III
Four bells on Sunday morning found the saloon half filled with voyagers, most of whom looked as if church-going was their custom. Sunlight flooded through the open ports and fretted the floor with dancing patterns as the steamer rolled lazily with the weight of the breathing sea. A warm wind gushed under the skylights and brought with it the thankful twitter of a little brown land-bird blown into the rigging over night. If ever worship were meet at sea, a singular aptness was in the peace and brightness of this place.
A hymn was sung and the captain read the morning service from the prayer-book. Then he threw back his shoulders without knowing that he did so, until the blue uniform coat stretched very taut across his bulky chest, and his corded hand gripped a small Bible that lay before him. Something in his pose told those of quick intuition that big emotions were hard held. They knew not why, but this hoary pillar of a man was tugging at their sympathies even before he began to speak, at first frowningly, then with a gathering light in his rugged face:
"From time to time I have tried to make these shipboard services a little more than the routine calls for. It was my way of thinking that when the Lord has led a man up out of the pit, and planted his feet on the Rock, he ought not to be ashamed of it. Perhaps I have had pride in my redemption. But it seemed to me a wonderful thing that a wicked, drunken young sailor, with no mother and no home, should be brought up with a round turn, as by a miracle of grace; that like a great light shining on the deep waters, the new hope of a better, manlier life came to him; and that he found the peace that passeth all understanding. Since then, some men and women have told me that they remembered sailing with me long after the voyage was done.
"Now I can speak no more of these things. This may be my last voyage, and if I were to talk to you out of the fullness of my heart it would be wrong. For the Book says, 'servants obey your masters,' and I am still a servant, wearing a servant's livery, and I have been proud to wear it for a good many years. I can't say any more. Several passengers asked me to give a talk in connection with the morning's service, and I want them to know that in disappointing them, my wishes have been overruled. Let us all thank God for fair weather in a closing hymn."
Arthur Valentine left the saloon fairly well pleased with himself, but inwardly recording one objection:
"He's pretty well muzzled, but I wrote him to cut out all his religious palaver in public, and I won't stand for any more of this nonsense of playing the martyr. That goes."
While idling forward after lunch, he met the first-officer coming off watch. Mischievous fortune thus brought together a young man with an axe to grind and a soured elder with a grievance.
"So the captain is ready to stay ashore," observed Valentine after a few greeting commonplaces. "Did you hear his queer speech this morning? I wonder what he was driving at? A passenger can't help being curious to know."
Mr. Parlin was a ripe and ruddy picture of a mariner, passing as heartily frank of speech except among those who knew him well. A lurking notion that he had seen this young man in New York was somehow coupled in his mind with the company's head offices, where an errand had called him before leaving that port. As he studied the passenger before replying, his glance was drawn to the gun-metal cigarette case, casually produced, whose face bore in gold outline the initials "A. H. V." Mr. Parlin was not dull witted. These letters stood for the name of the "old man's son."
The first-officer became inwardly alert as he said: "Well, Captain Kendrick is getting old, and he hasn't been right since he was smashed up so bad three years ago."
"How smashed?" asked Valentine eagerly.
"Got washed into the scuppers of the Juanita. They found him jammed under a boat with his timbers busted to smithereens. You may have noticed that he walks with a list to port."
"He didn't break his head, did he?" and Valentine tapped his forehead with a significant finger.
"Well, that's not for me to say," and Mr. Parlin hesitated, with a flutter of an eyelid; "but he has his hobby, and he sets all the sail it'll carry. You may have noticed it this morning. But he was going it very easy then."
"I'd have had my ship long before this," continued Mr. Parlin, "if the old man hadn't put a black mark on my record in the main office. Now that he talks of going out of the line, there's no harm in my sayin' that if I'd flopped on my knees and spouted psalms instead of sticking to my duties, it would be Captain Parlin by now. Excuse me. I have some work on."
Valentine said to himself as he watched the burly, bow-legged figure lumber toward a main-deck ladder:
"Now, there's a proper sailor for you! And this captain—pshaw, he makes me sick."
At the same time Mr. Parlin was thinking:
"Neatly done. I put a nail in the old cuss's coffin."
