Norman Springer

“ Aye, she was a ship! I was soon to curse my masters, and the very day I was born, but never, after that night, did I curse the ship. I loved her. I felt the full force that night of a hoary sea axiom, "Ships are all right. 'Tis the men in them."
I was surprised not to see Captain Swope upon the poop. According to the gossip I had heard at the Knitting Swede's, this eight to twelve watch was Yankee Swope's favorite prowling time. But he did not appear; indeed, he had not shown himself since he had so ignominiously surrendered the deck to Newman. ”

“ I began to feel that there was something wrong about the Golden Bough besides her bucko mates, and I possessed the superstitions of my kind. But Newman did not offer to dodge around the corner with me. He was merely advising me, in a fatherly, pitying fashion that my nineteen-year-old manhood could not stomach.
"I shipped in her, and I'll sail in her," I told him, shortly. "I can stand as much hell as any man, and I'd join her if I had to swim for it. That flaming packet can't scare me away; I'll take a pay-day from her, yet!" I was bound I'd live up to my reputation as a hard case! ”

“ I came on board the Golden Bough intending to become a murderer—but that madness is past. Now I am anxious to prevent killing—any killing. Now I am determined to preserve peace in this ship.
"For she is safe so long as I am alive, and he cannot easily dispose of me so long as the crew is peaceful. You can understand that, can you not? Angus Swope is a fiend; he is more than half-insane from long indulgence of his cruel lusts. But he is cunning. I am a menace to his safety, and now he knows that she is also a menace. ”

“ You feel a fine thrill when you see a half dozen huskies cringe away before you with fear in their eyes. I imagine it is the same thrill a wild animal tamer feels as he faces his beasts. I felt this fascinating sensation many times after I had become a mate of ships. Lynch had no mercy on the stiffs of our watch; he hammered the rudiments of seamanship into them with astonishing speed. He cuffed a knowledge of English into the squareheads. But he kept his hands off Newman and me, not because he was afraid of us—I don't think Lynch feared anything—but because we knew our work and did it. ”

“ It was a little squarehead who had the wheel. A young Scandinavian, an undersized, scrawny boy. He was pallid, and glazy-eyed with terror, as well he might be after facing the Old Man's tirade, and when I took the spokes from his nerveless grasp he had not sufficient wit left to give me the course. Indeed, he had not much chance to speak, for Captain Swope had followed me aft, and as soon as I had the wheel he commenced on the luckless youth.
"You didn't watch her, did you? Now I'll show you what happens in my ship when a man goes to sleep on his job!" he purred. Purred—aye, that is the word. ”

“ Mister Fitzgibbon seemed to come out of a trance; he shook himself, and stared at Sails and then at Chips. He glared across the deck at us of the starboard watch. He even swore. But there was no life to his curse, and he made no step to follow the defiant stiff into the foc'sle. Instead, he went to the job at hand, and quite obviously sought to regain mastery and self-respect by sulphuric blustering towards the men bent over the ropes. He was a defeated man. He knew it, and we knew it.
A hand fell upon my shoulder. Newman stood behind me.
"A brave act and a brave man," said he. ”

“ It was at this instant that Captain Swope became aware of our presence. It was Newman, himself, who attracted his attention—aye, and the attention of the whole ship, as well.
For Newman had marched into the light. He stood now almost at the forward poop rail, with his arms raised above his head; and he sent his voice forward in a stentorian hail, a cry that was like a thunderclap.
"Stop fighting, lads! Stop it, I say! It is I—Newman! Stop fighting and go for'ard!"
If ever a human face showed amazement and discomfiture, Swope's did. ”

“ It was just then that pandemonium broke out on deck—a shot, a string of shots and a bedlam of howls and yells. Overhead was bedlam, too. The skipper's tune changed instanter. He had been singing out to Mister Lynch to "topsail haul," and to the tradesmen to man the boat falls—but now he was screaming to the latter in a voice shaken with excitement—or panic—to regain their posts, to get into the roundhouse and "turn loose on 'em—pepper 'em! And, for God's sake, throw out the flares!" ”

“ I was to have other surprises before the day was out—the mean-faced beggar, and the way in which the Knitting Swede put us on board the Golden Bough. Surprising incidents. But this refusal of my new shipmate to drink with me was most surprising. Think of a sailor, a hard case, too, moping alone in his room on the day he shipped, when downstairs he could wassail away the day. I was surprised and resentful. It is hard for a nineteen-year-old man to stand alone, and I felt that Newman, my shipmate, should give me the moral support of his companionship. ”

