Chapter II

She was a two-thousand-ton, double topgallant and skysail yard ship--one of the larger, slower type that succeeded the old Cape Horn clippers, but a ship that even a naval officer might feel proud to command; and Jack was certainly proud of her. And as we--his mother and myself--watched him pacing the poop-deck as sail was being made, giving an occasional quiet order to the helmsman or sending a brazen roar forward to the mate on the forecastle, we were frankly proud of him. Six feet tall to an inch, straight as a man may be, with a chest almost as deep as his shoulders were broad, sunburned and brown-eyed, with only a well-kept mustache to relieve the boyishness of his face, he presented a picture that brought light into the eyes and a smile to the face of that mother as she stood beside me. But a contrasting look of pain followed, and I knew the thought behind was of the other boy, of whom we never spoke.

The first mate was a huge, hairy, brutal sort of man, uneducated beyond the mechanical formulas of navigation, but with a large and healthy conception of his own value to the ship and her people. The second mate was like him to a lesser extent--not quite so big, nor brutal, nor profane, and with less of the art of navigation.

At eight bells of that first evening out the men were chosen into watches by the two mates much as boys choose sides in a ball game, and my wife and I drew amidships to witness the scene. They were an unkempt lot in the moonlight, mostly foreigners, and clad in greasy and tarry garments of nondescript pattern and shape. Each called out his name as he was chosen, moving to starboard or port, according to the watch he now belonged to, and when the job was half done Jack, smoking a cigar, joined us and critically scanned his crew.

"Relieve the wheel and lookout," said the mate, when the last man was chosen. "That'll do the watch."

"Wait!" said Jack sharply, tossing away his cigar and stepping toward the dispersing men. "I've something to say to you."

They halted and drew together.

"This is my second voyage in the merchant marine," he continued. "The last was my first. Before that I was in the navy, with the power of the law and the Charlestown prison behind me in every order I gave to a man. As a consequence of this condition no man-o'-war's man ever refuses to obey an order, and few of them ever get to that prison. But I brought such ideas with me when I took command of this ship. I spoke kindly to my men and treated them well. I forbade my mates to bully or strike them, and even ironed my second mate for ignoring my wishes. I took sick and injured men aft and nursed them. But I found that I had made a mistake. Merchant sailors can be jailed as easily as man-o-war's men, but they don't know it. Knowing nothing, they fear nothing until it comes to them. Orders were disobeyed on that voyage, and each man was his own boss; ropes were never coiled up without an argument, gear was rove off wrong, earings were passed farm-fashion, canvas was lost, marlinespikes, capstan-bars, and draw-buckets went overboard, tar-pots were dropped from aloft on a clean deck, and a paint-brush came down on my head. Discipline went to the dogs, and I nearly lost my ship. Now there'll be none of that here. As I won't have time nor inclination to appeal to the law if you make trouble I mean to forestall it. I've shipped mates that'll break your heads on the first provocation, and they have my instructions to do it. So watch out. You'll get plenty of grub while you deserve it, but when you don't it'll be all hands in the afternoon and the government allowance. That'll do."

"That's all right, Cappen," said a big Irishman in a voice of rage. "This is a Yankee ship, an' ye needn't ha' said all that. But I tell ye, if ye'll pick out able seamen yerself in the shippin'-office, 'stid o' lettin' a shippin'-master gi' ye barbers an' waiters that don't know port from sta'board ye'll ha' no throuble wi' yer min. Luk at this ye've gi'n us for a watchmate." He seized a man standing near, swung him at arm's length, and flung him, spinning on his feet, full against the first mate. That worthy, shocked out of his better judgment, instead of rebuking the Irishman, drew back his mighty fist and struck the staggering man in the face, sending him reeling back toward the place he had come from. He slipped, stumbled, and fell, his head striking the corner of the main hatch. They he lay quiet on the deck.

But a strange thing happened--strange and inconsistent with regard to Jack's just-uttered declaration of his position. No sooner had the mate struck the man than Jack, with a muttered curse, launched himself toward his first officer, and knocked him against the fife-rail, where he clung, choking and clucking. Jack struck him twice, once in the face, once in the body. And now a stranger thing happened. It all occurred so quickly that I could hardly take note, shaky of nerve as I was and hampered by the distressed woman on my arm; but Jack, having struck the mate, and before the still erect victim of the mate and the Irishman had stumbled, had immediately bounded toward the Irishman. But as the luckless fellow's head struck the hatch combing, Jack brought up, and with a low, inarticulate whimper and a face like that of a frightened child looked this way and that, then sped aft toward the poop steps. We followed, while the second mate dispersed the men, and found Jack in a strange condition of terror, unnatural to him, or to any man of his type. His agitated mother endeavored to soothe him, but between her motherly admonitions to Jack came wifely admonitions to me to attend to the poor man who had been so brutally maltreated.

