# McClure's Magazine/Volume 7/Number 4/A Sea Change

pp. 362-371. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
A SEA CHANGE.
A TALE OF A MATE AND A COOK.
By Morgan Robertson
AT the age of twenty-five, John Dorsey possessed few attributes of mind or body that would distinguish him from other sea-faring men, unless it was the deep resonance of his voice and a strong memory for faces, facts, and places—which latter made him a wonderful pilot, his mind retaining a vivid picture of every harbor, island, rock or shoal that he had once seen. His strong lungs, with his pilotage and a general intelligence, raised him early to the quarter-deck.
Born at Nassau, in the Bahamas, where his mother still lived, he had obtained such education as the island schools afforded, had followed "wrecking" until his brain was a comprehensive chart of the whole West India group, and had then made four long voyages—one in the engine-room. The closing years of the Civil War found him engaged in blockade-running, which had grown to be a prosperous—though risky—and, from his insular standpoint, a legitimate business. Long, low, speedy steamers were built, painted slate-color, loaded with munitions of war, and sent to dodge their way past Federal cruisers into Southern ports, to return with cotton. In one of these—the "Petrel"—he occupied the position of first mate, and stood aft near the taffrail, one dark night, watching the indefinite loom of a pursuing sloop-of- war about a mile astern.
At intervals a gleam, as of heat lightning, would light up the blackness. Then could be heard the humming and "cheep, cheep" of a ricochetting solid shot, followed by the bark of the gun. They were firing low.
The chase, commencing with the wind abeam, ended with the wind ahead; for the quarry, with large engine and small sail power, had edged around in a wide curve until the sails of the pursuer no longer drew. The cruisers of that time were at best but auxiliaries, unfitted to chase to windward, and had not this one, as though to voice her disgust to the night, discharged a broadside as she squared away, the fleeing steamer might have escaped.
It is this broadside, or, particularly, one round, nine-inch shot of it, that concerns us. The rest of them, with the screaming shells, flew wide or short. This shot, unaimed and unhoped of, struck a sea at a quarter of the distance, another at three-quarters, arose in the air, and crashed through the rudder and stern posts of the "Petrel," forward through the boiler, and then on through the length of the steamer, making holes for itself where necessary, from the last of which—in the port bow—it dropped into the sea. The "Petrel" was successfully raked and disabled.
When the shot had entered the stern, an iron belaying-pin, jolted from its place in the taffrail by the impact, had spun high as the cross-trees. Before it came down, and coincident with the roar of escaping steam from the punctured boiler, the mate had noted the damage done in his department, and, to apprise the captain on the bridge, roared out: "Rudder post—" But the descending belaying-pin, striking him a glancing blow on the head, cut short the sentence, and he fell to the deck.
The escaping steam brought the cruiser back to the chase, and the "Petrel" was captured, towed to a Northern port, and condemned. Here John Dorsey, still unconscious, though breathing, was placed in the hospital of a military prison. In a week he opened his eyes and smiled—as a baby smiles. Then as a baby looks at his hands, he looked at his, and cooed softly. His skull had not, apparently, been injured, and the lump raised had disappeared; so he was told to get up and dress. He only smiled, and was then assisted.
It could hardly have been said that John Dorsey had recovered consciousness. While physically healthy, a negative, non-combative good-humor, indicated by his smile, was the only mental attribute apparent. He even seemed to lack some of the instincts of self-preservation which the human, in common with other animals, inherits from parents. Feeling hunger, he would not eat food placed before him until shown how; and then not with a knife and fork, or even by intelligent use of his fingers, but by lowering his head in the manner of brutes. Hustled aside by a harsh attendant, he felt pain, and cried out—with no articulation. But he felt no fear at the next meeting; he could not remember.
