# Solo/Chapter 4

Seated on an anchor caked with drying mud—an anchor that had been heaved on deck and made fast after much grunting, yo-hoing and pushing of breasts against capstan bars—Paul gazed far ahead, beyond the fat, steel bowsprit, beyond the foamy grey waves that advanced at a slant, towards a narrow, horizontal strip of blue above which stretched a wall of mist surmounted by clusters of cloud that looked like wash-drawings of gigantic balls of lint swept up on a carpet. Straight for that turquoise rift, straining and creaking, careening with great stately lunges, raising a starboard shoulder to avoid the hissing crests of the waves, then swerving broadly to port as she dipped into the ensuing hollows, the Clytemnestra drove on and on, patiently, grimly, loyally, too engrossed in her efforts to be eager, yet too intent on her goal to dally.
Once she even rebuked the helmsman. When he put the wheel over too hard, so that she was forced a point closer to the wind—a point that threatened to stifle her breath—she sent back a hasty warning by flapping her jib and fore upper top-gallantsail, then quivered with relief when the wheel went spinning back and disaster was averted. Paul turned, narrowed his eyes, gazed in righteous disapproval down the length of the ship, then grunted understandingly, for it was the new man, the beery hobo, who was not as familiar with the art of ​steering as he might have been. From the depths of his nautical experience—extending over several long days now—Paul scolded. The simpleton might have got the ship aback, then there would have been the devil to pay. Didn't he know that that was how top-masts were snapped off—sometimes, when a gale was blowing? This ten-knot breeze, Paul had to remind himself, was, of course, only a zephyr. Wait till they ran into a real gale—then that land-lubber would see!
Paul had learned much about gales, hurricanes and typhoons. He felt there wouldn't, somehow, be any on this voyage; the worst storms seemed to have blown themselves out years ago; nothing could ever again be as terrific as the hurricanes that the second mate and the sailmaker and the cook and the carpenter—"Chips"—and half the men in the forecastle had weathered in their time. Paul felt it was a pity he had struck such a tame sort of ship. Nothing, apparently, could be expected to happen to her. She was so much smaller—for all her two thousand and forty-nine registered tonnage—than those other fine vessels he had been told about; so much slower, so much less convenient to handle, carried so much less canvas, was so inadequately victualled, so prosaically devoid of hoodoos—and one had, in one's pitiable ignorance, thought her such a brave-looking craft, had thought the sails so vast and neat and stout, the ropes so thick and strong, the paint so fresh, the decks so velvety smooth, the food so—well, not really bad.
Even the mate and the "old man," hardy Canadians of the "blue-nose" stamp, Paul had looked upon as competent and sailorly to a degree—yet now he knew that, though the "old man understood what he was about," still he wasn't a patch on other old men under whom this weirdly variegated score of men had sailed in good old days which Paul, having been born so lamentably late in history, could enjoy only through the medium of ​narrative. Glorious as all these yarns were, instinct as they were with the inspiriting breath of adventure, Paul could almost have wished he had been left in ignorance of those incomparable clippers and packet ships, for there was something magnificently regal about the Clytemnestra; it would have been easy to offer her unstinted fealty; she was so obviously doing her best. And this afternoon he had crept forward by himself, as soon as his manifold duties had permitted, in order that no inveterate narrator might dull the fine edge of his enjoyment.
The cook was his chief entertainer, for they were thrown a good deal in each other's society. Six times a day Paul had to wait in the hot, narrow galley while the greasy Finn filled up the basket with tureens and platters, tea-pots, coffee-pots, vegetable and pudding dishes: one trip for the table of the captain and first mate, and another for that of the second mate, carpenter and sailmaker. Then at odd moments throughout the day he visited the galley for hot water, or to carry supplies from the store-room, or to heat irons to press the old man's shirts and pyjamas and handkerchiefs. And the cook had an anecdote to impart on each occasion.
He had recently got his discharge from a Yankee barque, the Ezra R. Smith on which there had been unlimited weekly rations of sugar and baking powder, yeast, spices, butter, and eggs preserved in water-glass. Wherefore, for the bread served on the Ezra R. Smith there had been no need to apologize; the plum duffs on the Ezra R. Smith thanks to the plethora of ingredients, had come into spontaneous and succulent being—they had, presumably, little kinship with the present rubberoid abortions. The prunes on the Ezra R. Smith had not been wrinkled of mien nor coal-like in consistency; the dried apples had been less reminiscent of scraps from a cobbler's floor; the pots and pans, the hatchets and meat-grinders had been more numerous and sharp, the ovens ​hotter. Paul wondered how the Clytemnestra—even though she had been built on the Clyde and sailed under the protection of that celebrated Britannia whom as a child, he had pictured, on the seashore with a school footrule in her hand, "ruling" the waves!—he wondered how she had the courage to drive on, under such handicaps, until the second mate, who swore by the Macrihanish, enlightened him by saying, apropos of the Ezra R. Smith "What, that sieve! That floating casket! Why I went aboard o' her in Rosario once. She liked to never got there, at that. The only sailin' she done was backwards till the skipper run short o' booze, eighty-odd days out, and come on deck for the first time and filled her sails with cusses. God help any mother's son that ships on that fire bucket. She's one o' your hunch-back wooden old-timers—except that it ain't lucky to touch her hump. She'll part amidships one o' these days. Good enough in her time, twenty-five year ago. I mind once, when I was boatswain aboard the Macrihanish—" but Paul had seen the captain's form emerging from the chart-room and scurried off to polish the knives.
