Bahama Bill, Mate of the Wrecking Sloop Sea-Horse

by T. Jenkins Hains

The old keeper of the Fowey Rocks lighthouse came out upon the gallery to take the morning air. The sun was shining and the warm wind from the Gulf Stream blew lazily through the doorway into the lantern-room. The blue sea sparkled in the sunshine, and the long, easy roll of the swell told of calm weather offshore. It was a perfect day, a day of peace and quiet, upon the end of the great Florida Reef, which stretched away for miles to the southward. Eastward nothing rose above the blue rim which compassed all. To the northward the low line of hummocks showed where Virginia Key and Key Biscayne rose above the water some ten miles distant. To the westward the little lump of Soldier Key showed where there might be a solitary human within a dozen miles. And all about the blue sea sparkled in the bright light, taking on the varicoloured hues found above the coral banks. Near the lighthouse, in three feet of water, the coral showed distinctly even from the height of the tower. Old man Enau gazed down at it, watching the bright green tinge melt to deeper colour until, in three fathoms, the pure limpid blue of the great stream flowed past uncoloured and undefiled. Fish were swimming around the iron piles of the lighthouse; great big bonito, sinuous barracuda, and now and then a shark would drift up to the iron pillars and bask a moment in the shade of the tall structure which rose above the coral bank to the height of a hundred feet and more, standing like a huge long-legged spider upon its iron feet in the shallow water.

The quiet of the morning was oppressive to the keeper. Not a sound rose from the reef save the low roll of the sea as it broke upon the edge of the bank, not the cry of a single sea-bird to break the great stillness and beautiful quiet of the day. The old man had been in the light for three years. To him the world was that eternal sea bounded by the blue rim and spotted in one or two places by the distant Keys. Whatever he had seen of human life he left behind him when he took the position as keeper. He had tried to forget. And now, as the years passed, his memories were fading. The human struggle was over. The thought of what he had seen and done was dimmed in the glare of the tropic sunshine, and the shadow of his past had faded to nothing.

He had a fine old face. Rugged and burned from the weather on the reef, his features still bore traces of culture. His nose was straight and small, and his eyes were bright and blue, the deep blue of the surrounding sea, which had kept him apart from his fellow men so long.

He leaned out over the rail and looked down. The heat and stillness oppressed him, and as he gazed below at the white and green formations he seemed to see again the inside of a court-room. The quiet and heat were there, and the stillness was strained and intense, as he waited for the word which meant his ruin. The faces of the jury who were trying a murder case were before him, the man on the right looking hard at him, and the foreman bowing his head gravely in that moment of utter silence before he spoke the words which meant his end. It had been a peculiar case, a case of great brutality and cruelty, apparently, from the evidence produced. He, the master of a large square-rigged ship, had been accused of a horrible crime, and the evidence of two witnesses was there to prove it. He remembered the man whose evidence was the strongest against him, a sailor whom he had befriended, and he could see the look of pious resignation upon the fellow's face. He also remembered the furtive gleam that came now and again from the corner of his eye as he sat near the witness-box and waited his turn to tell of the horror.

Why was it? Was it the heat that brought back those scenes which were fading, or was it the ominous silence of the torrid sunshine upon the reef? The lines in the face of the old man grew rigid and drawn, and he gazed stolidly into the blue water until the coral banks took on new shapes. He saw a ship's deck with the long plank strakes stretching hundreds of feet fore and aft; the low white deck-house, with the galley smoke-pipe stretching across it and the boats upon the strong-backs or booms atop of it; the solid coamings of the hatchways, with the battened hatches as strong as the sides of the vessel itself; the high topgallant-rail which shut off the view to windward, and the rows of belaying-pins stuck beneath with the neatly coiled braces upon them; the high head of the topgallant-forecastle and the long jibboom pointing out over the sea; and, above all, the long, tapering spars lifting upward into the blue above, with the white canvas bellying in the breath of the trade-wind. It was all plain before him again. Then it changed—the pampero off the River Plate, the great hurricane sea which swept the ship and smashed her up, leaving her a wreck, leaking and settling, six hundred miles from shore. The fracas was there before him—the men struggling, trying to save her, until, tired out with exertion and suffering, the man with the furtive eyes had refused to do duty and managed to get the rest to back him.

Then the days following, full of desperate endeavour: the fellow who refused duty shirking and endangering the lives of all; the measures he took, hanging the man by the hands and flogging him until he fell in a faint; how he staggered to his feet and looked at the master—one long look full of a purpose implacable, unrelenting, and then the quiet manner he had when he obeyed. He had picked the fellow up starving upon the streets, an outcast from some country and of a social sphere above his own, taking him aboard his ship and providing food and clothing with a fair wage—and this had been the outcome.

They had left her in the one remaining boat two days after, crowding the craft almost to the gunwales; but the sea was now smooth and the wind gone, leaving a quiet strangely like that of the beautiful day about him. The row westward over that oily, heaving ocean, day after day, day after day!

One by one they had dropped off, overboard, to float astern, and all the time the rip, rip, rip of a triangular fin above a great shadow below the surface.

He had done what he could, taking no more of the meagre food than the rest. Then the last days—four of them left, the men who witnessed against him and another, a stout fellow who had kept up better than the rest. How he had discovered that the fellow had stolen the scant store of food steadily and divided it with the man he had flogged. How, when they had taken all, they had set upon him, and he had killed the stout thief and wounded the other. There was nothing left to eat,—absolutely nothing for five days,—and they had—ugh!—it was too horrible; and upon the seventh day they had been picked up with the evidences of the horror too plain for their rescuers to make a mistake in the matter, even without the two men, who openly accused him of the whole wrong—accused him of not only killing his men, but—ugh!

The trial had lasted a week and the evidence was most horrible. The jury had convicted him upon that of the fellow who sat there with a pious look and furtive glance; the other fellow had merely corroborated his story, and, as it was two against him, his own tale was not believed. He had received a life sentence for the crime, for he had admitted killing the stout man who had stolen the last of the food. He explained that it was his duty as captain to protect his life from their combined assault. The jury had not believed him, for the man who was against him was ready to show the falsity of his tale; he had been sentenced for life. He had served seven years and had escaped by cutting the bars of his cell and gaining a vessel which was wrecked on the coast of Africa letting him get ashore unmolested. After drifting about for a time he had come back to America and taken the position as keeper in the tower, where his past was not open to inspection, for no one knew him or whence he came.