An inner sub-consciousness directed necessary physiological functions, and he lived and gained flesh. But, though far below the level of brutes in intellect, he differed from them and idiots in his capacity for improvement. For he learned—to dress himself; to use a knife and fork; to make his bed, sweep, carry water, etc. The first sign of memory he displayed was in his avoidance of the nurse who habitually abused him. He learned the names of things one by one, and, in time, essayed to speak them. But only with the progress of a gurgling infant did he acquire a vocabulary sufficient for his wants; and this he used, not in the breezy, quarter-deck tone of John Dorsey, but in accents soft and low, as became the gentleness of his new nature.
Not being a prisoner of war, he was discharged—cured; but being useful, and not a stickler for salary, was allowed to remain in the hospital until it was officially abolished, six months after the close of the war. Then he was turned adrift—a man in physique but a child in experience; for his life now dated from the awakening in the hospital, and what he knew he had learned since then. Not a glimmer or shadow of memory as to his past remained. It was as though the soul of John Dorsey had gone from him, and in its place had come another—but a limited, a weakling soul: one that could feel no strong emotions; that could neither love, nor hate, nor fear, in a human sense.
Poorly equipped as he was, he naturally became a beggar, but would work when told to. He wandered, associating with tramps; and under the tutelage of tramps, his mind expanded, but only to the limits of his soul. Some things he could not understand.
In a measure the embargo on his faculties impressed its stamp on his face; but the features of the intelligent John Dorsey did not at once yield to the new conditions, and while still a fit candidate for an asylum, the strange mixture of expression, resembling careworn candor, saved him from commitment as weak-minded, though he was often sent to jail as a vagrant.
For thirty years he was a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth, at the end of which time he had learned much, considering his limitations. He could talk fairly well in the slang of the road, and in an evenly-modulated tone of voice which was somewhat plaintive. He could not read or write; but he could count, though telling the time by the clock marked the limit of his his progress in practical mathematics. A time-table map, the chart of his wandering confrères, was an incomprehensible puzzle to him. He knew the use of money, and what his day's labor was worth, though his lack of skill at the simplest tasks prevented his holding a job; hence, his ever-reactionary tendency to beggary. But latterly he had worked in a hotel kitchen, and liking the shelter and warmth, cultivated the industry to the extent of becoming, in spite of himself, a fairly good third-rate cook.
At the hospital he had been number seven. Asked his name later, he had given this number, which his tramp companions corrupted to "Shiven," and prefixed with "Jack"—their hall-mark of fellowship. His beard had grown, and with his hair, was of a soft shade of brown. With no vices to age him, and tormented by no speculations as to his origin or destiny—the impressions of a year back being forgotten unless renewed by friction—his face, though changed, was even more youthful than the sailor Dorsey's. In repose it was stupid; but when he was pleased and smiled—with the same infantile smile that marked the birth of his new existence—it lighted up with the ineffable glory of an angel's. It was the mute expression of an innocence of soul which approached the divine—beyond human understanding, And it won him universal good-will, though not always good treatment,
In the autumn of 1895 he was in New York, penniless; and overhearing from a group of South Street loungers that the "Avon," at Pier No. 9, wanted a cook, hurried there and met her captain, stepping over the rail to find him.
"I heard you had no cook," he began.
"You a cook?"
"I kin cook plain grub."
"Ever been to sea?"
"No."
"Where're your clothes?"
The applicant looked down at himself.
"Tramp, aren't you?" said the captain, good-humoredly.
"Yes, kinder," he answered, and smiled,
"Come aboard. I'm in a hurry. Thirty dollars a month. Say 'Sir' when you speak to me or the mate."
The "Avon" was a two-masted, schooner-rigged, five-hundred-ton, iron screw steamer, with an old-fashioned oscillating engine, which her old-fashioned engineer patted lovingly for the wonderful bursts of speed he could induce from it. Against name on the "Avon's" articles, the new cook placed his mark for the highest rate of pay he had worked for as Jack Shiven. He was seasick the first day out, but recovered, and gave satisfaction, Quiet, good-humored, and obliging, he smiled on all hands and won their hearts. "He's a daft man, but a good 'un," said the engineer.