To-day, a Sunday and nearly a week out, it was pleasant to sit on the anchor and, for the first time since losing sight of land, really take stock of the situation. Up to this moment he had been too busy to meditate. The first hours on board, when the citadel, then the broad gate of the outer harbour, and finally the whole coast-line dropped away, had been more wonderful than anything in his experience. Never should he forget his strange exaltation as he had stood staring up at the little black figures crooked over the yards and watched the grey sails loosen and unfold and finally come clanking, creaking, flapping and ballooning down, till they made vast, bulging oblongs between the tapering yards and were securely held in place by a system of blocks and braces.
The unerring skill with which each man selected one ​rope from a bewildering choice and made it fast to its allotted pin! The nonchalance of perilously poised figures! The lusty shouts from deck to topmast! The queer falsetto break in the voices as arms strained and backs arched to overcome the resistance of enormous canvas folds! The picturesque oaths and the strange jargon of "buntlin's" and "gaskets"! The gathering momentum, proved by the speed at which bits of seaweed were left astern! The sheer romance of endowing with life this cumbersome mass of iron and wood! The heart-catching wonder of feeling oneself borne along by the wings of a monstrous bird! What an incomparable setting for a new movement in the theme of life—life more abundant than anything one could have dreamed!
The tow-boat had screamed its farewell, and throughout the yellowish-grey afternoon, the sails had been set. Night had descended and phosphorescent glints had begun to appear over the side before the last order of "Ay, belay that!" had been given, the yards brought into final alignment to the tune of strange, German-sounding heaving-cries, and the weary double watch had slouched forward for supper. Then Paul, replacing the last of his crockery in the pantry racks, hanging cups on hooks in the ceiling, mopping up a crumby shelf and proceeding to fill his tiny cabin lamp with oil, had begun to wonder whether——
He relived the experience of that first evening. Perhaps if he hurried off to bed! he had thought. The water bottles in the captain's bathroom had been filled, the captain's blankets turned down and the saloon lights lowered; the mates' cabins had been seen to—what a filthy reek of tobacco in the corridors!
Perhaps, if he undressed quickly and got straight——
If they hadn't put such silly dashboard-things at all the doors! Would one ever learn to step over them ​without stumbling? Oh, dear, what endless see-sawing! Up and down, up and down, relentlessly, and the heavy drawers groaned, the lamps swung patiently, in their sockets. The smell of oil! The strong, clean smell of tar and hemp in the store-room as one replaced the tin of kerosene in its frame—everything had a frame or a rack at sea; even the dining-table, in case the plate should slide off! Once in one's cabin—but it was away at the other side of the saloon, down another corridor, next to the lazaret—a long way. "A long wa-ays from home!" Sometimes, like Becky, he felt "like a motherless chile!" Dare he put down the lamp a minute? Terrible to set the ship afire!
Oh, dear! Would there be anyone on deck to see, in case—— After all, it was dark out there—the lee side. Would it be safe to try and blow out the lamp, or would the act of blowing tend to release the muscular control—that drawn-in tension——
He had reached the lee side just in time.
By standing on the huge iron "double post thing"—would they call it a cleat? No, not that, something more nautical; "bits," that was it—one's shoulders cleared the side. Rather comfortable, standing on these bits, pressed against the teak shelf-thing in which holes were bored for belaying pins, which were like "men" in the game called "cribbage." What a long slow rhythm to this incessant teetering; it seemed minutes between the rise and fall, and for all the see-sawing, the deck had a permanent slant—one would have to walk uphill to get back to the cabin door. One would be walking uphill all the way to Australia.
It hadn't lasted long. But how it made your eyes smart! Those big pilot-crackers in the pantry locker—they would help make up for a lost supper. Thank Heaven nobody had seen.
Would one be all right in the morning? Surely. ​"See-saw, Margery Daw——" If Gritty could only have foreseen, when singing that little song! Gritty—Hale's Turning. Already they seemed like a dream.
The second day had started badly, for in bringing breakfast aft he had unwisely contemplated a daub of porridge on the lid of a bowl. The sea had seemed quite needlessly busy; the decks cold, wet, and foolishly unstable. He had felt greenish and nibbled pilot bread rather desperately, and it had been hard to laugh at their talk of swallowing raw pork, but there had been so much to do! The old man had spent hours demonstrating how the corners were to be mopped, how the soda and borax were to be mixed, the brass polished, the linoleum scrubbed, had shown him where the stores were kept, revealed lockers under settees, explained how the mattresses were to be turned and the blankets tucked in. And one's head had ached, ached, ached—see-saw, ache, ache—whilst heavy loads of water dashed against the iron walls, hissing and spluttering at closed ports, and it was stuffy, and the old man was saying, "Once a week," and the Lord only knew what he was referring to.
Washing up the greasy platters was horrible. The serving at table was easy enough, but the white jacket was too long in the sleeves—Otto, his predecessor in office, being six feet tall.
Otto, who was now an ordinary seaman, had taken a whole hour out of his watch below to come and scrub the floors of the mates' rooms for him—and all because he had been able to chat with Otto in German. The sailors had professed to scorn the language, but his knowledge of it had given him a prestige, which was increased when he tied intricate knots Mr. Silva had taught him. Neither of these accomplishments had received adequate recognition in Hale's Turning. At last Aunt Verona's Mondays and Wednesdays—were bearing fruit—as everything instigated by Aunt Verona, had a ​way of doing. At the least they had won him a powerful ally in the forecastle.
Those floors! The saloon and the captain's bedroom and bathroom were spotless—a pleasure to do them out. But the mates! They chewed tobacco. On the floor, within convenient reach, were brass receptacles—but the mates were appallingly bad shots! Whenever it came time to scrub those two tiny floors, Paul found it necessary to think about something miles away, or hum strenuously—not too strenuously, for in this new world somebody was always asleep—while he slathered and brushed and slaped; for if he let himself dwell on the situation in hand—well, it meant another hasty exit, and one couldn't always pretend to be looking over the side for jelly-fish!
