Chapter XIV: Bill Hayden Comes to the End of His Voyage

I was ejected from the galley as abruptly and strangely as I had been drawn into it. The candle went out at a breath from the great round lips; the big hand again closed on my shoulder and lifted me bodily from my chair. The door opened and shut, and there was I, dazed by my strange experience and bewildered by the story I had heard, outside on the identical spot from which I had been snatched ten minutes before.

In my ears the negro's parting message still sounded, "Dis nigger wouldn't tell a boy one word, no sah, not dis nigger. If he was to tell a boy jest one leetle word, dat boy, he might lay hisself out ready foh a fight. Yass, sah."

For a long time I puzzled over the whole extraordinary experience. It was so like a dream, that only the numbness of my arm where the negro's great fist had gripped it convinced me that the happenings of the night were real. But as I pondered, I found more and more significance in the cook's incoherent remarks, and became more and more convinced that their incoherence was entirely artful. Obviously, first of all, he was trying to pacify his conscience, which troubled him for breaking the promise of secrecy that he probably had given the steward, from whom he must have learned the things at which he had hinted. Also he had established for himself an alibi of a kind, if ever he should be accused of tattling about affairs in the cabin.

That Captain Falk had promised to divide the money among the crew, I long had suspected; consequently that part of the cook's revelations did not surprise me. But the picture he gave of affairs in the cabin, disconnected though it was, caused me grave concern. After all, what could Roger do to preserve the owners' property or to carry out their orders? Captain Falk had all the men on his side, except me and perhaps poor old Bill Hayden. Indeed, I feared for Roger's own safety if he had detected that rascally pair in falsifying the log; he then would be a dangerous man when we all went back to Salem together. I stopped as if struck: what assurance had I that we should go back to Salem together--or singly, for that matter? There was no assurance whatever, that all, or any one of us, would ever go back to Salem. If they wished to make way with Roger, and with me too, for that matter, the green tropical seas would keep the secret until the end of time.

I am not ashamed that I frankly was white with fear of what the future might bring. You can forgive in a boy weaknesses of which a man grown might have been guilty. But as I watched the phosphorescent sea and the stars from which I tried to read our course, I gradually overcame the terror that had seized me. I think that remembering my father and mother, and my sister, for whom I suspected that Roger cared more than I, perhaps, could fully realize, helped to compose me; and I am sure that the thought of the Roger I had known so long,--cool, bold, resourceful, with that twinkle in his steady eyes--did much to renew my courage. When eight bells struck and some one called down the hatch, "Larbowlines ahoy," and the dim figures of the new watch appeared on deck, and we of the old watch went below, I was fairly ready to face whatever the next hours might bring.

"Roger and I against them all," I thought, feeling very much a martyr, "unless," I mentally added, "Bill Hayden joins us." At that I actually laughed, so that Blodgett, prowling restlessly in the darkness, asked me crossly what was the matter. I should have been amazed and incredulous if anyone had told me that poor Bill Hayden was to play the deciding part in our affairs.

He lay now in his bunk, tossing restlessly and muttering once in a while to himself. When I went over and asked if there was anything that I could do for him, he raised himself on his elbow and stared at me more stupidly than ever. It seemed to come to him slowly who I was. After a while he made out my face by the light of the dim, swinging lantern, and thanked me, and said if I would be so good as to give him a drink of water--He never completed the sentence; but I brought him a drink carefully, and when he had finished it, he thanked me again and leaned wearily back.

His face seemed dark by the lantern-light, and I judged that it was still flushed. Muttering something about a "pain in his innards," he apparently went to sleep, and I climbed into my own bunk. The lantern swung more and more irregularly, and Bill tossed with ever-increasing uneasiness. When at last I dozed off, my own sleep was fitful, and shortly I woke with a start.

Others, too, had waked, and I heard questions flung back and forth:--

"Who was that yelled?"

"Did you hear that? Tell me, did you hear it?"

Some one spoke of ghosts,--none of us laughed,--and Neddie Benson whimpered something about the lady who told fortunes. "She said the light man and the dark man would make no end o' trouble," he cried; "and he--"

"Keep still," another voice exclaimed angrily. "It was Bill Hayden," the voice continued. "He hollered."

Getting out of my bunk, I crossed the forecastle. "Bill," I said, "are you all right?"

He started up wildly. "Don't hit me!" he cried. "That wasn't what I said-- it--I don't remember _just_ what I said, because I ain't good at remembering, but it wasn't that--don't-oh! oh!--I _know_ it wasn't that."

Two of the men joined me, moving cautiously for the ship was pitching now in short, heavy seas.

"What's that he's saying?" one of them asked.

Before I could answer, Bill seemed suddenly to get control of himself. "Oh," he moaned. "I've got such a pain in my innards! I've got a rolling, howling old pain in my innards."

