Michael, Brother of Jerry

“But back in Boston. Yarns and yarns, when seemingly I was gone in drink, I told my apparent cronies – men whom I despised, stupid dolts of creatures that they were. But the word spread, until one day, a young man, a reporter, tried to interview me about the treasure and the Wide Awake. I was indignant, angry. – Oh, softly, steward, softly; in my heart was great joy as I denied that young reporter, knowing that from my cronies he already had a sufficiency of the details.

“And the morning paper gave two whole columns and headlines to the tale. I began to have callers. I studied them out well. Many were for adventuring after the treasure who themselves had no money. I baffled and avoided them, and waited on, eating even less as my little capital dwindled away.

“And then he came, my gay young doctor – doctor of philosophy he was, for he was very wealthy. My heart sang when I saw him. But twenty-eight dollars remained to me – after it was gone, the poor-house, or death. I had already resolved upon death as my choice rather than go back to be of that dolorous company, the living dead of the poor-farm. But I did not go back, nor did I die. The gay young doctor’s blood ran warm at thought of the South Seas, and in his nostrils I distilled all the scents of the flower-drenched air of that far-off land, and in his eyes I builded him the fairy visions of the tradewind clouds, the monsoon skies, the palm isles and the coral seas.

“He was a gay, mad young dog, grandly careless of his largess, fearless as a lion’s whelp, lithe and beautiful as a leopard, and mad, a trifle mad of the deviltries and whimsies that tickled in that fine brain of his. Look you, steward. Before we sailed in the Gloucester fishing-schooner, purchased by the doctor, and that was like a yacht and showed her heels to most yachts, he had me to his house to advise about personal equipment. We were overhauling in a gear-room, when suddenly he spoke:

“‘I wonder how my lady will take my long absence. What say you? Shall she go along?’

“And I had not known that he had any wife or lady. And I looked my surprise and incredulity.

“‘Just that you do not believe I shall take her on the cruise,’ he laughed, wickedly, madly, in my astonished face. ‘Come, you shall meet her.’

“Straight to his bedroom and his bed he led me, and, turning down the covers, showed there to me, asleep as she had slept for many a thousand years, the mummy of a slender Egyptian maid.

“And she sailed with us on the long vain voyage to the South Seas and back again, and, steward, on my honour, I grew quite fond of the dear maid myself.”

The Ancient Mariner gazed dreamily into his glass, and Dag Daughtry took advantage of the pause to ask:

“But the young doctor? How did he take the failure to find the treasure?”

The Ancient Mariner’s face lighted with joy.

“He called me a delectable old fraud, with his arm on my shoulder while he did it. Why, steward, I had come to love that young man like a splendid son. And with his arm on my shoulder, and I know there was more than mere kindness in it, he told me we had barely reached the River Plate when he discovered me. With laughter, and with more than one slap of his hand on my shoulder that was more caress than jollity, he pointed out the discrepancies in my tale (which I have since amended, steward, thanks to him, and amended well), and told me that the voyage had been a grand success, making him eternally my debtor.

“What could I do? I told him the truth. To him even did I tell my family name, and the shame I had saved it from by forswearing it.

“He put his arm on my shoulder, I tell you, and.. ”

The Ancient Mariner ceased talking because of a huskiness in his throat, and a moisture from his eyes trickled down both cheeks.

Dag Daughtry pledged him silently, and in the draught from his glass he recovered himself.

“He told me that I should come and live with him, and, to his great lonely house he took me the very day we landed in Boston. Also, he told me he would make arrangements with his lawyers – the idea tickled his fancy – ‘I shall adopt you,’ he said. ‘I shall adopt you along with Isthar’ – Isthar was the little maid’s name, the little mummy’s name.

“Here was I, back in life, steward, and legally to be adopted. But life is a fond betrayer. Eighteen hours afterward, in the morning, we found him dead in his bed, the little mummy maid beside him. Heart-failure, the burst of some blood-vessel in the brain – I never learned.

“I prayed and pleaded with them for the pair to be buried together. But they were a hard, cold, New England lot, his cousins and his aunts, and they presented Isthar to the museum, and me they gave a week to be quit of the house. I left in an hour, and they searched my small baggage before they would let me depart.