After the third or fourth day, the see-sawing had become less annoying, and the emergency pilot-crackers crumbled to powder in his pockets. But every day he discovered new areas of brass to be polished. The people who had fitted forth the Clytemnestra had shown a maddening partiality for this metal. It covered the silly dashboards that blocked progress from cabin to cabin; it embellished every door; it encircled every porthole; it was twisted into fantastic settings for lamps and barometers, with myriad angles and crevices that caught the white paste and defied your efforts to dislodge it, whereupon you delivered yourself, sotto voce, of robust oaths which would have startled the eaves of Hale's Turning, but which seemed meet and fitting at sea.
That he could swear with an untroubled conscience illustrated the quality of this new plane of existence. Here oaths and ribaldries that would formerly have crisped his hair had no more consequence than the spray which leapt over the sides. Like spray they evaporated, leaving a tang of salt which was not unpleasant—he ​even licked his arms, as Mr. Silva's cow licked rock salt in the corner of the pasture.
In Hale's Turning such allusions had menaced the neat precarious cohorts of his childish ideals, like vandal dogs among tin soldiers. They had riled waters which, since the dawn of consciousness, had been limpid. Walter's stories, the minister's patronage, the evangelist's religious debauchery, Miss Mason's myopic dogmatism, the head master's coercion, had aroused his scorn, because they fell below the twenty-four-carat standard of fitness that prevailed in the privacy of Aunt Verona's kitchen. Thrust into a civilization adapted to the needs of little Nova Scotia at large, and bereft of the touchstone of Aunt Verona's interpretative faculty (even Aunt Verona had not assayed half the specimens of truth-ore he might have submitted), he had been shocked by the divergence between his notion of true gold and the base alloy in public currency. Having been nourished for twelve years on dishes seasoned to his palate, then brusquely confronted with dishes from which he had been spared by guardian angels, he had been nauseated. He had eyed them with the candour of a child whose idealistic development had not been hampered, and had immediately detected adulterations, which he with childlike inexorableness condemned. To have accepted the dishes would have meant swallowing the adulterations for the sake of a few honest currants and cloves, or persuading himself that adulterated food was the most wholesome, as all the other adolescents seemed to be doing. But such a course would have been a repudiation of Aunt Verona's kitchen, would have implied that its eclecticism had been some sort of hoax, a sham as petty as the talk of gold cobble-stones in heaven. That constituted a reductio ad absurdum, for nothing in life could shake his faith in Aunt Verona's kitchen. Whether the method of living he had learnt there were right or wrong ​it was at least the only method possible for him, and for no conceivable bribe would he think of going back to the beginning and starting all over again.
He could improve his method, adapt it to his growth, but he could no more change it than he could change the colour of his eyes. Tiens! Phœbe, the day of the party, had been in doubt about the colour of his eyes and to be on the safe side had given out that they were "Uh—blue," like all the other vague eyes in the world. Similarly, society, in doubt about the nature of his method of life, had, to be on the safe side, sought to make him conform to a rule-of-thumb method fit only for bullies and dunces and nonentities incapable of self-navigation. In Aunt Verona's kitchen, year by year, he had felt his theme becoming clearer, stronger, more soaring; his long hours of practice and his miscellaneous reading, his days of German and French, his ambling talks with Mr. Silva and engrossing arguments with Mark Laval, his sentimental exploits and solitary wanderings in the fields, his excursions into the world of day-school and church and his nightly draughts from Aunt Verona's well of wisdom—all had contributed harmonies, rhythms, and sonorities to the theme, and he felt that a clearly defined movement in the vast composition had come to an end with Aunt Verona's death. In Halifax he had hoped to commence a new movement which, if not a variation on the original theme, should at least put forward a theme in keeping with it and develop the opening ideas in some progressive manner. Instead, he had heard but feeble reiterations of outgrown configurations drowned in a discordant chorus.
Whereas here, on the scudding sea, he was in a position to sing forth his theme "full organ." Here the raw materials of life were at hand, to be dealt with as instinct, and not arbitrary authority, should dictate. Authority in this little world was a force which directed ​you to "do" a brass knob again because you had done it badly the first time, which reminded you to moisten the linen before pressing it, which told you to look sharp and scolded if the soup was cold—a force which was usually reasonable, tolerably kind, irksome of course, but quite understandable at its worst, a force which in no sense meddled with your theories, which made no indecent assaults on your principles, which never obliged you to climb down from the walls of your mental castle to be a mere "dirty rascal." Ideals were hurled at you here, and you took your choice, without coercion; your convictions were scoffed at by burly, good-natured grown-ups, but you were not asked to report to the captain "at three o'clock" and retract them.
True enough, in this world you performed many acts for the sake of what the French master had called esprit de corps. You lent a hand at the main brace, for instance, if you happened to be on deck when the mate was wearing ship—or you ran up to the poop and manipulated the main royal and upper topgallant braces all by yourself. But that sort of co-operation didn't cheapen you in your own estimation, as the j'ai-tu-as-il-a sort most certainly did. On the contrary, lending a hand on deck, humble and brawny co-operation though it was, added a pleasant new sonority to your theme, and certainly did more for your muscles than dipping and lunging in Gym to the tune of "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey?" or "Put me off at Buffalo."
Moreover, in this world you learned plenty of things from the beginning: you learned, for instance, that there was no such thing as the "key of the keelson," and that you had been sent to ask the old man for it merely that a dozen tarry and salty men-babies might split their sides with laughter at your greenness, but you were much more willing to learn useless things of this sort than the useless or pernicious things Miss Mason ​had to teach, for in the former case there was no question of betraying a miraculously gifted aunt.