At Cedar Keys, Florida, the captain brought aboard, one evening, a tall, dark man, with whom he consulted locked in his cabin. As they parted at the rail, he said, in a low tone: "We're speedy enough to get away from any cutter on the coast, and, I think, any cruiser the Spanish have over. This was a blockade dodger in war times, named 'Petrel.' Still, as I said, Doctor, I must consult my crew. It's risky work."
"Did you own the 'Avon' then, when she was the 'Petrel'?" asked the other, speaking with an accent that stamped him a foreigner.
"No," answered the captain; "I bought her years afterward. But," he added proudly, "I sailed in her 'fore the mast when she was captured. They jugged us for a while; then let us go. 'Twas curious about the mate, a fellow named Dorsey. Got a rap on the head somehow, and came to in the hospital, but lost his bearings—didn't know his name, and couldn't understand when told. They let him out 'fore they did us, and we lost all track of him. It's pitiful, the way his old mother sits up on the rocks over at Nassau and watches the channels. She expects her boy back; says she knows he'll come. I've got so I hate to bring the 'Avon' there; for every time I've done it, she's recognized the old 'Petrel,' and waved her shawl from the rocks, and rushed aboard. And I've always had to give her the same old story: 'Haven't heard from him.' It's heart-breaking. But John Dorsey's dead, sure."
In a couple of days the "Avon" sailed, with the dark stranger below in the empty hold. Two hours later a revenue cutter, primed with information of a purposed breach of the neutrality laws, lifted her anchor and followed, a menacing speck on the horizon astern of the "Avon," and an irritation to the quickened nerves of her captain, as he viewed her through the glasses, and wondered, and guessed, and swore. But next morning the horizon was clear, and the "Avon," having doubled the Florida reef in the night, was steaming up the east coast. The following midnight found her well up past Cape Canaveral, and here, after answering a rocket from the shore, she cautiously, and with much heaving of the lead, and speaking-tube calls to the engine-room, felt her way through a narrow inlet in the outlying reef, or sand-covered barrier, into the enclosed lagoon, where she lay, with steam up and without anchoring, while her crew brought off, with the three boats, numerous boxes, cases, and barrels, which they stowed carefully in the hold.
As the largest boat came out, the captain said to the tall stranger: "I'll not have that stuff aboard. We'll tow it astern. It's fine weather and smooth water. Here, you cook, Jack Shiven, watch this boat. Don't let it touch the side, or it'll blow your old head off. Keep it away with an oar." The boat was fastened to the stern by the painter, and the cook, who had been awakened by the unusual proceedings, obeyed orders.
Then, leaving the dark man on the bridge to watch the horizon, and a negro fireman in the boiler-room to keep up steam, every other man in the crew from the captain to the mess-boy went ashore in the next boat, for the last and hardest lift of all. A large shell-gun, too heavy for one boat, was to be carried off on a temporary deck covering two. At this work they were engaged when daylight broke; and with its coming appeared, outside the barrier and heading for the inlet, the revenue cutter that had followed them, with ports open, guns showing, and at her gaff-end a string of small flags which, in the silent Volapük of the sea, said: "Get under way as fast as you can."
A signal-book and a good glass are needed, as a rule, to interpret this language. The captain and mate ashore had neither, and those aboard were not tutored in their use; so the command was neither answered nor obeyed. "The jig's up," said the captain. "Get this gun ashore again. We'll go aboard and answer, or he may fire. They'll confiscate my boat, but I don't want her sunk."
But their hurry to unload the gun resulted in the swamping of one boat and the staving of the other; so they were forced to remain—and hope.
"Run up a white flag," roared the captain; "then scull that boat ashore."