“I went to New York. It was the same game there, only that I had more money and could play it properly. It was the same in New Orleans, in Galveston. I came to California. This is my fifth voyage. I had a hard time getting these three interested, and spent all my little store of money before they signed the agreement. They were very mean. Advance any money to me! The very idea of it was preposterous. Though I bided my time, ran up a comfortable hotel bill, and, at the very last, ordered my own generous assortment of liquors and cigars and charged the bill to the schooner. Such a to-do! All three of them raged and all but tore their hair.. and mime. They said it could not be. I fell promptly sick. I told them they got on my nerves and made me sick. The more they raged, the sicker I got. Then they gave in. As promptly I grew better. And here we are, out of water and heading soon most likely for the Marquesas to fill our barrels. Then they will return and try for it again!”

“You think so, sir?”

“I shall remember even more important data, steward,” the Ancient Mariner smiled. “Without doubt they will return. Oh, I know them well. They are meagre, narrow, grasping fools.”

“Fools! all fools! a ship of fools!” Dag Daughtry exulted; repeating what he had expressed in the hold, as he bored the last barrel, listened to the good water gurgling away into the bilge, and chuckled over his discovery of the Ancient Mariner on the same lay as his own.

CHAPTER XIV

Early next morning, the morning watch of sailors, whose custom was to fetch the day’s supply of water for the galley and cabin, discovered that the barrels were empty. Mr. Jackson was so alarmed that he immediately called Captain Doane, and not many minutes elapsed ere Captain Doane had routed out Grimshaw and Nishikanta to tell them the disaster.

Breakfast was an excitement shared in peculiarly by the Ancient Mariner and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and bewailed. Captain Doane particularly wailed. Simon Nishikanta was fiendish in his descriptions of whatever miscreant had done the deed and of how he should be made to suffer for it, while Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched his great hands as if throttling some throat.

“I remember, it was in forty-seven – nay, forty-six – yes, forty-six,” the Ancient Mariner chattered. “It was a similar and worse predicament. It was in the longboat, sixteen of us. We ran on Glister Reef. So named it was after our pretty little craft discovered it one dark night and left her bones upon it. The reef is on the Admiralty charts. Captain Doane will verify me.. ”

No one listened, save Dag Daughtry, serving hot cakes and admiring. But Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the old man was babbling, bellowed out ferociously:

“Oh, shut up! Close your jaw! You make me tired with your everlasting ‘I remember.’”

The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had slipped somewhere in his narrative.

“No, I assure you,” he continued. “It must have been some error of my poor old tongue. It was not the Wide Awake, but the brig Glister. Did I say Wide Awake? It was the Glister, a smart little brig, almost a toy brig in fact, copper-bottomed, lines like a dolphin, a sea-cutter and a wind-eater. Handled like a top. On my honour, gentlemen, it was lively work for both watches when she went about. I was super-cargo. We sailed out of New York, ostensibly for the north-west coast, with sealed orders – ”

“In the name of God, peace, peace! You drive me mad with your drivel!” So Nishikanta cried out in nervous pain that was real and quivering. “Old man, have a heart. What do I care to know of your Glister and your sealed orders!”

“Ah, sealed orders,” the Ancient Mariner went on beamingly. “A magic phrase, sealed orders.” He rolled it off his tongue with unction. “Those were the days, gentlemen, when ships did sail with sealed orders. And as super-cargo, with my trifle invested in the adventure and my share in the gains, I commanded the captain. Not in him, but in me were reposed the sealed orders. I assure you I did not know myself what they were. Not until we were around old Cape Stiff, fifty to fifty, and in fifty in the Pacific, did I break the seal and learn we were bound for Van Dieman’s Land. They called it Van Dieman’s Land in those days.. ”

It was a day of discoveries. Captain Doane caught the mate stealing the ship’s position from his desk with the duplicate key. There was a scene, but no more, for the Finn was too huge a man to invite personal encounter, and Captain Dome could only stigmatize his conduct to a running reiteration of “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and “Sorry, sir.”