It was with some such inventory as this, though the realization of it was present to him in the nebular form of feeling rather than the precision of formulated thought, that Paul accounted for his nonchalance in the face of bloody oaths and smutty stories, and he breathed deep draughts of his freedom as he sat in the bows of the barque and gazed far out at the horizon. When his mind went back to the life he was forswearing, it went straight to the little village, without pausing in the painful city. He pictured Aunt Verona's twisted smile and kind eyes. He saw the glass monuments flashing at Becky's ears, and heard her unearthly growlings give place to the cadences of "Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile, a long wa-ays from ho-o-ome"—Becky whose bursts of song were more musical to the inch than Miss Todd's Ave Maria's to the yard—poor gurgling Gertrude who called him "Paul dear."
He wistfully recalled the night when he had stolen roses from the Ashmill gardens and kept a bud for Phœbe Meddar. His tenderness toward Phœbe had in no wise suffered at the hands of the boy who outmanœuvred him. Phœbe burying her straight little nose in Walter's bouquet was as precious to him as Phœbe in any other pretty pose. For that matter he earnestly guessed she had loved the blossoms because they were lovely, not because Walter had given them to her.
And Gritty—vulgar, loyal, tigerish, inimitable Gritty! She had got the letter before this, and all Hale's Turning must have heard. Dr. Wilcove might even at this moment be holding a pow-wow with the head master while he, Paul Minas, alias Paul Laval, was—according to the second mate—"somewheres about the same latitude as Baltimore." Rather rough on old boy Wilcove—but he would soon forget about his troublesome ward and pass ​the collection plate till Kingdom Come, while Miss Todd's G's grew squeakier and squeakier and the minister served up the réchauffé sermons of his youth.
He left his anchor seat to lean over the iron railing, gazing into the liquid mountains that flung themselves up against the curving bow. Three miles deep! He tried to think his way down to the bottom. From Hale's Turning to Bridgetown was nine miles—a third of the distance would be as far as the shanty where the blind Indian made baskets out of sweet grass and the gipsies camped in summer. Down, down—he could think down as far as the distance from Aunt Verona's to the schoolhouse—down, down—to the church and Miss Todd's and up the hill? No, his mind wouldn't sink any farther than Gritty's gate, where a demure little girl was saying, "I'm sorry about your auntie, Paul."
The turquoise strip had expanded. The water was changing from steel grey to steel blue. And the ship drove on, while one's thoughts glided and circled like the gulls, without getting tired or lost. On and on unflaggingly towards the blue horizon. The Clytemnestra was abandoning the autumnal rigours of the north for the south's warm promise, bearing one towards knowledge and achievement, like the kindly white bear in the tale called East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
A resounding bell made him jump. Good Lord! Quarter to four. That uproar in the forecastle was Fritz calling the first mate's watch. The old man would be looking for his tea, and might peek into the pantry and discover the bottle of limejuice swiped from the storeroom!
He descended the iron ladder, running the length of the main deck till he came to the mainsail-sheet stretched across his route. When it was slack, he balanced on it, for the fun of being jerked into the air as the bellying sail snapped it taut. A black kitten was playing ​"Mouse" with a frayed end of manilla, trying vainly to make Mother evince a spark of interest. Paul thought of Becky's black baby whom he had once tried so hard to visualize in heaven—a little coon angel! Would the old cat sit blinking on the fife-rail if her piccaninny should pounce a few inches too far and go shooting through the scupper hole?
From the grating which ran forward from the poop to the standard compass, Paul suddenly noticed the old man frowning down at him.
"What about my tea, steward?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir, in a minute. It's drawing."
This was inaccurate, but the young steward was confident of being able to smuggle the empty teapot to the galley under his loose jacket. Just so, a young organist had known how to improvise a modulation bridging his private reverie with the celebration of a rite.
On and on, striving toward the south but ever frustrated by winds which made it necessary to veer south-south-west or south-east-by-east. Paul had mastered the psychology of those that go down to the sea in ships and was no longer surprised to hear his mates curse the old man in one breath for making them unbend stout sails and replace them by worn, fair-weather sails, then, in the next breath, commend him for his thrift. And when, after thoughtful examination of some speck on the horizon, the old man gave an order to take in the royals and topgallantsails, and perhaps even the foresail and mainsail, Paul knew that the incarnadined phrases dropped by the men clambering up the shrouds like tired gorillas, while ostensibly aimed at the old man's head, were in reality meant for the capriciousness of fate. The expedition with which they took in sail proved deep-​seated if grudging faith in their captain's flair for a storm.
Once, at dead of night, when Paul was seated on the hatch amidships listening to Otto's tales of schooldays in Bremen, the old man made a portentous appearance on deck, his pyjamas looming in the moonlight. A moment later the second mate was roused and the watch below turned out. Grumbling and adjusting their sheath knives, the men straggled forth and took to the rigging. Then the moonlight was cut off as when a slide is drawn across a dark-lantern, the vessel shivered, a cold breath crept into pockets of canvas, and soon there was a commotion aloft, a clanking and flapping and knocking of blocks and tackle that reminded Paul of a panic in a stable. The ship heeled over steeply and drove ahead. Paul remembered the open ports in the cabin and flew aft to screw them to. On his return the wind rushed at him. The shrouds hummed like tuning forks and from perches high above the ghostly wall of canvas came faint falsetto yohoings mingled with an affrighting flow of blasphemy, which was drowned in the increasing roar of wind and sea.
Even in the shelter of the main deck, Paul had difficulty in gaining the mate's side to help with the letting out and making fast of lines, and when the situation had been saved and the yards gleamed faintly like the limbs of a dancing skeleton, while human insects groped their way along slack footholds imprisoning ends of rope, the mate stooped and bellowed in his ear, "Clumsy bastards, this squall has put the fear of God into 'em!" Whereupon Paul divined that the same holy emotion had penetrated into the heart of the mate, and he wondered, as he clung to a stanchion for support, whether this "squall" might not compare favourably with the cataclysmal hurricanes that had struck other ships.
