The Mutiny of the Elsinore | Page 8

I complimented.
"I was, I was," he muttered sadly, and I caught the whiff of whiskey
strong on the air.
I stole a look at his gnarled hands. Any finger would have made three
of mine. His wrist would have made three of my wrist.
"How much do you weigh?" I asked.
"Two hundred an' ten. But in my day, at my best, I tipped the scales
close to two-forty."
"And the Elsinore can't sail," I said, returning to the subject which had
roused him.
"I'll take you even, anything from a pound of tobacco to a month's
wages, she won't make it around in a hundred an' fifty days," he
answered. "Yet I've come round in the old Flyin' Cloud in eighty- nine
days--eighty-nine days, sir, from Sandy Hook to 'Frisco. Sixty men
for'ard that WAS men, an' eight boys, an' drive! drive! drive! Three
hundred an' seventy-four miles for a day's run under t'gallantsails, an' in
the squalls eighteen knots o' line not enough to time her. Eighty-nine
days--never beat, an' tied once by the old Andrew Jackson nine years
afterwards. Them was the days!"
"When did the Andrew Jackson tie her?" I asked, because of the
growing suspicion that he was "having" me.
"In 1860," was his prompt reply.
"And you sailed in the Flying Cloud nine years before that, and this is
1913--why, that was sixty-two years ago," I charged.
"And I was seven years old," he chuckled. "My mother was stewardess
on the Flyin' Cloud. I was born at sea. I was boy when I was twelve, on
the Herald o' the Morn, when she made around in ninety- nine
days--half the crew in irons most o' the time, five men lost from aloft

off the Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken square off,
knuckle-dusters an' belayin'-pins flyin', three men shot by the officers
in one day, the second mate killed dead an' no one to know who done it,
an' drive! drive! drive! ninety-nine days from land to land, a run of
seventeen thousand miles, an' east to west around Cape Stiff!"
"But that would make you sixty-nine years old," I insisted.
"Which I am," he retorted proudly, "an' a better man at that than the
scrubby younglings of these days. A generation of 'em would die under
the things I've been through. Did you ever hear of the Sunny
South?--she that was sold in Havana to run slaves an' changed her name
to Emanuela?"
"And you've sailed the Middle Passage!" I cried, recollecting the old
phrase.
"I was on the Emanuela that day in Mozambique Channel when the
Brisk caught us with nine hundred slaves between-decks. Only she
wouldn't a-caught us except for her having steam."
I continued to stroll up and down beside this massive relic of the past,
and to listen to his hints and muttered reminiscences of old man-killing
and man-driving days. He was too real to be true, and yet, as I studied
his shoulder-stoop and the age-drag of his huge feet, I was convinced
that his years were as he asserted. He spoke of a Captain Sonurs.
"He was a great captain," he was saying. "An' in the two years I sailed
mate with him there was never a port I didn't jump the ship goin' in an'
stay in hiding until I sneaked aboard when she sailed again."
"But why?"
"The men, on account of the men swearin' blood an' vengeance and
warrants against me because of my ways of teachin' them to be sailors.
Why, the times I was caught, and the fines the skipper paid for me--and
yet it was my work that made the ship make money.''

He held up his huge paws, and as I stared at the battered, malformed
knuckles I understood the nature of his work.
"But all that's stopped now," he lamented. "A sailor's a gentleman these
days. You can't raise your voice or your hand to them."
At this moment he was addressed from the poop-rail above by the
second mate, a medium-sized, heavily built, clean-shaven, blond man.
"The tug's in sight with the crew, sir," he announced.
The mate grunted an acknowledgment, then added, "Come on down,
Mr. Mellaire, and meet our passenger."
I could not help noting the air and carriage with which Mr. Mellaire
came down the poop-ladder and took his part in the introduction. He
was courteous in an old-world way, soft-spoken, suave, and
unmistakably from south of Mason and Dixon.
"A Southerner," I said.
"Georgia, sir." He bowed and smiled, as only a Southerner can bow and
smile.
His features and expression were genial and gentle, and yet his mouth
was the cruellest gash I had ever seen in a man's face. It was a gash.
There is no other way of describing that harsh,