* * * * *
At midday of the day we clawed off Tierra Del Fuego the Elsinore was rolling in a dead calm, and all afternoon she rolled, not a score of miles off the land. Captain West was buried at four o’clock, and at eight bells that evening Mr. Pike assumed command and made a few remarks to both watches. They were straight-from-the-shoulder remarks, or, as he called them, they were “brass tacks.”
Among other things he told the sailors that they had another boss, and that they would toe the mark as they never had before. Up to this time they had been loafing in an hotel, but from this time on they were going to work.
“On this hooker, from now on,” he perorated, “it’s going to be like old times, when a man jumped the last day of the voyage as well as the first. And God help the man that don’t jump. That’s all. Relieve the wheel and lookout.”
* * * * *
And yet the men are in terribly wretched condition. I don’t see how they can jump. Another week of westerly gales, alternating with brief periods of calm, has elapsed, making a total of six weeks off the Horn. So weak are the men that they have no spirit left in them—not even the gangsters. And so afraid are they of the mate that they really do their best to jump when he drives them, and he drives them all the time. Mr. Mellaire shakes his head.
“Wait till they get around and up into better weather,” he astonished me by telling me the other afternoon. “Wait till they get dried out, and rested up, with more sleep, and their sores healed, and more flesh on their bones, and more spunk in their blood—then they won’t stand for this driving. Mr. Pike can’t realize that times have changed, sir, and laws have changed, and men have changed. He’s an old man, and I know what I am talking about.”
“You mean you’ve been listening to the talk of the men?” I challenged rashly, all my gorge rising at the unofficerlike conduct of this ship’s officer.
The shot went home, for, in a flash, that suave and gentle film of light vanished from the surface of the eyes, and the watching, fearful thing that lurked behind inside the skull seemed almost to leap out at me, while the cruel gash of mouth drew thinner and crueller. And at the same time, on my inner sight, was grotesquely limned a picture of a brain pulsing savagely against the veneer of skin that covered that cleft of skull beneath the dripping sou’-wester. Then he controlled himself, the mouth-gash relaxed, and the suave and gentle film drew again across the eyes.
“I mean, sir,” he said softly, “that I am speaking out of a long sea experience. Times have changed. The old driving days are gone. And I trust, Mr. Pathurst, that you will not misunderstand me in the matter, nor misinterpret what I have said.”