forsooth, for all practical purposes—it was settled, she next said:
“Come on and see the chickens.”
And I accompanied her along the spidery bridge to the top of the ’midship-house, to look at the one rooster and the four dozen fat hens in the ship’s chicken-coop.
As I accompanied her, my eyes dwelling pleasurably on that vital gait of hers as she preceded me, I could not help reflecting that, coming down on the tug from Baltimore, she had promised not to bother me nor require to be entertained.
Come and see the chickens!—Oh, the sheer female possessiveness of that simple invitation! For effrontery of possessiveness is there anything that can exceed the nest-making, planet-populating, female, human woman?—Come and see the chickens! Oh, well, the sailors for’ard may be hard-bitten, but I can promise Miss West that here, aft, is one male passenger, unmarried and never married, who is an equally hard-bitten adventurer on the sea of matrimony. When I go over the census I remember at least several women, superior to Miss West, who trilled their song of sex and failed to shipwreck me.
As I read over what I have written I notice how the terminology of the sea has stolen into my mental processes. Involuntarily I think in terms of the sea. Another thing I notice is my excessive use of superlatives. But then, everything on board the Elsinore is superlative. I find myself continually combing my vocabulary in quest of just and adequate words. Yet am I aware of failure. For example, all the words of all the dictionaries would fail to approximate the exceeding terribleness of Mulligan Jacobs.
But to return to the chickens. Despite every precaution, it was evident that they had had a hard time during the past days of storm. It was equally evident that Miss West, even during her sea-sickness, had not neglected them. Under her directions the steward had actually installed a small oil-stove in the big coop, and she now beckoned him up to the top of the house as he was passing for’ard to the galley. It was for the purpose of instructing him further in the matter of feeding them.
Where were the grits? They needed grits. He didn’t know. The sack had been lost among the miscellaneous stores, but Mr. Pike had promised a couple of sailors that afternoon to overhaul the lazarette.
“Plenty of ashes,” she told the steward. “Remember. And if a sailor doesn’t clean the coop each day, you report to me. And give them only clean food—no spoiled scraps, mind. How many eggs yesterday?”
The steward’s eyes glistened with enthusiasm as he said he had got nine the day before and expected fully a dozen to-day.
“The poor things,” said Miss West—to me. “You’ve no idea how bad weather reduces their laying.” She turned back upon the steward. “Mind now, you watch and find out which hens don’t lay, and kill them first. And you ask me each time before you kill one.”
I found myself neglected, out there on top the draughty house, while Miss West talked chickens with the Chinese ex-smuggler. But it gave me opportunity to observe her. It is the length of her eyes that accentuates their steadiness of gaze—helped, of course, by the dark brows and lashes. I noted again the warm gray of her eyes. And I began to identify her, to locate her. She is a physical type of the best of the womanhood of old New England. Nothing spare nor meagre, nor bred out, but generously strong, and yet not quite what one would call robust. When I said she was strapping-bodied I erred. I must fall back on my other word, which will have to be the last: Miss West is vital-bodied. That is the key-word.
When we had regained the poop, and Miss West had gone below, I ventured my customary pleasantry with Mr. Mellaire of:
“And has O’Sullivan bought Andy Fay’s sea-boots yet?”
“Not yet, Mr. Pathurst,” was the reply, “though he nearly got them early this morning. Come on along, sir, and I’ll show you.”
Vouchsafing no further information, the second mate led the way along the bridge, across the ’midship-house and the for’ard-house. From the edge of the latter, looking down on Number One hatch, I saw two Japanese, with sail-needles and twine, sewing up a canvas-swathed bundle that unmistakably contained a human body.
“O’Sullivan used a razor,” said Mr. Mellaire.
“And that is Andy Fay?” I cried.
“No, sir, not Andy. That’s a Dutchman. Christian Jespersen was his name on the articles. He got in O’Sullivan’s way when O’Sullivan went after the boots. That’s what saved Andy. Andy was more active. Jespersen couldn’t get out of his own way, much less out of O’Sullivan’s. There’s Andy sitting over there.”
I followed Mr. Mellaire’s gaze, and saw the burnt-out, aged little Scotchman squatted on a spare spar and sucking a pipe. One arm was in a sling and his head was bandaged. Beside him squatted Mulligan Jacobs. They were a pair. Both were blue-eyed, and both were malevolent-eyed. And they were equally emaciated. It was easy to see that they had discovered early in the voyage their kinship of bitterness. Andy Fay, I knew, was sixty-three years old, although he looked a hundred; and Mulligan Jacobs, who was only about fifty, made up for the difference by the furnace-heat of hatred that burned in his face and eyes. I wondered if he sat beside the injured bitter one in some sense of sympathy, or if he were there in order to gloat.
Around the corner of the house strolled Shorty, flinging up to me his inevitable clown-grin. One hand was swathed in bandages.
“Must have kept Mr. Pike busy,” was my comment to Mr. Mellaire.
“He was sewing up cripples about all his watch from four till eight.”
“What?” I asked. “Are there any more?”
“One more, sir, a sheeny. I didn’t know his name before, but Mr. Pike got it—Isaac B. Chantz. I never saw in all my life at sea as many sheenies as are on board the Elsinore right now. Sheenies don’t take to the sea as a rule. We’ve certainly got more than our share of them. Chantz isn’t badly hurt, but you ought to hear him whimper.”
“Where’s O’Sullivan?” I inquired.
“In the ’midship-house with Davis, and without a mark. Mr. Pike got into the rumpus and put him to sleep with one on the jaw. And now he’s lashed down and talking in a trance. He’s thrown the fear of God into Davis. Davis is sitting up in his bunk with a marlin-spike, threatening to brain O’Sullivan if he starts to break loose, and complaining that it’s no way to run a hospital. He’d have padded cells, straitjackets, night and day nurses, and violent wards, I suppose—and a convalescents’ home in a Queen Anne cottage on the poop.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Mr. Mellaire sighed. “This is the funniest voyage and the funniest crew I’ve ever tackled. It’s not going to come to a good end. Anybody can see that with half an eye. It’ll be dead of winter off the Horn, and a fo’c’s’le full of lunatics and cripples to do the work.—Just take a look at that one. Crazy as a bedbug. He’s likely to go overboard any time.”
I followed his glance and saw Tony the Greek, the one who had sprung overboard the first day. He had just come around the corner of the house, and, beyond one arm in a sling, seemed in good condition. He walked easily and with strength, a testimonial to the virtues of Mr. Pike’s rough surgery.
My eyes kept returning to the canvas-covered body of Christian Jespersen, and to the Japanese who sewed with sail-twine his sailor’s shroud. One of them had his right hand in a huge wrapping of cotton and bandage.
“Did he get hurt, too?”