Although the poop was out of bounds to anyone but ​the old man, the helmsman, and the officer on duty, Paul for once ventured to ascend the steps. The captain stood beside the binnacles, his grim, vigilant, bearded face revealed in the glow of the lamps. Belatedly Paul's sense of duty revived and he dived into the companion-way to fetch the old man's oilskins and seaboots. These were donned without a word of acknowledgment, but Paul knew that his thoughtfulness was appreciated, and accepting the abnormal circumstances as a special license remained at the break of the poop, clinging to the rail and bracing himself against the blast. The old man had altered the course, letting the ship drive before the storm.
A crackle of lightning, as bright as though it had been touched off by a photographer, revealed the denuded outline of the vessel, making her seem as grotesquely tiny as she had, in the dark, seemed gigantically big. With only the topsails and staysails set, floundering in foam-tipped seas of greenish putty she reminded Paul of a little ship in a bottle, like the model Otto was making for him. Before he could account for this discrepancy there came a grinding, splintering, exploding crash, as though all heaven had been riven asunder. He crouched in the belief that a mast had given way and would come down with its trappings of wood and steel to annihilate him. Impossible that mere thunder could be so close, so ear-splitting and heart-shaking! He waited with tense muscles for the next flash, and rejoiced in the deluge that swept across the decks and drenched him to the skin.
Until dawn he maintained his position on the poop, absorbed in the ruthless spectacle, exultantly aware of his puniness, glorying in the thought that, with a slightly increased concentration of wrath, the elements might engulf him in one swirl of wreckage. Tons of water tossed themselves on the deck below and, failing to stave in the tarpaulined hatches, seethed from scupper to scup​per in search of exits, that they might return to the assault in more overwhelming force. If they only would! Paul caught himself "rooting" for the wind and waves, inciting them to greater and greater violence. He was almost sure that years hence, when he was skipper of some fine ship, he would recall this occasion and say, "I mind one night aboard the old Clytemnestra——"
By the time the first grey streaks of light were stealing into the dishevelled sky, the wind, although it would still have seemed hurricanic in other circumstances, had abated, and only the colossal seas were animated by the hope of smashing the toy man had sent to defy them. The captain had gone below, and Paul reluctantly followed to snatch a little sleep. In the musty corridors he had a different impression of the storm. The sides were trembling with each brutal attack, and the waves, sliding upwards, smothered the ports with a sickly gurgle. In his cabin, books and "gear" of all sorts had been flung to the floor and his canvas chair was upside down in a corner. With the fore and aft pitching, the lamp in its brass socket strove to turn somersaults. What if the captain had not appeared on deck during that talk with Otto—how long ago it seemed! Would the mate have seen the danger in time?
Paul shivered. The muffled uproar lost its glamour—it was rather like being buried alive—and he no longer desired the storm to do its worst. Water had forced its way into the cabin, soaking strips of carpet—and that meant extra work. He threw aside his drenched garments, towelled himself, and got into pyjamas—a cast-off suit of the old man's well reefed.
It had been the most exciting night of his life, and he was tired.
On and on. Until propitious northern "Trades" were encountered, the pencil in the chart-room recorded a sharp zigzag. Then, to a point near the equator, the ​course proceeded in a straight line, representing blue, golden, foam-flecked days when steady progress had made for a settled routine. When the Trade Winds petered out, a tropical languor stole over the ship, and she could do nothing but roll in the long glassy swell under an ardent sun, while the sails, damp from swift recurring downpours, slapped against masts and cordage, then, as the vessel dipped forward, filled out with their own dead weight, drawing in the slack sheets with a whip-like snap. The rudder punctuated the long rhythms by dull kicks that sounded like the distant slamming of a barn door.
See-saw, see-saw—but it was now the drowsy teetering of a "painted ship upon a painted ocean." How those sullenly memorized verses of The Ancient Mariner came to glowing life! One day Paul caught a mollycoddle, which Otto said was nearly as big as an albatross, by means of a baited, triangular ring of tin, into a corner of which it thrust its hooked beak. Keeping the line taut, he had drawn the bird aboard. Once on deck it was unable to fly away, because there was no air purchase for its wings. It declined food and drink. The black kitten, peering around a corner of the house, humped its back at the apparition of a ten-foot spread of wing, and ran for its life, hiding in the hollow of the bowsprit under the forecastle head. Paul finally lifted the bewildered bird to the rail and it flew away, little the worse for its adventure. He had, nevertheless, felt guilty during its captivity, and that night dreamt it hung about his neck while Chips and the cook cursed him with fever-glazed eyes.
Merciless heat, a soft azure sky, towers of canvas mirrored in a field of gently undulating sapphire—and, on boatswain-chairs hung over the sides, men scraped and hammered at flakes of rust, applying great swathes of vermilion paint. At close range, if you stood on the ​fat iron bits and gazed into the sea, you could detect an amethyst tinge in the water as the rays of the sun probed down, revealing in the depths flecks and shreds, like the motes in sunbeams. You looked into the heart of a circle of mixed water and light, warmest and most amethystine at the centre and becoming less translucent, and colder in tint, towards the rim of vision, like the misty halos surrounding street lamps. Then perhaps an olive shadow would writhe across the circle, and you would tease yourself by imagining that you had, after all, obeyed an impulse to tie the end of a lee brace about your waist and dive overboard for a swim. If you had! Ugh! For however cautiously those shadowy monsters might approach a bait of salt pork, you had no assurance that they were abstinent in the case of cabin-boys seductively browned by the sun!
Swansen, the Swede—the old man referred to all foreigners as "dis-and-datters"—was drawing bucketfuls of water which Otto poured down a pipe leading to the captain's bathroom. The sun wrapped itself about its victims. For twenty-four hours there had been no stirring of air, except for little rushes caused by the sails as they collapsed against the shrouds. The ship rocked like some canopied cradle in a bowl of jelly. The captain, whose hobby was sailmaking, was seated on the poop with needle, beeswax and palm, at work on a mending job.
