The deck now was empty, except for Still at the wheel some distance away. Cavarly was forward, and Morgan somewhere below. Calhoun went on in a quiet, even tone:
“That's a pity. But a man can't tell, you know, till he's thought it over, can he? Why, I heard once of a fellow that wanted to go to San Francisco in a ship that was bound from Honolulu round the Horn. That didn't seem good judgment. And yet he went to 'Frisco all right. How? Well, it was this way. He sort of thought it over.”
He smoked thoughtfully a moment, then put his hand in his pocket, took out a piece of iron three inches long, and looked at it as if it had been his watch, lying in the palm of his hand.
“He sort of thought it over. 'Now,' he says, 'here's the fact: a ship always sails by the needle in the compass. The way she depends on that measly little thing is pathetic. If she wants to go south, she goes opposite the needle. If she wants to go east or west or anyhow, she goes at proper angles with that needle. It's singular, it's pathetic, but it's true,' says the fellow I'm telling you of. 'Now,' he says, 'this ship wants to go south, and she sails against the needle. Now, it stands to reason, if I point that piece of ironmongery west, this ship'll sail east, and that's 'Frisco. Don't it?' he says. 'Why not?' Well, sir, he went over that again, and maybe three or four times, and the more he thought it over the more it appeared to be correct. And what did he do? Did he stick a pin into the little thing? Not he. He persuaded it. He argued with it according to its nature. He thought the best way to treat things was according to their nature. He took a magnet, which is a piece of iron—um—something like this one—it happened to look like this one. A magnet is a piece of iron, as you might say, with a ghost in it, something sticky in its vitals. He got a chance to hold the wheel by himself. He put that magnet into the binnacle on the little shelf under the compass, on the right side of the needle, just half-way round the circle. Course, if he'd wanted to go west instead of east, say, such a direction as from here to the United States, he'd have put it on the left side corresponding. Well, sir, that magnet, such was the stickiness of its vitals, it pulled the business end of the needle around plumb over it, and there it stayed. Then this fellow I'm telling you of, he put the ship about, taking caution not to disturb anyone, taking great caution, because he thought it wouldn't be right to disturb anyone, and pointed her for 'Frisco. And that needle kept on telling a yarn that would have made a keg of nails blush. Yes, sir, it lied steady for twenty-four days without turning a hair—wet weather it was, or misty, like this—till they brought up on the coast of California, and the fellow I'm telling you of, well, he sloped. Course, if a ship's going south, and a man can't help himself, he can't. But this fellow sort of thought it over, and it seemed to him, the needle being a good liar and the sun not coming out to mess things, that there wasn't any real need of his going to the Horn. That was his opinion.”
A moment later I was standing alone by the rail and staring blankly after Calhoun, where he strolled slowly forward and grew dim in the mist. The little piece of black iron had got into my hand. It was no more than three inches long and sharp at the corners. The only sounds about the misty ship were the slow shoving of the engines below, and Still at the wheel whistling.
I wondered at Calhoun, that singular man, and wondered at this business altogether which I was in. For Cavarly and Morgan had played their great trick, and here was Calhoun tricking them, and how should I know what he might be doing with me, he a man so full of stratagem. I thought there would be no way of telling that, and I had better play the part that seemed to be laid out for me; but I felt very lonely and troubled, and not cheerful, not as I used to in setting off fire crackers behind Mr. Hooley, though that was considered perilous enough.
I went up to Still, thinking to fall into talk with him indifferently, but my throat was gaspy and choked in an odd way. Still's pipe was out, and he wanted me to go forward and fetch him his plug.
“Oh!” I said, with my knees shaking disgracefully, “you go, and let me hold the wheel.”
“Hardly, Bennie, hardly. An' you learnin' seaman's duty o' me that way!”
Some footsteps were coming along the deck, and I thought the chance was gone; but it was Calhoun.