Captain Kettle

“ He was a tall man, and the hands thrust him from below, upward, and, though he struggled wildly and madly, all his efforts to have his own way were futile. Captain Owen Kettle had handled far too many really strong men in this fashion to even lose breath over a dram-drinking passenger. So Cranze found himself hurtled out on to the lower fore-deck, where somebody handcuffed him neatly to an iron stanchion, and presently a mariner, by Captain Kettle's orders, rigged a hose, and mounted on the iron bulwark above him, and let a three-inch stream of chilly brine slop steadily on to his head. ”

“ No, Captain Kettle, I’m going through with this matter, whether it succeeds or it fails; whether it is brought about without injury to a single human soul, or whether it costs the last pant of breath for every one in this ship. But I own to you I am nervous. The only things which we can be sure will happen, are the unexpected; and we can’t prepare for those; and the want of preparation may ruin us.”
“It’s a big gamble,” assented Kettle, “and I wish I could say, ‘May the Lord defend the right!’ But I can’t, and you can’t, and, least of all, Shelf can’t. ”

“ Captain Kettle whistled to himself long and dismally. "Piled her up," he muttered, "that's what her old man has done. Hit a half-ebb reef, and fairly taken root there. He's not shoved on his engines astern either, and that means she's ripped away half her bottom, and he thinks she'll founder in deep water if he backs her off the ground." A tiny spit of flame, pale against the moonlight, jerked out from under the awnings of the steamer's upper bridge. The noise of the shot came some time afterward, no louder than the cracking of a knuckle. ”

“ Captain Kettle laughed aloud into the storm. "Me!" he cried. "Me in luck! There's not been a man more bashed and kicked by luck between here and twenty years back. I suppose God thought it good for me, and He's kept me down to my bearings in bad luck ever since I first got my captain's ticket. But He's not cruel, Mr. Philipps, and He doesn't push a man beyond the end of his patience. My time's come at last. He's given me something to make up for all the weary waiting. He's sent me this derelict, and He only expects me to do my human best, and then He'll let me get her safely home." ”

“ The African is not great at making deductions. Captain Kettle had to give a definite order. "Now, overboard with you, all hands, and lib for beach. No time for lower boats. You all fit for swim."
They took the hint, and began leaping the bulwark rail like a swarm of black frogs. "Good-by, boys," he said, in valediction. "You'll find it cheaper to be good and virtuous next time. You haven't stay enough in you for a real good fight." And then he went to where the davits dangled over the water, and slid down to the boat, while the frightened crew cursed him aloud for keeping them waiting. ”

“ Every hand on the Port Edes’ deck had heard them distinctly, and disquiet arose under the belts of nine out of ten. The mates grew nervous and the men inattentive; and, from the bridge, Captain Kettle’s voice and whistle kept ringing out with biting clearness. As it was, only one man attempted to put the warning into practical effect. He was a miserable, half-clad wretch, a coal-trimmer by rating, already repentant of the spell of physical toil which he had signed on for. ”

“ Kettle read the hurried letter through a second time, and then got up out of his long chair, and put on his spruce white drill uniform coat, and exchanged his white canvas shoes for another pair more newly pipeclayed. His steamer might merely be a common cargo tramp, the town he was going to visit ashore might be merely the usual savage settlement one meets with on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf, but the little sailor did not dress for the admiration of fashionable crowds. He was smart and spruce always out of deference to his own self-respect. ”

“ Captain Kettle, being human, had greatly needed some one during the last half-hour to ease his feelings on--though he was not the man to own up to such a weakness, even to himself--and the boat came neatly to supply his want. ”

“ Alone of all the six men on the derelict, Captain Kettle had knowledge of the seaman's craft; but, for the present, thews and not seamanship were required. The vessel lay in pathetic helplessness on her side, liable to capsize in the first squall which came along, and their first effort must be to get her in proper trim whilst the calm continued. They knocked out the wedges with their heels, and got the tarpaulins off the main hatch; they pulled away the hatch covers, and saw beneath them smooth slopes of yellow grain. ”