There was little that we could do, so we smoothed his blankets and went back to our own. The Island Princess was pitching more fiercely than ever now, and while I watched the lantern swing and toss before I went to sleep, I heard old Blodgett saying something about squalls and cross seas. There was not much rest for us that night. No sooner had I hauled the blankets to my chin and closed my eyes, than a shout came faintly down to us, "All-hands--on deck!"

Some one called, "Ay, ay," and we rolled out again wearily--all except Bill Hayden whose fitful tossing seemed to have settled at last into deep sleep.

Coming on deck, we found the ship scudding under close-reefed maintopsail and reefed foresail, with the wind on her larboard quarter. A heavy sea having blown up, all signs indicated that a bad night was before us; and just as we emerged from the hatch, she came about suddenly, which brought the wind on the starboard quarter and laid all aback.

In the darkness and rain and wind, we sprang to the ropes. Mr. Kipping was forward at his post on the forecastle and Captain Falk was on the quarter-deck. As the man at the wheel put the helm hard-a-starboard, we raised the fore tack and sheet, filled the foresail and shivered the mainsail, thus bringing the wind aft again, where we met her with the helm and trimmed the yards for her course. For the moment we were safe, but already it was blowing a gale, and shortly we lay to, close-reefed, under what sails we were carrying.

In a lull I heard Blodgett, who was pulling at the ropes by my side, say to a man just beyond him, "Ay, it's a good thing for _us_ that Captain Falk got command. We'd never make our bloody fortunes under the old officers."

As the wind came again and drowned whatever else may have been said, I thought to myself that they never would have. Plainly, Captain Falk and Kipping had won over the simple-minded crew, which was ready to follow them with never a thought of the chance that that precious pair might run off with the spoils themselves and leave the others in the lurch.

But now Kipping's indescribably disagreeable voice, which we all by this time knew so well, asked, "Has anybody seen that sojering old lubber, Hayden?"

"Ay, ay, sir," Blodgett replied. "He's below sick."

"Sick?" said the mild voice. "Sick is he? Supposing Blodgett, you go below and bring him on deck. He ain't sick, he's sojering."

"But, sir,--" Blodgett began.

"But what?" roared Kipping. His mildness changed to fierceness. "_You go_!" He snapped out the words, and Blodgett went.

Poor stupid old Bill!

When he appeared, Blodgett had him by the arm to help him.

"You sojering, bloody fool," Kipping cried; "do you think I'm so blind I can't see through such tricks as yours?"

A murmur of remonstrance came from the men, but Kipping paid no attention to it.

"You think, do you, that I ain't on to your slick tricks? Take that."

Bill never flinched.

"So!" Kipping muttered. "So! Bring him aft."

Though heavy seas had blown up, the squalls had subsided, and some of the men, for the moment unoccupied, trailed at a cautious distance after the luckless Bill. We could not hear what those on the quarterdeck said; but Blodgett, who stood beside me and stared into the darkness with eyes that I was convinced could see by night, cried suddenly, "He's fallen!"

Then Captain Falk called, "Come here, two or three of you, and take this man below."

Old Bill was moaning when we got there. "Sure," he groaned, "I've got a rolling--howling--old Barney's bull of a pain in my innards." But when we laid him in his bunk, he began to laugh queerly, and he seemed to pretend that he was talking to his little wee girl; for we heard him saying that her old father had come to her and that he was never going to leave her again.

To me--only a boy, you must remember--it was a horrible experience, even though I did not completely understand all that was happening; and to the others old Bill's rambling talk seemed to bring an unnamed terror.

All night he restlessly tossed, though he soon ceased his wild talking and slept lightly and fitfully. The men watching him were wakeful, too, and as I lay trying to sleep and trying not to see the swaying lantern and the fantastic shadows, I heard at intervals snatches of their low conversation.

"They hadn't ought to 'a' called him out. It warn't human. A sick man has got _some_ rights," one of the men from Boston repeated interminably. He seemed unable to hold more than one idea at a time.

Then Blodgett would say, "Ay, it don't seem right. But we've all got to stand by the skipper. That's how we'll serve our ends best. It don't do to get too much excited."

I imagined that Blodgett's voice did not sound as if he were fully convinced of the doctrine he was preaching.

"Ay," the other would return, "but they hadn't ought to 'a' called him out. It warn't human. A sick man has got _some_ rights, and he was allers quiet."

They talked on endlessly, while I tried in vain to sleep and while poor Bill tossed away, getting no good from the troubled slumber that the Lord sent him.

No sooner, it seemed to me, did I actually close my eyes than I woke and heard him moaning, "Water--a--drink--of--water."

The others by then had left him, so I got up and fetched water, and he muttered something more about the "pain in his innards." Then my watch was called and I went on deck with the rest.

