Moran of the Lady Letty

At length, on the afternoon of the third day, the captain of the junk, whose name was Hoang, presented himself upon the quarter-deck. He was naked to the waist, and his bare brown torso was gleaming with oil and sweat. His queue was coiled like a snake around his neck, his hatchet thrust into his belt.

“Well?” said Moran, coming up.

Wilbur caught his breath as the two stood there facing each other, so sharp was the contrast. The man, the Mongolian, small, weazened, leather-colored, secretive—a strange, complex creature, steeped in all the obscure mystery of the East, nervous, ill at ease; and the girl, the Anglo-Saxon, daughter of the Northmen, huge, blond, big-boned, frank, outspoken, simple of composition, open as the day, bareheaded, her great ropes of sandy hair falling over her breast and almost to the top of her knee-boots. As he looked at the two, Wilbur asked himself where else but in California could such abrupt contrasts occur.

“All light,” announced Hoang; “catchum all oil, catchum all bone, catchum all same plenty many. You help catchum, now you catchum pay. Sabe?”

The three principals came to a settlement with unprecedented directness. Like all Chinamen, Hoang was true to his promises, and he had already set apart three and a half barrels of spermaceti, ten barrels of oil, and some twenty pounds of bone as the schooner’s share in the transaction. There was no discussion over the matter. He called their attention to the discharge of his obligations, and hurried away to summon his men aboard and get the junk under way again.

The beach-combers returned to their junk, and Wilbur and Moran set about cutting the carcass of the whale adrift. They found it would be easier to cut away the hide from around the hooks and loops of the tackle than to unfasten the tackle itself.

“The knots are jammed hard as steel,” declared Moran. “Hand up that cutting-in spade; stand by with the other and cut loose at the same time as I do, so we can ease off the strain on these lines at the same time. Ready there, cut!” Moran set free the hook in the loop of black skin in a couple of strokes, but Wilbur was more clumsy; the skin resisted. He struck at it sharply with the heavy spade; the blade hit the iron hook, glanced off, and opened a large slit in the carcass below the head. A gush of entrails started from the slit, and Moran swore under her breath.

“Ease away, quick there! You’ll have the mast out of her next—steady! Hold your spade—what’s that?”

Wilbur had nerved himself against the dreadful stench he expected would issue from the putrid monster, but he was surprised to note a pungent, sweet, and spicy odor that all at once made thick the air about him. It was an aromatic smell, stronger than that of the salt ocean, stronger even than the reek of oil and blubber from the schooner’s waist—sweet as incense, penetrating as attar, delicious as a summer breeze.

“It smells pretty good, whatever it is,” he answered. Moran came up to where he stood, and looked at the slit he had made in the whale’s carcass. Out of it was bulging some kind of dull white matter marbled with gray. It was a hard lump of irregular shape and about as big as a hogshead.

Moran glanced over to the junk, some forty feet distant. The beach-combers were hoisting the lug-sail. Hoang was at the steering oar.

“Get that stuff aboard,” she commanded quietly.

“That!” exclaimed Wilbur, pointing to the lump.

Moran’s blue eyes were beginning to gleam.

“Yes, and do it before the Chinamen see you.”

“But—but I don’t understand.”

Moran stepped to the quarterdeck, unslung the hammock in which Wilbur slept, and tossed it to him.

“Reeve it up in that; I’ll pass you a line, and we’ll haul it aboard. Godsend, those vermin yonder have got smells enough of their own without noticing this. Hurry, mate, I’ll talk afterward.”

Wilbur went over the side, and standing as best he could upon the slippery carcass, dug out the lump and bound it up in the hammock.

“Hoh!” exclaimed Moran, with sudden exultation. “There’s a lot of it. That’s the biggest lump yet, I’ll be bound. Is that all there is, mate?—look carefully.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

“Yes, yes; that’s all. Careful now when you haul up—Hoang has got his eye on you, and so have the rest of them. What do you call it, anyhow? Why are you so particular about it? Is it worth anything?”

“I don’t know—perhaps. We’ll have a look at it, anyway.”

Moran hauled the stuff aboard, and Wilbur followed.

“Whew!” he exclaimed with half-closed eyes. “It’s like the story of Samson and the dead lion—the sweet coming forth from the strong.”

The schooner seemed to swim in a bath of perfumed air; the membrane of the nostrils fairly prinkled with the sensation. Moran unleashed the hammock, and going down upon one knee examined the lump attentively.

