Where Angels Fear to Tread | Page 6

cabin table,
with knives and forks. Decide this matter quickly."
The captain began pacing the deck, and the listening pilot stepped
forward, and said kindly: "Take my advice, boys, and go along. You're
in for it if you don't."
They thanked him with their eyes for the sympathy, conferred together
for a few moments, then their spokesman called out: "We'll leave it to
the fellers forrard, captain"; and forward they trooped. In five minutes
they were back, with resolution in their faces.
"We'll go, captain," their leader said. "Bigpig can't be moved 'thout
killin' him, and says if he lives he'll follow your mate to hell but he'll
pay him back; and the others talk the same; and we'll stand by
'em--we'll square up this day's work."
Captain Benson brought his walk to a stop close to the shot-gun. "Very
well, that is your declaration," he said, his voice dropping the
conversational tone he had assumed, and taking on one more in
accordance with his position; "now I will deliver mine. We sail at once
for Callao and back to an American port of discharge. You know your
wages--fourteen dollars a month. I am master of this ship, responsible
to my owners and the law for the lives of all on board. And this
responsibility includes the right to take the life of a mutineer. You have
been such, but I waive the charge considering your ignorance of
salt-water custom and your agreement to start anew. The law defines
your allowance of food, but not your duties or your working- and
sleeping-time. That is left to the discretion of your captain and officers.
Precedent--the decision of the courts--has decided the privilege of a

captain or officer to punish insolence or lack of respect from a sailor
with a blow--of a fist or missile; but, understand me now, a return of
the blow makes that man a mutineer, and his prompt killing is justified
by the law of the land. Is this plain to you? You are here to answer and
obey orders respectfully, adding the word 'sir' to each response; you are
never to go to windward of an officer, or address him by name without
the prefix 'Mr.'; and you are to work civilly and faithfully, resenting
nothing said to you until you are discharged in an American port at the
end of the voyage. A failure in this will bring you prompt punishment;
and resentment of this punishment on your part will bring--death. Mr.
Jackson," he concluded, turning to his first officer, "overhaul their
dunnage, turn them to, and man the windlass."
A man--the bald-headed Sinful Peck--sprang forward; but his face was
not cherubic now. His blue eyes blazed with emotion much in keeping
with his sobriquet; and, raising his hand, the nervously crooking fingers
of which made it almost a fist, he said, in a voice explosively strident:
"That's all right. That's your say. You've described the condition o'
nigger slaves, not American voters. And I'll tell you one thing, right
here--I'm a free-born citizen. I know my work, and can do it, without
bein' cursed and abused; and if you or your mates rub my fur the wrong
way I'm goin' to claw back; and if I'm shot, you want to shoot sure; for
if you don't, I'll kill that man, if I have to lash my knife to a
broom-handle, and prod him through his window when he's asleep."
But alas for Sinful Peck! He had barely finished his defiance when he
fell like a log under the impact of the big mate's fist; then, while the
pilot, turning his back on the painful scene, walked aft, nodding and
shaking his head, and the captain's strong language and leveled
shot-gun induced the men to an agitated acquiescence, the two officers
kicked and stamped upon the little man until consciousness left him.
Before he recovered he had been ironed to a stanchion in the
'tween-deck, and entered in the captain's official log for threatening life.
And by this time the dunnage had been searched, a few sheath-knives
tossed overboard, and the remaining ten men were moodily heaving in
the chain.

And so, with a crippled crew of schooner sailors, the square-rigger
Almena was towed to sea, smoldering rebellion in one end of her, the
power of the law in the other--murder in the heart of every man on
board.

PART II
Five months later the Almena lay at an outer mooring-buoy in Callao
Roads, again ready for sea, but waiting. With her at the anchorage were
representatives of most of the maritime nations. English ships and
barks with painted ports and spider-web braces, high-sided,
square-sterned American half-clippers, clumsy, square-bowed
"Dutchmen," coasting-brigs of any nation, lumber-schooners from
"'Frisco," hide-carriers from Valparaiso, pearl-boats and fishermen, and
even a couple