For the most part it was a day of coarse weather. Now intermittent squalls from the southwest swept upon us with lightning and thunder, driving before them rain in solid sheets; now the ship danced in choppy waves, with barely enough wind to give her steerage-way and with a warm, gentle drizzle that wet us to the skin and penetrated into the forecastle, where blankets and clothing soon became soggy and uncomfortable. But the greater part of the time we lurched along in a gale of wind, with an occasional dash of rain, which we accepted as a compromise between those two worse alternatives, the cloudbursts that accompanied the squalls, and the enervating warm drizzle.

That Bill Hayden did not stand watch with the others, no one, apparently, noticed. The men were glad enough to forget him, I think, and the officers let his absence pass, except Davie Paine, who found opportunity to inquire of me secretly about him and sadly shook his gray head at the tidings I gave.

Below we could not forget him. I heard the larboard watch talking of it when they relieved us; and no sooner had we gone below in turn than Blodgett cried, "Look at old Bill! His face is all of a sweat."

He was up on his elbow when we came down, staring as if he had expected some one; and when he saw who it was, he kept his eyes on the hatch as if waiting for still another to come. Presently he fell back in his bunk. "Oh, I've got such a pain in my innards," he moaned.

By and by he began to talk again, but he seemed to have forgotten his pain completely, for he talked about doughnuts and duff, and Sundays ashore when he was a little shaver, and going to church, and about the tiny wee girl on the bank of the Merrimac who would be looking for her dad to come home, and lots of things that no one would have thought he knew. He seemed so natural now and so cheerful that I was much relieved about him, and I whispered to Blodgett that I thought Bill was better. But Blodgett shook his head so gravely that I was frightened in spite of my hopes, and we lay there, some of us awake, some asleep, while Bill rambled cheerily on and the lantern swung with the motion of the ship.

To-day I remember those watches below at that time in the voyage as a succession of short unrestful snatches of sleep broken by vivid pictures of the most trivial things--the swinging lantern, the distorted shadows the muttered comments of the men, Bill leaning on his elbow at the edge of his bunk and staring toward the hatch as if some one long expected were just about to come. I do not pretend to understand the reason, but in my experience it is the trifling unimportant things that after a time of stress or tragedy are most clearly remembered.

When next I woke I heard the bell--_clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang, clang_--faint and far off. Then I saw that Blodgett was sitting on the edge of his bunk, counting the strokes on his fingers. When he had finished he gravely shook his head and nodded toward Bill who was breathing harder now. "He's far gone," Blodgett whispered. "He ain't going to share in no split-up at Manila. He ain't going to put back again to India when we've got rid of the cargo. His time's come."

I didn't believe a word that Blodgett said then, but I sat beside him as still as the grave while the forecastle lantern nodded and swung as casually as if old Bill were not, for all we knew, dying. By and by we heard the bell again, and some one called from the hatch, "Eight bells! Roll out!"

The very monotony of our life--the watches below and on deck, each like every other, marked off by the faint clanging of the ship's bell--made Bill's sickness seem less dreadful. There is little to thrill a lad or even, after a time, to interest him, in the interminable routine of a long voyage.

When we came on deck Davie Paine looked us over and said, "Where's Bill?"

Blodgett shook his head. Even this simple motion had a sleepy quality that made me think of a cat.

"I'm afraid, sir," he replied, "that Bill has stood his last watch."

"So!" said old Davie, reflectively, in his deep voice, "so!--I was afraid of that." Ignorant though Davie was, and hopelessly incompetent as an officer, he had a certain kindly tolerance, increased, perhaps, by his own recent difficulties, that made him more approachable than any other man in the cabin. After a time he added, "I cal'ate I got to tell the captain." Davie's manner implied that he was taking us into his confidence.

"Yes," Neddie Benson muttered under his breath, "tell the captain! If it wasn't for Mr. Kipping and the captain, Bill would be as able a man this minute as any one of us here. It didn't do to abuse him. He ain't got the spirit to stand up under it."

Davie shuffled away without hearing what was said, and soon, instead of Captain Falk, Mr. Kipping appeared, bristling with anger.

"What's all this?" he snapped, with none of the mildness that he usually affected. "Who says Bill Hayden has stood his last watch? Is mutiny brewing? I'll have you know I'm mate here, legal and lawful, and what's more I'll show you I'm mate in a way that none of you won't forget if he thinks he can try any more of his sojering on me. I'll fix him. You go forward, Blodgett, and drag him out by the scalp-lock."

Blodgett walked off, keeping close to the bulwark, and five minutes later he was back again.

Mr. Kipping grew very red. "Well, my man," he said in a way that made my skin creep, "are you a party to this little mutiny?"

"N-no, sir," Blodgett stammered. "I--he-it ain't no use, he _can't_ come."