“It didn’t seem possible,” Wilbur heard her saying to herself; “but there can’t be any mistake. It’s the stuff, right enough. I’ve heard of such things, but this—but this—” She rose to her feet, tossing back her hair.

“Well,” said Wilbur, “what do you call it?”

“The thing to do now,” returned Moran, “is to get clear of here as quietly and as quickly as we can, and take this stuff with us. I can’t stop to explain now, but it’s big—it’s big. Mate, it’s big as the Bank of England.”

“Those beach-combers are right on to the game, I’m afraid,” said Wilbur. “Look, they’re watching us. This stuff would smell across the ocean.”

“Rot the beach-combers! There’s a bit of wind, thank God, and we can do four knots to their one, just let us get clear once.”

Moran dragged the hammock back into the cabin, and, returning upon deck, helped Wilbur to cut away the last tricing tackle. The schooner righted slowly to an even keel. Meanwhile the junk had set its one lug-sail and its crew had run out the sweeps. Hoang took the steering sweep and worked the junk to a position right across the “Bertha’s” bows, some fifty feet ahead.

“They’re watching us, right enough,” said Wilbur.

“Up your mains’l,” ordered Moran. The pair set the fore and main sails with great difficulty. Moran took the wheel and Wilbur went forward to cast off the line by which the schooner had been tied up to one of the whale’s flukes.

“Cut it!” cried the girl. “Don’t stop to cast off.”

There was a hail from the beach-combers; the port sweeps dipped and the junk bore up nearer.

“Hurry!” shouted Moran, “don’t mind them. Are we clear for’ard—what’s the trouble? Something’s holding her.” The schooner listed slowly to starboard and settled by the head.

“All clear!” cried Wilbur.

“There’s something wrong!” exclaimed Moran; “she’s settling for’ard.” Hoang hailed the schooner a second time.

“We’re still settling,” called Wilbur from the bows, “what’s the matter?”

“Matter that she’s taking water,” answered Moran wrathfully. “She’s started something below, what with all that lifting and dancing and tricing up.”

Wilbur ran back to the quarterdeck.

“This is a bad fix,” he said to Moran. “Those chaps are coming aboard again. They’re on to something, and, of course, at just this moment she begins to leak.”

“They are after that ambergris,” said Moran between her teeth. “Smelled it, of course—the swine!”

“Ambergris?”

“The stuff we found in the whale. That’s ambergris.”

“Well?”

“Well!” shouted Moran, exasperated. “Do you know that we have found a lump that will weigh close to 250 pounds, and do you know that ambergris is selling in San Francisco at $40 an ounce? Do you know that we have picked up nearly $150,000 right out here in the ocean and are in a fair way to lose it all?”

“Can’t we run for it?”

“Run for it in a boat that’s taking water like a sack! Our dory’s gone. Suppose we get clear of the junk, and the ‘Bertha’ sank? Then what? If we only had our crew aboard; if we were only ten to their dozen—if we were only six—by Jupiter! I’d fight them for it.”

The two enormous red eyes of the junk loomed alongside and stared over into the “Bertha’s” waist. Hoang and seven of the coolies swarmed aboard.

“What now?” shouted Moran, coming forward to meet them, her scowl knotting her flashing eyes together. “Is this ship yours or mine? We’ve done your dirty work for you. I want you clear of my deck.” Wilbur stood at her side, uncertain what to do, but ready for anything she should attempt.

“I tink you catchum someting, smellum pretty big,” said Hoang, his ferret glance twinkling about the schooner.

“I catchum nothing—nothing but plenty bad stink,” said Moran. “No, you don’t!” she exclaimed, putting herself in Hoang’s way as he made for the cabin. The other beach-combers came crowding up; Wilbur even thought he saw one of them loosening his hatchet in his belt.

“This ship’s mine,” cried Moran, backing to the cabin door. Wilbur followed her, and the Chinamen closed down upon the pair.

“It’s not much use, Moran,” he muttered. “They’ll rush us in a minute.”

“But the ambergris is mine—is mine,” she answered, never taking her eyes from the confronting coolies.

“We findum w’ale,” said Hoang; “you no find w’ale; him b’long to we—eve’yt’ing in um w’ale b’long to we, savvy?”

“No, you promised us a third of everything you found.”

Even in the confusion of the moment it occurred to Wilbur that it was quite possible that at least two-thirds of the ambergris did belong to the beach-combers by right of discovery. After all, it was the beach-combers who had found the whale. He could never remember afterward whether or no he said as much to Moran at the time. If he did, she had been deaf to it. A fury of wrath and desperation suddenly blazed in her blue eyes. Standing at her side, Wilbur could hear her teeth grinding upon each other. She was blind to all danger, animated only by a sense of injustice and imposition.