“ It was the Knitting Swede who shanghaied the corpse on board the Tam o' Shanter. It was the Knitting Swede who drugged the skipper of the Sequoia, and shipped him in his own foc'sle. It was the Knitting Swede who sent the crowd of cowboys to sea in the Enterprise. It was the Knitting Swede who was the infamous hero of quite half the dog-watch yarns. It was the Knitting Swede who was—oh, the very devil! ”

“ Mutiny is a serious business, a hanging business, the business of scoundrels, or the last resort of desperate men. I knew the consequences of mutiny, so did the others, squareheads and stiffs, and we had not been sufficiently maltreated to make us ripe for such an undertaking.
But there was mutiny in the air on the Golden Bough from that very first day or the voyage. I was soon to learn that there was plenty of rebellious spirit forward, and shrewd, daring fellows eager to lead, because of piratical greed. Also, she was a hell-ship. ”

“ He had a jagged, bluish scar over one eye, which traveled up his forehead and disappeared beneath his hair, plainly the result of some terrible clout. But it was not these things, not his face or size which drew me to him; it was his bearing.
All of the chaps in Swede Olson's house were hard cases. They boasted of their hardness. But their hardness was the typical tough's hardness, nine parts bravado, a savagery not difficult to subdue with an oak belaying pin in the fist of a bucko mate. But the hardness of this big, scar-faced man was of a different sort. ”

“ Bucko Lynch might kill a man in what he considered the line of duty, but snapping men off a yardarm was not his style. But I also knew that he was an officer of an American ship, and would consider it his duty to back up his captain no matter what villainy the latter attempted.
Swope smiled sweetly at us. One might think that a man, even a ship's autocrat, when detected in an attempt at cold-blooded murder, would make some specious explanation of his act. ”

“ If the lady had not taken the revolver from me, I fear I should have shot the man despite my promise. As it was my sheath knife lay bared in my hand, and I had to fight myself to keep from leaping the barrier and confronting him. Aye, to face him, and make him eat the steel out of my hand!
Yes, Swope was in a happy mood. A rollicking, loquacious mood. He talked. Unconsciously he made me witness to his confession of black treacheries, and deeds more loathsome than I could have imagined myself. ”

“ The black-bearded man who had been lounging over the poop rail watching us work, and at whom I had been casting curious and fearful glances as I rushed about beneath his arctic glare, now swung about and damned the helmsman's eye with soft voiced, deadly words. The mates' voices dropped low, and we listened to Yankee Swope's storm of venomous curses with bated breath.
As a man curses so he is. ”

“ And if anything were needed to make my decision more certain, there was the little Jewess. She leaned close, and there was more than a hint of command in her voice. "Boy, say yes! I want you to, Boy!"
"Boy!" To me, a nineteen-year-old man, who had just been offered a fighting man's berth! "I want you to," she commanded. I saw more clearly just what the Swede's offer meant: to spend my days in evil living, my drugged will twisted about the slim, dishonest fingers of the wanton; to spend my nights carrying out whatever black rascality the Swede might command. ”

“ Three bells struck while I was still whittling and digging at the caulking in the seams with my sheath knife. But the echo of the big ship's bell forward had hardly died away when I carefully, ever so carefully, lifted up and laid back the cut-away section of the deck. I had left the caulking at one end nearly intact, so the solid piece laid back like a trap-door.
The lady and I knelt by the side of the hole and peered down into the littered darkness. We could make out, dimly, heaps of barrels and boxes. ”

“ For it was now the elemental instinct of self-preservation that swayed the men and determined their actions. Oh, there was plenty of sympathy for me, and for Holy Joe and Newman; there was rage on our account; but underlying the sympathy and rage was a very terrible fear. It was a fear of death, a fear that each man felt for himself. Self-preservation, that's it!
My shipmates, sailors and stiffs, had reached a point where they were afraid not to take some violent and illegal action against the men in command of the ship. ”

“ If he were alive I should not need your assistance, Captain; one look at the man and I could paint him in his true colors. I have that gift. Not men alone—I am able to invest even inanimate objects with personality. A house, a street, or a—yes, even a ship. Even this ship. Now, this old box——"
Captain Shreve sat up straight in his chair. I thought he was rasped by the fellow's slur, for he is very proud of his ship. But it was something else that rubbed the expression of patient resignation from his face; he was staring over the starboard rail with an expression of lively interest. ”

“ I was dying for my friend's sake. My imagination gave my death nobility. I imagined Newman and the lady remembering me sadly all their lives long, thinking of me always as their saviour. I imagined my name on sailors' lips, in ships not yet launched; they would talk of me, of Jack Shreve, the lad who killed Yankee Swope so his shipmate might live. ”

