The Mutiny of the Elsinore | Page 4

the Horn.
By ten o'clock a nondescript youth arrived on foot, carrying a suit- case,
which was turned over to me a few minutes later by the wharfinger. It
belonged to the pilot, he said, and gave instructions to the chauffeur
how to find some other pier from which, at some indeterminate time, I
should be taken aboard the Elsinore by some other tug. This served to
increase my irritation. Why should I not have been informed as well as
the pilot?
An hour later, still in my cab and stationed at the shore end of the new
pier, the pilot arrived. Anything more unlike a pilot I could not have
imagined. Here was no blue-jacketed, weather-beaten son of the sea,
but a soft-spoken gentleman, for all the world the type of successful
business man one meets in all the clubs. He introduced himself
immediately, and I invited him to share my freezing cab with Possum
and the baggage. That some change had been made in the arrangements
by Captain West was all he knew, though he fancied the tug would
come along any time.
And it did, at one in the afternoon, after I had been compelled to wait
and freeze for four mortal hours. During this time I fully made up my

mind that I was not going to like this Captain West. Although I had
never met him, his treatment of me from the outset had been, to say the
least, cavalier. When the Elsinore lay in Erie Basin, just arrived from
California with a cargo of barley, I had crossed over from New York to
inspect what was to be my home for many months. I had been delighted
with the ship and the cabin accommodation. Even the stateroom
selected for me was satisfactory and far more spacious than I had
expected. But when I peeped into the captain's room I was amazed at its
comfort. When I say that it opened directly into a bath-room, and that,
among other things, it was furnished with a big brass bed such as one
would never suspect to find at sea, I have said enough.
Naturally, I had resolved that the bath-room and the big brass bed
should be mine. When I asked the agents to arrange with the captain
they seemed non-committal and uncomfortable. "I don't know in the
least what it is worth," I said. "And I don't care. Whether it costs one
hundred and fifty dollars or five hundred, I must have those quarters."
Harrison and Gray, the agents, debated silently with each other and
scarcely thought Captain West would see his way to the arrangement.
"Then he is the first sea captain I ever heard of that wouldn't," I
asserted confidently. "Why, the captains of all the Atlantic liners
regularly sell their quarters."
"But Captain West is not the captain of an Atlantic liner," Mr. Harrison
observed gently.
"Remember, I am to be on that ship many a month," I retorted. "Why,
heavens, bid him up to a thousand if necessary."
"We'll try," said Mr. Gray, "but we warn you not to place too much
dependence on our efforts. Captain West is in Searsport at the present
time, and we will write him to-day.
To my astonishment Mr. Gray called me up several days later to inform
me that Captain West had declined my offer. "Did you offer him up to
a thousand?" I demanded. "What did he say?"

"He regretted that he was unable to concede what you asked," Mr. Gray
replied.
A day later I received a letter from Captain West. The writing and the
wording were old-fashioned and formal. He regretted not having yet
met me, and assured me that he would see personally that my quarters
were made comfortable. For that matter he had already dispatched
orders to Mr. Pike, the first mate of the Elsinore, to knock out the
partition between my state-room and the spare state- room adjoining.
Further--and here is where my dislike for Captain West began--he
informed me that if, when once well at sea, I should find myself
dissatisfied, he would gladly, in that case, exchange quarters with me.
Of course, after such a rebuff, I knew that no circumstance could ever
persuade me to occupy Captain West's brass bed. And it was this
Captain Nathaniel West, whom I had not yet met, who had now kept
me freezing on pier-ends through four miserable hours. The less I saw
of him on the voyage the better, was my decision; and it was with a
little tickle of pleasure that I thought of the many boxes of books I had
dispatched on board from New York. Thank the Lord, I did not depend
on sea captains for entertainment.
I turned Possum over to Wada, who was settling with