Hurricane Williams/Chapter 20

LD SAILS with his arms full of canvas came aft. As he stepped into the cabin he dropped his canvas and respectfully pulled off his cap to McGuire, who with folded arms leaned broodingly against the mirrored mast.

Sails was bald, with fuzzy chin-whiskers. His head trembled and the old hands shook with a palsy-like movement even when they held palm and needle and pulled at cloth. His red-rimmed eyes ran water and continually he pushed up the tarnished spectacles to wipe them with the backs of his hard, dry hands.

He admitted sixty-six years and probably had a dozen more around him somewhere; for his was the withered decrepitude of the age-sapped man. For all of its saltiness the sea does not readily dry out its slaves, but keeps them strong, pithy, wiry, the better to do their bitter work.

He was a gentle spirit, quieted by age as well, and with the blood nearly turned to dust in his veins it was hard for him to get to sea. Mariners have scant use for old men on their ships; but he was unhappy to sickness with ground long under his broken, shuffling feet, and he walked with stooped humbleness before the greenest lubber that ever stumbled over canvas laid out on a hatch for cutting.

He had lived too long and was an enfeebled stranger among the new breed of huskies. All that he waited for was death. Many an evening hour he leaned, pipe in mouth, on the rail, looking down at the sea as though contemplating the great cool mausoleum, as more enduring as it was more vast than marble or bronze, that would some day be his and where he had stowed away many a good ship mate with honestly stitched seams down the front of his shroud.

Whether he sewed storm-sail reef-bands or gave the final stitch to a dead scullion, he did it with unhurried care. The pride that he would carry into the Judgment Hall was that canvas burst before his stitches parted.

“In here, Sails.”

McGuire pointed to Matt Ward's room.

“Yes, 'ir. Yes, 'ir.”

He stooped in ague-like feebleness and picked up his fold of canvas, tremblingly but without emotion.

“Only the one, sir? I thought—it were well to have some iron, sir. Iron 'r coal. There's them as uses broke holystones. If I'd kept reckonin', sir, it's more 'n four-score mates I've give their harbor furl. Way we all must go, sir—all must go. Here to-day—out there to-morrow.”

While he talked he worked, slowly, his motions unsteady, but going ahead, laying the canvas out on the deck, smoothing the bunt, folding the edges, all with great care.

“Now, sir, if I can have somebody as 'll give me a hand to lift—my, my, sir! I never seen so many tears in a man. Dreadful times we've been havin', sir. Dreadful. An' this, sir, I helped 'im sharpen this”

“Leave it,” said McGuire. “He may have to fight his way—up—but he'll get there.”

“Yes, 'ir. Yes, 'ir. I turned the grin'stone when he sharpened it. He were partic'lar, sir. I little thought—it's here to-day—to-morrow—many mates out there as was alive yeste'day. If you'll take his feet, sir. Only the one, you say?”

“The only Christian.”

“Oh, I see, sir,” said Sails blankly, finding something not heard before in his sixty or more years on ships. “That would make a diff'rence, sir, in times like what we've had. They killed one poor woman, didn't they? The pretty 'un, I hear. All set, sir?”

They lifted Brundage. His fingers were stiff, hard-frozen at the handle of the cutlas.

The weight was heavy for old Sails. He staggered, but lowered the body gently.

“To think I helped 'im sharpen it. Little I thought—it's the way life goes, sir. Could you hand me that side, sir? Thankee. I allus give 'em a straight seam. Very careful, sir, to make it straight. Some how I feel they don't rest easy. Not good sailormen, nohow. I know as how I won't.”

He worked slowly, trembling, with head a-quiver, bending low from his knees, pausing now and then to wipe his eyes of rheum.

McGuire stood with hands to hips, feet apart, a shoulder sagging, and could not take his eyes from the dead wrinkled face. Brundage had died, as few tired weary men do, with mouth tightly closed.

The monotonous rambling of Sails aged voice went on and on like a garrulous funeral chant.

Brundage alone of all the many that had died in the short red hours of the Heraldr's travail was to have the courtesy of a shroud. The mutineers had pitched the other bodies over, and before dawn the Kanakas, kicked into life by McGuire, had cleared the cabin and begun to scrub and wash. The great body of Sam-O, misshapenly rigid, went over with a curse following it.

But French Monty had carried his crucifix, again fastened by strong cord about his neck. “It may help,” McGuire had muttered to the corpse.

“Here to-day—out there to-morrow. I allus feel as how a grave must cramp sailormen. Nothin' but a little hole 'n' he'd been used to the sea. An layin' in a wood box, all hard. I'm allus careful to smooth the bunt an' not have no wrinkles as you see, sir. An' make the seams straight. I know, sir, as how I won't be easy if the seam down front ain't straight.”