The cook heard, but could not understand. The man on the bridge understood, but could not obey—he could not find the flag locker. However, he impressed on the cook's mind the wisdom of getting the boat ashore. But Jack Shiven only smiled and shook his head. He could not scull a boat. Neither could the Cuban—for such he was—and the fireman conscientiously and emphatically refused to leave his work. He had shipped fireman, not sailor.
The boom of an unshotted gun was heard from seaward—given as a hint, which, of course, was not taken. Then another report, louder, came from the cutter, and with it a shot, aimed to cross the stern of the "Avon." But years of service in the revenue marine had somewhat demoralized the old man-of-war's-man who had charge of the gun. He did not allow for the half-charge of powder, and the lateral deflection given the consequently ricochetting shot by choppy waves, running at angle with his aim. That shot, barely clearing the reef, made a curve, shorter with each blow of a glancing sea, bounded over the stern of the "Avon," and cut through the port main-boom lift (a wire rope), which fell and struck the wondering, smiling cook on the head—a slight blow, but enough. The shot buried itself in the sand on the beach, having undone the work of that other government shot fired thirty years before; it had wakened the sleeping soul of John Dorsey. He reeled, recovered, and in a cracked falsetto, cried out: "—carried away, sir," finishing the sentence begun in his youth and interrupted by the descending belaying-pin. Clapping his hands to his head, he looked around bewildered; then bounded forward to the bridge. The Cuban followed.
"Are you hurt?" asked the latter.
"Hurt? Who are you? Get off the bridge! Where's the captain? Who's got the wheel?" His voice was choked and guttural.
"The captain is on shore with the crew. Do you not see them?"
Dorsey reached into the pilot-house, and in the old familiar nook placed his hand on a pair of glasses, with which, after a suspicious inspection, he examined the group on the beach.
"None of our crowd," he muttered. Then he turned the glasses on the revenue vessel outside.
"Haven't they got enough men-of-war on the coast without trotting out their cutters?" he growled. "What's he say? 'M, L, H,'—'get under way.' Say, you," he demanded of the Cuban, "what's happened? What time is it? When'd you join this boat?"
"On the day before yesterday, at Cedar Keys."
"You lie," snarled Dorsey. "We haven't been there in four months: but—" he felt his head again—"what's happened? Everything looks queer. Where's the ball on the pilot-house? Two minutes ago it was night-time. What does this mean?"
"Two minutes ago you were struck on the head, and have acted strangely since," answered the Cuban, who thought the cook was crazed by the blow.
"Yes, I know something belted me; my head's pretty sore. But you weren't aboard, and t'was up near Hatteras. Now we're down here in Gallino Bay, and it's daylight. I must ha' been knocked silly and stayed so. What day is it? Monday? Three days ago!" Dorsey's mind had solved the problem, though, of course, with no regard to the lapse of time. But his mind had not yet regained the command of Jack Shiven's body: his gestures were clumsy, and his eyes—wide open and alert—though not the eyes of Jack Shiven, were not the eyes of John Dorsey. His voice was a mixture of strange sounds, and he coughed continually.
"What ails my throat? And this!" he exclaimed; he had felt of his beard. "Say, Mister Man, am I dead or alive, or asleep, or crazy? Who am I?"
"I believe you are the cook of this boat, in a sad condition of mind," said the Cuban dryly, more interested now in the approaching cutter.
"Cook! I'm mate, if I'm anything," spluttered Dorsey, the sailor in him aroused by the affront. Yet the terror in his eyes might have indicated his doubts that he was anything.
The vessel outside had stopped her engines at the mouth of the inlet, and now sent another and better-aimed shot across the "Avon's" stern. It aroused Dorsey to fury.
"That's your game, is it?" he growled, hoarsely. "All right. 'Get under way,' you say." He sprang to the deck, saw that the anchors were on the rail; then, to satisfy misgivings thirty years old, ran aft and looked over the stern at the rudder. It was there, intact, and he hurried to the engine-room hatch.
"Down there, Chief?" he called. "Who's below?"
