The Blood Ship | Page 9

her.
The Swede grinned jocosely at me. "How you like to ship by the Golden Bough! There ban easy ship, Ja! Plenty grub, easy vork, good mates----"
"Yah-h-h!" One swelling, jeering shout from the whole crowd submerged the Swede's joking reference.
"Plenty to eat!" yelled one. "Aye, plenty o' belaying-pin soup, an' knuckle-duster hash!"
"Easy work!" sang out another. "In your watch below, which never happens!"
"Proper gents, the mates are," spoke up a third. "They eats a sailorman every mornin' for breakfast!"
Oh, they knew the Golden Bough! Who did not?
"How many, Swede?" called out a man.
"Ay ban ship a crowd of stiffs--and some sailor-mans," stated the Swede.
Cursing broke out afresh. Some of them must go! The bulk of the crew was to be crimped, of course, in the Swede knew what kennels of the town. But a few tried sailormen must go to leaven that sodden, sea-ignorant lump. It was like condemning men to penal servitude. No wonder they swore. And swear they did, with mouth-filling, curdling oaths, as though in vain hope their flaming words would quite consume that evilly known vessel.
In the midst of that bedlam I stood thinking strange thoughts. It is hardly credible, but I was considering if I should tell the Swede I would ship in the Golden Bough. And I had heard all about the ship, too, for if the Knitting Swede was the hero of half the dog-watch yarns, the Golden Bough was the heroine of the other half. I knew of the ship, the most notorious blood-ship afloat, and the queen of all the speedy clippers. I knew of her captain, the black-hearted, silky-voiced Yankee Swope, who boasted he never had to pay off a crew; I knew of her two mates, Fitzgibbon and Lynch, who each boasted he could polish off a watch single-handed, and lived up to his boast. I knew of the famous, blood-specked passages the ship had made; of the cruel, bruising life the foremast hands led in her. And I stood before the Swede's bar and considered shipping. Oh, Youth!
For my thoughts were fathered by the vaulting conceit of my nineteen years. Consider . . . a few days before I had for the first time assumed a man's estate in sailordom. Already I was a marked man. Had I not stopped at the Knitting Swede's, and ruffled on equality with the hard cases? Had I not whipped the bully of the beach? Had I not been offered a fighting man's billet by the Swede, himself? Was not that glory?
Then how much greater the glory if I spoke up with a devil-may-care lilt in my voice, and shipped in the hottest packet afloat! Glory!--why, I would be the unquestioned cock of any foc'sle I afterward happened into. You know, in those days the ambitious young lads regularly shipped in the hot clippers; it was a postgraduate course in seamanship, and accomplishment of such a voyage gave one a standing with his fellows. I had intended going in one--in the Enterprise, or the Glory of the Seas, both loading in port. But the Golden Bough! No man shipped in her, sober, and unafraid. If I shipped, I should be famous the world around as the fellow who feared neither God, nor Devil, nor Yankee Swope and his bucko mates!
So I stood there, half wishful, half afraid, deaf to all save my own swirling thoughts. And there happened that which gave me my decision.
It was the man with the scar. He had been lounging against the bar, an uninterested spectator of the bestowing of the runnership. Now, my eyes fell upon him, and I saw to my surprise that he was shaken out of his careless humor. He was standing tensely on the balls of his feet, and his hands were gripping the bar rail so fiercely his fingers seemed white and bloodless. It was apparent some stern emotion wrestled him; the profile I saw was set like chiseled marble. There was something indescribably menacing in his poise. The sight of him jolted my ears open to the noises of the room.
The crowd was still talking about the Golden Bough. And the talk had progressed, as talk of the Golden Bough always progressed, from skipper and mates, to the lady. They spoke of the ship's mystery, of the Captain's lady. She was a character to pique a sailorman's interest, the Lady of the Golden Bough. Her fame was as wide, and much sweeter, than the vessel's. With all their toughs' frankness, the crowd were discussing the lady's puzzling relations with Swope.
"Uncommon queer, I calls it," said one chap, who had sailed in the ship. "They call 'em man an' wife, but she lives to port, an' he to starboard. Separate cabins, dash me! I had it from the cabin boy. They even eats