Hoang uttered a sentence in Cantonese. One of the coolies jumped forward, and Moran’s fist met him in the face and brought him to his knees. Then came the rush Wilbur had foreseen. He had just time to catch a sight of Moran at grapples with Hoang when a little hatchet glinted over his head. He struck out savagely into the thick of the group—and then opened his eyes to find Moran washing the blood from his hair as he lay on the deck with his head in the hollow of her arm. Everything was quiet. The beach-combers were gone.

“Hello, what—what—what is it?” he asked, springing to his feet, his head swimming and smarting. “We had a row, didn’t we? Did they hurt you? Oh, I remember; I got a cut over the head—one of their hatchet men. Did they hurt you?”

“They got the loot,” she growled. “Filthy vermin! And just to make everything pleasant, the schooner’s sinking.”

VIII. A RUN FOR LAND

“SINKING!” exclaimed Wilbur.

Moran was already on her feet. “We’ll have to beach her,” she cried, “and we’re six miles out. Up y’r jib, mate!” The two set the jib, flying-jib, and staysails.

The fore and main sails were already drawing, and under all the spread of her canvas the “Bertha” raced back toward the shore.

But by the time she was within the head of the bay her stern had settled to such an extent that the forefoot was clear of the water, the bowsprit pointing high into the heavens. Moran was at the wheel, her scowl thicker than ever, her eyes measuring the stretch of water that lay between the schooner and the shore.

“She’ll never make it in God’s world,” she muttered as she listened to the wash of the water in the cabin under her feet. In the hold, empty barrels were afloat, knocking hollowly against each other. “We’re in a bad way, mate.”

“If it comes to that,” returned Wilbur, surprised to see her thus easily downcast, who was usually so indomitable—“if it comes to that, we can swim for it—a couple of planks—”

“Swim?” she echoed; “I’m not thinking of that; of course we could swim.”

“What then?”

“The sharks!”

Wilbur’s teeth clicked sharply together. He could think of nothing to say.

As the water gained between decks the schooner’s speed dwindled, and at the same time as she approached the shore the wind, shut off by the land, fell away. By this time the ocean was not four inches below the stern-rail. Two miles away was the nearest sand-spit. Wilbur broke out a distress signal on the foremast, in the hope that Charlie and the deserters might send off the dory to their assistance. But the deserters were nowhere in sight.

“What became of the junk?” he demanded suddenly of Moran. She motioned to the westward with her head. “Still lying out-side.”

Twenty minutes passed. Once only Moran spoke.

“When she begins to go,” she said, “she’ll go with a rush. Jump pretty wide, or you’ll get caught in the suction.”

The two had given up all hope. Moran held grimly to the wheel as a mere matter of form. Wilbur stood at her side, his clinched fists thrust into his pockets. The eyes of both were fixed on the yellow line of the distant beach. By and by Moran turned to him with an odd smile.

“We’re a strange pair to die together,” she said. Wilbur met her eyes an instant, but finding no reply, put his chin in the air as though he would have told her she might well say that.

“A strange pair to die together,” Moran repeated; “but we can do that better than we could have”—she looked away from him—“could have LIVED together,” she finished, and smiled again.

“And yet,” said Wilbur, “these last few weeks here on board the schooner, we have been through a good deal—together. I don’t know,” he went on clumsily, “I don’t know when I’ve been—when I’ve had—I’ve been happier than these last weeks. It is queer, isn’t it? I know, of course, what you’ll say. I’ve said it to myself often of late. I belong to the city and to my life there, and you—you belong to the ocean. I never knew a girl like you—never knew a girl COULD be like you. You don’t know how extraordinary it all seems to me. You swear like a man, and you dress like a man, and I don’t suppose you’ve ever been associated with other women; and you’re strong—I know you are as strong as I am. You have no idea how different you are to the kind of girl I’ve known. Imagine my kind of girl standing up before Hoang and those cutthroat beach-combers with their knives and hatchets. Maybe it’s because you are so unlike my kind of girl that—that things are as they are with me. I don’t know. It’s a queer situation. A month or so ago I was at a tea in San Francisco, and now I’m aboard a shark-fishing schooner sinking in Magdalena Bay; and I’m with a girl that—that—that I—well, I’m with you, and, well, you know how it is—I might as well say it—I love you more than I imagined I ever could love a girl.”