There was no answer. He reached the fire-room hatch at a bound, and met, emerging, the woolly head of the fireman, who had heard the gun and wanted to know.
"What steam you got?" demanded Dorsey, who recognized his craft, though not knowing him.
"Wha' dat yo' business, Jack Shiven? Yo' g' back t' yo' pots an' pans, an' doan yo' cum foolin' 'roun' dis yere fire-hole. Dis fire too hot f yo'. Yo' git bawned, shua! Yah, yah, yah-ha. Who fire dat cannon, cookie?"
"What steam you got?"—the words seemed to explode from the throat—"answer me, you black imp, or I'll jam you into that furnace. How many pounds?"
"Wha' dat?"
The fireman got no farther. Dorsey's fingers gripped his throat, and in a second he was sprawled backward over the hatch-combing. Squeezing hard for a moment, the infuriated questioner again demanded: "What steam you got?"
"Fifty pounds, Jack," gurgled the negro; "le' go; wha' yo' want?"
"Get down there! Bring it up to sixty, and keep it so. I'm going to start the engine. Down with you, quick! Don't you leave that fire-hold till I tell you."
The frightened fireman descended, and Dorsey examined the engine.
"Same scrap-heap," he muttered. "Hasn't changed like me and the boat, and the heavens and earth." He ran forward again. In the after end of the pilot-house he found a chest, which he kicked open, scattering the contents—signal flags—on the floor. He picked out three, and called the Cuban.
"Who are you, anyhow?" he asked. "Can you run the engine?"
"No."
"Can you steer?"
"I cannot."
"Then I must do both. Run these three flags up to the truck in the order I name them—K, G, P. Understand? K on top. They're marked. Quick, now."
"Why," demanded the other, "what do these flags say?"
"They say our engine's broken down, if you must know," yelled Dorsey. "I want to stop his fire, and draw him into the inlet; then dash by him. It's our only chance. D'you want to end your days in a Yankee prison? Bear a hand, or you will—that is, unless you want to swim." The Cuban glanced at three dorsal fins alongside toward which Dorsey pointed, and took the flags. He had watched the friction at the hatch with as much amusement as would mingle with his apprehension of arrest. But this masterful, methodical lunatic, who had given such forceful instructions to the fireman, and who now seemed to have the International Signal Code in his head, was the same smiling imbecile who could not scull a boat. Suspicions of Spanish espionage disturbed him. Yet, the other's action might indicate a desire to escape; and so, reasoning that whatever the flags might say, his position would be made no worse, he hoisted them, while Dorsey, after giving a tentative turn or two to the engine, watched the effect on the cutter.
The ruse succeeded. The mendacious message, read aboard the government craft, caused her to reserve her fire and enter the inlet. Then Dorsey threw the throttle wide open, and with a passing objurgation to the victim in the fire-room, ran to the wheel.
"Come up here and give me a hand," he called; but the Cuban did not answer. He had just seen a dark figure emerge from the fire-hold, take a hurried look around, and speed to the stern, where the boat, nearly on end now as the steamer gathered way, was fastened by its painter. Acting on a sudden resolution, he followed, choosing to join the party ashore with the aid of the fireman—who could scull—rather than remain with a man who, if not a maniac, was a most aggressive and unpleasant companion—possibly a Spanish spy. He slipped down the rope after the negro, and cut the boat clear.
Dorsey saw them, shook his fist, and steered for the inlet.
The wind had drifted the "Avon" close to the opening; so now, with the other vessel just entering, they were not a quarter of a mile apart, and a minute later were within hailing distance.
"Where are you going?" bawled a brass-buttoned officer from the cutter's bridge. "Stop your engine or I'll sink you!"
Dorsey stretched his head and half his body through the pilot-house window, and shouted in reply: "Our engine's running away with us—lever's broken. We'll pull our fires outside."
