The Secret Sharer and Other Stories (8 page)

“You wait,” he repeated, balanced in great swings with his back to Jukes, motionless and implacable.

“Do you mean to say we are going to catch it hot?” asked Jukes with boyish interest.

“Say? . . . I say nothing. You don't catch me,” snapped the little second mate, with a mixture of pride, scorn, and cunning, as if Jukes' question had been a trap cleverly detected. “Oh, no! None of you here shall make a fool of me if I know it,” he mumbled to himself.

Jukes reflected rapidly that this second mate was a mean little beast, and in his heart he wished poor Jack Allen had never smashed himself up in the coal lighter. The far-off blackness ahead of the ship was like another night seen through the starry night of the earth—the starless night of the immensities beyond the created universe, revealed in its appalling stillness through a low fissure in the glittering sphere of which the earth is the kernel.

“Whatever there might be about,” said Jukes, “we are steaming straight into it.”

“You've said it,” caught up the second mate, always with his back to Jukes. “You've said it, mind—not I.”

“Oh, go to Jericho!” said Jukes, frankly; and the other emitted a triumphant little chuckle.

“You've said it,” he repeated.

“And what of that?”

“I've known some real good men get into trouble with their skippers for saying a dam' sight less,” answered the second mate feverishly. “Oh, no! You don't catch me.”

“You seem deucedly anxious not to give yourself away,” said Jukes, completely soured by such absurdity. “I wouldn't be afraid to say what I think.”

“Aye, to me! That's no great trick. I am nobody, and well I know it.”

The ship, after a pause of comparative steadiness, started upon a series of rolls, one worse than the other, and for a time Jukes, preserving his equilibrium, was too busy to open his mouth. As soon as the violent swinging had quieted down somewhat, he said: “This is a bit too much of a good thing. Whether anything is coming or not I think she ought to be put head on to that swell. The old man is just gone in to lie down. Hang me if I don't speak to him.”

But when he opened the door of the chart room he saw his captain reading a book. Captain MacWhirr was not lying down: he was standing up with one hand grasping the edge of the bookshelf and the other holding open before his face a thick volume. The lamp wriggled in the gimbals, the loosened books toppled from side to side on the shelf, the long barometer swung in jerky circles, the table altered its slant every moment. In the midst of all this stir and movement Captain MacWhirr, holding on, showed his eyes above the upper edge, and asked, “What's the matter?”

“Swell getting worse, sir.”

“Noticed that in here,” muttered Captain MacWhirr. “Anything wrong?”

Jukes, inwardly disconcerted by the seriousness of the eyes looking at him over the top of the book, produced an embarrassed grin.

“Rolling like old boots,” he said, sheepishly.

“Aye! Very heavy—very heavy. What do you want?”

At this Jukes lost his footing and began to flounder.

“I was thinking of our passengers,” he said, in the manner of a man clutching at a straw.

“Passengers?” wondered the Captain, gravely. “What passengers?”

“Why, the Chinamen, sir,” explained Jukes, very sick of this conversation.

“The Chinamen! Why don't you speak plainly? Couldn't tell what you meant. Never heard a lot of coolies spoken of as passengers before. Passengers, indeed! What's come to you?”

Captain MacWhirr, closing the book on his forefinger, lowered his arm and looked completely mystified. “Why are you thinking of the Chinamen, Mr. Jukes?” he inquired.

Jukes took a plunge, like a man driven to it. “She's rolling her decks full of water, sir. Thought you might put her head on perhaps—for a while. Till this goes down a bit—very soon, I dare say. Head to the eastward. I never knew a ship roll like this.”

He held on in the doorway, and Captain MacWhirr, feeling his grip on the shelf inadequate, made up his mind to let go in a hurry, and fell heavily on the couch.

“Head to the eastward?” he said, struggling to sit up. “That's more than four points off her course.”

“Yes, sir. Fifty degrees. . . . Would just bring her head far enough round to meet this. . . .”

Captain MacWhirr was now sitting up. He had not dropped the book, and he had not lost his place.