Moran’s frown came back to her forehead.

“I don’t like that kind of talk,” she said; “I am not used to it, and I don’t know how to take it. Believe me,” she said with a half laugh, “it’s all wasted. I never could love a man. I’m not made for men.”

“No,” said Wilbur, “nor for other women either.”

“Nor for other women either.”

Wilbur fell silent. In that instant he had a distinct vision of Moran’s life and character, shunning men and shunned of women, a strange, lonely creature, solitary as the ocean whereon she lived, beautiful after her fashion; as yet without sex, proud, untamed, splendid in her savage, primal independence—a thing untouched and unsullied by civilization. She seemed to him some Bradamante, some mythical Brunhilde, some Valkyrie of the legends, born out of season, lost and unfamiliar in this end-of-the-century time. Her purity was the purity of primeval glaciers. He could easily see how to such a girl the love of a man would appear only in the light of a humiliation—a degradation. And yet she COULD love, else how had HE been able to love her? Wilbur found himself—even at that moment—wondering how the thing could be done—wondering to just what note the untouched cords would vibrate. Just how she should be awakened one morning to find that she—Moran, sea-rover, virgin unconquered, without law, without land, without sex—was, after all, a woman.

“By God, mate!” she exclaimed of a sudden. “The barrels are keeping us up—the empty barrels in the hold. Hoh! we’ll make land yet.”

It was true. The empty hogsheads, destined for the storage of oil, had been forced up by the influx of the water to the roof of the hold, and were acting as so many buoys—the schooner could sink no lower. An hour later, the quarterdeck all awash, her bow thrown high into the air, listing horribly to starboard, the “Bertha Millner” took ground on the shore of Magdalena Bay at about the turn of the tide.

Moran swung herself over the side, hip deep in the water, and, wading ashore with a line, made fast to the huge skull of a whale half buried in the sand at that point.

Wilbur followed. The schooner had grounded upon the southern horn of the bay and lay easily on a spit of sand. They could not examine the nature of the leak until low water the next morning.

“Well, here we are,” said Moran, her thumbs in her belt. “What next? We may be here for two days, we MAY be here for two years. It all depends upon how bad a hole she has. Have we ‘put in for repairs,’ or have we been cast away? Can’t tell till to-morrow morning. Meanwhile, I’m hungry.”

Half of the stores of the schooner were water-soaked, but upon examination Wilbur found that enough remained intact to put them beyond all fear for the present.

“There’s plenty of water up the creek,” he said, “and we can snare all the quail we want; and then there’s the fish and abalone. Even if the stores were gone we could make out very well.”

The schooner’s cabin was full of water and Wilbur’s hammock was gone, so the pair decided to camp on shore. In that torrid weather to sleep in the open air was a luxury.

In great good spirits the two sat down to their first meal on land. Moran cooked a supper that, barring the absence of coffee, was delicious. The whiskey was had from aboard, and they pledged each other, standing up, in something over two stiff fingers.

“Moran,” said Wilbur, “you ought to have been born a man.”

“At all events, mate,” she said—“at all events, I’m not a girl.”

“NO!” exclaimed Wilbur, as he filled his pipe. “NO, you’re just Moran, Moran of the ‘Lady Letty.’”

“And I’ll stay that, too,” she said decisively.

Never had an evening been more beautiful in Wilbur’s eyes. There was not a breath of air. The stillness was so profound that the faint murmur of the blood behind the ear-drums became an oppression. The ocean tiptoed toward the land with tiny rustling steps. The west was one gigantic stained window, the ocean floor a solid shimmer of opalescence. Behind them, sullen purples marked the horizon, hooded with mountain crests, and after a long while the moon shrugged a gleaming shoulder into view.

Wilbur, dressed in Chinese jeans and blouse, with Chinese wicker sandals on his bare feet, sat with his back against the whale’s skull, smoking quietly. For a long time there was no conversation; then at last:

“No,” said Moran in a low voice. “This is the life I’m made for. In six years I’ve not spent three consecutive weeks on land. Now that Eilert” (she always spoke of her father by his first name), “now that Eilert is dead, I’ve not a tie, not a relative, not even a friend, and I don’t wish it.”

“But the loneliness of the life, the solitude,” said Wilbur, “that’s what I don’t understand. Did it ever occur to you that the best happiness is the happiness that one shares?”

Moran clasped a knee in both hands and looked out to sea. She never wore a hat, and the red light of the afterglow was turning her rye-hued hair to saffron.