Iron links had been brought by one of the Kanakas and Sails put them at the feet, folding over the flap and stitching it snugly.

“Time was I couldn't sleep well the night after I put a mate in canvas—notice them seams, sir? There's none as does it better 'an that—but I'd say to myself, 'Sails, if you didn't give 'em a snug furl—an I'd lay an' think over ever' stitch an' know-I never seen a corpse what had such a look, like he wasn't done fightin' yet—then I'd go right t' sleep.”

Sails got up stiffly and walked to Brundage's head where be again knelt and held the flap a moment, peering down at the hard-set face. He laid the flap across it and the point of his needle dipped into the canvas.

“God!” said McGuire.

“Yes, 'ir. Yes,'ir. It's all in His hands now an' He knows all about what we never say to nobody. Here to-day—'n' the cable parts an' we go driftin' out there, 'way farther'n we can see. You say as how he were a good Christian, sir? 'N' he's nothin' to trouble 'im. Them as keeps a straight log”

The flap was sewn. Sails' old hands, shaking tremulously, hovered for a moment before the covered face, then the needle was thrust down.

“I'm allus careful with the las' stitch, sir. 'Lad,'” says old Bill Windor, him as was Sails 'n I was a young un on the Cambyses, 'Lad, says he, 'if you ever see a ghost you'll know as how you forgot the las' stitch. Allus take a turn through the nose, lad, the las' thing. An' there he is, sir, ready for to be put on the gratin'.”

Sails got slowly to his feet, looked about peeringly to see that nothing was being left behind and went out, silent, shuffling, his hands trembling, head jerking. His work was done.

At ten o'clock Old Tom passed the word.

McGuire, Benny and the two Kanakas, with uncovered heads, bore out the body and it rested on a hatch grating at an unshipped lee gangway, covered with a British ensign—a flag Brundage had once served.

The yard was backed. The men came, uneasily, all of them, and edged into a line, bare of heads, half-afraid, balancing themselves to the roll of the ship and waiting stiffly in solemn awe.

Gorvhalsen's couch of two deck-chairs had been pulled to the poop rail. Half-dead himself, he would not give up his voracious interest in life and what went on about him. There was no knowing what pain he suffered of mind and body; for he suffered without speaking. His wife stood by; beside her Eve, pale, tired, her face swollen from renewed crying.

Williams came out of the cabin door, half-naked still, his body black from the sun, his face hard and unexpressive as stone. He carried a small black book with gilded edges. His finger marked the page. For a time he stood looking along the line of men. They shifted feet and eyes. Only Clobb stared back at him.

Without opening the book, Williams began slowly:

His voice was strong, hard, not loud. Each word fell carefully. He was no longer looking at any one around him, but far away where the sky bent down to touch the water as if whoever reached the horizon might easily climb into Heaven.

Then opening the book he read, glancing away from the page as when one reads something not unfamiliar:

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God—”

Eve was sobbing. The strain of the night, the solemnity of the moment drew tears from eyes that had already wept themselves dry. Her choking gasps came over the quiet deck with the sound of inconsolable sorrow. Mrs. Gorvhalsen had enfolded her with an arm and pressed her motheringly.

Gorvhalsen, leaning heavily with bearded cheek to hand, gazed down like some great barbarian of old time suddenly intent on the mystery that had come out of Judea.

The men gaped, swallowing nervously, scarcely hearing the words, but knowing what they meant by having their eyes on the man who spoke them.

“—we therefore commit his body to the deep—”

McGuire's face was that of one in great pain. His eyes were vaguely fastened on the little mound under the bright flag. At that sentence he took hold of the ensign and was lifting it as Old Tom, guided by a gesture, stepped forward and tipped the grating.

Brundage slipped slowly along under the folds of the flag as it was being raised, then fell, glancing out, feet downward, taking the water with a noiseless plunge.

The voice, lifted in high solemn tones, went on:

“—the sea shall give up her dead”

The ship heaved unsteadily. Sails shook gustily from the increased wind. Men staggered to keep their feet.

''“—may he rest in peace. Amen.”''

Williams stood motionless for a moment after the benediction, his eyes far off, his thick-muscled body for once slightly relaxed; then, again tense and hard, ready to drive and smash whoever came against him, he sternly gave the order to haul the yard around.

Old Tom repeated the order, bawling it out, and the men shufflingly broke from the line and went hurriedly to their work; and the Heraldr was on her way to the reefs to surrender.