Hurricane Williams/Chapter 4

ATT WARD called himself a devil-tamer, and got together a crew unenvied by any captain in port.

McGuire came out on the eve of sailing with two boat-loads of Ward's devils, as yet untamed. They were a riffraff of quarreling, singing fellows, many ragged, some hungry—but none sober.

They were mostly bearded; many had small loops of gold in their ears, and one piratical Frenchman with a red cloth bound over his forehead wore ear rings that tinkled when he moved. There was a crucifix about his neck.

Shirts of all the bright and dirty colors were among them, with a glow of yellow silk on the black body of a big American negro. Trousers were of canvas and dungarees, brown, blue and white. Knives, some of them very long, were on their hips, with lanyards through the rings.

One bearded fellow crouched down in the boat as though with a broken body. Men tossed fragments of flower-chains at him, and drunken laughter mocked him for being drunk. An enfeebled old fellow—the sailmaker—patiently struck sulphur matches against the wet gunnel, his pipe between his teeth. A burly American prize-fighter insisted that he was champeen and that his name was Clobb. A Spaniard rattled in his soft tongue to a dozing Swede. Two bearded old whalers sat together and sang wailingly of a sailor's sad life.

They had the impudence of chosen men, and bawled cheers at the Heraldr's poop where Jeanne Vaughn and Eve stood among three or four figures.

Two mates bent above the accommodation ladder, expecting trouble. A fellow with a girth like a barrel's stood at the foot of the ladder to take a hand in quieting down the raffle. He was the boatswain.

The mates cursed stormily as the men with a rush, almost capsizing, crowded toward the ladder, clustering up unsteadily, their feet less sure than their hands. They clutched the man-ropes and stumbled.

The one wholly drunk man was dragged on board with his head hanging from a neck as limp as if broken. He was dropped like a sack of unneeded ballast. Men stumbled over and stepped on him.

They were kicked, dragged, shunted, cursed forward, where they swarmed about the forecastle like upturned ants. They tumbled about, unable to decide where to go or what to do, roaring, singing, fighting, snoring, swearing, settling on hatches and in scuppers, getting in their own way, staggering if their feet moved.

They filled the deck-house and dungeon-like quarters in the forecastle, overflowing all about the deck. It was impossible to call a muster. They would not have answered Gabriel himself. The boatswain, a big Britisher, got orders to keep the crew piped down. The women aft were being made uneasy. Gorvhalsen and Matt Ward were not yet on board.

Most of the crew had been swept up from the beach, pulled out of adobe shacks and gin-shops around the fish-market. Among them were men who had been shipwrecked, some on coral, some on ice; a few real sailormen who had bucked the westward wind around the Horn; fellows who had hunted whales from the Behring to the Tuscarora, rioted in the bazaars of Singapore.

They were superstitious and blasphemous, the jetsam of a tropic port, driftings from the seas of all the world: Portuguese, a Frenchman, three Hawaiians who considered McGuire as one of themselves, a Swedish carpenter, two Chinese cooks, a Jap boy, a Chilian or two, a California miner, British deserters who knew many ballads and believed a scratch on the mizzen would raise a wind.

Thirty-one men before the mast. Matt Ward was looking for trouble.

Strange tales they told one to another, with fierce oaths casually used, of fights and sights and drunken nights.

A fellow named Smith, an old-timer in the South Seas, babbled of having seen the Mariana, the iron bark stolen by the pirate, “Hurricane” Williams, when she put into Havannah Harbor.

Brundage, sleepless and aloof, sat quietly watching Smith and listening to the sons of the men who had built Babel's tower.

Men were called liars who said that the girls in the Tunis bazaars wore gaily colored breast-clothes and tight creamy trousers; but every yarn of a spectral craft was taken with the solemn nod of approval.

They yarned, jabbered, fought and sang.

Shortly before dark the boatswain came forward with a belaying-pin to pipe down a noisy quartet draped about the topgallant forecastle windlass and yelling a sad song of a faithless shore-girl.

It was a good fight. Then the burly boatswain, aglow with the spirit of battle, yelled louder than they had sung: “Now 'f hany more o' hu livelies wants a bashed 'ead, just hu sing hout!”

He was answered with jeers and groans from all sides. He bounded down the ladder, tramping and peering about, his bull neck outthrust, and when he caught sight of a fellow's open mouth he jumped for him. Somebody with a piece of wood in hand hit the boatswain from behind. He fell and lay for many minutes like a drunken man.

McGuire's lazy mild manner was undisturbed. He climbed on top of the deck-house and smoked placidly. Niggerhead tobacco made him dizzy. Emptied gin-bottles had a like effect; but he would admit it less willingly. He smoked and meditated. The talk of that fellow who had seen the iron bark in Havannah Harbor interested him.

