Beggars on Horseback

by F. Tennyson Jesse

The Spirito Santo had been a good enough ship in her day, and had weathered a typhoon in the China seas and a hurricane in the Atlantic, but she was one of the earliest steam vessels built, and had started life as a side-wheeler; her paddles having been changed for a single screw and simple engines, of the kind guaranteed to combine the greatest possible consumption of fuel with a correspondingly large waste of steam.

She was a wooden vessel, iron still being looked at askance when her keel was laid, and her lines were those of the true sailing-ship, with bows that bulged out almost square from either side of her cutwater, above which her long bowsprit raked the air. The result was that she steamed as a wind-jammer, with her bows delaying her speed by their large surface of resistance; and went better under canvas, with her screw running free. She was barque-rigged, that is to say she carried trysails on her fore and main, below the lovely tower of royals, topgallant sails and top-sails which even her stumpy sticks and too-wide yards could not make ungraceful. Her long thin funnel amidships looked as though it had got there by mistake, and indeed she belonged rather to the class of auxiliary steam than that of auxiliary sail, in spite of the motive with which she had conceived. In fact, her trouble was that in a world where steamships, and iron ones at that, were beginning more and more to snatch at trade, and where the great racing clippers still broke records, the Spirito Santo, being neither one thing nor the other, had become a losing proposition. Her owners grudged tar on her sides as sorely as kids of meat to the men, and no shabbier trader than the Spirito Santo nosed her way from Port of Spain to the Golden Gate. Yet she got there all right, bullied and driven, got there on cheap coal and rotten rigging, though her engines seemed as though they must beat a hole in her straining sides and her planks part from sheer exhaustion. She held together as a coherent and reliable whole partly because, with all her lack of grace, she was a sweet ship in a seaway if one knew her idiosyncrasies, partly because her skipper could nurse a ship through anything while the hull stayed afloat. And the Spirito Santo took some handling, for in spite of her wide yards and tonnage to the tune of seven hundred, she only drew fourteen feet and was as tricky as a cat. Her skipper coaxed her and humoured her, bullied her at just the right moment, in short, treated her as though she had been a woman—only Joab Elderkin would not have taken the trouble over any she-thing of flesh and blood.

Elderkin was the best-feared man in the Caribbean. He had a thin sinewy frame and a very soft voice which he never raised in ordinary conversation, and this gave a curious effect of monotony to whatever he was saying. Never drunk at sea, he was always perfectly sober on land except for the first twenty-four hours after landing, when he soaked steadily. Even his movements were gentle, as though to match his voice and the dark eyes, deep-set in his prematurely wizened face, held the wistful puzzled sadness of a monkey's. His language was unparalleled for profanity, and to the most hardened there was something of terror in the appalling flow of words issuing on such an unruffled softness of intonation. In those days the master of a vessel had almost unlimited power within the area of his ship's rails. If, goaded by ill-use, a man struck his officer, he was quite likely to be shot straightway, and on reporting the matter the captain would be praised for his promptness in quelling mutiny at its rising. Floggings with the cat or the yoke-rope, brutal mishandling with knuckle-dusters and belaying-pins, were the quick and common resort on the slightest count, and Captain Joab Elderkin was famous for his technique in all these methods. His ship literally merited the trite description of a floating hell, and one boy aboard her had died of a broken heart. The child had failed in an attempt to get ashore at Frisco, been brought back and flogged at the mizzen rigging, and afterwards turned his face to the dark forecastle wall, refused food and died. The little incident had added to Elderkin's unsavoury reputation, but it was this reputation which made him a man after his owners' hearts. He was not likely to suffer from scruples, and it is needless to say that the Spirito Santo, a free-lance trading from what port she chose, carried a good deal now and again on which she never paid duty. Her skipper's only form of conscience was his seamanship. The owners might grudge paint, but every bit of brass-work on board shone like gold, and the decks were holy-stoned till the men sobbed over their aching knees. At twenty-three he had held command of a full-rigged ship trading to China. Now, since the Spirito Santo was becoming more and more of a falling investment, he rarely made the passage round into the Pacific, and, Atlantic-bound, dodging from the Islands to Colon and down the coast as far as Rio, Elderkin was wont to refer to the time when he really had been a sailor. . . .

It was his conscience as a seaman that the owners were up against when they called the captain into consultation over the diminishing returns of the Spirito Santo, and proposed to him the course that is regarded by sailors the world over as the great betrayal.

To anyone without a nice sense for spiritual values, everything is merely a matter of price, and Elderkin's fee for the loss of his ship and with her his soul was higher than the partners could have wished. They were greasy men, with the Spanish strain, that too often, in those latitudes, means a hint of the negro as well, and their office was on the outskirts of the dirty vulture-ridden Port of Spain of those days. The room was bare, and upon the blotchy whitewash of the wall there hung nothing but a map and a few advertisements. The mosquitoes sang through the unscreened windows; outside, in the dusty strip of bleached earth between the house and the road, a hedge of hibiscus was in bloom. In the glaring sunshine the flaunting back-curled blossoms seemed afire as they shot their thin vermeil tongues out into the air made so alive with light. To Elderkin, as he sat in the dimmed room, full of green reflections from the vegetation without, came the unpleasant thought that it was as though he were under seas . . . and the flaming tongues of the hibiscus were some evil sea-growth, mocking at his plight.