The mate looked sternly at Blodgett, and I thought he was going to hit him; but instead, after a moment of hesitation, he started forward alone.

We scarcely believed our eyes.

By and by he came back again, but to us he said nothing. He went into the cabin, and when next we saw him Captain Falk was by his side.

"I don't like the looks of it," Kipping was saying, "I don't at all."

As the captain passed me he called, "Lathrop, go to the galley and get a bucket of hot water."

Running to the deck-house, I thrust my head into the galley and made known my want with so little ceremony that the cook was exasperated. Or so at least his manner intimated.

"You boy," he roared in a voice that easily carried to where the others stood and grinned at my discomfiture, "you boy, what foh you come promulgatin' in on me with 'gimme dis' and 'gimme dat' like Ah wahn't ol' enough to be yo' pa? Ain't you got no manners nohow? You vex me, yass, sah, you vex me. If we gotta have a boy on boa'd ship, why don' dey keep him out of de galley?"

Then with a change of voice that startled me, he demanded in an undertone that must have been inaudible a dozen feet away, "Have things broke? Is de fight on? Has de row started?"

Bewildered, I replied, "Why, no--it's only Bill Hayden."

Instantly he resumed his loud and abusive tone. "Well, if dey gwine send a boy heah foh wateh, wateh he's gotta have. Heah, you wuthless boy, git! Git out of heah!"

Filling a bucket with boiling water, he thrust it into my hand and shoved me half across the deck so roughly that I narrowly escaped scalding myself, then returned to his work, muttering imprecations on the whole race of boys. He was too much of a strategist for me.

When I took the bucket to the forecastle, I found the captain and Mr. Kipping looking at poor old Bill.

"Dip a cloth in the water," the captain said carelessly, "and pull his clothes off and lay the cloth on where it hurts."

I obeyed as well as I could, letting the cloth cool a bit first; and although Bill cried out sharply when it touched his skin, the heat eased him of pain, and by and by he opened his eyes for all the world as if he had been asleep and looked at Captain Falk and said in a scared voice, "In heaven's name, what's happened?"

The captain and Mr. Kipping laughed coldly. It seemed to me that they didn't care whether he lived or died.

Certainly the men of the larboard watch, who were lying in their bunks at the time, didn't like the way the two behaved. I caught the word "heartless" twice repeated.

"Well," said Captain Falk at last, "either he'll live or he'll not. How about it, Mr. Kipping?"

The mate laughed as if he had heard a good joke. "That's one of the truest things ever was said aboard a ship," he replied, in his slow, insincere way. "Yes, sir, it hits the nail on the head going up and coming down."

"Well, then, let's leave him to make up his mind."

So the two went aft together as if they had done a good day's work. But there was a buzz of disapproval in the forecastle when they had gone, and one of the men from Boston, of whom I hitherto had had a very poor opinion, actually got out of his blankets and came over to help me minister to poor Bill's needs.

"It ain't right," he said dipping the cloth in the hot water; "they never so much as gave him a dose of medicine. A man may be only a sailor, but he's worth a dose of medicine. There never come no good of denying poor Jack his pill when he's sick."

"Ay, heartless!" one of the others exclaimed. _"I could tell things if I would."_

That remark, I ask you to remember. The man who made it, the other of the two from Boston, had black hair and a black beard, and a nose that protruded in a big hook where he had broken it years before. It was easy to recognize his profile a long way off because of the peculiar shape of the nose. The remark itself is of little importance, of course; but a story is made up of things that seem to be of little importance, yet really are more significant by far than matters that for the moment are startling.

It was touching to see the solicitude of the men and the clumsy kindness of their efforts to help poor Bill when the captain and the mate had left him. They crowded up to his bunk and smoothed out his blankets and spoke to him more gently than I should have believed possible. So angry were they at the brutality of the two officers, that the coldest and hardest of them all gave the sick man a muttered word of sympathy or an awkward helping hand.

We worked over him, easing him as best we could, while the bell struck the half hours and the hours; and for a while he seemed more comfortable. In a moment of sanity he looked up at me with a sad smile and said, "I wish, lad, I surely wish I could do something for _you_." But long before the watch was over he once more began to talk about the tiny wee girl at Newburyport--"Cute she is as they make 'em," he reiterated weakly, "a-waiting for her dad to come home." And by and by he spoke of his wife, --"a good wife," he called her,--and then he made a little noise in his throat and lay for a long time without moving.

"He's dead," the man from Boston said at last; there was no sound in the forecastle except the rattle of the swinging lantern and the chug-chug of waves.

I was younger than the others and more sensitive, so I went on deck and leaned on the bulwark, looking at the ocean and seeing nothing.

IV

IN WHICH THE TIDE OF OUR FORTUNES EBBS