CHAPTER XV
A few of the pickpocket-faced ones hung back during the gale that morning, crawled into corners, effacing themselves, like sick cats. At the afternoon feeding and watering (despite the words of contempt, glances of contempt, and, worst of all, silences of contempt, bestowed upon them when they showed face at their own feeding-time) several did not turn out, pretended to do so—perhaps tried to do so—but slunk back to the cabin. When Rafferty, missing them, came aft to hunt them forth, they showed their peeked faces to him, worn and scared; and he despised them and left them, turned back to his working majority again and shouted through the shouting of the storm overhead, and the rushing of the draught along his deck: "There's some chickens, some chickens!" His men knew to whom he referred, looked at him—and sneered, and laughed, and tossed their heads in agreement; Jack even, whose attitude to Rafferty so far had been one of watchfulness, gave a kind of loud mutter of: "We don't want them with us, messing about here." Cockney too, energetic straw-boss, looked on them as did Rafferty.
"Let 'em lie there and shiver, then," he said.
Only two of the main deck men were perturbed beyond labour by the steadily increasing violence of the gale, scared by the consideration that it had begun to blow last night, and had been getting worse and worse ever since.
"Two men short!" commented Candlass in the afternoon, and went aft to the cabin to look for them, found one on the way, behind a bale of hay, peered at him as if wondering what he was doing there, balancing carefully with loose knees, taking hand from pocket only to grab and hang on by a protruding end of barricade. He eyed him as a man may eye a newly-bought puppy that has gone in between the sofa's end and the wall. The youth got up, scrambled out as best he could, hauled himself to his feet. Candlass spoke never a word, but bowed to him in the attitude of one listening for a whisper, mock-commiserating, and the youth dragged himself forward to find that his fellows did not want him, had fallen to work passing the hay themselves, and were inclined to treat him as if he was in the way. He had the air as of pleading to be allowed to do something. Candlass, meanwhile, walked on into the cabin, zig-zagged across, looking for his other missing man.
There were two of the lower deck hobbledehoys there. He waggled a thumb at the door, and they got up and crawled out, but he did not follow them; he went up on deck instead, to hunt out the man who was missing from his own deck in particular. The sheep sniffled and bleated occasionally under securely-lashed dodgers that now covered the tops of all the pens. They saw his feet and thrust out their black faces, wrinkled their noses, shivered and withdrew. It was near their feed time. (Mike and Cockney, with two or three others, saw to them daily on their way back, after having tended the cattle.) Candlass tilted his body along, looking left and right to see where his man might be hiding, the ship ever and again pausing in the midst of a rise, pausing much as men on deck did at a more violent and unexpected roll and kick. Some greater wave, at such times, had caught her fair, and smashing upon her hull as on a cliff, raced whirling along the length of her, shot up her side, soared thinly there beyond the bulwark, to be immediately blown wide, as is the top of a fountain in the wind, scudding and rattling along the decks. Tarpaulins had been rigged entirely across her, below the bridge, to protect the sheep on the after deck; and as far as to that barrier did Candlass now strut, tilting and balancing. And there, in a space between two sheep-pens, beside a ventilator, he saw a pair of boot-soles, bent down and grabbed at the legs beyond them, and the face of the missing man looked up at him—green. It was sea-sickness. Candlass stooped low.
"Sick?" he said.
The man's eyes rolled. He clung desperately to the ventilator.
"Don't fall overboard, don't want to lose a man. Savvey?"
The man tried to nod; his whole body sagged forward in that effort.
"You lie on your back when you ain't actually being sick," Candlass roared into his ear. "Savvey?"
Again the man tried to nod and at least succeeded in making his head go up and down instead of being powerless to keep it from doing aught but rolling left and right.
"Don't fall overboard," Candlass counselled again, and lurched away, muttering to himself: "Sick all right."
But most of the men enjoyed the gale. It was something doing. And when, next morning, the pickpocket-faced youth sat up ready to give his shout of: "Call me in another hour, Rafferty, and bring me me shaving water," his voice failed. He looked round the cabin; he had been one of the shirkers yesterday.
"That's right," said one of the men. "You keep your mouth shut this morning!" And the gunsel and his special cronies kept quiet, for it was unfitting that those who skulked in a corner during a gale should cheek Rafferty the morning after merely because they found that the swing and sweep of the tossing stern were back a little more to the normal. The gale had indeed blown itself out, or nearly so. It was a tremendous morning in the North Atlantic. A fountain of gold, preceding sunrise, shot up eastwards. A sound of hissing and of breaking foam was round the ship, and echoed in every corner. The waves soared, great and curving, blue and purple, veined like marble in their forward curves with the foam of other broken waves, soared higher, curled their tops, broke, and as they broke the wind took the foam and whirled it broadcast. There was a wonderful purple and blue and windy hilarity over that great expanse, so high a sea running that even the horizon line was ragged.
The grub that day seemed painfully scanty. The uneaten shares of the one or two seasick men made no difference, so great were the appetites of the fit. Cockney admitted, after the meal was over, that he sympathised with those persons who chummed with, or intimidated, Pierre and Four Eyes, for the sake of what food they might smuggle away from the galley—though his phrasing of this comprehension was of course all his own.
"Are they cadgin' off Frenchy and that object in the coat?" asked Mike.
"'Aven't you seen 'em?" said Cockney. "'O, Frenchy, bring hus along some pie!'" he cried out in a fleering voice.
