Yes, he was mad, thought Tod—mad like Leif the Lucky when he stood at the helm and sailed to the unknown West, mad like Magellan when he ordered spread canvas and navigated the perilous straits. Courage, fearless, intrepid, steered the fragile boat that night.
And in the heart of a boy, a lubber reared on inland soil, it struck a warm responsive chord that came down to him, like an echo of a song, through the bitter, gallant ages.
PART TWO. THE FIGHT IN THE FORECASTLE
Wireless Report:
8 pm March 7
Araby —San Francisco for Balboa 2538 miles south of S. F.
San Francisco Chronicle
CHAPTER I
SOUTHERN WATERS
IN a slow monotony of daily routine the freighter Araby, that time-worn little vessel, steamed steadily down the Latitudes. The storm vanished astern, with only the heaving ocean left as evidence of a passing fury. When Lower California rose mistily to port as a thin gray line, the swells had become an almost imperceptible undulation, and the sky a clear translucent blue. The ship's course veered east; Mexico lay off toward the blazing dawn across a sea of molten gold.
Tod often stole moments to hang listlessly over the forward rail, where he watched the Araby's blunt bows cut the water into white masses of foam. At such times, he had the feeling of being in a dream. Pictures arose which were unconsciously put away in the lavender of his memory, pictures of ships coming up over the horizon from the south—lumber schooners bound under sail for Columbia River ports, long oil-tankers returning home from Europe, great cargo liners out of New York for San Francisco with a ribbon of smoke trailing behind them.
One morning, off Tehuantepec, he glimpsed his first flying fish. They flashed, a gleam of leaping silver, in a broad arc above the sea, then sank again into those fairy depths. White gulls placidly circled overhead, awakening to swoop and shriek when the waste from the galley was thrown overside. Once he saw a whale spout close by; and off Salvador, one late afternoon, the ship ran into a school of porpoises. Tod thought how like seals the lean black bodies appeared as they dived in small half circles in and out of the water.
The past fell away in the wake of the ship. Only the life on board mattered. But if the ship seemed trailing through a dream world of peace and beauty, that only served to accentuate the stark reality of the life on deck.
Murmurs of discontent rose with the heat from the engine-room skylight. The Black Gang was not satisfied with the events of that night of storm. Though the stoker had been saved from the sea, he apparently was not to be saved from the effects of his hour of exposure in the numbing water. He lay in his bunk fighting pneumonia, while the two forecastles took on a strange subdued air. The heightening tension might have been relieved by a sick-bay; but there was none aboard the Araby. The deck crew silently came and went; the stokers drifted in from their inferno in the bowels of the ship, paused a second to glance at their muttering and tossing comrade, and cursed softly under their breath. Captain Ramsey, acting as ship's doc tor, made daily ineffectual visits, but the man barely rallied. The spark of life threatened to grow dim at any moment and flicker out like a candle flame into the void.
During daylight, Tod seldom went forward. Depression had crept like a fog into his mind. From four in the morning until eight at night, he remained at the work that seemed never ended, with an hour or two of stolen rest in the afternoon. He would slip up to the boat deck and throw himself down in the shade of a lifeboat, where the warm breeze coming up from the south would fan his mind into forgetfulness.
He awoke there one afternoon to find the Tattooed Man reclining against the chocks with his feet hanging precariously over the edge of the deck. In blue jeans, and singlet he was reading a book, his large carved pipe in his mouth. Tod, silently regarding him with growing incredulity, noted how his flexed arm showed the knotted cords standing out. What a man! thought Tod. How could he lie there in contentment, slowly turning the pages, puffing on his pipe? How could he endure this ship without a murmur, without a word against the officers who commanded it? Who was he? What had he been before he stepped aboard the Araby?
The boy had pondered the question often; but never could he come to any satisfactory explanation. He admired Jarvis greatly, he admired the litheness of his huge body and the mind that appeared equal to any eventuality; above all, he admired the spirit that animated the man. Yet he was not a friend. About the cook there was a wall of cold reserve which Tod had never penetrated. It was there, palpable as a mist, and it served as well to hold back any confidences that the boy may have desired to make to the older man.
If he might only talk to him of Neil! If he could only get someone's advice! Not a word had he learned of Neil's whereabouts, not a word of the mystery of his brother's disappearance; and here he was with the passage to Panama almost completed. Then, too, there was a suspicion still tapping at the threshold of the boy's consciousness that the cook was somehow in league with the first mate.
Were not Jasper Swickard and Mr. Hawkes his enemies, Neil's enemies? And were not Hawkes and Jarvis obviously friends? Yes, a suspicion was tapping, tapping at his mind, slowly gathering, taking form. It flashed suddenly clear as crystal. Tom Jarvis's job as cook aboard the Araby was a blind. If a blind, then why was it not another link in the schemes of the European-Pacific Company, schemes which Sheila Murray had divined as nefarious, schemes which had sent his brother as a fugitive in a foreign land?
Tod drew a deep breath, and immediately he was aware that the Tattooed Man had put down his book and was surveying him out of those strange Tartar eyes.
"Awake, Joe Macaroni?" he said in a voice that vibrated above the hiss of the ship's funnel. "It's gettin' too hot to sleep daytimes."
"Yes," Tod admitted; "but I can't sleep in the fo'c's'le with the stoker moaning right next door." He rose to a sitting position and faced the open sea.
"Why don't you read, then?" went on the cook. "Say—this is a fine story you gave me. It's a peach!"
Tod glanced at the title: "The Lookout: A Romance of the Sea." With a snort of disgust he gripped his knees with both hands. All the rebellion of the last week came to his lips in a rush of words.
"Lies! All lies!" he retorted gruffly. "A romance of the sea. Oh, I know that book and all its kind. I've read them—and not one bit of truth in the whole lot."
The cook raised his eyebrows slightly as he regarded the boy. "Lies?" he said serenely. "How come? What's got into you lately?"
Somewhat sheepishly Tod moved his foot along the deck. "Oh, I don't know," he murmured vaguely; "but all that stuff is—bunk I Romance? Not on your life. Not on this sea."
Tom Jarvis chuckled softly as he struck a match and relighted his pipe. "Joe Macaroni," he drawled, "you're beginning to grow up. I know. I was that way once myself. Pat yourself on the back. By the time this voyage is over, you'll be a man—almost."
Tod stared moodily out across the vast expanse of sparkling water.
"I know what's wrong with you," the cook went on. "You've dreamed dreams of what you think the sea ought to be. You expect your imaginings to have a marvellous flowering. Instead, you get—this!" He threw out his arms in a gesture that seemed to include the sea, the ship, and the ship's company. "What do you want? A passenger liner? A nice clean white ship and a nice clean white crew and a sea that's always kind? Well, you won't get 'em—not in this world."