Ebook The Mutiny of the Elsinore mobi,epub

-like, and as he shuffled and dragged his brogans over the deck he paused every several steps to place both hands on his abdomen and execute a queer, pressing, lifting movement. Months were to pass, in which I saw him do this thousands of times, ere I learned that there was nothing the matter with him and that his action was purely a habit. His face reminded me of the Man with the Hoe, save that it was unthinkably and abysmally stupider. And his name, as I was to learn, of all names was Sundry Buyers. And he was bosun of the fine American sailing-ship Elsinore--rated one of the finest sailing-ships afloat! Of this group of aged men and boys that moved the luggage along I saw only one, called Henry, a youth of sixteen, who approximated in the slightest what I had conceived all sailors to be like. He had come off a training ship, the mate told me, and this was his first voyage to sea. His face was keen-cut, alert, as were his bodily movements, and he wore sailor-appearing clothes with sailor-seeming grace. In fact, as I was to learn, he was to be the only sailor-seeming creature fore and aft. The main crew had not yet come aboard, but was expected at any moment, the mate vouchsafed with a snarl of ominous expectancy. Those already on board were the miscellaneous ones who had shipped themselves in New York without the mediation of boarding-house masters. And what the crew itself would be like God alone could tell--so said the mate. Shorty, the Japanese (or Malay) and Italian half-caste, the mate told me, was an able seaman, though he had come out of steam and this was his first sailing voyage. "Ordinary seamen!" Mr. Pike snorted, in reply to a question. "We dont carry Landsmen!--forget it! Every clodhopper an cow-walloper these days is an able seaman. Thats the way they rank and are paid. The merchant service is all shot to hell. There aint no more sailors. They all died years ago, before you were born even." I could smell the raw whiskey on the mates breath. Yet he did not stagger nor show any signs of intoxication. Not until afterward was I to know that his willingness to talk was most unwonted and was where the liquor gave him away. "Itd a-ben a grace had I died years ago," he said, "rather than to a- lived to see sailors an ships pass away from the sea." "But I understand the Elsinore is considered one of the finest," I urged. "So she is . . . to-day. But what is she?--a damned cargo-carrier. She aint built for sailin, an if she was there aint no sailors left to sail her. Lord! Lord! The old clippers! When I think of em!-- The Gamecock, Shootin Star, Flyin Fish, Witch o the Wave, Staghound, Harvey Birch, Canvas-back, Fleetwing, Sea Serpent, Northern Light! An when I think of the fleets of the tea-clippers that used to load at Hong Kong an race the Eastern Passages. A fine sight! A fine sight!" I was interested. Here was a man, a live man. I was in no hurry to go into the cabin, where I knew Wada was unpacking my things, so I paced up and down the deck with the huge Mr. Pike. Huge he was in all conscience, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned, and, despite the profound stoop of his shoulders, fully six feet in height. "You are a splendid figure of a man," I complimented. "I was, I was," he muttered sadly, and I caught the whiff of whiskey strong on the air. I stole a look at his gnarled hands. Any finger would have made three of mine. His wrist would have made three of my wrist. "How much do you weigh?" I asked. "Two hundred an ten. But in my day, at my best, I tipped the scales close to two-forty." "And the Elsinore cant sail," I said, returning to the subject which had roused him. "Ill take you even, anything from a pound of tobacco to a months wages, she wont make it around in a hundred an fifty days," he answered. "Yet Ive come round in the old Flyin Cloud in eighty-nine days--eighty-nine days, sir, from Sandy Hook to Frisco. Sixty men forard that was men, an eight boys, an drive! drive! drive! Three hundred an seventy-four miles for a days run under tgallantsails, an in the squalls eighteen knots o line not enough to time her. Eighty-nine days--never beat, an tied once by the old Andrew Jackson nine years afterwards. Them was the days!" "When did the Andrew Jackson tie her?" I asked, because of the growing suspicion that he was "having" me. "In 1860," was his prompt reply. "And you sailed in the Flying Cloud nine years before that, and this is 1913--why, that was sixty-two years ago," I charged. "And I was seven years old," he chuckled. "My mother was stewardess on the Flyin Cloud. I was born at sea. I was boy when I was twelve, on the Herald o the Morn, when she made around in ninety-nine days--half the crew in irons most o the time, five men lost from aloft off the Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken square off, knuckle-dusters an belayin-pins flyin, three men shot by the officers in one day, the second mate killed dead an no one to know who done it, an drive! drive! drive! ninet