At this juncture he was standing one day watching a busy little knot of porters loading up packages of hardware from a warehouse into a couple of heavy waggons. The swiftness and apparent eagerness with which they did their work, without any appearance of being driven, appealed to him, and unconsciously his face took on a wistful expression—he would so much have liked to be one of that busy band. A keen-eyed, pleasant-faced man of middle age, who stood in the doorway with a book in his hand making certain entries, caught sight of the waiting, earnest-looking man. And being of an imaginative, romantic turn of mind (which, scoff at the idea as you may, is almost essential to the making of a successful business man), he began in a side alley of his brain to build up a theory concerning this evidently country-bred young fellow who was watching manual labour being carried on with such manifest desire to take part in it. Moreover, the owner of the warehouse, for it was he, was a kindly Christian, whose interest in all men, but specially his own employés, was proverbial in Chicago—that humming hive of business that contains so much that is evil, but, thank God, has also so much that is pre-eminently good.
Will began to move away slowly, but Mr. Schermer made half-a-dozen swift strides after him, and tapping him smartly upon the shoulder, said, ‘Say, young man, are you looking for work?’ ‘I am, sir,’ Will replied smartly. ‘Then come right in here, and I’ll start you at once. I’m wanting a young fellow of your build pretty bad.’ And in ten minutes Will felt that he was on the high road to fortune. Plenty of work, not difficult to learn, good thews and muscle to do it, and a hearty, appreciative man at the head of things; he was delighted. More by a turn of Fortune’s wheel than any design discoverable by man, Will had fallen into just the place he needed, where not only did he receive fair play, but where the employer kept ever before himself the fact that each of his men was an individual soul for whom Christ died, and not just the cog of a machine; where the employer shouldered his responsibility for his men as he did the bills he endorsed, and with just the same absence of consciousness that he was doing anything more than his obvious duty. No one praised him for meeting his bills as they fell due; why should they praise him for considering the men who were serving him faithfully, and all the more faithfully because they knew full well that their employer had their interests at heart as well as his own—nay, that he regarded their interests and his as inseparable?
I must leave Will here, under the most favourable conditions, to push his manful way up the ladder of prosperity, and to preserve, if he can, a measure of humility with it all, in that it was his lot to fall into good hands without any seeking of his own. Also I have a half-guilty feeling that this has been a prosy old chapter, quite at variance with the strain of high adventure which I have endeavoured to maintain throughout the rest of the book. And now we must return to Priscilla.
CHAPTER XII
REPAIRING DAMAGES
The old Grampus, all unknowing of the hopes and fears and aches and pains she bore, rolled uneasily throughout that terribly long night. To tell the exact truth, she was often left entirely to herself, existing only by the good will of the elements or any passing ship. In much the same condition as the remnant of a beaten army, whose outposts, weary to death, fall down and sleep weltering in mud and blood because poor human nature has said her last word, the broken mate lay sleeping, his fractured leg, benumbed from heel to thigh, straightened out, and his utterly worn-out body not disturbing it by a single movement. The battered men below in the stifling reek of the foc’s’le also lay asleep (blessed be God for sleep and death), utterly unconscious of their woes. The shipkeepers, whom a sense of duty kept, desperate as their need was, from sleeping too long at one spell, lay in uncouth attitudes about the moonlit deck. Occasionally one of them would rise and aimlessly rove aft to the binnacle, gaze into its glittering oval with eyes that distinguished not North from South, and then with another owl-like glance aloft would stagger forward and tumble down asleep again. And the missing ones, six stalwart men who yesterday morning were each a centre of activity and private hopes, desires, and possibilities? At any rate their rest would be long and sound.