So I went forward, passing on the way the two mates, the one assisting the other. As I passed, the second mate called out that the other's jaw-bone and some ribs were broken, and that my services were needed; but, feeling enough of indignation to make the brutal first mate the last on my list of patients, I went on, and found the mistreated sailor in the port forecastle, where he had been carried by his shipmates. He was sitting on a chest, just recovering his senses, and looking about in a dazed manner out of swollen and blackened eyes. As the men parted to make way for me Jack's mighty voice sounded from amidships: "Weather main-brace, here. Where's the watch? Where's the second mate? Attend to your yards, sir." Obviously, Jack was himself again.

"I didn't mean to hit the mate wi' him, sorr," said the big Irishman deferentially, "an' it was a dom shame for the mate to slug him like that, even if he was no sailor. But the skipper's a brick. Be-gob, he'll 'tind to that bunco mate."

"Are you hurt much?" I asked of the victim. He looked into my face, then, rising, burst forth:

"Doctor, doctor, take me away from here. Take me out of this place. They hit me and curse me because I don't know things. I don't know why I am here--I don't know where I am." The broken voice became a wail. "I'm on the water again and I'll drown, I know I'll drown. Oh, doctor"--he seized my arm--"I'm Jim; don't you know me, doctor?"

"Jim?" I queried. "Jim who?" and turned him to the light.

"Look, doctor. You did this, they told me, when I was a baby." He pulled up the right sleeve of a ragged, filthy shirt, and showed me a dot of india ink just below the elbow.

"For God's sake, are you Jim, the twin brother of Jack? We all thought you were dead--drowned with your father."

"He was drowned, doctor. I floated on a piece of board and was saved. I went crazy for a while, and then--I never could get along. I couldn't get work, and things got worse and worse, and then I took to the road, and then I came to New York, and--I guess I got drunk, and got here."

"Shanghaied, that's what ye were," grunted the Celt.

I looked closely at Jim's face. Aside from the facial angle and the color of his eyes there was no resemblance to the brother who, at seven years of age, had been his counterpart. A badly kept beard added to the discrepancy, no doubt, but the whole atmosphere of the man was different. There was a slight reminder of Jack in the lower tones of the voice, but its usual note was a whine, and in his whole bearing was the slinking aspect of a vagrant of the worst kind. Certainly, I could not take this human wreck into the presence of that mother and brother.

"You must stay here for a while, Jim," I said firmly. "You must not come near the other end of the ship unless I give you permission, and I will see that you are protected and cared for. Understand? Stay here with these men, and I will see you every day. What is your name?" I asked the Irishman.

"Limerick, sorr--aboard ship."

"Limerick, you seem to be a man, and a square one. This is an old friend of mine--and of my family--but you can understand that he must stay here. See that he is well treated, and I will make it right with you."

"I will that, sorr," answered Limerick promptly, "though I belong in the other watch an' ought to be on deck now. I don't wonder ye're ashamed o' him, sorr. I'm ashamed meself. Just the same I'll break the sconce o' the first mon that lays hands on him. I'll do that for ye, sorr. I know a gintleman, an' ye're one, or ye wouldn't be here in this fo'c'sle."

I went aft and joined Jack and his mother on the poop, forgetting the mate's need of my services in the mood I was in.

"Dad," said Jack, addressing me by the name he had called me since I had become his stepfather, "you're a physician. Tell me what ails me. I'm all right now, but I went for the mate for doing just what I had told him to do, and then went into a blue funk over it--frightened out of my senses. But what at? I'm not afraid of any man aboard."

"How is the poor man that was struck?" asked my wife anxiously.

"He's all right," I answered promptly, understanding now her instinctive concern, and inclined to smile at Jack's palpable resentment of it.

"But what's the matter with _me_?" he demanded sharply.

"I don't know, Jack," I said. "I'll have to think it out."

His mention of the mate had recalled to me the plight he was in, and I went to him, finding that the second mate's diagnosis was correct. Two ribs and his jaw-bone were smashed as though from the kick of a mule. I bound him in plasters, and stoically endured his mumbled profanity; then, first seeing my wife to her berth in the after cabin, and thoroughly exhausted by the exciting experiences, I took a sleeping-draught to quiet my nerves and went to my own berth in the forward cabin.

But, perhaps because of the intensity of the strain upon my nervous system, perhaps because of my strong interest in the problem, the sleeping-draught merely threw me into a logical, inductive frame of mind that kept me awake all night, thinking it out. And it was daylight before the problem took shape. After years of separation the twins again shared each other's emotions.