Chapter V

On Light-ship 67, drifting broad onto the breakers, all hands were perched high in her rigging, safe above any stray seas; all but Nelson and Bowen, who were hanging on to her weather rail forward.

Bowen was the first to realize what the figure on the after end of the tug meant to them. "Heave for here!" he shouted, and Nelson, also awake to the situation, held up one of the torches for a mark.

Nearer and nearer butted the tug. "Stand by!" they heard the call from the forward end of her. Looking up, they could see the shadow against the pilot-house light. "By!" came the echo, and the man astern stepped on to her open quarter and balanced himself to heave.

A note in that answering voice caught Bowen's ear. "Say, Nelson, that's not one of the tug's regular crew!"

"I don't know. I don't t'ink, but he ban a foolish man," replied Nelson--"he should lash himself."

"Stand by with the line!" came again.

"By!" echoed tensely from astern.

"Ready!"

"All ready!"

"When she lifts! Now--w--"

From the top of a sea the line came whistling down to the light-ship rail. "I'll take it," called Bowen, and, loosing his hold of the stay, he reached out and caught the flying line to his breast. "A good throw," he muttered, and hauled it in.

The hawser followed the heaving line, and Nelson and Bowen, with life-lines about them, bent the stubborn end of it around the windlass. It was heavy work, even for two men, on the tumbling, slippery deck, and, that done, they turned, anxiously, to see how the man in the stern of the tug was making out. He was there, back to, bending the thick stubborn bight about the towing bitts with slow, heavy motions. They saw one great sea break over him; and another: but when the seas were past there he was still working away.

"Won't he never mak' him fast?" wailed Nelson.

"Give him time," snapped Bowen. "He's doing well. He's got to do it right. If his end came loose, where would we be? Give him time."

Nelson looked significantly shoreward. "Time?"

"How's she coming, Bud?" they heard then.

"Bud? And that sounds like his voice, too," muttered Bowen.

"Wa-atch out!" Even with the roar of it Nelson and Bowen could hear the warning from the pilot-house to the man in the stern of the tug. A tremendous sea it was and the little _Whist_ went over--over. Over until her side-lights were under. There she held for a moment, started to rise, and then a following sea caught her and overbore her and that time she rolled low enough to take salt water down her funnel.

She came back--after a time. Up, up, nobly; but when they next looked from the light-ship they could see no figure in her stern. Bowen leaned far over the light-ship's rail. Nothing there, but he called to Nelson for the torch, and Nelson let it flare out over the water.

Then Bowen saw him. Almost under the bow of the light-ship he was, and the big torch was throwing a light like blood on his face. "It is him!" cried Bowen.

"Vat iss?" demanded the puzzled Nelson, and then under the light he, too, saw the face in the tossing waters.

Bowen, with a life-line under his arms was already over the side. But his plunge fell short. Nelson heard a sound as of a man's voice smothering, saw a hand raised and lowered, and then into the tossing blackness the lone figure was swept.

Nelson hauled Bowen aboard. When he recovered his first word was, "God, Nelson, that was Harty!"

"Harty, wass it? I don't know him, but he was one goot man."

The big hawser strained and groaned, chocks and bitts crooned their song of stress, the wind whistled its dirge, while out from the breakers the _Whist_ hauled her tow.

To the wheel of the tug Baldwin glanced ahead and behind, pointed her nose for the breakwater, gave her four bells and the jingle, put his mouth to the tube, and answered, "Yes, Pete, that's right--'twas Bud went. And now it's up to you, son. Keep steam on her, and if the hawser holds and nothing else happens, she oughter stagger home all right."

Nothing more happened and the _Whist_ staggered home. The morning light saw her safe to the Navy Yard with the light-ship moored alongside.

Bowen stepped from the light-ship to the tug. Up in the pilot-house he found Baldwin. The sailor was staring through a window, staring out to sea. Bowen waited.

Baldwin turned inboard at last. "I s'pose you're wonderin' how we knew. Well, 'twas Bud passed me the word, and more than that, 'twas Bud broke me out of as promisin' a little game as ever a man sat into. Chips? Enough to fill my service cap afore me, and not all white chips either. And he comes along and just the same as yanks me up by the collar an' says, 'You got to go!' and I had to. And of course where I go Pete goes."

"And a game thing, Baldwin."

"Game hell. It's our trade--Pete's and mine. But it wasn't Bud's. But he was bound to go. And when he went under, when I woke up to it he was gone, I looked out. The sea was still rolling up to the clouds. I sticks my head out the window to cool it, and to myself I says: If there was only somebody else in this watch so I could take five minutes off somewhere and lie down and cry. That's the way I felt about it. Yes, sir, if it wasn't for you fellows behind and good old Pete below, I believe I'd let everything go. Yes, sir, government property or no, I believe I'd a let the old _Whist_ roll up on the beach and been glad to roll up with her. And Bud--" Baldwin came suddenly to a full stop and stared out to sea. After a time he turned and asked: "Did you see him when he went?"

