Later on, strolling with Possum on the main deck, as I passed the open door of the hospital I heard the muttering chant of O’Sullivan, and peeped in. There he lay, lashed fast on his back in the lower bunk, rolling his eyes and raving. In the top bunk, directly above, lay Charles Davis, calmly smoking a pipe. I looked for the marlin-spike. There it was, ready to hand, on the bedding beside him.
“It’s hell, ain’t it, sir?” was his greeting. “And how am I goin’ to get any sleep with that baboon chattering away there. He never lets up—keeps his chin-music goin’ right along when he’s asleep, only worse. The way he grits his teeth is something awful. Now I leave it to you, sir, is it right to put a crazy like that in with a sick man? And I am a sick man.”
While he talked the massive form of Mr. Pike loomed beside me and halted just out of sight of the man in the bunk. And the man talked on.
“By rights, I oughta have that lower bunk. It hurts me to crawl up here. It’s inhumanity, that’s what it is, and sailors at sea are better protected by the law than they used to be. And I’ll have you for a witness to this before the court when we get to Seattle .”
Mr. Pike stepped into the doorway.
“Shut up, you damned sea-lawyer, you,” he snarled. “Haven’t you played a dirty trick enough comin’ on board this ship in your condition? And if I have anything more out of you . . . ”
Mr. Pike was so angry that he could not complete the threat. After spluttering for a moment he made a fresh attempt.
“You . . . you . . . well, you annoy me, that’s what you do.”
“I know the law, sir,” Davis answered promptly. “I worked full able seaman on this here ship. All hands can testify to that. I was aloft from the start. Yes, sir, and up to my neck in salt water day and night. And you had me below trimmin’ coal. I did full duty and more, until this sickness got me—”
“You were petrified and rotten before you ever saw this ship,” Mr. Pike broke in.
“The court’ll decide that, sir,” replied the imperturbable Davis .
“And if you go to shoutin’ off your sea-lawyer mouth,” Mr. Pike continued, “I’ll jerk you out of that and show you what real work is.”
“An’ lay the owners open for lovely damages when we get in,” Davis sneered.
“Not if I bury you before we get in,” was the mate’s quick, grim retort. “And let me tell you, Davis, you ain’t the first sea-lawyer I’ve dropped over the side with a sack of coal to his feet.”
Mr. Pike turned, with a final “Damned sea-lawyer!” and started along the deck. I was walking behind him when he stopped abruptly.
“Mr. Pathurst.”
Not as an officer to a passenger did he thus address me. His tone was imperative, and I gave heed.
“Mr. Pathurst. From now on the less you see aboard this ship the better. That is all.”
And again he turned on his heel and went his way.
CHAPTER XVI
No, the sea is not a gentle place. It must be the very hardness of the life that makes all sea-people hard. Of course, Captain West is unaware that his crew exists, and Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire never address the men save to give commands. But Miss West, who is more like myself, a passenger, ignores the men. She does not even say good-morning to the man at the wheel when she first comes on deck. Nevertheless I shall, at least to the man at the wheel. Am I not a passenger?
Which reminds me. Technically I am not a passenger. The Elsinore has no licence to carry passengers, and I am down on the articles as third mate and am supposed to receive thirty-five dollars a month. Wada is down as cabin boy, although I paid a good price for his passage and he is my servant.
Not much time is lost at sea in getting rid of the dead. Within an hour after I had watched the sail-makers at work Christian Jespersen was slid overboard, feet first, a sack of coal to his feet to sink him. It was a mild, calm day, and the Elsinore , logging a lazy two knots, was not hove to for the occasion. At the last moment Captain West came for’ard, prayer-book in hand, read the brief service for burial at sea, and returned immediately aft. It was the first time I had seen him for’ard.
I shall not bother to describe the burial. All I shall say of it is that it was as sordid as Christian Jespersen’s life had been and as his death had been.
As for Miss West, she sat in a deck-chair on the poop busily engaged with some sort of fancy work. When Christian Jespersen and his coal splashed into the sea the crew immediately dispersed, the watch below going to its bunks, the watch on deck to its work. Not a minute elapsed ere Mr. Mellaire was giving orders and the men were pulling and hauling. So I returned to the poop to be unpleasantly impressed by Miss West’s smiling unconcern.
“Well, he’s buried,” I observed.
“Oh,” she said, with all the tonelessness of disinterest, and went on with her stitching.
She must have sensed my frame of mind, for, after a moment, she paused from her sewing and looked at me.
Your first sea funeral, Mr. Pathurst?
“Death at sea does not seem to affect you,” I said bluntly.
“Not any more than on the land.” She shrugged her shoulders. “So many people die, you know. And when they are strangers to you . . . well, what do you do on the land when you learn that some workers have been killed in a factory you pass every day coming to town? It is the same on the sea.”
“It’s too bad we are a hand short,” I said deliberately.
It did not miss her. Just as deliberately she replied:
“Yes, isn’t it? And so early in the voyage, too.” She looked at me, and when I could not forbear a smile of appreciation she smiled back.
“Oh, I know very well, Mr. Pathurst, that you think me a heartless wretch. But it isn’t that it’s . . . it’s the sea, I suppose. And yet, I didn’t know this man. I don’t remember ever having seen him. At this stage of the voyage I doubt if I could pick out half-a-dozen of the sailors as men I had ever laid eyes on. So why vex myself with even thinking of this stupid stranger who was killed by another stupid stranger? As well might one die of grief with reading the murder columns of the daily papers.”
“And yet, it seems somehow different,” I contended.
“Oh, you’ll get used to it,” she assured me cheerfully, and returned to her sewing.
I asked her if she had read Moody’s Ship of Souls , but she had not. I searched her out further. She liked Browning, and was especially fond of The Ring and the Book . This was the key to her. She cared only for healthful literature—for the literature that exposits the vital lies of life.
For instance, the mention of Schopenhauer produced smiles and laughter. To her all the philosophers of pessimism were laughable. The red blood of her would not permit her to take them seriously. I tried her out with a conversation I had had with De Casseres shortly before leaving New York . De Casseres, after tracing Jules de Gaultier’s philosophic genealogy back to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, had concluded with the proposition that out of their two formulas de Gaultier had constructed an even profounder formula. The “Will-to-Live” of the one and the “Will-to-Power” of the other were, after all, only parts of de Gaultier’s supreme generalization, the “Will-to-Illusion.”
I flatter myself that even De Casseres would have been pleased with the way I repeated his argument. And when I had concluded it, Miss West promptly demanded if the realists might not be fooled by their own phrases as often and as completely as were the poor common mortals with the vital lies they never questioned.
And there we were. An ordinary young woman, who had never vexed her brains with ultimate problems, hears such things stated for the first time, and immediately, and with a laugh, sweeps them all away. I doubt not that De Casseres would have agreed with her.