Perhaps the most important discovery, although he did not know it at the time, was that of Dag Daughtry. It was after the course had been changed and all sail set, and after the Ancient Mariner had privily informed him that Taiohae, in the Marquesas, was their objective, that Daughtry gaily proceeded to shave. But one trouble was on his mind. He was not quite sure, in such an out-of-the-way place as Taiohae, that good beer could be procured.

As he prepared to make the first stroke of the razor, most of his face white with lather, he noticed a dark patch of skin on his forehead just between the eyebrows and above. When he had finished shaving he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such a spot. But he did not know he had touched it in so far as there was any response of sensation. The dark place was numb.

“Curious,” he thought, wiped his face, and forgot all about it.

No more than he knew what horror that dark spot represented, did he know that Ah Moy’s slant eyes had long since noticed it and were continuing to notice it, day by day, with secret growing terror.

Close-hauled on the south-east trades, the Mary Turner began her long slant toward the Marquesas. For’ard, all were happy. Being only seamen, on seamen’s wages, they hailed with delight the news that they were bound in for a tropic isle to fill their water-barrels. Aft, the three partners were in bad temper, and Nishikanta openly sneered at Captain Doane and doubted his ability to find the Marquesas. In the steerage everybody was happy – Dag Daughtry because his wages were running on and a further supply of beer was certain; Kwaque because he was happy whenever his master was happy; and Ah Moy because he would soon have opportunity to desert away from the schooner and the two lepers with whom he was domiciled.

Michael shared in the general happiness of the steerage, and joined eagerly with Steward in learning by heart a fifth song. This was “Lead, kindly Light.” In his singing, which was no more than trained howling after all, Michael sought for something he knew not what. In truth, it was the lost pack, the pack of the primeval world before the dog ever came in to the fires of men, and, for that matter, before men built fires and before men were men.

He had been born only the other day and had lived but two years in the world, so that, of himself, he had no knowledge of the lost pack. For many thousands of generations he had been away from it; yet, deep down in the crypts of being, tied about and wrapped up in every muscle and nerve of him, was the indelible record of the days in the wild when dim ancestors had run with the pack and at the same time developed the pack and themselves. When Michael was asleep, then it was that pack-memories sometimes arose to the surface of his subconscious mind. These dreams were real while they lasted, but when he was awake he remembered them little if at all. But asleep, or singing with Steward, he sensed and yearned for the lost pack and was impelled to seek the forgotten way to it.

Waking, Michael had another and real pack. This was composed of Steward, Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient forbears had ran with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage was the lair of this pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the whole world, which was the Mary Turner ever rocking, heeling, reeling on the surface of the unstable sea.

But the steerage and its company meant more to Michael than the mere pack. It was heaven as well, where dwelt God. Man early invented God, often of stone, or clod, or fire, and placed him in trees and mountains and among the stars. This was because man observed that man passed and was lost out of the tribe, or family, or whatever name he gave to his group, which was, after all, the human pack. And man did not want to be lost out of the pack. So, of his imagination, he devised a new pack that would be eternal and with which he might for ever run. Fearing the dark, into which he observed all men passed, he built beyond the dark a fairer region, a happier hunting-ground, a jollier and robuster feasting-hall and wassailing-place, and called it variously “heaven.”

Like some of the earliest and lowest of primitive men, Michael never dreamed of throwing the shadow of himself across his mind and worshipping it as God. He did not worship shadows. He worshipped a real and indubitable god, not fashioned in his own four-legged, hair-covered image, but in the flesh-and-blood image, two-legged, hairless, upstanding, of Steward.

CHAPTER XV

Had the trade wind not failed on the second day after laying the course for the Marquesas; had Captain Doane, at the mid-day meal, not grumbled once again at being equipped with only one chronometer; had Simon Nishikanta not become viciously angry thereat and gone on deck with his rifle to find some sea-denizen to kill; and had the sea-denizen that appeared close alongside been a bonita, a dolphin, a porpoise, an albacore, or anything else than a great, eighty-foot cow whale accompanied by her nursing calf – had any link been missing from this chain of events, the Mary Turner would have undoubtedly reached the Marquesas, filled her water-barrels, and returned to the treasure-hunting; and the destinies of Michael, Daughtry, Kwaque, and Cocky would have been quite different and possibly less terrible.