The officer doubted, but hesitated, and the "Avon" shot by at a fifteen-knot rate. Dorsey edged up into the cutter's wake, and by keeping her masts in line, avoided, for awhile, her fire; for she was a revenue cutter, built to pursue, not to flee; hence none of her guns could be trained over the stern. Was ever dignified government craft caught in a more undignified position? She could not safely back out of the inlet, and by the time she had steamed in, turned around, and started seaward, the "Avon" was a mile and a half away, with an increased blackness to her line of belching smoke which indicated anything but an intention to "pull fires." Dorsey, lashing the wheel, had gone down and added fuel, tried the water, and talked (after the fashion of the engine-room) to the oscillating cylinder, wagging away like the stump-tail of an over-pleased dog. He now returned to the wheel,
Shot after shot from the cutter's long-range guns hummed around the "Avon," but none of them struck. Though her armament was comparatively modern, her engine was old—older than the "Avon's," and inferior by two knots' speed per hour.
Dorsey steered due east, made periodical trips to the boat's vitals, and in three hours whooped in triumph as he saw the pursuer head slowly around and start back. An hour later he drew his fires, stopped the engine, and cooked his breakfast, hardly yet recovered from his excitement sufficiently to realize to the full his isolation—not of space, but of time. He was still of the past; just escaped from peril a generation gone.
He finished his meal and wanted a smoke. Going to his old room, he found strange clothing, strange alterations of the fittings, but no pipe. "Queer," he muttered. "Got some one in my place, I suppose." His tone was aggrieved. "Might ha' waited more'n three days. Wonder how long, though, I've been silly. Not long—my head's sore yet. Yet, I've grown a beard. Wonder what hit me. I'll get a pipe down forrard."
In the forecastle he found one and a strange brand of tobacco, which he confiscated. Returning to the deck he smoked and reflected. But in a minute he put the pipe down nauseated. Jack Shiven had not been a smoker.
"What'll I do?" he mused. "Go back to the coast and pick up the crew—that wasn't the crew! The boat's changed hands. Has she been seized? May be; and I was too dead to move. Wish I knew where that cutter'll hunt next. Wish I knew what's happened. What ails the boat? She looks as though she'd been through seven hells." He went to the rail. "Old paint! old woodwork! old boat! Where's she been to? Wire-rigged, too! I'll see the articles. I'll see if I belong here."
The captain's room was locked. In no condition of mind to care for nautical etiquette, he raised his foot, burst in the door, and entered. A large mirror on the bulk-head reflected his image, and he stood transfixed by the strange, staring, bearded face—which was not his own. He raised his hand; the image did the same. He inclined his head to the right and the left, and was accompanied.
"It's me," he groaned, "and it isn't me!" Approaching the glass, he examined closely the spectre confronting him. There was not a trace of resemblance between the old and the new John Dorsey, unless it was the color of the eyes. Hair, features, even the shape of the nose and thickness of the lips, were changed. The shoulders, too, were more sloping, as though dragged down by weights. John Dorsey had pulled ropes, downward; Jack Shiven had wheeled barrows.
He sank down on a chest in helpless fright, while perspiration oozed from his forehead. A discolored newspaper lay folded in the berth, which he seized and examined. It was dated January 1, 1895. He threw it down. "Can't be," he said, with a doubting, though piteous, half smile. "Seventy-five, eighty-five, ninety-five—thirty years. Nonsense. Where's the log-book?"
He found it in the mate's room; its last departure dated October 3, 1895. With brain on fire, he returned to the captain's room, and attacked the boat's library, tearing books from their places, examining the publishers' imprints, and throwing them down. They bore dates ranging through the years following the war. He burst the captain's desk apart, and rummaged for the articles. His name was not there. The last entered was "Jack Shiven, cook;" and the articles also were dated thirty years into the future. He crept on deck. He wanted air.