Three days passed before Captain Kendrick made a social appearance on the after deck. His old friends among the passengers welcomed his lavish fund of stories, some of them a trifle heavy, but all delivered with beaming good nature, and such thunderous sallies of laughter as wagged the white beard until his audience joined in from sheer sympathy. Valentine hung on the outskirts for a little while and then preferred to walk the deck. He felt irritation and disgust, partly because he thought he ought to be holding the center of the stage, and regretting that expediency should force him to travel incognito. Wouldn't these silly folk open their eyes if they knew how easily he, the owner, could lay this childish old nuisance of a skipper on the shelf? And he chafed the more because the poison so deftly administered by the first mate was working to confirm all his headlong suspicions.
Scowling at the jolly company as he passed them, Valentine caught a new note of earnestness in the captain's voice and stopped to listen:
"It may not be wrong after all, now that you are all urging me, and I will cut it short. God has been very good to me, and in my poor way I try to bear witness. And you may understand when I tell you what happened in '67 when I was battering around the fo'ksle of a deep-water ship out of Baltimore. Never will I forget the night when——"
The words produced an extraordinary effect upon Valentine. Blind anger seized him. He could see nothing else than that the captain was defying his written order, the passengers abetting him, and the whole group making a mockery of his authoritative judgment. He brushed in among the listeners, and shouted in a gusty treble:
"This has got to stop, I tell you. What did I write you, Captain Kendrick, about all this religious tommy-rot? I'll show you whose orders go on this ship."
The company scattered as if a bomb had lit in the midst of it as Captain Kendrick took two strides, whipped out a long arm and grasped Valentine by the shoulder:
"No man gives me orders on the deck of my ship at sea. Do you want to go below in irons? Who are——"
"My name is A. H. Valentine, and I threatened to kick you out of your berth two weeks ago, and you know it," screamed the struggling young man. "Turn me loose, I tell you. Pension be hanged. Now you can go ashore and rot. I own this ship and a dozen like her. I'll put the first officer in command to-day, and it's high time, too. He deserves it, and I know why he lost his promotion."
"I don't care if you're the Emperor of Chiny. Put a stopper on that tongue of yours, or—" Captain Kendrick checked his hot words and looked at the agitated young man like a pitying father. "You don't know any better, do you? We'll talk it all over ashore. But not at sea, understand—not at sea."
Captain Kendrick walked slowly toward his room without looking back, and sent word for Mr. Parlin to come to him at once. The mate breezed in with hearty salutation, but his high color paled a little when he looked squarely at the captain's flinty face.
"Stand on your two feet like a man, Mr. Parlin, for you're before your commander. Have you been telling lies to a passenger named Valentine?"
"Didn't know Mr. Valentine was aboard, sir. Wouldn't know him if he was sitting there in your chair. Are you trying to insult me?"
"Could I insult a slush-bucket?" thundered the captain. "You have been talking to Mr. Valentine. Don't spit out the lie that's on the tip of your tongue. Two years ago, I found you asleep on watch. At other times you have been slack and inefficient. I reported you every time. That's why you've seen three mates go over your head and get their ships. If I'd had my way you'd have been disrated or thrown on the beach. But you worked wires ashore, you harpooned me in the back, and you held your berth instead of being kicked out for a better man."
The mate's face was purple as he stammered:
"I haven't said anything against you, sir."
"If you're trying to work up into the wind with Mr. Valentine, you wait until you get ashore," growled the captain. "This is my ship until she docks. You can't say I ever tried to convert you to God. He doesn't want jelly-fish. He wants men."
Driven into a corner, the mate tried to take the aggressive in a burst of defiance:
"I guess that what Mr. Valentine says goes. I'll see that he hears my side of the case before sundown."
Mr. Parlin had gone too far, and he knew it before he had bitten off his empty words. Captain Kendrick jumped to his feet, and his beard was pushed within an inch of Mr. Parlin's bulbous nose:
"You're disrated now. Mr. Carr takes your berth until we make port. Get for'ard, you mutinous loafer."
"Get nothin'!" yelled Mr. Parlin. "I'm going aft to see the real boss."
Two hairy hands clamped down on his shoulders, and he was swung clear of the deck. Then his heavily shod toes beat an intermittent tattoo over the sill and along the planks, as he was hauled and shoved toward his own room. The captain shifted his burden until the mate was tucked under one arm, breathless, impotent, trickling juicy curses. He was dumped inside and heard the heavy storm-door slam and the click of a turning key before he could heave himself to his feet and hammer the barricade in useless rage until his fists bled.