“To the eastward?” he repeated, with dawning astonishment. “To the. . . Where do you think we are bound to? You want me to haul a full-powered steamship four points off her course to make the Chinamen comfortable! Now, I've heard more than enough of mad things done in the world—but this.... If I didn't know you, Jukes, I would think you were in liquor. Steer four points off. . . . And what afterwards? Steer four points over the other way, I suppose, to make the course good. What put it into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as if she were a sailing ship?”

“Jolly good thing she isn't,” threw in Jukes, with bitter readiness. “She would have rolled every blessed stick out of her this afternoon.”

“Aye! And you just would have had to stand and see them go,” said Captain MacWhirr, showing a certain animation. “It's a dead calm, isn't it?”

“It is, sir. But there's something out of the common coming, for sure.”

“Maybe. I suppose you have a notion I should be getting out of the way of that dirt,” said Captain MacWhirr, speaking with the utmost simplicity of manner and tone, and fixing the oilcloth on the floor with a heavy stare. Thus he noticed neither Jukes' discomfiture nor the mixture of vexation and astonished respect on his face.

“Now, here's this book,” he continued with deliberation, slapping his thigh with the closed volume. “I've been reading the chapter on the storms there.”

This was true. He had been reading the chapter on the storms. When he had entered the chart room, it was with no intention of taking the book down. Some influence in the air—the same influence, probably, that caused the steward to bring without orders the Captain's sea boots and oilskin coat up to the chart room—had as it were guided his hand to the shelf; and without taking the time to sit down he had waded with a conscious effort into the terminology of the subject. He lost himself amongst advancing semicircles, left- and right-hand quadrants, the curves of the tracks, the probable bearing of the center, the shifts of wind and the readings of barometer. He tried to bring all these things into a definite relation to himself, and ended by becoming contemptuously angry with such a lot of words and with so much advice, all headwork and supposition, without a glimmer of certitude.

“It's the damnedest thing, Jukes,” he said. “If a fellow was to believe all that's in there, he would be running most of his time all over the sea trying to get behind the weather.”

Again he slapped his leg with the book; and Jukes opened his mouth, but said nothing.

“Running to get behind the weather! Do you understand that, Mr. Jukes? It's the maddest thing!” ejaculated Captain MacWhirr, with pauses, gazing at the floor profoundly. “You would think an old woman had been writing this. It passes me. If that thing means anything useful, then it means that I should at once alter the course away, away to the devil somewhere, and come booming down on Fu-chau from the northward at the tail of this dirty weather that's supposed to be knocking about in our way. From the north! Do you understand, Mr. Jukes? Three hundred extra miles to the distance, and a pretty coal bill to show. I couldn't bring myself to do that if every word in there was gospel truth, Mr. Jukes. Don't you expect me. . . .”

And Jukes, silent, marveled at this display of feeling and loquacity.

“But the truth is that you don't know if the fellow is right, anyhow. How can you tell what a gale is made of till you get it? He isn't aboard here, is he? Very well. Here he says that the center of them things bears eight points off the wind; but we haven't got any wind, for all the barometer falling. Where's his center now?”

“We will get the wind presently,” mumbled Jukes.

“Let it come, then,” said Captain MacWhirr, with dignified indignation. “It's only to let you see, Mr. Jukes, that you don't find everything in books. All these rules for dodging breezes and circumventing the winds of heaven, Mr. Jukes, seem to me the maddest thing, when you come to look at it sensibly.”

He raised his eyes, saw Jukes gazing at him dubiously, and tried to illustrate his meaning.

“About as queer as your extraordinary notion of dodging the ship head to sea, for I don't know how long, to make the Chinamen comfortable; whereas all we've got to do is to take them to Fu-chau, being timed to get there before noon on Friday. If the weather delays me—very well. There's your logbook to talk straight about the weather. But suppose I went swinging off my course and came in two days late, and they asked me: ‘Where have you been all that time, Captain?' What could I say to that? ‘Went around to dodge the bad weather,' I would say. ‘It must've been dam' bad,' they would say. ‘Don't know,' I would have to say; ‘I've dodged clear of it.' See that, Jukes? I have been thinking it all out this afternoon.”