"I quite belave it," said Mike. "I see some of 'em cadgin' tobacco. There's men aboard this ship I know I wouldn't prisint me plug of tobacco to. If they took a bite out of it you'd be thinkin' the plug was in their mouth, and the chaw they axed for was the piece they gave back to ye." There was an attempt at a laugh, an obvious attempt, for the shot had gone home. "'Have ye got a piece of chewing on ye?'" mocked Mike. "'Me pipe's empty, have you a fill about ye?'—'Have ye a ceegareet about ye?'" He paused. "'After you wid the ceegareet!'" he mocked.
And he lived up to his opinion. There are people who arrange their moral code according to what they can do and cannot do. There are people to whom a fall from fealty to their code is occasion for renouncing and deriding that code. Mike was not of these. He disliked cadging, but had his love of a smoke or a chew driven him to cadge he would not have relinquished his opinion; he would have smoked and chewed as a defeated man.
All day now there was sign of better weather. Even the wind aided to calm the seas, swinging round a point or two and besoming the wave-tops, flattening them. There was hash and pea-soup that day—the pea-soup drunk in the tin mugs, of course, along with, or after, the hash—and the "Push" were glad of it. It was a great tonic day. By night all the clouds seemed to have been blown away; stars by the billion filled the vault; the Milky Way was like a whirl of triumph, like a gesture of joy across the heavens. The wake of the tiny little Glory (she seemed tiny now) was as an imitation of that Milky Way, full of balls, large and small, and smaller, down to the size of sparks even, of phosphorus—dancing and bursting and thinning out. Mike, coming on deck a trifle disgusted by a surfeit of what he called "soup-kitchen palaver" that was in progress amid a group of "youse," looked down at that wake, moody, and furrowed, that kind of half-broken look upon his face, like a wondering beast, a puzzled beast. He stood there at the stern, lifted high and brought low, till his back went cold.
"Bejabbers, it's all very strange," he said to himself; and being cold he looked round for shelter. Some wisps of hay, blown from windward, had been brought up against the lee rail, and he gathered them together. The sheep bleated.
"I'm using this for me own comfort," he said, addressing the sheep in the end cote; "go to sleep!" And he squatted down with his back against the cotes, and stretched out his legs—sat there a long time while the ship pulsed and pulsed on, tossing her stern and the engines racing and steadied, racing and steadied, as she slid through the sea, churning the water into foam, in which whirls of gold began like nebulas of stars, whirled into complete little globes, danced away as entrancing as opals, and then suddenly went out.
Now it happened that, below, Scholar felt he might almost suffocate, and remembering that he had been some time out of the weather, for which he had always a great friendliness, never liking to be too long out of touch with it—blow high, blow low, rain, mist or sunshine—he too came on deck. The poop companion-way had been closed these last few days, and that made the cabin all the more asphyxiating. He came up that narrow staircase, feet clattering on the worn brass edges, turned the handle; eddies of wind did the rest. He wrestled a spell with the door, then came on deck, closed the door, and looked up in awe at all these stars—stood there balancing, now drawn away from them down and down, next moment soaring and swinging up with a sensation as if he might be swung on and come up through that golden dust and see some explanation. Then down he was borne again, or felt as though his body was borne down and his spirit left up there. Explanation, or no explanation, it was good—all good, the crying of the sea, the whistle and shriek of the wind in the cordage, the feel of the wind, the scud of the spray—good!
He turned and looked forward. There seemed to be not a soul on deck. It was as if he had dropped from a star, forgetting all about it on the way, and had alighted gently upon this thing that, reeking volcano-like, tossed and swung, but always forward through the night. He had almost to take it on faith that there was a man in that hardly-discernible little barrel on the foremast, the summit of which raked from left to right. He peered up at the bridge. Yes, something moved there from port to starboard and back again, like a mouse running to and fro on a shelf. Below his feet the ceaseless whirl and whirl went on. A man suddenly appeared, jumping up on top of the sheep pens, tapping with his toe before him, then stepping, to be sure he stood on firm board top and not on tarpaulin cover, turned the top of a ventilator, disappeared, bobbed up again, revealed against the starry sky, or at any rate revealed from his head down to about his knees, the wind pluck-pluck-plucking at his short jacket. He disappeared again, jumping down and was gone. Scholar moved to one side, kicked something soft, looked down and said: "Oh, I beg your pardon!" and a coarse Irish voice answered: "All right, Scholar."
There was fresh movement at Scholar's feet.
"I seen ye against the stars, but ye couldn't see me. Bring yourself to an anchor here beside me—I have some straw here—and give us your crack."
Scholar, peering down, was now able to make out where Mike reclined, and sat down beside him, back against the end of the last sheep-pen. But they did not speak at once. Scholar felt in his pocket for pipe and tobacco, and held the tobacco-bag to Mike.
"Have a fill?" he said.
Mike put forth a hand, and drew it back.
"No," he growled.
"I've a plug of chewing-tobacco somewhere," said Scholar. "Yes—here it is."
Out went Mike's hand, then abruptly back again; and this time he thrust both hands deep in pockets.
"No, thank you, Scholar."
Scholar wondered if he had given some offence. Ignorant of how to repel in this society in which he found himself, he might also, even in sitting down in response to Mike's invitation, ignorantly have transgressed some usage of courtesy in this sphere. Next moment Mike explained.
"When I see the way the fellers on this ship go cadgin' for tobacco it gives me a pain." He shifted his position slightly, as if he really felt a physical pain. "I would think shame to keep on axing a man day after day—many times a day—'Have you got any chewing? Have you got any smoking?'"
"That's all right," said Scholar. "You didn't ask me—I offered to you."
"Yes, yes, I know; but I said to meself: 'Thim fellers has no daycency. I'll do without chewings and smokings until I get to Liverpool.' No, Scholar, thank you kindly—I'll go wanting it. It has too much hold upon me as it is."
Scholar did not press.