The tank was filled, Otto screwed down the brass plate, and as he pattered forward, his enormous, bare feet stuck to the tar that bubbled up between the smooth planks. He seemed unaware of it. He was incredibly tough, as he was incredibly tall, ugly, powerful, and good-natured. His face was distorted in a friendly grin that revealed gaps between his teeth and wrinkled the narrow space between his piggy blue eyes and reddish curls. Swansen had drawn two buckets more than necessary. Otto ​picked them up and was about to descend from the poop when Paul ran to the foot of the steps and begged for a shower-bath. After glancing towards the old man, Otto obligingly emptied the buckets over the naked shoulders of his protégé. The water was colder than it looked. Paul gasped and cavorted about the broiling deck, leaving a trail and making a clumping noise with the slop-chest slippers into which his feet were thrust. Then he grabbed his basket, vaulted to Otto's shoulders, and was borne forward.
Dinner was not yet ready to be dished up, and to escape the heat of the galley Paul mounted the forecastle head to look for the sail which had been sighted during the morning. It was still on the horizon, gleaming like a tiny pearl. In the absence of a breeze, both ships were at the mercy of whatever current there might be. After weeks of isolation the prospect of passing another ship was of the essence of romance.
While serving dinner, Paul heard the captain report a change in the barometer that gave promise of a breeze, rather than a mere repetition of futile showers. And, by the time he had finished washing up, a ripple was passing like a film over the sapphire, broken by a million golden glints. The ship responded, and for a welcome change slid through the water, overtaking great opalescent jelly-fish—"Portuguese men-o'-war"—and leaving a little wake of bubbles astern. "About three knots," Paul estimated, as he leaned over the side and shook the crumbs from the tablecloth.
The sail locker was a most satisfactory retreat. It could be ventilated by two portholes, and the folds of canvas provided a safe, comfortable privacy in which to consume stolen fruits: tinned cherries and grapes and asparagus. All that was lacking was an adequate supply of books. The dog's-eared paperbound volumes from the mates' cabins were dismal fare, and the captain's ​shelves were richer in works on tides, soundings and cloud formations than in works of fiction and poetry.
In the beginning the captain had been a little forbidding in manner, and Paul, to his dying day, would not forget the look that had been turned on him when he had so far forgotten himself as to sit on a corner of the bench at the dining-table while the captain regaled the mate with an enthralling yarn. The old man hadn't reprimanded him in words, but had simply stopped talking and waited, in surprise but not anger, and Paul had risen, a wave of shame surging over him. His cheeks burned and his heart had seemed to leap out. The captain had resumed the tale, and Paul had walked quickly from the saloon with his tray, passed the pantry-door, and gained the deck with some confused intention of flinging himself and the crockery into the hissing sea, to perish with the death of his self-esteem. He might grow up to be a criminal and be condemned by his peers, but never again could he experience quite such an overwhelming sense of humiliation as he had been reduced to by that mute reminder of his menial estate. It was the first time he had thought of it as menial, and it had indeed been rendered so by his witless lapse.
A few days later there had been a momentous interview. Running to his cabin with his mind full of some errand, Paul had found the captain examining the big gold watch which for once he had forgotten to conceal. The sight gave him the feeling in his spine that he might have experienced had an umbrella suddenly snapped shut over his head. The old man was staring at the Dutch inscription inside the case as though he were seeing a ghost.
"Where did you get this?" he demanded.
"My father left it to me," Paul confessed, through sheer inability to say otherwise. What excuse could he offer for having it with him, when he had sworn in Hali​fax that he had pawned all his possessions? The captain would think him a thief as well as a liar, yet he could no more have lied at this juncture than he could have poisoned the food.
"Was your father Captain Andrew Minas?" the old man asked.
"Yes, sir."
"How many other lies have you told me?"
Paul's eyes dropped. "None, sir, since leaving port."
The captain replaced the watch on the dresser. "See here, boy," he admonished, "you've done your work ship-shape, and I'm not finding fault. But you take and count ten before ever you go telling me any more fantastical yarns. What's more, don't leave that lying about. It ain't as though it was an ordinary timepiece."
"No, sir."
"Away now to that job of varnishing."
As he was leaving, Paul couldn't resist one question. "Did you know my father, sir?"
"Can't say I ever knew a drunken lumber-jack by the name of Laval," replied the old man.
Since that memorable day the captain's attitude had been less forbidding, though he was as impersonal as ever, and Paul redoubled in diligence. But the captain had made new concessions and Paul felt that an ordinary steward would not have been given lessons in the science of navigation nor allowed to take the sun with an extra sextant. The old man had explained the chronometers and compass, had entrusted him with the log-line, and even let him take the wheel on occasion. He had also turned over to Paul the slop-chest accounts, and every Saturday night, when the men came slouching aft for tobacco, clay pipes, knives, caps, and dungarees, it was Paul who acted as shopkeeper and importantly noted the debits in the captain's book.
Paul also recognized a special concession in the Cap​tain's proposal that he should unlock the old square piano and play during spare moments in the dog-watches. And once he thought he detected a twinkle in the old man's eye when, at table, the mate had spoken of the Brandywine, the ship which Mark Laval had thought Paul owned.
Paul lingered in the sail locker reading and ruminating, though it was time to take in the washing and see to the old man's tea. He must open a new tin of fancy biscuits, and set aside some of the chocolate-coated ones for himself. His conscience condoned petty larcenies in the store-room. In the first place, he could not stomach salt beef and porridge and bacon, and had to make up for such staples of sea diet by extra rations of tinned food. Besides, the captain always left the chocolate-coated biscuits on the plate. The cigars he had smuggled forward to Otto? Well, he hadn't taken more than four, and after all the captain hadn't paid for them; they were "come-shaw."