“Hoh!” she exclaimed, her heavy voice pitched even lower than usual. “Who could understand or share any of my pleasures, or be happy when I’m happy? And, besides, I’m happiest when I’m alone—I don’t want any one.”

“But,” hesitated Wilbur, “one is not always alone. After all, you’re a girl, and men, sailormen especially, are beasts when it’s a question of a woman—an unprotected woman.”

“I’m stronger than most men,” said Moran simply. “If you, for instance, had been like some men, I should have fought you. It wouldn’t have been the first time,” she added, smoothing one huge braid between her palms.

Wilbur looked at her with intent curiosity—noted again, as if for the first time, the rough, blue overalls thrust into the shoes; the coarse flannel shirt open at the throat; the belt with its sheath-knife; her arms big and white and tattooed in sailor fashion; her thick, muscular neck; her red face, with its pale blue eyes and almost massive jaw; and her hair, her heavy, yellow, fragrant hair, that lay over her shoulder and breast, coiling and looping in her lap.

“No,” he said, with a long breath, “I don’t make it out. I knew you were out of my experience, but I begin to think now that you are out of even my imagination. You are right, you SHOULD keep to yourself. You should be alone—your mate isn’t made yet. You are splendid just as you are,” while under his breath he added, his teeth clinching, “and God! but I love you.”

It was growing late, the stars were all out, the moon riding high. Moran yawned:

“Mate, I think I’ll turn in. We’ll have to be at that schooner early in the morning, and I make no doubt she’ll give us plenty to do.” Wilbur hesitated to reply, waiting to take his cue from what next she should say. “It’s hot enough to sleep where we are,” she added, “without going aboard the ‘Bertha,’ though we might have a couple of blankets off to lie on. This sand’s as hard as a plank.”

Without answering, Wilbur showed her a couple of blanket-rolls he had brought off while he was unloading part of the stores that afternoon. They took one apiece and spread them on the sand by the bleached whale’s skull. Moran pulled off her boots and stretched herself upon her blanket with absolute unconcern, her hands clasped under her head. Wilbur rolled up his coat for a pillow and settled himself for the night with an assumed self-possession. There was a long silence. Moran yawned again.

“I pulled the heel off my boot this morning,” she said lazily, “and I’ve been limping all day.”

“I noticed it,” answered Wilbur. “Kitchell had a new pair aboard somewhere, if they’re not spoiled by the water now.”

“Yes?” she said indifferently; “we’ll look them up in the morning.”

Again there was silence.

“I wonder,” she began again, staring up into the dark, “if Charlie took that frying-pan off with him when he went?”

“I don’t know. He probably did.”

“It was the only thing we had to cook abalones in. Make me think to look into the galley to-morrow....This ground’s as hard as nails, for all your blankets....Well, good-night, mate; I’m going to sleep.”

“Good-night, Moran.”

Three hours later Wilbur, who had not closed his eyes, sat up and looked at Moran, sleeping quietly, her head in a pale glory of hair; looked at her, and then around him at the silent, deserted land.

“I don’t know,” he said to himself. “Am I a right-minded man and a thoroughbred, or a mush-head, or merely a prudent, sensible sort of chap that values his skin and bones? I’d be glad to put a name to myself.” Then, more earnestly he added: “Do I love her too much, or not enough, or love her the wrong way, or how?” He leaned toward her, so close that he could catch the savor of her breath and the smell of her neck, warm with sleep. The sleeve of the coarse blue shirt was drawn up, and it seemed to him as if her bare arm, flung out at full length, had some sweet aroma of its own. Wilbur drew softly back.

“No,” he said to himself decisively; “no, I guess I am a thoroughbred after all.” It was only then that he went to sleep.

When he awoke the sea was pink with the sunrise, and one of the bay heads was all distorted and stratified by a mirage. It was hot already. Moran was sitting a few paces from him, braiding her hair.

“Hello, Moran!” he said, rousing up; “how long have you been up?”

“Since before sunrise,” she said; “I’ve had a bath in the cove where the creek runs down. I saw a jack-rabbit.”

“Seen anything of Charlie and the others?”

“They’ve camped on the other side of the bay. But look yonder,” she added.

The junk had come in overnight, and was about a mile and a half from shore.

“The deuce!” exclaimed Wilbur. “What are they after?”

“Fresh water, I guess,” said Moran, knotting the end of a braid. “We’d better have breakfast in a hurry, and turn to on the ‘Bertha.’ The tide is going out fast.”