But every link was present for the occasion. The schooner, in a dead calm, was rolling over the huge, smooth seas, her boom sheets and tackles crashing to the hollow thunder of her great sails, when Simon Nishikanta put a bullet into the body of the little whale calf. By an almost miracle of chance, the shot killed the calf. It was equivalent to killing an elephant with a pea-rifle. Not at once did the calf die. It merely immediately ceased its gambols and for a while lay quivering on the surface of the ocean. The mother was beside it the moment after it was struck, and to those on board, looking almost directly down upon her, her dismay and alarm were very patent. She would nudge the calf with her huge shoulder, circle around and around it, then range up alongside and repeat her nudgings and shoulderings.

All on the Mary Turner, fore and aft, lined the rail and stared down apprehensively at the leviathan that was as long as the schooner.

“If she should do to us, sir, what that other one did to the Essex,” Dag Daughtry observed to the Ancient Mariner.

“It would be no more than we deserve,” was the response. “It was uncalled-for – a wanton, cruel act.”

Michael, aware of the excitement overside but unable to see because of the rail, leaped on top of the cabin and at sight of the monster barked defiantly. Every eye turned on him in startlement and fear, and Steward hushed him with a whispered command.

“This is the last time,” Grimshaw muttered in a low voice, tense with anger, to Nishikanta. “If ever again, on this voyage, you take a shot at a whale, I’ll wring your dirty neck for you. Get me. I mean it. I’ll choke your eye-balls out of you.”

The Jew smiled in a sickly way and whined, “There ain’t nothing going to happen. I don’t believe that Essex ever was sunk by a whale.”

Urged on by its mother, the dying calf made spasmodic efforts to swim that were futile and caused it to veer and wallow from side to side.

In the course of circling about it, the mother accidentally brushed her shoulder under the port quarter of the Mary Turner, and the Mary Turner listed to starboard as her stern was lifted a yard or more. Nor was this unintentional, gentle impact all. The instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, she flailed out with her tail. The blow smote the rail just for’ard of the fore-shrouds, splintering a gap through it as if it were no more than a cigar-box and cracking the covering board.

That was all, and an entire ship’s company stared down in silence and fear at a sea-monster grief-stricken over its dying progeny.

Several times, in the course of an hour, during which the schooner and the two whales drifted farther and farther apart, the calf strove vainly to swim. Then it set up a great quivering, which culminated in a wild wallowing and lashing about of its tail.

“It is the death-flurry,” said the Ancient Mariner softly.

“By damn, it’s dead,” was Captain Doane’s comment five minutes later. “Who’d believe it? A rifle bullet! I wish to heaven we could get half an hour’s breeze of wind to get us out of this neighbourhood.”

“A close squeak,” said Grimshaw,

Captain Doane shook his head, as his anxious eyes cast aloft to the empty canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind-ruffles on the water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of all the orderly procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped and mountainous, like so much quicksilver.

“It’s all right,” Grimahaw encouraged. “There she goes now, beating it away from us.”

“Of course it’s all right, always was all right,” Nishikanta bragged, as he wiped the sweat from his face and neck and looked with the others after the departing whale. “You’re a fine brave lot, you are, losing your goat to a fish.”

“I noticed your face was less yellow than usual,” Grimshaw sneered. “It must have gone to your heart.”

Captain Doane breathed a great sigh. His relief was too strong to permit him to join in the squabbling.

“You’re yellow,” Grimshaw went on, “yellow clean through.” He nodded his head toward the Ancient Mariner. “Now there’s the real thing as a man. No yellow in him. He never batted an eye, and I reckon he knew more about the danger than you did. If I was to choose being wrecked on a desert island with him or you, I’d take him a thousand times first. If – ”

But a cry from the sailors interrupted him.

“Merciful God!” Captain Doane breathed aloud.

The great cow whale had turned about, and, on the surface, was charging straight back at them. Such was her speed that a bore was raised by her nose like that which a Dreadnought or an Atlantic liner raises on the sea.

“Hold fast, all!” Captain Doane roared.