“ He squatted just underneath the slit, and began to quarry the earth at the foot of the wall with skill and determination.
But if Kettle was prompt, his captors were by no means dilatory. Between Kettle's prison and the mate's was another of those bottle-shaped oubliettes, and in that there was presently a bustle of movement. There came the noises of some one lighting a fire, and coughing as he fanned smouldering embers into a glow with his breath, and then more coughing and some curses as the fire-lighter took his departure. ”

“ But if Captain Kettle was keen on the conversion of the heathen to the tenets of the Tyneside chapel, he was by no means forgetful of his commercial duties. He had always got Mrs. Kettle, the family, and the beauties of a home life in an agricultural district at the back of his mind, and to provide the funds necessary for a permanent enjoyment of all these items close at hand, he worked both Clay and himself remorselessly.
Ivory does not grow on hedgerows even in Africa, and the necessary store could by no means be picked up even in a day, or even in a matter of weeks. ”

“ We're at sea now, and no one can gossip beyond the walls of the ship. Besides Kettle is far too staunch to talk. He's the sort of man who can be as mum as the grave when he chooses. But if you persist in refusing to trust him, well, I tell you that the thought of what he may be up to makes me frightened."
"Now look here, my boy," said White, "you force me to remind you that I'm senior partner here, and to repeat that what I say on this matter's going to be done. I flatly refuse to trust this Kettle with the whole yarn. ”

“ He never owned to himself that this thirst for power was one of the greatest curses of his life; and it did not occur to him that his lust for authority, and his ruthless use of it when it came in his way, were the main things which accounted for his want of success in life.
Captain Kettle's voyage down to the Congo on the British and African S.S. M'poso gave time for the groundwork of Coast language and Coast thought (which are like unto nothing else on this planet) to soak into his system. The steamer progressed slowly. She went up rivers protected by dangerous bars ”

“ He is down in the Red Sea now, doing well. You had all along intended to promote him. Do it now, and set him to overlook this Italian salvage firm whilst the new boat is building. He is the one to see that Isaac Bird's foot doth not fall, for Captain O. Kettle is a godly man also.'"
The letter was shut off conventionally enough with the statement that the writer was Captain Kettle's truly, and ended in a post-scriptum tag to the effect that the envoy should still draw his two and a-half per cent. ”

“ Nilssen was an utter wreck. Prolonged residence in this pestilential Congo had sapped his constitution; the poison was constantly eating at him; and he must either get relief in a very short time, or give up the fight and die. So that same afternoon saw Kettle journeying in a dug-out canoe over the beer-colored waters of the river, up stream, toward the witch-doctor's village.
Two savages (one of them suffering from a bad attack of yaws) propelled the craft from her forward part in erratic zig-zags; amidships sat Captain Kettle in a Madeira chair under a green-lined white umbrella ”

“ Over-curiosity is not a thing that pays with Orientals. Stolid indifference, on the other hand, may earn easy admiration.
But at last the man took his courage in a firmer grip, and came up from the Parakeet's lower deck, where the hands were working cargo, and advanced under the bridge deck awnings to Captain Kettle's long chair and salaamed low before him. ”

“ The work was dangerous, and required more than ordinary nerve and endurance and skill. A heavy sea ran, and from its crests a spindrift blew which cut the face like whips, and numbed all parts of the body with its chill. The boats were tossed about like playthings, and required constant bailing to keep them from being waterlogged. But Kettle had brought the Flamingo to windward of the Grosser Carl, and each boat carried a line, so that the steam winches could help her with the return trips. ”

“ I'm sorry to see you come down to this, Captain."
"Captain Kettle," said the sulky Mate, "that was in the Congo Pilot Service?"
"Yes," said Kettle.
"Then, Captain," said the Mate, "I take back what I said about you being Robinson Crusoe. You may have met with misfortune, but, by the Lord, you're a man all the way through. You've made the ports down there on the Congo just ring with the way you kept your end up with those beastly Belgians. And now when any Englishman goes ashore at Boma or Matadi or any place on the river, they're fit to eat him." ”