Not a breath of air ruffled the glassy smoothness of the ground swell which, sent by some distant gale, had thrown the "Avon" into its trough and was rolling her gently as she drifted north with the Gulf Stream. The sun was shining from a cloud-flecked sky, and in the air were all the mild warmth and softness of the Florida winter. But to this human soul, torn from its past, plunged alone and unguided far into the unknown, there was something unreal and unearthly in the aspect of the sea and sky. There was insufferable heat and dryness to the air he breathed, and a new, metallic ring to the tinkling swash of the water as the boat rolled; and this sound, with the hissing of steam from the boiler, instead of relieving, seemed but to accentuate the intense silence of the ocean—which bore him down and crushed him.
"Who am I?" he thought, rather than uttered. "I'm not John Dorsey. I'm some one else. Who?"
He backed up against the side of the forward house. Off to the westward was a speck—the revenue cutter. It was a tangible reality, and his dazed faculties seized it. He traced back, painfully, the events of the morning. "She chased me out here," he whispered. "Who was that Dago? He knew me. Who was the nigger, and the crowd on the beach? They were not the crew—I'm not the mate." He walked aft. "Here I stood this morning—last night—when I was struck; and then—all at once—it was daylight, and I was here." He moved a few steps. "And nothing is the same." He noticed the broken wire-rope on the deck. "What parted the lift? It seems—yes—it must be—that is what hit me. I remember now; I saw it move on the deck. It must have knocked me senseless, and meanwhile the boat has had trouble. But they haven't mended the lift, and it was a hemp lift, too—and I'm still in her—no, I'm not—I'm not John Dorsey. I'm somebody else. Who am I? I can't make it out. Who am I?" He clung to the rail and screamed loudly and hoarsely, in an agony of terror. Then he ran forward, then aft, and forward again. He burst into the captain's room, examined again the face in the glass —which he loathed—and fled from it.
On the pilot-house was the boat's name, which he had not noticed in the articles. He saw it now for the first time. He sprang to the bow, and looked over. There, in block copper letters, where once had been the word "Petrel," he saw the boat's later name. Aft on the stern he read it again—"Avon, of New York." He seated himself on a hatch, steadier in mind now for the removal of the "Petrel" from the problem. As he sat there he noticed an anchor worked in india-ink on the back of his hand—the soft, white hand of Jack Shiven, the cook. He looked at it in amazement; then pulled up his right sleeve. There, close to his elbow, was a wreath, and within it the initials "J.D." He tore open his shirt, and on his breast found a mole. He sprang to his feet, raised his clenched fist, brought it down, and said, calmly and decisively: "I am John Dorsey. And this boat—" he scanned the fabric from trucks to curving deck with the eye of a sailor who loves his craft,—"has once been the 'Petrel.'"
As the noon hour approached he thought of an observation. "I know the latitude," he mused. "I can subtract that from the zenith distance and get the declination, and that will give me the month and day in the almanac. But what's the use? I'll know to-morrow, when I see the owners. The sun's well south of the line; it's the fall of the year. It was last January when my light went out."
He threw on coal, started the engine, and shaped a course for the Providence channel. All that day and the following night he gravitated from the wheel to the boiler and engine, and next morning, as the languid islanders were waking to their indolent existence, he steered into the west entrance of Nassau harbor.
On the highest point of the low shore was a figure that waved to him something red. He did not see it. Inside the harbor, he stopped the engine, while he puzzled over the mechanism of a patent windlass, which was new to him. Mastering this, he went on at half speed. The figure had left the rocks, and, still waving the red cloth, was hastening toward the landing. Close in as he dared go, he again shut off steam, pried the small anchor off the rail, dropped it, and after paying out a few fathoms, banked the fires, and hailed a shore boat. As he landed, an old woman in a red shawl was waiting. She flung herself upon him with a glad cry, and after a moment he knew her for his mother. But his greeting of her was rather a cold one, for by his chronology it was only a week since he kissed her good-by. Later, when questioned, he said: "I didn't know mother, at first; she had grown so old." She, on her part, declared, with streaming eyes: "I recognized Johnny the minute I saw him. And I always knew he'd come back in the old 'Petrel.'"
