The blacks studied the big windlass and bitts, forward; they climbed over and around the cold try-works; they peered down the main hatch and adventured into the fo’c’stle, and admired from a respectful distance the three long whaleboats on the bearers along either rail, and on skids at the stern. These boats, tools of the Deborah’s epic trade, were almost half as long as the schooner herself. They were, moreover, as seaworthy as many a larger craft; and save only perhaps the dory of the fishing-fleet, they would outride any other type of small-boat that white men know. The two at the rails were just abeam the break in the deck; the stern boat lay crosswise, lashed in place upon the skids. A larger craft of the Deborah’s sort would have had one or two spare boats stowed on the boathouse just forward of the mizzenmast; but the Deborah’s spares, if she had had any, would have been athwartship, on the skids, aft. As it was, she had none. The third mate and his boat had been lost in the killing of the last whales; and the schooner was going home with only two officers besides Black Pawl. The third mate’s widow in Nantucket would get his lay, along with his seachest and the sparse belongings in his cabin.
Black Pawl saw his son’s boat put off at last from the beach and start for the schooner. He roared good-humoredly at the blacks and drove them overside. They went, giggling and laughing. Black Pawl was a tall, lean man, with a big framework of bones insufficiently covered with flesh. Nevertheless there was strength in his stringy arms and his lank legs and his gaunt torso. He had got his name of Black instead of Dan Pawl in the days when his head was crowned with a shock of ebony; now that shock of hair was iron gray, almost white. Beneath it, the bold, black eyes of the man gazed mockingly at the world. He was known for a bold man, and a cold one; he laughed much, but when he laughed, it was as though he mocked himself and all the world. He had suffered; his face told that. He still suffered; the mark of it was alive in his eyes. There were whispers about him—at which he laughed.
His son, Red Pawl—they had been christened so by the men of the sea, for it was necessary to have a mark that would distinguish one from the other—his son was his opposite. Three inches shorter than his father, and reputed to be thrice as strong, he was red of hair, red of countenance, morose and sullen in speech—an unsmiling man. Whereas Black Pawl had friends everywhere, and enemies everywhere, Red Pawl had no friends and no enemies; but men disliked and avoided him, and wondered why Black Pawl had him about. “I’d break his neck—even if he were my son,” they said. Black Pawl told some one, once, in a jocular mood, that Red was a penance. “I bear him like the load of my sins about my neck,” he said, and laughed his mirthless laugh.
There had always been enmity between father and son. Red was in his twenties now; Black Pawl was close to fifty. And for three months past, Red had been taking occasion to balk his father, to come between Black Pawl and the men, to seek strife. At such times, Black Pawl laughed at him; but when he was alone, and thought upon the matter, he frowned with a weary anxiety. If it had been another man, Black Pawl would have destroyed him and had done with it. Yet it was not because Red was his son that he held his hand; it was some stronger feeling. He disliked Red, son or no son, as much as the others did. There may have been some truth in the reason for his forbearance which he had given, when he spoke—laughingly—of his own sins. It is a hard and ugly thing for a father to recognize his own evil self in his son.
Red Pawl’s boat was nearing the schooner. It drove in a hair line, deviating no whit; and the natives in the canoes scattered before it with shrieks of laughing consternation. One was slow. The whaleboat sheared away the outrigger, and the canoe spun around and filled. Red called over his shoulder:
“Keep clear, there, you swine!”
But it was hardly worth while to swear at these islanders. They shouted with mirth at the misadventure; a trio of paddlers hauled the occupants of the wrecked canoe into their own craft; and Red Pawl’s boat slid alongside the Deborah.
Black Pawl, on the quarter, saw that the man and the woman were in Red’s boat. The man was elderly, clothed in black. The Captain knew the breed of the church. The woman, he saw, was young.
Red and his boat-steerer steadied the boat while the missionary climbed to the deck. He reached down and took the girl by both hands, and she stepped lightly up to a place by his side. Red said morosely:
“Ask Cap’n Pawl.”