Priscilla woke about midnight, and looked uneasily about her. The almost stifling atmosphere of the tiny cabin, the reek of the lamp, and the innumerable exhalations from below, made the place almost unbearable. And as with a feeling of nausea overpowering her she surveyed her prison, there came to her, like a voice from a previous life, the most vivid recollection possible of the sweet breath stealing over the fields of her old home; of the careless days when singing she went about her household work; of the many delights brought by the changing seasons, each with its own particular charm; yes, even the hard, bitter winters when all the land was held in a grip of steel, and only amusement, out of doors, seemed possible. That seemed to her like a glimpse of paradise, from which, by her own act and because she did not value its joys, she had been shut out: she had exchanged it for this. And her eyes filled, her heart swelled with self-pity, regret, repentance, until suddenly a hoarse murmur by her side resolved itself into: Pris, whar air ye?’
Immediately she was recalled to present realities. Swift as thought she had asked and received strength, and leaning over her helpless husband, she said, quite tenderly, ‘Yes, dear, I am here. What can I do for you?’ Apparently ignoring her gentle question, he muttered savagely but disconnectedly, ‘What’s th’ matter? whar’s everybody? what’s doin’? call th’ mate.’ I do not see any necessity for indicating the stream of fantastic blasphemies which followed, apparently to emphasise his demand for information. They made her shrink, as does a delicate skin upon meeting a cold blast; but as soon as she was able she said, ‘The mate has been badly hurt, Ramon, but I can call the second mate if you will. He can explain so much better than I can what has happened.’ ‘Well, whyn’t yew call him, then? Kain’t ye see, yo’ pulin’ idiot, ’at I want t’ know—t’ know, d’ ye hear?’ More horrible emphasis, in the midst of which Priscilla crept from the cabin, and, going to the companion, rung a little handbell, an agreed signal for summoning the steward. That worthy man was lapped in profoundest slumber by the side of the galley, but at almost the first tinkle of the little bell he sprang to his feet, and, hastening to the companion, listened breathlessly to his mistress’s orders (he called them so, but they sounded more like entreaties).
As soon as he understood them he departed, and returning in two minutes announced to Priscilla that he had succeeded in arousing the second mate, who was coming immediately. Receiving Priscilla’s instructions to keep handy in case she wanted anything, he retired to the lee-side of the skylight and waited. In about a minute the second mate appeared, still heavy with sleep (the deep sleep of utter exhaustion from which he had been aroused), and lumberingly made his way down into the darksome cabin. Tapping gently at the skipper’s state-room door, he was greeted with a torrent of oaths, and understood that if he didn’t hurry in nameless consequences awaited him. Trembling in every limb, he instantly obeyed, and presently stood beside his commander’s couch like an utterly abject coward. Yet he was, as we have seen, nothing less than a hero. His deeds on the preceding day were those of a man who counted the preservation of his own life but a very little thing, if haply he might save some of his shipmates from death. In the midst of those aggressive monsters he did not quail, but led his men on to deeds as noble as any that have ever been recorded—yet here he stood abashed and quivering before a helpless man morally as much his inferior as it was possible for a man to be. Mystery of mysteries, and one that men have never yet taken sufficient account of, even with the stupendous object-lesson of that utterly contemptible animal, but supereminent commander of men, Napoleon, before their eyes. The meanest soldier of Napoleon’s armies was a greater hero than he; but the possession of that awful power of domination enabled this utter egotist, this unutterable cad, to rule Europe and send to sordid deaths rejoicingly hundreds of thousands of men, most of whom were in a moral and physical sense immeasurably superior to himself.
Thus Mr. Winslow stood before his skipper, who, glaring up at him with an expression of fiercest contempt in his black eyes, demanded of him why he had not reported before the doings of that disastrous day. Falteringly, as if personally to blame for the skipper’s incapability of receiving any information before, Mr. Winslow began his melancholy narration. His nervousness, coupled with a most excusable desire to make the best account he could of an exceedingly bad job, caused him at times to be almost unintelligible, and subjected him to the fiercest abuse from the skipper. But this incitement had one good effect. It tended to brevity of account, and in ten minutes there was little left to tell. For a moment or two after he ceased speaking there was a dead silence, through which the ceaseless wash of the watchful waves outside against the topsides could be felt rather than heard.