Dorsey did not go to seek the owners of the "Petrel." Men who professed to be friends of his, but who looked curiously old and weatherbeaten, talked to him in such a way that everything grew more uncertain than ever. Then, one day, as he climbed over the "Avon's" rail, a man emerged from the cabin, and with a stern countenance, though with a secret twinkle in the eye, advanced and collared him. "So-ho, my man," said he; "never been to sea, hey? Yet you can navigate. Can't scull a boat ashore, but can run an engine, and steal a big steamer?"
He gave Dorsey a gentle shake. The next moment he was seated on the deck a dozen feet away, rubbing a smarting spot on his chest about as large as Dorsey's fist—which fist, as unused to such collisions as Dorsey was to being shaken, was also being rubbed. In his incomplete correspondence with his environment, he was still the mate of the "Petrel," dealing with an insolent member of her crew; for time had touched lightly the captain of the "Avon," and Dorsey recognized him as his old shipmate.
"The nigger was right," muttered the captain, as he arose; "mad as an Irish duke on a tater-hill." He started for the rail, and had nearly scrambled over when Dorsey seized, dragged him inboard, and seated him, not too gently, on a hatch.
"Now then, you sit right there and answer a few questions," said Dorsey, with his hand on the captain's collar. "They tell me it's a long time you and I were together. What do you know? What became of me after that shot from the Yankee?"
"Why, I don't really know, Jack," said the captain, resolved to humor his captor, whose maniacal strength prevented an escape; but his neck was nearly dislocated by the sudden shake he received as Dorsey thundered: "Don't call me Jack! Answer me!"
"I don't know; I s'pose you came here. You ran off with my boat; but that's all right; good thing you did; don't choke me, don't!"
Dorsey had shifted his fingers. "No nonsense. Where'd I go after we were taken?"
"We weren't taken. Don't you remember? You started the machine, and fooled the cutter, and got away. I s'pose you kept right on and brought up here."
Dorsey released him. "But that was in this boat. Do you belong in her?"
"I'm her captain and owner; and it seems I'm getting queer treatment from my cook. You've looted my cabin." The captain grew easier. There was no gleam of insanity in the earnest eyes that were fixed on him.
"Was I the cook? What was my name? Where'd I come from?" asked Dorsey eagerly.
"You shipped in New York as Jack Shiven; that's all I know. You're not a bewildering success as a cook, but I'll admit you were a well-behaved man until lately. The fireman swears you're crazy." The grinning captain said nothing of his own doubts on this point.
"Jack Shiven," repeated Dorsey; "yes, that's what he called me. But, Captain, I meant the 'Petrel'—when she was taken—it was last week to me—but they tell me it's thirty years back—when you were 'fore the mast and I was mate; what happened? Where'd I go?"
"Wha-at?" exclaimed the captain, springing up; "you Mr. Dorsey? Not much! I'd know him with wings on."
"I tell you I am," said Dorsey vehemently. "My mother knows me."
"She does? Then I'll take it on faith. But," he seized Dorsey's hand, and began to shake it vigorously—"Mr. Dorsey, I might ha' known it—I might ha' known it, if I'd thought. No man on earth but John Dorsey would have got by that cutter. Why, it was a miracle, that's what it was. Takes blockadin' to develop a man. I s'pose old times brought you round. Yes, don't you know? You was stunned and couldn't remember. And you've seen your mother. I'd give this boat to have been at that meeting. Thirty long years, winter and summer, she's sat on those rocks, waiting for you, Mr. Dorsey, and now you've come!" The captain was winking hard. "Come below, Mr. Dorsey. There's only one thing that fits this occasion. If you'd smashed more furniture, you'd ha' found it. It was bottled the year you went under."
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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