When he returned to the deck he found that the breeze had pleasantly transformed his circumscribed world. While the tea was steeping he ran to look for the sail. To his joy it occupied a greater space on the horizon. Apparently it was coming north, and as the wind was abeam for both ships they should, at the present rate, pass each other before dark.
The appearance of a vessel was a phenomenon sufficient to give a festive air to the evening gathering on the fore hatch. After supper Paul hurried forward to hear scraps of talk. It was a strangely assorted group. Chips, an old Dane from Holstein, had migrated in his youth to escape the German yoke. In his shop, half buried in shavings, he had told Paul of the tyrannies borne by his family, and solemnly prophesied a day of deliverance for Denmark. These accounts had stimulated the cook to similar tales of oppression in Finland. Rather than submit to Russian rule, he had crossed to ​Stockholm and eventually gone to sea in Swedish vessels. Swansen, the Swede, showed no particular devotion to the country in which the Finn had taken refuge, but planned to make his way eventually to Seattle and become a good American.
For Paul, the situation of Otto was the most interesting, for it involved a curious blend of sentiment and compulsion. Otto had run away from school five years previously, and within the next six months would have to return to Germany for a period of military or naval training. The captain had promised him his discharge on arrival in Australia.
Paul had been a little shocked to learn that young men in European countries were conscripted in this fashion. It made him feel slightly apprehensive, as he had been wont to feel in the days of estrangement when he had seen John Ashmill and Skinny Wiggins making snowballs with stone kernels and storing them in the fastnesses of a snow fort. The thought of obligatory training was hard to reconcile with his preconceived notions of Otto's fatherland; an abode of music and poetry; the eclectic land where Aunt Verona had passed an exquisite youth; where Werther had loved and sighed and wept; where kindly millers ground corn which kindly bakers made into cake, "der immer den Kindern besonders gut schmeckt."
"Why do they make you train?" he had asked Otto.
"So we'll know how to fight when the time comes."
"Is there going to be a war?"
"There are always wars."
"But why should any country want to go and fight?"
"To protect its honour."
"How? Are there good countries and bad ones?"
"Yes."
"What bad country is there for your country to fight?"
"France is bad. And England."
"It isn't! They aren't!"
​Otto smiled his good-natured smile.
"Do you want to fight against France and England?" Paul insisted.
"It isn't me. I have no quarrel with them."
"Then why do you go back to train?"
"Because my country commands me. Was kann ich dafür?"
"You can just plain refuse," Paul retorted. "Das kannst du dafür!"
"Then my poor old father would have to pay a fine to the authorities, and I would be a disgrace to him."
"I should think he'd rather pay a fine than have you turned into a slave. I wouldn't let any country boss me about!"
"You would do as all the others did."
"Not unless I felt like it! I'd run away. Why, you ran away yourself, from school. How could you do that, if you're so fussy about obeying authorities?"
"Running away from school is different. It affects only oneself. Running away from military service affects the country."
"Do you mean to say you're willing to be bullied by your country just because it may need you to help kill people of a country which it thinks is bad, but which isn't bad at all? I suppose you would have stayed at school and let the teachers bully you, had the fatherland decided its honour could be saved only if all the kids in Germany learned square root and decimals!"
Otto was unmoved by this outpour.
"Besides," continued Paul severely, "fighting does no earthly good. Liars and thieves can win fights, if they're strong enough, and they usually are." He was thinking bitterly of frays behind the schoolhouse in Hale's Turning. "And it's liars and thieves who prate about honour. I don't believe honest people worry about theirs."
He recalled an occasion when Skinny Wiggins had ​pinned him to the wall and attempted to frighten him into conceding a moral advantage to which, as every boy within earshot knew, Skinny had not the slightest right. "Am I a liar? Am I a liar?" Skinny had reiterated with idiotic insistence. "Yes, you are," Paul had truthfully replied, and his valour had merely earned him a bloody nose.
He was strangely perturbed by this issue and pondered it long after his talk with Otto. Among other difficult points, just what did "country" mean? There might be bad kings and good kings, but surely a country was only land occupied by a collection of people, good and bad mixed! Suppose all the people in France went to live in Germany, and all the people in Germany went to live in France. Would the fact of their being on French soil make Germans bad, or would the advent of Germans make French soil good? He feared there was some terrible fallacy at the base of Otto's contentions.
Moreover, if France and England were bad, how could such splendid books be written in London and Paris? Englishmen and Germans must be very much alike. Otto should realize that, after having been two years on a British ship.
More than ever Paul felt he must see all countries at close range, giving a wide berth to reefs of national prejudice, which was too like the clannish braggadoccio of the schoolyard. He had once heard Skinny Wiggins boasting to Mark Laval, "Aw, you dirty Canuck, my father can do your father, one hand tied behind his back!" Mark, in point of fact, had forthwith blacked Skinny's eye, and Might, for once, had been Right.
However Otto might reflect the conscriptive policy of European diplomats, the worst enemy of his fatherland could not have taken offence at any act of his. Chips, for all his anti-German bias, never hesitated to supply Otto with wood and tools for his "models," while Fritz, a ​gigantic German in the second mate's watch, ruled the forecastle by sheer radiation of goodwill.
Surrounding Otto on the hatch were seamen of various nationalities: the once beery hobo, who was Irish-Canadian; a dour young Cornishman known as "Dismal Jimmy"; a Scot; a Frisian who spoke a weird dialect; and a decrepit "hard case" from Cardiff who, though past the age of mating, beguiled the forecastle with tales of his amative exploits and the exploits of an amazing creature in Sydney known as Dirty Dora, the Sailors' friend.