He looked up again in his unseeing, unimaginative way. No one had ever heard him say so much at one time. Jukes, with his arms open in the doorway, was like a man invited to behold a miracle. Unbounded wonder was the intellectual meaning of his eye, while incredulity was seated in his whole countenance.

“A gale is a gale, Mr. Jukes,” resumed the Captain, “and a full-powered steamship has got to face it. There's just so much dirty weather knocking about the world, and the proper thing is to go through it with none of what old Captain Wilson of the
Melita
calls ‘storm strategy.' The other day ashore I heard him hold forth about it to a lot of shipmasters who came in and sat at a table next to mine. It seemed to me the greatest nonsense. He was telling them how he outmaneuvered, I think he said, a terrific gale, so that it never came nearer than fifty miles to him. A neat piece of headwork he called it. How he knew there was a terrific gale fifty miles off beats me altogether. It was like listening to a crazy man. I would have thought Captain Wilson was old enough to know better.”

Captain MacWhirr ceased for a moment, then said, “It's your watch below, Mr. Jukes?”

Jukes came to himself with a start. “Yes, sir.”

“Leave orders to call me at the slightest change,” said the Captain. He reached up to put the book away, and tucked his legs upon the couch. “Shut the door so that it don't fly open, will you? I can't stand a door banging. They've put a lot of rubbishy locks into this ship, I must say.”

Captain MacWhirr closed his eyes.

He did so to rest himself. He was tired, and he experienced that state of mental vacuity which comes at the end of an exhaustive discussion that has liberated some belief matured in the course of meditative years. He had indeed been making his confession of faith, had he only known it; and its effect was to make Jukes, on the other side of the door, stand scratching his head for a good while.

Captain MacWhirr opened his eyes.

He thought he must have been asleep. What was that loud noise? Wind? Why had he not been called? The lamp wriggled in its gimbals, the barometer swung in circles, the table altered its slant every moment; a pair of limp sea boots with collapsed tops went sliding past the couch. He put out his hand instantly, and captured one.

Jukes' face appeared in a crack of the door: only his face, very red, with staring eyes. The flame of the lamp leaped, a piece of paper flew up, a rush of air enveloped Captain MacWhirr. Beginning to draw on the boot, he directed an expectant gaze at Jukes' swollen, excited features.

“Came on like this,” shouted Jukes, “five minutes ago ... all of a sudden.”

The head disappeared with a bang, and a heavy splash and patter of drops swept past the closed door as if a pailful of melted lead had been flung against the house. A whistling could be heard now upon the deep vibrating noise outside. The stuffy chart room seemed as full of drafts as a shed. Captain MacWhirr collared the other sea boot on its violent passage along the floor. He was not flustered, but he could not find at once the opening for inserting his foot. The shoes he had flung off were scurrying from end to end of the cabin, gamboling playfully over each other like puppies. As soon as he stood up he kicked at them viciously, but without effect.

He threw himself into the attitude of a lunging fencer, to reach after his oilskin coat; and afterwards he staggered all over the confined space while he jerked himself into it. Very grave, straddling his legs far apart, and stretching his neck, he started to tie deliberately the strings of his sou'-wester under his chin, with thick fingers that trembled slightly. He went through all the movements of a woman putting on her bonnet before a glass, with a strained, listening attention, as though he had expected every moment to hear the shout of his name in the confused clamor that had suddenly beset his ship. Its increase filled his ears while he was getting ready to go out and confront whatever it might mean. It was tumultuous and very loud—made up of the rush of the wind, the crashes of the sea, with that prolonged deep vibration of the air, like the roll of an immense and remote drum beating the charge of the gale.

He stood for a moment in the light of the lamp, thick, clumsy, shapeless in his panoply of combat, vigilant and red-faced.

“There's a lot of weight in this,” he muttered.

As soon as he attempted to open the door the wind caught it. Clinging to the handle, he was dragged out over the doorstep, and at once found himself engaged with the wind in a sort of personal scuffle whose object was the shutting of that door. At the last moment a tongue of air scurried in and licked out the flame of the lamp.