The Blood Ship | Page 3

she is just a dirty old scow--" he commenced.
"Blast me, can't you even guess what she once was?" went on Briggs, relentlessly. "Well, young feller, that dirty old scow--as you call her--is the Golden Bough!"
The passenger only blinked. The name meant nothing to him. But it did to me.
"The Golden Bough!" I echoed. "Surely you don't mean the _Golden Bough_?"
"But I do," said Briggs. He waved his hand. "There she is--the Golden Bough. All that is left of the finest ship that ever smashed a record with the American flag at her gaff. She's a coal hulk now, but once she was the finest vessel afloat. Eh, Captain?"
Captain Shreve nodded affirmation. Then he turned to the writing guy, and courteously salved the chap's self-esteem.
"Small wonder you overlooked her build; it takes a sailor's eye for such things. And really, your description strikes home to me. We are all workhorses, are we not, we of the sea? And time breaks down us all, man and ship." The Old Man was staring at the hulk, and his voice was sorrowful. "Aye, but time has used her cruelly! What a pity--she was so bonny!"
The writing guy perked up at this. "Well, you know, I see her through a layman's eyes," he explained. "And she does look so old, and dirty, and commonplace----"
Briggs snorted, and the Captain hastened to continue, cutting off the mate's hard words. "Oh, yes, she looks old and dirty--no mistake. But time was when no ship afloat could match her for either looks or speed. Aye, she was a beauty. Remember how she looked in the old days, Briggs?"
Briggs did. He emphatically blasted his eyes to the effect that he remembered very well the Golden Bough in the days of her glory, the days when she was no workhorse, but a double-planked racehorse of the seas, as anyone but a lubber could see she had once been, just by looking at her. Yes, blast his eyes, he remembered her. He remembered one time running the Easting down in the _Josiah T. Flynn_, a smart ship, with a reputation, and they were cracking on as they would never dare crack, on in these degenerate days, when, blast his eyes, the Golden Bough came up on them, and passed, and ran away from the poor old Flynn, and Yankee Swope had stood on his poopdeck at the passing, and waved a hawser-end at the Old Man of the Flynn, asking if he wanted a tow. "And then we caught hell," commented Mr. Briggs. Aye, he should say he did remember the Golden Bough. But he had never sailed in her.
"And she looks commonplace enough," continued Captain Shreve, "providing you know nothing of her history. But she does not look commonplace to Briggs or me. I suppose we regard her through the mist of memory--we see the tall, beautiful ship that was. We know the record of that ship. Aye, lad, and if those sorry-looking timbers yonder could talk, you would not have to make the voyage with us in order to get a taste of the salt. You'd get real local color there--you'd hear of many a wild ocean race, of smashed records, or shanghaied crews and mutinies. Yes, and you'd get, perhaps, some of that particular information you say you are after. Those old, broken bulwarks yonder have looked upon life, I can tell you--and upon death."
"The dangerous life of the sailor, I presume," drawled the writing guy. "Falling from aloft, and being washed overboard, and all that sort of thing."
"Not always," retorted Captain Shreve. "There were other ways of going to Davy Jones in the old clipper days--and in these days, also, for that matter. Knives, for instance, or bullets, or a pair of furious hands--if you care for violent tragedy. But I did not mean the physical dangers of life, particularly; I meant, rather, that Fate tangles lives on board ship as queerly as in cities ashore. I meant that the Golden Bough, in her day, left her mark upon a good many lives. She broke men, and made them. And once, I know, she had to do with a woman's life, and a woman's love. There was a wedding performed upon that ship upon the high seas, and a dead man sprawled on the deck at the feet of the nuptial pair, and the bride was the dead man's widow!"
"Oh, come now--" said the writing guy. It was plain he thought the skipper was stringing him. But I knew how difficult it was to get our Old Man to spin a yarn, and I was determined he should not be shunted off on a new tack. I interrupted the author, hurriedly. "Did you ever make a voyage in the Golden Bough, Captain?" I asked.
"Yes," replied the Captain. "I