That such an assortment could chat unconstrainedly, drinking like all the beasts of the jungle at a common pool which slaked their thirst for yarns, was a source of wonderment to Paul. Each had a grudge of some sort, yet when they were socially foregathered the grudges were sheathed, and differences of opinion led to no manifestation more hostile than a satiric grin, a humorous broadside, or an incredulous hitching up of trousers.
"M'n dee got to be shipmates togedder," was the philosophic carpenter's explanation to Paul. "Don't do to go monkey-shinin' when dee're all in de same boat." But Chips, a teetotaller, was inclined to saddle Rum with the responsibility for the world's disasters. "When dee get ashore and get drunk," he moralized, "dee suddenly remember dee're a different nationality as de oders, and dee start breakin' each oder's heads. And next day de ol' man got to go to de police court to find 'em. Men is more stoopid as animals."
This evening there was certainly no hint of discord. Otto had gone to fetch an accordion, and as if by magic, mouth-organs and concertinas made their appearance. Fritz and Chips sang German words to the tunes. Dismal Jimmy played a Jew's harp. Paul performed on a comb covered with tissue-paper, interrupting the melody now and again to brush his tickled lips. And those who ​had no better instrument beat time on stanchions with ringing steel marlin spikes.
Paul winced as the accordions and mouth-organs played major intervals for minor, which they seemed unable to negotiate. But on the whole it was a stirring din. Certainly Otto was a musician, and everybody followed his conducting with zest. A naïve glow was reflected on the stolid faces. Paul recalled Mr. Silva's notion of music as the soul's esperanto. How Mr. Silva would have rejoiced in just such a concert!
When Paul knew the words he abandoned his comb and sang, with the last vestiges of a boyish soprano. Some of the men danced thumpingly together, reminding Paul of the trained bear that came to Hale's Turning every spring. A sailor called Shorty seized him as partner, but Paul couldn't waltz, for Hale's Turning had never countenanced anything so heathenish. He vowed he would learn.
Between selections he kept watch for the approaching ship. From a pearly blot on the horizon she had gradually taken form as a dark hull surmounted by a huge spread of canvas. For a time she had loomed high and higher, then the breeze had failed. The sky was flushed with an ardent rose screened by low-lying, etiolated brown clouds. High above the clouds were fields of pale jade and primrose, and near the horizon were palette swirls of lilac deepening to purple. Paul had feared that night would cut off the strange ship, when the man who had gone to take up his lookout duties reported lights ahead. At this announcement, he flew to the side and found the vessel only a short distance away. For hours she had seemed stationary, and now she was visibly creeping near.
The concert was abandoned and the crew came to watch—deprecatingly. Paul attributed their attitude to diffidence. He knew they were excited, to a man.
As the vessel slowly advanced, it was possible to make ​out four masts, and finally her rig—a four-mast barque, carry skysails on the main and mizzen masts. Otto and Fritz recognized in her lines a German build, and the others were obliged on principle to differ. Then a perfect hush descended on the world, broken only by the faint crisp lapping of water and the sighing of canvas.
The brown clouds had faded and were now stretched across the horizon like patches of ash over the glowing end of a cigar. Twilight was descending swiftly, and as the last hint of gold dissolved in the west the unknown ship, a towering black silhouette, came regally abeam of the Clytemnestra, not more than three or four shiplengths away. At long intervals she inclined, like a queen acknowledging homage, her mastheads tracing imaginary curves against the vault. The horizon showed dully wine-coloured in the spaces between her sails. Little men were visible on deck. Faint strains of music could be heard across the water—the music of an accordion.
Suddenly Fritz climbed a few steps into the rigging and broke the unearthly silence with a booming inquiry in German, his hands held to his face as a megaphone.
Ears strained to catch the reply. A thrill shot through Paul and a lump came to his throat.
Deliberately, Fritz boomed out another question, not in the voice full of humps and hollows that he employed in talking, nor the jumbled falsetto with which he marked time when pulling at the head of the braces. It was an even tone that stretched out like a wire. And after tense seconds of waiting a similar voice, like a ghostly echo, made the return journey with answers and reciprocal inquiries. Paul asked himself how Fritz dared stand forth in the presence of his mates and give such a personal exhibition; there was something gloriously immodest in the physical outpouring of sound. Paul felt that the Clytemnestra must be blushing for the prosaic nature of the information conveyed.
​"It's the Dornröschen," Fritz announced. "Bound for Hamburg. Thirty-one days out from Montevideo."
In a few moments the ship had passed. Paul's eyes regretfully followed her. Hamburg, where his father had got Aunt Verona's piano! "The Sleeping Beauty," with twenty-five or thirty men aboard—another little floating world—like the Clytemnestra a living thing, losing herself in the softly encroaching gloom! It was beautiful; his throat ached and his eyes smarted from the sheer loveliness of the experience.
The last hint of colour had gone. Night closed in and all that could be seen of the strange ship was a pin-point of light at the stern. She had vanished as quietly as a dream. The presence of another ship on this lonely ocean revived, for a moment, his old fear of the dark.
He walked slowly aft. The concert had been half-heartedly resumed, although the second mate's watch was preparing to turn in. As heard from the after quarters, the music had a haunting appeal. Distance lent enchantment to the harsh accordions.
The little tune was vulgar but somehow fitting. It was even beautiful, rendered so by the homely cravings it satisfied. Just such a tune had come across the water from the mysterious Dornröschen. And there were still many weeks of isolation before the cape could be rounded and the coast of Western Australia sighted.
He wondered if there were some lad on that other ship—cabin-boy or apprentice—who had also been impressed by the beauty of the encounter, or had the old Clytemnestra, with her three masts and her daubs of red lead, ​looked too shabby against the eastern sky? He wondered if that other boy, provided he existed, were wondering if there were any such boy as himself, Paul Minas!
With a strange pang he hoped so.