He leaned forward and helped himself again from the bottle of whisky that stood upon the bare table. When he lifted it a crescent of gold fled across the table, slipping back again when he set the bottle down, as a ripple of reflected light runs through water. Elderkin had often seen a gleam like it when watching a small bright fish flash through a pool.

His reluctant mind responded to the kick of the liquor: the dirty little room, the watchful eyes of the partners as they sat on either side of him in their soiled linen suits, no longer seemed so unpleasant to him, accustomed as he was to the sordidness that, if care is not exercised, so soon overtakes an interior in the tropics. His caution still remained to him, and he sounded the scheme at every point, finding the partners were prepared, full of urgings, advices, rosy forecasts, cunning details. On the homeward voyage, that would be best . . . he could take her out in ballast, bring her back loaded to her limit and beyond it. . . . Those were days before the Plimsoll mark, and vessels often left port—even great English ports—so loaded that their scuppers were all but awash, and not only left but perhaps attempted the passage round the Horn itself. There would be no difficulty about that, but Captain Elderkin must, of course, not sail from a Peruvian harbour as the authorities there had an unpleasant habit of marking a load-line on every ship that cleared and seeing that she did not go above it. Besides, a cargo was awaiting him in Chili, and the partners were prepared about that too. It was to be a double deal, the actual copper and nitrates, with a small amount of gold, which she would go out to take was, by arrangement with a certain official known to the partners, to be changed for sand and stones. Just a sprinkling of nitrate at the top, perhaps, since nitrate is loaded in bulk. It was risky, but on the other hand it was a thing often carried through with success, and Elderkin, who knew all the tricks and possibilities of both coasts, could see his way with reasonable clarity. The partners advised Captain Elderkin not to attempt bringing the Spirito Santo round the Horn, as he might have more difficulty in saving himself; if the accident occurred on the Pacific side it would be better for many reasons. If he were picked up by a passing ship he must, of course, see to it that the Spirito Santo was too far gone for salvage, or that would indeed make matters worse with a vengeance. An accident with the steering-gear—they had reason to know that Olsen, the chief engineer, would come in on it—when off a weather shore, would probably be the best solution. But, naturally, there was no need to instruct so clever a sailor as Captain Elderkin in his part of the affair . . . more smiles and whisky.

Joab Elderkin sat and absorbed it all, with little expression on his sad, gentle face, his thin mouth remained imperturbable under the heavy dark moustache, only in his high and narrow temples a pulse beat. As he drank he raised his price, till at last the point was reached above which the partners refused to go and below which he would not descend. At that point they came to their agreement, and Joab Elderkin went out of the office having sold his only form of honour on a gamble which stood to put him on the way towards attaining a ship of his own. For that was the desire of his heart, and until now had seemed as impossible of realization as the phantom vessel of a dream. Probably for no other inducement under the skies would he have given another ship's salvation.

* * * * *

The month of August found the Spirito Santo, all sail set, running down the Pacific coast before a north-westerly wind. Elderkin watched the weather carefully, for he had no idea of losing his life, or, for the matter of that, the lives of any of his crew who could be allowed to retain them with safety to himself and the partners. For there is always the personal equation to be studied in a matter of this kind, and Elderkin had given much thought to the members of his crew. He had hoped, while always fearing the futility of it, that the first mate, Isidore Lemaire, might be kept in ignorance. For a while it seemed as though this were so, but since leaving port Elderkin had felt doubtful of the creole. Lemaire had a furtive way with him at the best of times, a hint as of something that crept and glided rather than walked normally, but then so had many of his race. He was supposed to be a white—in the expressive Island phrase, he "passed for white"—but on the French and Spanish and even the Danish islands the objection to racial mingling is not nearly so strong as in the colonies that have always been English. Also, Lemaire came from Martinique, which, after Haiti, is the headquarters of Obeah, and worse, of voodoo. Even quite good families in decaying Martinique had dealings with the unclean thing, and St. Pierre was known, even among sailors, for a hotbed of strange vices. All this was why Lemaire made such a powerful mate, for the crew, except for the red-headed Danish engineer from St. Thomas, were either half-castes from the Islands and the southern continent, or full-blooded negroes; which was to say that superstition was so part of them that the last vestige of it would only run out with the last drop of blood from their bodies. Elderkin knew better than to penetrate the forecastle, but he was aware of the bottles filled with dead cockroaches, bits of worsted and the rest of the paraphernalia for the casting of spells, which hung there. He himself had found that the only way to keep his steward off his whisky was to decorate his locker with a similar charm, and since he had done so had suffered no more from pilfering. All this was obeah, harmless enough, and if now and then, a white cock was sacrificed in the forecastle and a seaman went somewhat mad on its blood, Elderkin ignored the matter. But Lemaire was, he knew, suspected by the crew of darker dealings. There had been a rumour that the reason Lemaire left Martinique was because the disappearance of a planter's child was like to be laid at his door, and the rumour was enough to make the niggers cringe before him. This was a master, perhaps the friend of papalois and mamalois, with the power of life and death. Elderkin loathed him—there are things from which the most hardened white man shrinks, and it would have to be one utterly unregenerate who could dabble his hands in voodooism. Nevertheless, the suspicion made Lemaire the best nigger-driver in the length and breadth of the Caribbean, and Elderkin made use of him for that reason. Now, for the first time, he began to feel the man's peculiarities getting on his own nerves. A word dropped now and again, odd looks from the protuberant and opaque brown eyes, were making him wonder if the mate guessed, whether it would be better to take him into the secret and trust to his never reaching shore. . . .