I cannot but marvel at Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs. Old and fragile as
they are, it seems impossible that they can endure what they do. For
that matter, I cannot understand why they work at all. I cannot
understand why any of them toil on and obey an order in this freezing
hell of the Horn. Is it because of fear of death that they do not cease
work and bring death to all of us? Or is it because they are
slave-beasts, with a slave-psychology, so used all their lives to being
driven by their masters that it is beyond their mental power to refuse
to obey?
And yet most of them, in a week after we reach Seattle, will be on
board other ships outward bound for the Horn. Margaret says the reason
for this is that sailors forget. Mr. Pike agrees. He says give them a
week in the south-east trades as we run up the Pacific and they will
have forgotten that they have ever been around the Horn. I wonder. Can
they be as stupid as this? Does pain leave no record with them? Do they
fear only the immediate thing? Have they no horizons wider than a day?
Then indeed do they belong where they are.
They _are_ cowardly. This was shown conclusively this morning at two
o’clock. Never have I witnessed such panic fear, and it was fear of the
immediate thing—fear, stupid and beast-like. It was Mr. Mellaire’s
watch. As luck would have it, I was reading Boas’s _Mind of Primitive
Man_ when I heard the rush of feet over my head. The _Elsinore_ was
hove to on the port tack at the time, under very short canvas. I was
wondering what emergency had brought the watch upon the poop, when I
heard another rush of feet that meant the second watch. I heard no
pulling and hauling, and the thought of mutiny flashed across my mind.
Still nothing happened, and, growing curious, I got into my sea-boots,
sheepskin coat, and oilskin, put on my sou’wester and mittens, and went
on deck. Mr. Pike had already dressed and was ahead of me. Captain
West, who in this bad weather sleeps in the chart-room, stood in the
lee doorway of the house, through which the lamplight streamed on the
frightened faces of the men.
Those of the ’midship-house were not present, but every man Jack of the
forecastle, with the exception of Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs, as I
afterwards learned, had joined in the flight aft. Andy Fay, who
belonged in the watch below, had calmly remained in his bunk, while
Mulligan Jacobs had taken advantage of the opportunity to sneak into
the forecastle and fill his pipe.
“What is the matter, Mr. Pike?” Captain West asked.
Before the mate could reply, Bert Rhine snickered:
“The devil’s come aboard, sir.”
But his snicker was palpably an assumption of unconcern he did not
possess. The more I think over it the more I am surprised that such
keen men as the gangsters should have been frightened by what had
occurred. But frightened they were, the three of them, out of their
bunks and out of the precious surcease of their brief watch below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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