"I did. And that time I grabbed for him and missed and he went by me, he half-turned and looked at me, and I thought he said, 'I never meant it.' Just that I heard, when the sea washed over him, and when he came up again he must've thought that I didn't understand, and he waved one arm. It was like he was saying 'Good-by!'--the way he did it. Yes, he was all right--Harty."

"You betcher he was all right. An' more than all right. As for that, it's a damn poor specimen' that ain't all right when it comes to a show-down. I've known Bud--I can't remember when I didn't know Bud Harty. And, Bowen, he was a better man than you or me. Bud always let you see the worst of himself, but you had to guess at the best of him. Bud, he sure could hate a man--but, son, he could like you a lot better than ever he hated you."

The two men sat and looked out to sea in silence. At last Baldwin, with a heavy sigh? stood up, and, reaching into a locker, brought forth a bottle and two glasses. "I s'pose we oughter try to forget it for awhile. This stuff here, it's against regulations havin' it aboard, but lots of things against regulations never hurt anybody. It was against regulations our takin' out the _Whist_ last night. And when the commandant's back from leave I reckon I'll get mine. For you"--he laid a forefinger against the big rating badge on his coat sleeve--"that I've been shipmates with for fifteen years--off and on--I reckon will be detached. But I've been disrated before and we'll let that pass. But you an' me and Bud, we ain't been the best of friends we used to be since--well, you know when, but you're goin' to drink for him now the toast he wouldn't drink last night, but the toast that if he was here I know he'd drink now, for it's a sure thing that when he went into the breakers he didn't go out of hate. So you drink for Bud, and I'll drink for myself. Here's to you and yours, Bowen, your wife and the baby that's comin'--"

"And that baby--if it's a boy, Baldwin, I'll name after him."

"Will you? God, but he'll like that--Bud'll sure like that. And now, here you go--

"May the wind be always fair for you
Whatever the course you sail!

"An' you an' me and all of us we'll be like we used to be, an' Bud'll like it, I know. An' now one to Bud himself. I know 'twill please him to see us doin' it. Here's to Buddie, Bowen. Is it a go?"

"Let her run!"

"Run it is, and a gale behind her--Christmas to Bud!"

Captain Blaise

Two years now since Mr. Villard had come home, and not a soul on the plantation but believed that at last the new master had given up his mysterious voyages and was home to stay. But one day I had business in Savannah, and while there, hearing that the bark _Nereid_ was in from the West African coast, I strolled down to the river front; and presently I was approached and addressed by the master of the _Nereid_, a seaman-like and rather shrewd-looking man who had a message for Mr. Villard, he said--from the West Coast.

"I am charged to ask him to pass the word to Captain Blaise," said the _Nereid's_ master, "that an old friend of his lies low of fever into Momba. Captain Blaise would know who. We were putting out of Momba lagoon and I was standing by the rail, when a nigger came paddling up and whispered it. Like a breath of night air it was. 'Tell Master Captain that Ubbo bring the word,' said the nigger, and like another breath of wind he passed on. No more than that. A short, very stout, and very black nigger. And I was to pass the word to Mr. Villard, a gentleman of estate near Savannah, Georgia, and if you, sir, will attend to that, my part's done."

After my dinner in town was through with, I rode hard; but it was late night by the time I reached the manor-house. I found him sitting out under the moon, smoking a cheroot as usual, and he continued to smoke immovably for some minutes after I had delivered the message; but by and by he stood up and took to pacing the veranda, and presently, after his fashion, to speak his thoughts aloud.

"A hundred thousand acres and a thousand slaves, good, bad, and indifferent--surely a man does owe a little something to his manorial duties. At least, so all my highly respectable and well-established neighbors tell me. What do you say, Guy?"

"I never gave much thought to the matter, sir."

"No? Well, doubtless you will--some day. But d'y' remember Kingston Harbor, where the black boys dive through the green waters for the silver sixpenny pieces, and Kingston port, where the white roads and the white walls throw back the tropic sun so that it seems twice as hot as it really is--Kingston, Guy--in Jamaica, where the sun sets like a blood-orange salad in a purple dish? D'y' remember, Guy, and the day we were lying into Kingston in the _Bess_ and the word came that my uncle was dead? Aye, you do; but don't you remember how he used to rail against me? To be sure--you were too young. And yet a good old uncle, who gave me never a mild word in his life but left me his all at death."

"And why shouldn't he, sir?"

