He dropped on to the deck and I followed him. There was no watchman to guard the corpse. I looked at the standing rigging all gone to ruin and the sticks that had survived many a gale, the grimy decks that once had been white, then I dropped down to the cabin after Brent.
The ports were open and water shimmers from the harbour water danced on the maple panelling, the upholstery had been eaten by rats or roaches and a faint smell filled the place like the ghost of the odour of corruption, but there was a bottle of whisky on the table, a couple of glasses and a syphon.
“If I hadn’t met you, I’d ’a brought someone else,” said Brent, taking his seat before the funeral refreshments, “but there’s not many I’d have sooner had than you to give her a send off. You remember I told you, Buck had her from Pat O’Brien who didn’t know her qualities, no one did in those days; why, a chap by name of Gadgett come aboard first day we had her and said she ought to be condemned, said she wasn’t seaworthy and that’s many years ago.” He took the cork from the bottle and poured “Many years ago and now I’m having my last drink and smoke here where Buck and me have often sat, and him in the cemetery. Well, here’s to you, Buck—and here’s to her.” We drank and lit up.
“Well, she’s had her day,” said I, trying to say something cheerful. “It’s like a wife that has done her duty——”
The Captain snorted.
“Wives,” said he, “a ship’s all the wife I’ve ever had and I don’t want no other, it’s all the wife a sailor-man wants and if she’s decently found and run, she never lets him down. I told that to Buck once. I told him the Greyhound was his lawful wife and he’d come a mucker if he took another. He wouldn’t believe me, but he found it out. You’ve never seen him. He died only four years ago and he hadn’t lost a tooth, he hadn’t got a grey hair on his head, six foot he stood and he’d only to look at a girl and she’d follow him, but he wasn’t given that way after his marriage.”
“Oh, he got married, did he?” said I. “I always fancied from what you told me of him that he was a single man.—Did she die?”
“I expect she’s dead by this,” said the Captain. “No knowing, but if she ain’t she ought to be. We fell in with her, me and Slane, the year after that dust up with Sru I told you of. We’d lost money on that job, but we’d pulled up over a deal in silver that had come our way through Pat O’Brien and Buck had thirty thousand dollars in the Bank of California, and I’d got near ten in my pocket. I didn’t trust banks. For all that money we lived quiet, not being given to drink, and we were fitting the Greyhound out for a new job, when one night at a sociable we met in with Mrs. Slade. That was the name she gave herself, a fine, fresh-faced young woman, not thirty, with eyes like Cape mulberries, they had that red look in the black of them, and a laundry of her own they said was bringing in five hundred a week profit. She harpooned Buck. Clean through the gizzard. You’ve seen a chicken running about with a woman after it till she catches it and wrings its neck, that was Buck. He was no more good after she’d got the irons into him.
“One night I had it out with him. I said: ‘The Lord Almighty has given you a ship to tend and take care of, she’s been true to you and brought you in the dollars, and look at the way you’re usin’ her, why, we ought to have had her out of dock by this and the cargo half on board her, she over there at Oakland and you foolandering after a widow woman.’
“‘She’s a girl,’ says he.