Every man braced himself for the shock. Henrik Gjertsen, the sailor at the wheel, spread his legs, crouched down, and stiffened his shoulders and arms to hand-grips on opposite spokes of the wheel. Several of the crew fled from the waist to the poop, and others of them sprang into the main-rigging. Daughtry, one hand on the rail, with his free arm clasped the Ancient Mariner around the waist.

All held. The whale struck the Mary Turner just aft of the fore-shroud. A score of things, which no eye could take in simultaneously, happened. A sailor, in the main rigging, carried away a ratline in both hands, fell head-downward, and was clutched by an ankle and saved head-downward by a comrade, as the schooner cracked and shuddered, uplifted on the port side, and was flung down on her starboard side till the ocean poured level over her rail. Michael, on the smooth roof of the cabin, slithered down the steep slope to starboard and disappeared, clawing and snarling, into the runway. The port shrouds of the foremast carried away at the chain-plates, and the fore-topmast leaned over drunkenly to starboard.

“My word,” quoth the Ancient Mariner. “We certainly felt that.”

“Mr. Jackson,” Captain Doane commanded the mate, “will you sound the well.”

The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, which had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the eastward.

“You see, that’s what you get,” Grimshaw snarled at Nishikanta.

Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, “And I’m satisfied. I got all I want. I didn’t think a whale had it in it. I’ll never do it again.”

“Maybe you’ll never have the chance,” the captain retorted. “We’re not done with this one yet. The one that charged the Essex made charge after charge, and I guess whale nature hasn’t changed any in the last few years.”

“Dry as a bone, sir,” Mr. Jackson reported the result of his sounding.

“There she turns,” Daughtry called out.

Half a mile away, the whale circled about sharply and charged back.

“Stand from under for’ard there!” Captain Doane shouted to one of the sailors who had just emerged from the forecastle scuttle, sea-bag in hand, and over whom the fore-topmast was swaying giddily.

“He’s packed for the get-away,” Daughtry murmured to the Ancient Mariner. “Like a rat leaving a ship.”

“We’re all rats,” was the reply. “I learned just that when I was a rat among the mangy rats of the poor-farm.”

By this time, all men on board had communicated to Michael their contagion of excitement and fear. Back on top of the cabin so that he might see, he snarled at the cow whale when the men seized fresh grips against the impending shock and when he saw her close at hand and oncoming.

The Mary Turner was struck aft of the mizzen shrouds. As she was hurled down to starboard, whither Michael was ignominiously flung, the crack of shattered timbers was plainly heard. Henrik Gjertsen, at the wheel, clutching the wheel with all his strength, was spun through the air as the wheel was spun by the fling of the rudder. He fetched up against Captain Doane, whose grip had been torn loose from the rail. Both men crumpled down on deck with the wind knocked out of them. Nishikanta leaned cursing against the side of the cabin, the nails of both hands torn off at the quick by the breaking of his grip on the rail.

While Daughtry was passing a turn of rope around the Ancient Mariner and the mizzen rigging and giving the turn to him to hold, Captain Doane crawled gasping to the rail and dragged himself erect.

“That fetched her,” he whispered huskily to the mate, hand pressed to his side to control his pain. “Sound the well again, and keep on sounding.”

More of the sailors took advantage of the interval to rush for’ard under the toppling fore-topmast, dive into the forecastle, and hastily pack their sea-bags. As Ah Moy emerged from the steerage with his own rotund sea-bag, Daughtry dispatched Kwaque to pack the belongings of both of them.

“Dry as a bone, sir,” came the mate’s report.

“Keep on sounding, Mr. Jackson,” the captain ordered, his voice already stronger as he recovered from the shock of his collision with the helmsman. “Keep right on sounding. Here she comes again, and the schooner ain’t built that’d stand such hammering.”

By this time Daughtry had Michael tucked under one arm, his free arm ready to anticipate the next crash by swinging on to the rigging.

In making its circle to come back, the cow lost her bearings sufficiently to miss the stern of the Mary Turner by twenty feet. Nevertheless, the bore of her displacement lifted the schooner’s stern gently and made her dip her bow to the sea in a stately curtsey.

“If she’d a-hit.. ” Captain Doane murmured and ceased.

“It’d a-ben good night,” Daughtry concluded for him. “She’s a-knocked our stern clean off of us, sir.”