Fire Mountain Part 20

"I suppose the police are looking for us?" ventured Martin.

"Not likely," a.s.sured the other. "We are safe away, at any rate. But I doubt if they have even heard of the _Coha.s.set_. The denizens of that groggery would have given no evidence against us--they are themselves too deeply implicated. Also, shooting affrays are common enough on the Frisco waterfront, even gunfights of such magnitude as we indulged in. The police will forget all about it within a week's time.

"Of course, if we had left you behind, to be arrested, the consequences might have been serious enough for you, providing you did not have money or influence. That is the main reason we brought you to sea with us. But as it is, a dead or wounded j.a.p does not amount to much in Frisco, and the affair will have slipped men's minds long ere we see Market Street again."

"But--I think I killed that man, Spulvedo!" urged Martin, with a qualm at the recollection.

"A good job if you did," was the reply. "He was a notorious scoundrel.

If you snuffed him out, I suspect the police would feel inclined to vote you a medal. But don't feel badly about that incident, Blake.

Remember, you dropped him in self-defense."

"Gentlemen!" broke in Ruth suddenly. "We will have to adjourn this meeting till another time. Seven bells went some time ago. I have just time to get my coffee and relieve the bosun by midnight."

"What--the watch gone!" cried the captain. "But, la.s.s, you have had no rest."

"Small matter," a.s.sented the girl, rising. "I'll make up for it. Is there any change in course, captain?"

"No, make all the westing we can," said the captain. "If this breeze will only hold a couple of days longer, we'll pick up the trades. Then for the pa.s.sage!"

"But--a second!" exclaimed Little Billy. "We have not yet a.s.signed our new brother to his duties. You know, Blake, there are no drones in the happy family. Now, I suggest, you are eminently qualified to a.s.sist the hard-driven steward."

A hearty laugh from the girl and the old man checked the hunchback's speech.

"No, you are not going to sluff your job upon poor Mr. Blake's shoulders!" cried Ruth. "That is--unless he wishes to become a steward."

"I want to be a sailor," Martin a.s.serted emphatically.

"Well said, lad--I know you have mettle," commented Captain Dabney.

"But it means work. You cannot learn a sailor's work by pacing a p.o.o.p-deck."

"I am more than willing to work--common sailor work," said Martin.

"Well, we'll a.s.sign you to a watch," said the old man. "Of course, you will live aft. Keep your present berth with Billy. You had better join the starboard watch, I think. The bosun is a great hand to break in a greenhorn."

But Martin objected to this disposition. He was watching Ruth. She was b.u.t.toning her pea-coat around her throat, preparatory to braving the raw night. There was, he dared to think, a welcome twinkle, a meaning message, in the sidewise glance she shot at him.

"I would rather be in the mate's watch," said Martin.

The captain grinned, Little Billy chuckled and muttered something about a "sheep to the slaughter," and the mate rewarded him with a flash of white teeth.

"I'll be glad to have you in my watch," she said. "But remember--it is all work and no play! I keep strict discipline in my watch!"

Martin then proposed to commence straightway his seaman's career, by standing the impending watch, by accompanying Ruth on deck. Thereupon his officer voiced her first command:

"I don't want you blundering about the decks to-night with that sore head. Time enough for you to start in the morning; after breakfast I'll examine the wound, and if it looks well I'll turn you to. Also, you need to visit the slop-chest." She pointed to his once natty, now bedraggled, business suit. "You are hardly dressed for facing weather.

Billy will outfit you in the morning. Meanwhile, turn in and sleep."

CHAPTER XII

THE Pa.s.sAGE

It was the night of April 29, 1915, that Martin Blake, clerk, sat at the _Coha.s.set's_ cabin table and heard the tale of Fire Mountain. It was on the morning of July 6, 1915, that Martin Blake, seaman, bent over the _Coha.s.set's_ foreroyal yardarm and fisted the canvas, with the shrill whistle of the squall in his ears.

The interim had fas.h.i.+oned a new Martin Blake. In the bronzed and active figure, dungaree clad, sheath-knife on hip, who so casually balanced himself on the swaying foot-rope, there was little in common, so far as outward appearance went, with the dapper, white-faced clerk of yore.

