Some Persons Unknown

by E. W. Hornung

"My dear fellow, it isn't that," he said. "It's much more likely to be whisky. He was as right as rain when he was with me an hour or two ago. He came to tell me what he was going to do for us to-morrow night at the concert. He means to bring the ship down this time; he's our star, my boy, and we mustn't take him too seriously; it'll never do to go and have a row with Jim Clunie."

The doctor thought differently a day or two later; meantime he took the chair at our second concert, held in 6° N., and in his opening speech he paid Clunie what I considered a rather unnecessary compliment, which, however, the "star" certainly justified before our entertainment was over. He gave us a capital selection on his melodeon, then he sang to it, concluding with a breakdown in response to a double encore. But his great success was scored in the second part of the programme, when he recited "The Dream of Eugene Aram" with a tragic intensity which has not since been surpassed in my hearing. Perhaps the tragedy was a little overdone; perhaps the reciter ranted in the stanzas descriptive of the murder; but I confess I did not think so at the time. To me there was murder in the lowered voice, and murder in the protruding chin (on which the beard was still growing), and murder in the rolling eye that gleamed into mine oftener than I liked in the course of the recitation. The latter was the most realistic performance I had ever heard, and also the most disagreeable. Nor can I have been alone in thinking so, for, when it was over, a deep sigh preceded the applause. This was deafening, but Clunie was too good an artist to risk an anti-climax by accepting his encore. He was content, possibly, to have pulled the cork out of the rest of the entertainment, which fell very flat indeed. Then, in a second speech, our infatuated doctor paid a second compliment to "the star of the Grasmere." And by midnight he had the star on his hands: sunstruck, it was suspected: in reality as mad as a man could be.

Some details of his madness I learned afterwards, but more I witnessed on the spot.

At six bells in the first watch he appeared half-dressed on the poop and requested the captain to make it convenient to marry him next morning. Our astonished skipper had taken his pipe from his teeth, but had not answered, when Clunie broke away with the remark that he had still to ask the girl. In a minute or two he was back, laughing bitterly, snapping his fingers, and announcing in the same breath how his heart was broken, and that he did not care. It appeared that, with a most unmerited proposal of marriage, he had been frightening the wits out of some poor girl in the steerage, whither he now returned (as he said) to sleep it down. The chief officer was sent after him, to borrow his pistols. Clunie lent them on condition the mate should shoot me with them, and heave my body overboard, and never let him set eyes on me again. And in the mate's wake went our dear old doctor, who treated the maniac for sun-stroke, and pronounced him a perfect cure in the morning.

Nevertheless he was seen at mid-day perched upon the extreme weather-end of the fore-t'-gallan' yard-arm, holding on to nothing, but playing his melodeon to his heart's content. The whole ship's company turned out to watch him, while the chief officer himself went aloft to coax him down. To him Clunie declared that he could see Liverpool as plain as a pike-staff on the port bow, that he could read the time by the town-hall clock, and that he wasn't coming down till he could step right off at the docks. Our ingenious chief was, however, once more equal to the occasion, and at last induced Clunie to return to the deck in order to head a mutiny and take command of the ship. When he did reach the deck, he rushed straight for me, the mate tripped him up, and in another minute he was wailing and cursing, and foaming at the mouth, with the irons on his wrists and a dozen hands holding him down. It appeared that the two of them had arranged, up aloft, to burn me alive as an offering to Neptune on crossing the line; to behead the captain and all the male passengers; and to make all females over the age of thirty walk the plank that afternoon. The last idea must have emanated from our wicked old chief himself.

They put him first in the second mate's cabin, which opened off the passage leading to the saloon. His language, however, was an unsavoury accompaniment to our meals, and it was generally felt that this arrangement could not be permanent. Though shackled hand and foot, and guarded day and night by an apprentice, he managed to escape, in a false nose and very little else, on the second afternoon. A number of us effected his capture on the main deck, but I was the only one whose action in the matter he appeared to resent. He spent the rest of that day in hoarsely cursing me from the second mate's berth. On the morrow we lost the trade-wind, which had carried us nearly to the line. All day we wallowed in a stream of rain upon an oily sea. But the damp of the doldrums seemed to suit the poor fellow in the second mate's cabin; at all events, his behaviour improved; and in a couple of days (when we were fortunate enough to drift into the south-east trades) the carpenter's berth, in the for'ard deck-house, was ready for his reception, with a sheet of iron over the door, stout bars across the port-hole, and the carpenter's locker securely screwed up.

It took Clunie exactly twenty-four hours to break into that locker. He then stationed himself at his port-hole with a small broadside of gouges and chisels, which he poised between the bars and proceeded to fire at all comers. The officers were fetched to overpower him, but Clunie managed to break the third mate's head in the fray. Then, because they could not throw him overboard, they fixed a ring-bolt in the floor of the carpenter's berth, and handcuffed Clunie down to that whenever he became violent. As we sailed into cooler latitudes, however, his mania abated day by day. He gave up railing at every man, woman, or child who passed his port-hole; he even ceased to revile me when we met on deck, where he was now allowed to take the air with his right wrist handcuffed to the left of the strongest seaman in the forecastle. And at this stage I fear that poor Clunie was the amusement of many who had latterly gone in terror of him, for he was very strong on mesmerism, which he fancied he achieved by rattling his manacles in our ears, while he was ever ready to talk the most outrageous balderdash to all who cared to listen to him. His favourite delusion was a piece of profanity, sadly common in such cases; his chief desire, to be allowed to row himself back to Liverpool in one of the boats.

"Give me the dinghy and a box of mixed biscuits," he used to say, "and that little girl who wouldn't marry me, and I won't trouble you any more."

It was all very sad, but the violent phase had been the worst. His only violence now was directed against his own outfit, which he dismembered suit after suit, swathing his feet with the rags. The striped football jersey alone survived, and this he wore in a way of his own. Because he had torn up all his trousers, he thrust his legs through the tight striped sleeves; and as his costume was completed by a strait-waistcoat, constructed by the sailmaker, it was impossible not to smile at the ludicrous figure now cut by this irresponsible soul. He was no longer dangerous. The homicidal tendency had disappeared, and with it the particular abhorrence with which I of all people had been unfortunate enough to inspire him when he was still comparatively sane. We were now quite friendly. He called me Brother John, after a character in a comic song with which I had made rather a hit at our first concert, but the familiarity was employed without offence.

We had it very cold in our easting. We all but touched the fiftieth parallel. But we were rewarded with excellent winds, and we bade fair to make a quick passage in spite of our sluggish start. One wild, wet evening, I was standing on the weather side of the quarter-deck, when Clunie came up to me with his strange apparel soaked through, his swathed feet dragging behind him like squeegees, and the salt spray glistening in his beard.