"Why not? Aye, that is so. Why not? And yet he could have left it to anybody--to you, say."

"Why to me? Who am I?"

"What? Who are you?" He ceased his pacing. "That is so, Guy--who are you? You with the strange, quick blood writ so plain in your countenance that there--"

"Isn't it good blood, sir?"

"Aye, Guy, be sure it is good blood. But often have I thought how he would have stormed if--" He gazed curiously at me.

"If--"

"Aye, if--but no matter." He resumed his nervous pacing back and forth, back and forth, hands in pockets, head up, chin out, and face turned always toward the river, past the moss-hung cypress trees to the yellow Savannah flowing swiftly beyond. The salt tide-water made as far as Villard Landing, and when it was in full flood, as now, it brought the smell of the sea strongly with it.

"No matter that now, Guy. A good old soul, my uncle, d'y' see; but the blood was everything to him. And he put it in the bond and I am bound by it: that only the lawful issue, a son of the house, shall inherit. 'I'll have no strange derelict child inherit my estate.' His own words. So this fair estate, lacking lawful issue of my body or my old uncle's son--and he is dead--it goes out of the family. Oh, a stormy, intolerant, but well-meaning old uncle, who would have none of his property left to--Oh, but not that, Guy--no, no, lad." He laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. "No, no, lad, you must not take that to yourself; for you are, no fear, honest born."

"I've waited long for you to tell me even that. Won't you tell me more, sir?"

"Enough for now. But whatever my uncle thought or wished, here, Guy, is an estate to your hand to enjoy. What d'y' say, eh, to the life of a Southern gentleman on his plantation? A hundred thousand acres, a thousand slaves, a stable of the horses you love so, upland and river bottom to hunt, dancing, riding, balls, the city in winter. Is not that something better than the hard, uncertain sea, Guy?"

He had paused for my answer, but I made none. He was standing motionless, except for the backward toss of his head and the deep inhalation, three or four times, of the briny air from the flooding river. There was disappointment in his voice when he took up the talk again.

"Oh, Guy, between us two what a difference! I was born ashore, you at sea, and yet

"'It's you for the back of a charging barb,
And me for the deck of a heaving brig!'"

In a lower voice he repeated the couplet, and was plainly vastly pleased with it. "Faith, and I wonder is that my own, or something I read somewhere. Something of the lilt of a Scotch strathspey to 't, shouldn't you say? You know more of such things. What d'y' say--shall I claim that for my own, Guy?"

"You do, sir, and it's not Homer, nor Dante, nor Keats who will rise up to accuse you of plagiarism."

"Bah! You would no more allow me the merit of a poetic vein than--"

"Poetry, sir?"

"Poetry--why not?" and suddenly bending sidewise and forward, he essayed to obtain a fuller view of my face. And it is true that I was thinking of anything but poetry.

His face darkened as he gazed. "A hundred estates and plantations were nothing to me against--" he burst out passionately, but no further than that. He checked himself and went inside, and with no good-night going.

In the morning he was gone. I waited--one, two, three days, and then I went also--to Savannah, where I saw the _Bess_, but so altered that it needed a lifetime's intimacy to hail her in the stream. Her spars had been sent down and her name was now the _Triton_, and to her bow and stern was clamped the false work which left her with no more outward grace than any clumsy coaster; and by these signs I knew that Mr. Villard of Villard Manor would once more disappear and that Captain Blaise would soon again be sailing the _Dancing Bess_ overseas.

Captain Blaise had not yet come aboard; but whatever ship he sailed the full run of that ship was mine, and I went into his cabin to wait for him.

It was after dark when he came over the side. It was always after dark when he boarded the _Bess_ in home ports. His words were colder than his expression when he addressed me. "And where are you bound?"

"I don't know yet, sir."

"And why not?"

"You have not yet told me, sir, where you are going."

"Suppose it should be the West Coast and the old trade?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but even so I go."

"And leave all that good life you love so at the Manor?"

On his face was still the stern look. I could not stand it longer and I stepped closer to him. "You have not turned against me, sir?"

He softened at once. "Guy, Guy, don't mind me. I meant well. I thought you might prefer the shore to living on the sea."

"I do, sir, but when you are at sea it's at sea I'd rather be too, sir."

"Ah-h--" and when he looked at me like that it mattered not about his law-breaking--he was the bravest, finest man that ever sailed the trades. "Guy, my boy, if you'll have it so, why come along. And once more we'll cruise together; but you won't judge your commander too harshly, will you, Guy?"

We took the ebb down the river. Our papers read for a West India trading voyage, but we lingered not among the West Indies. Four weeks later we raised the Cape Verdes, and an islet rose like a castle from out of the mists. Abreast of a pebbled beach we came to anchor and waited.