Where Angels Fear to Tread | Page 7

of homesick Malay proas from the west crowded the
roadstead; for the guano trade was booming, and Callao prosperous.
Nearly every type of craft known to sailors was there; but the postman
and the policeman of the seas--the coastwise mail-steamer and the
heavily sparred man-of-war--were conspicuously absent. The Pacific
Mail boat would not arrive for a week, and the last cruiser had departed
two days before.
Beyond the faint land- and sea-breeze, there was no wind nor promise
of it for several days; and Captain Benson, though properly cleared at
the custom-house for New York, was in no hurry, and had taken
advantage of the delay to give a dinner to some captains with whom he
had fraternized on shore. "I've a first-rate steward," he had told them,
"and I'll treat you well; and I've the best-trained crew that ever went to
sea. Come, all of you, and bring your first officers. I want to give you
an object-lesson on the influence of matter over mind that you can't
learn in the books."
So they came, at half-past eleven, in their own ships' dinghies, which
were sent back with orders to return at nightfall--six big-fisted, more or
less fat captains, and six big-fisted, beetle-browed, and embarrassed
chief mates. As they climbed the gangway they were met and

welcomed by Captain Benson, who led them to the poop, the only dry
and clean part of the ship; for the Almena's crew were holystoning the
main-deck, and as this operation consists in grinding off the oiled
surface of the planks with sandstone, the resulting slime of sand, oily
wood-pulp, and salt water made walking unpleasant, as well as being
very hard on polished shoe-leather. But in this filthy slime the men
were on their knees, working the six-inch blocks of stone, technically
called "bibles," back and forth with about the speed and motion of an
energetic woman over a wash-board.
The mates also were working. With legs clad in long rubber boots, they
filled buckets at the deck-pump and scattered water around where
needed, occasionally throwing the whole bucketful at a doubtful spot
on the deck to expose it to criticism. As the visitors lined up against the
monkey-rail and looked down on the scene, Mr. Becker launched such
a bucketful as only a second mate can--and a man who happened to be
in the way was rolled over by the unexpected impact. He gasped a little
louder than might have been necessary, and the wasting of the
bucketful of water having forced Mr. Becker to make an extra trip to
the pump, the officer was duly incensed.
"Get out o' the way, there," he bawled, eying the man sternly. "What
are you gruntin' at? A little water won't hurt you--soap neither."
He went to the pump for more water, and the man crawled back to his
holystone. It was Bigpig Monahan, hollow-eyed and thin, slow in his
voluntary movements; minus his look of injury, too, as though he might
have welcomed the bowling over as a momentary respite for his aching
muscles.
Now and then, when the officers' faces were partly turned, a man would
stop, rise erect on his knees, and bend backward. A man may work a
holystone much longer and press it much harder on the deck for these
occasional stretchings of contracted tissue; but the two mates chose to
ignore this physiological fact, and a moment later, a little man, caught
in the act by Mr. Jackson, was also rolled over on his back, not by a
bucket of water, but by the boot of the mate, who uttered words
suitable to the occasion, and held his hand in his pocket until the little

man, grinning with rage, had resumed his work.
"There," said Captain Benson to his guests on the poop; "see that little
devil! See him show his teeth! That is Mr. Sinful Peck. I've had him in
irons with a broken head five times, and the log is full of him. I towed
him over the stern running down the trades to take the cussedness out
of him, and if he had not been born for higher things, he'd have
drowned. He was absolutely unconquerable until I found him telling his
beads one time in irons and took them away from him. Now to get an
occasional chance at them he is fairly quiet."
"So this is your trained crew, is it, captain?" said a grizzled old skipper
of the party. "What ails that fellow down in the scuppers with a
prayer-book?" He pointed to a man who with one hand was rubbing a
small holystone in a corner where a large one would not go.
"Ran foul of the big end of a handspike," answered Captain Benson,
quietly; "he'll carry his arm in splints all