“ Briggs shifted his quid, spat, and inspected the passing hulk with extreme deliberation. I looked at her too, wondering what there was about an old coal-carrier that could pierce Captain Shreve's accustomed phlegm.
The tow was passing abreast, but a couple of hundred yards distant. The tug was shortening the line, and on the hulk's forecastle-head a couple of hands were busy at a cathead, preparing to let go anchor. She was ill-favored enough to look at, that hulk—weather-beaten, begrimed, stripped of all that makes a ship sightly. Nothing but the worn-out old hull was left. An eyesore, truly. ”

“ Then Lynch would take firm grasp of the scruff of the neck and seat of the breeches, and hurl the resurrected one through the door onto the deck, and out of range of my vision. A waspish voice streaming blistering oaths proved that Mister Fitzgibbon was welcoming each as he emerged into daylight. Another voice, melodiously penetrating the uproar, proved another man was watching the crew turn to. I recognized the silky, musical voice of Yankee Swope. "Stir them up, Mister! Make them jump! My ship is no hotel!" ”

“ To heighten the squareheads' foreboding, and to scare the wits half out of us all, Nils' ghost visited the ship. You know what sort of men we were in that foc'sle; save Newman and the parson, we were ignorant men, and superstitious. We all believed implicitly in ghosts, I, and the squareheads, Nigger and Cockney, and even the stiffs who had not the sea in their blood. Aye, even Blackie and Boston believed in haunts. It seemed reasonable to us that Nils should come back to the scene of his earthly misery. Reasonable, and fearsome. ”

“ Everything on the decks was brightly revealed, every ringbolt, the pins in the rails, deadeyes, sails, gear, aye, every rope in the rigging was boldly etched against the glowing background. With that one sweeping glance I took in the scene. High up in the main rigging, almost to the futtock shrouds, the figure of a man was revealed: he was blazing away in the direction of the poop with a revolver. On the deck, near the mainmast, the second mate was laying about him with a capstan bar, and a dozen men seemed boiling over each other in efforts to close with him. ”

“ Good men and sailors, here, but men whose habit of life was submission. Yet, I saw they were gravely disturbed by what had taken place on deck. No wonder. I knew their minds. "Who is safe in this ship?" they thought. "Who, now, may go aloft feeling secure he will reach the deck again, alive and unhurt?" Those squareheads had proof of the mate's temper in the person of their young landsman, lying broken in his bunk. Now, they had proof of the skipper's temper.
My eyes met those of Boston and Blackie, eyeing me speculatively, and the contact brought my musing to a sharp turn. ”

“ It is some tigerish instinct he possesses; it makes him kill and destroy, it makes him inflict pain. Oh, Roy, it is his pleasure—to inflict pain."
"Lynch doesn't like it," said Sails, in reply to some question I had missed hearing.
"Little good not liking it will do him," was Chips' opinion. "He'll do what the Old Man wants him to do, just like the rest of us."
"Has he ever used you—as victim?" said Newman, a new, hard note in his voice.
"No, no, not in that way," answered the lady. "It is to the crew he does that. He has never hurt me physically." ”

“ So, when opportunity offered, I slipped away from the crowd unobserved, and went rolling along East street as though that thoroughfare belonged to me. And in truth it did. Aye, I was the chesty lad, and my step was high and proud, during that stroll. For men hailed me, and pointed me out. I was the rough, tough king of the beach that hour; I was the lad who had whipped the Knitting Swede's bully, and shipped in the Golden Bough. ”

“ I was Newman's one close friend, and Boston must have thought I knew something of the big man's intentions.
Anyway, after supper that evening, as I was sitting on the forehatch, whittling away at a model of the Golden Bough I was making, Boston came and sat down beside me.
"Should think you'd be so fed up with this hooker, you wouldn't want any model of her," he remarked, by way of opening a conversation.
"She's a bonny ship," I told him. "It is not the ship, it is the men in her. You'll never see a better craft than the Golden Bough, Boston." ”

“ Cockney had been most violent and outspoken among those advocating mutiny, far more outspoken than the cautious Blackie or Boston, and the disaffected had naturally confided in him. I knew that every man in the crew who had expressed a willingness to revolt was known by name to Cockney (and without doubt to Yankee Swope) and these men now could not escape the feeling that they were marked men. If anything had been needed to settle the conviction of the foc'sle that mutiny was necessary, this unmasking of Cockney supplied the need. ”