The Mutiny of the Elsinore | Page 7

knew must be painful,
but did not offer to shake hands, turning immediately to call orders to
half-a-dozen frozen-looking youths and aged men who shambled up
from somewhere in the waist of the ship. Mr. Pike had been drinking.

That was patent. His face was puffed and discoloured, and his large
gray eyes were bitter and bloodshot.
I lingered, with a sinking heart watching my belongings come aboard
and chiding my weakness of will which prevented me from uttering the
few words that would put a stop to it. As for the half-dozen men who
were now carrying the luggage aft into the cabin, they were unlike any
concept I had ever entertained of sailors. Certainly, on the liners, I had
observed nothing that resembled them.
One, a most vivid-faced youth of eighteen, smiled at me from a pair of
remarkable Italian eyes. But he was a dwarf. So short was he that he
was all sea-boots and sou'wester. And yet he was not entirely Italian.
So certain was I that I asked the mate, who answered morosely:
"Him? Shorty? He's a dago half-breed. The other half's Jap or Malay."
One old man, who I learned was a bosun, was so decrepit that I thought
he had been recently injured. His face was stolid and ox- like, and as he
shuffled and dragged his brogans over the deck he paused every several
steps to place both hands on his abdomen and execute a queer, pressing,
lifting movement. Months were to pass, in which I saw him do this
thousands of times, ere I learned that there was nothing the matter with
him and that his action was purely a habit. His face reminded me of the
Man with the Hoe, save that it was unthinkably and abysmally stupider.
And his name, as I was to learn, of all names was Sundry Buyers. And
he was bosun of the fine American sailing-ship Elsinore--rated one of
the finest sailing-ships afloat!
Of this group of aged men and boys that moved the luggage along I
saw only one, called Henry, a youth of sixteen, who approximated in
the slightest what I had conceived all sailors to be like. He had come
off a training ship, the mate told me, and this was his first voyage to sea.
His face was keen-cut, alert, as were his bodily movements, and he
wore sailor-appearing clothes with sailor-seeming grace. In fact, as I
was to learn, he was to be the only sailor-seeming creature fore and aft.
The main crew had not yet come aboard, but was expected at any

moment, the mate vouchsafed with a snarl of ominous expectancy.
Those already on board were the miscellaneous ones who had shipped
themselves in New York without the mediation of boarding-house
masters. And what the crew itself would be like God alone could
tell--so said the mate. Shorty, the Japanese (or Malay) and Italian
half-caste, the mate told me, was an able seaman, though he had come
out of steam and this was his first sailing voyage.
"Ordinary seamen!" Mr. Pike snorted, in reply to a question. "We don't
carry Landsmen!--forget it! Every clodhopper an' cow-walloper these
days is an able seaman. That's the way they rank and are paid. The
merchant service is all shot to hell. There ain't no more sailors. They all
died years ago, before you were born even."
I could smell the raw whiskey on the mate's breath. Yet he did not
stagger nor show any signs of intoxication. Not until afterward was I to
know that his willingness to talk was most unwonted and was where
the liquor gave him away.
"It'd a-ben a grace had I died years ago," he said, "rather than to a-lived
to see sailors an' ships pass away from the sea."
"But I understand the Elsinore is considered one of the finest," I urged.
"So she is . . . to-day. But what is she?--a damned cargo-carrier. She
ain't built for sailin', an' if she was there ain't no sailors left to sail her.
Lord! Lord! The old clippers! When I think of 'em!--The Gamecock,
Shootin' Star, Flyin' Fish, Witch o' the Wave, Staghound, Harvey Birch,
Canvas-back, Fleetwing, Sea Serpent, Northern Light! An' when I think
of the fleets of the tea-clippers that used to load at Hong Kong an' race
the Eastern Passages. A fine sight! A fine sight!"
I was interested. Here was a man, a live man. I was in no hurry to go
into the cabin, where I knew Wada was unpacking my things, so I
paced up and down the deck with the huge Mr. Pike. Huge he was in all
conscience, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned, and, despite the profound
stoop of his shoulders, fully six feet in height.

"You are a splendid figure of a man,"