Stores were to be broken out and the boatswain with a dirty-colored cloth about his aching head came in the darkness, seeking the least drunken, and found McGuire's extended feet.

On the way toward the lazarette McGuire passed young Corydon. The boy's face had a worried, strained look. Holding on to the rail at the break of the poop, he was staring forward, shocked, a little frightened.

“My aunt has a nervous headache. And she hears them. Would it do any good to tell them, do you think? She has a headache.”

McGuire said not unkindly that it would depend on the size of the club with which they were told; and he had no time to talk further, as the irritated boatswain bawled for him to move lively.

McGuire slowed into a saunter, passed the cabin skylight. Peering down he saw the first mate, sitting at a table, gazing steadily toward Jeanne Vaughn, radiant and fluffy. She was talking with him.

The crew almost at once hated Gorvhalsen and were afraid of him. He was, they said, the devil himself and crazy. Had he been a man of the sea, they would have cursed him and sworn by him; but he was a landsman, so they cursed him only.

From the first day at sea Corydon came seeking McGuire in the dog watches and they talked together. Corydon had an almost superstitious dread that something fearful would happen. It was because of Gorvhalsen.

“You think he's a Jonah,” said McGuire, understanding.

Gorvhalsen called himself a Black Dane, and though a scholarly man with many scientific books to his name, he was really a big barbarian and got himself thought a lunatic by the crew. The deserters at Honolulu, who brought the ship in, had sworn they wouldn't stay another twenty-four hours on the Heraldr; not if they hanged for it. That fellow—why, blast him; he was likely to scuttle the ship for the fun of seeing if they could swim.

He was always trampling about, singing, exercising, beating a sack of sand, crawling out on the crossjack boom—playing with his life. Once he dropped a hawser over the taffrail and slid down, enjoying the tow. A shark nearly got him. He came scrambling up. Naked and hairy as a beast, he stood, dripping and shouting down at the vanished fish, cursing in loud good-natured enmity. All that day, restlessly, unable to stay quiet in any place for more than a few minutes, he fished around the ship for sharks. He caught nothing.

Gorvhalsen one day had gone into the forecastle, carrying some pieces of padded leather. Matt Ward had protested against his going, against mingling with the crew, but he went and, throwing the gloves down, invited any man there to pick them up.

The big negro, called Sam-O, no matter what his name, poked them with a bare foot and pretended not to know what they were.

The boatswain urged this fellow and that to slip them on and have a go. He was sarcastically invited to honor himself by the wearing of them, but declined.

Clobb, the “champeen,” swaggered up with a restrained wise air on his broad face. He examined them critically, and urged by a dozen shipmates, put on the gloves.

Their feet were hardly braced before Gorvhalsen whipped a long arm across his shoulder and Clobb went down. He came up angered, rushed powerfully and went down again.

Gorvhalsen laughed derisively; contemptuous, like a half-god or a whole devil.

Clobb came back, amazed, furious, terrible. His blows were blocked deftly, his face beaten; but his rushes were strong.

Gorvhalsen went down, deliberately tripped by one of the crew. For a half-hour he was unconscious. He knew that he had been tripped. As he fell he had seen by whom, but at the moment of falling he had not been able to help himself. The ring bolt which his head struck delayed justice for a time; but he nearly killed the man who had tripped him. He beat the fellow, a man half his size, with bare fists in the midst of the crew; then went toward the cabin, whistling.

The forecastle muttered. Somebody would stick a knife in him—yet. Or break an ax-blade over his head. Threats ran bitterly from mouth to mouth.

Had Gorvhalsen beaten them, kicked them, hazed them, murdered them, to the thunder of seamanly orders, much of the dangerous discontent in their feelings would have been lost; but he was not a seaman. He had books read aloud to him on the poop, and otherwise acted crazily.

A little fellow, scrawny and shrill of voice, who was called “Dicer” because he was always rattling his leather box under the noses of men, urging them to gamble, said vicious things to the crew.

Another fellow, ugly and squat with broken black teeth, also talked much:

“—beach this old hooker—brandy an'”

The significant words fell strikingly out of muffled sentences; and what he indicated by a thumb's jerk over his shoulder was more significant than what he said. The three women were under the awning.

McGuire listened. He knew there was a lot of human powder in the forecastle, but it was rather early for even a whisper of that kind though already he had heard the Heraldr cursed, Jeanne Vaughn brutally appraised; the Chinks in the galley who tainted the food with the unmistakable tang of the Orient kitchen pots, blasted with oath on oath. He doubted if Jeanne Vaughn would flaunt herself so wilfully if she knew what lightly slept in forecastle men.