“ I've got them here to work, and help me do my duty by the owners. If they take up low class trades like artisting, they must be prepared to stand the consequences. You'll remember the orders I've given you? If I'm wanted, you'll say I'll probably be back by tea."
Captain Kettle went off then in a shore-boat, past a small fleet of pearling dhows, which rolled at their anchors, and after a long pull--for the sea was shallow, and the anchorage lay five miles out--stepped on to the back of a burly Arab, and was carried the last mile dry-shod. ”

“ Or am I to clear both ends in this boat by myself?"
So, by example and tongue, Captain Kettle got his boats swung outboard, and the Flamingo, with her engines working at an unusual strain, surged rapidly nearer and nearer to the blaze.
On shore a house on fire at any hour draws a crowd. At sea, in the bleak cold wastes of the water desert, even one other shipload of sympathizers is too often wished for vainly. Wind, cold, and breakdowns of machinery the sailor accepts with dull indifference; shipwrecks, strandings, and disease he looks forward to as part of an inevitable fate ”

“ He had no sympathy with Kettle's constantly repeated theory that discipline ought to be restored.
"Guess it's the captain's palaver," he would say. "If the old man likes his ship turned into a bear garden, 'tisn't our grub they're wasting, or our cargo they've started in to broach. Anyway, what can we do? You and I are only on board here as pilots. I wish the ship was in somewhere hotter than Africa, before I'd ever seen her."
"So do I," said Kettle. "But being here, it makes me ill to see the way she's allowed to rot, and those poor beasts of niggers are left to die just as they please. ”

“ You're to have all my share of the loot--the ivory, I mean. You savvy, I leave it to you in my last will and testament, fairly and squarely. And Skipper, I'm sorry I ragged you about your mug on those New Republic stamps. If ever a man deserved what he wanted in that line, you're--you're--"
The voice failed. "Yes?" said Kettle, and stooped nearer.
Clay feebly winked. "You're him," he whispered. "So long, old cock."
Captain Kettle buried his friend in the first gold of the next dawn under a magnolia tree, which was hung with sweet-scented blossoms, in the middle of the village. ”

“ They are just bursting for want of a job, most of them; they revel in anything like an accident to break the monotony; and if they can spot a bit of foul play--or say they helped to spot it--why, there they are, supplied with one good solid never-stale yarn for all the rest of their natural lives. So you see they've every inducement to do a lot of ferreting that a ship's officers (with other work on hand) would not dream about."
Captain Kettle pulled thoughtfully at his neat red pointed beard. "You're putting the thing in a new light, sir, and I thank you for what you've said. ”

“ Captain Kettle showed his visitor courteously down to the temporary jail, and then returned to the chart-house and sipped his tea.
"His name may really have been Cranze, but he was a poet, poor lad," he mused, thinking of the dead. "That's why he couldn't do the dirty work. But I sha'n't tell Lupton that reason. He'd only laugh--and--that poetry ought to be a bit of a secret between the lad and me. Poor, poor fellow! I think I'll be able to write a few lines about him myself after I've been ashore to see the agent, just as a bit of an epitaph. ”

“ Then he retired to the poop deck-house, where he lived with the carpenter and boatswain, [87] and offered to bet those worthies (who had just come in for dinner) that Captain Kettle shot some one on board before the Port Edes tied up against New Orleans levee.
“He’s a just holy terror, our old man,” observed the donkeyman cheerfully. “I sailed with him once before, and he unbent a quartermaster’s front teeth with the bridge telescope before we were three days out. With the smudgy crowd we’ve got here now, it’s a pound to a brick they start him moving, even sooner than that. ”

“ Their labor was having its effect, and by infinitesimal gradations they were counteracting the list and getting the ship upright; but the wind was worsening, and it seemed to them also that the water was getting deeper under their feet, and that the vessel rode more sluggishly.
So far the well had not been sounded. It is no use getting alarming statistics to discourage one's self unnecessarily. But after night had fallen, and it was impossible to see to work in the gloomy hold any longer without lamps, Captain Kettle took the sounding-rod and found eight feet. ”