He completed furling the sail. Then he straightened and swept the sea with keen, puckered eyes. It was a scrutiny that was rewarded. Ahead, across the horizon sky, floated a dark smudge, like the smoke-trail of a steamer, and beneath it was a black speck. It was no s.h.i.+p, but land, he knew. It was the expected landfall, the volcanic island, there ahead, and he, of all of the s.h.i.+p's company, first perceived it from his lofty perch.

He sent the welcome hail to the deck below----

"Land ho!"

He leaned over the lee yard-arm, grasped a back-stay, and commenced a rapid and precipitous descent to the deck. A few months before, he would have descended laboriously and fearfully by way of the shrouds; sliding down a backstay would then have rubbed his palms raw, and visited giddiness upon him. But now his hands were rope calloused, and his wits height proof. He was now the equal, for agility and daring, with any man on the s.h.i.+p. He had won, without much trouble, a seaman's niche on the s.h.i.+p.

In truth, Martin was to the life born, and he took to the sea like a duck to water. He won quickly through the inevitable series of mishaps that rubbed the greenhorn mark away; and he gleefully measured his progress by his ever-growing ability to outpull, outclimb, and outdare the polyglot denizens of the brigantine's forecastle.

He had expert coaching to urge his education on apace. He knew the many ropes and their various offices before he was two weeks on board; and he was able to move about aloft, by day or night, quite fearlessly.

By the end of the first month he was standing his regular wheel trick.

And, as the weeks pa.s.sed, he gained more than a cursory knowledge of the leverages and wind surfaces that controlled and propelled his little floating world.

He applied himself earnestly to master his new craft. It was the life he had l.u.s.ted for, and the mere physical s.p.a.ciousness of his new outlook was a delight. He contrasted it with his former city-cramped, office-ridden existence.

He rejoiced openly as each day lengthened the distance between him and his former slavery. On the very first day he had mounted to the deck to commence work, the morning after the meeting in the cabin, he had enacted a ceremony that, to his own rollicking mind, placed a definite period to his old life. He came on deck bravely bedecked in his new slop-chest clothes, a suit of s.h.i.+ny, unstained dungarees.

He held carefully in his hands a black derby hat, and a starched collar of the "choker" variety. He carried the articles to the s.h.i.+p's side and cast them into the sea. Then he declaimed his freedom.

"They were the uniform of my servitude--badges of my clerkhood! I have finished with them. Into the ocean they go! Now--ho for the life on the billowy wave!"

"Very good!" the mate applauded his act and words. Her next words were an incisive and frosty command. "You may commence at once your life on the billowy wave! Go for'rd and stand by with the watch!"

Martin went forward, and he began to learn the why and wherefore of things in his new world. He learned to jump to an order called out by that baffling and entrancing person aft, learned to haul in unison, to laugh at hard knocks and grin at pain.

He learned to cultivate humility, and to mount the p.o.o.p on the lee side when duty took him there. He learned the rigid etiquette of the sea, and addressed that blooming, desirable woman with the formal prefix, "mister."

His body toughened, his mind broadened, his soul expanded. But his heart also expanded, and it was unruly. Ruth was such a jolly chum--off duty. On duty, she was a martinet. Below, she was the merry life of the "happy family." On deck, she lorded it haughtily from the high place of the p.o.o.p, and answered to the name of "mister"!

The _Coha.s.set_, Martin discovered, was manned by a total of eighteen souls. Besides the five persons aft, there were a sailmaker, a carpenter, a Chinese cook and ten forecastle hands. His first impression--that the crew was composed of wild men--was partially borne out. Of the ten men in the forecastle, but four were Caucasian--two Portuguese from the Azores, a Finn and an Australian--and the quartet were almost as outlandish in their appearance as the other six of the crew.

The remaining six were foregathered from the length and breadth of the Pacific. There was a Maori from New Zealand, a Koriak tribesman from Kamchatka, two Kanakas, a stray from Ponape, and an Aleut. The six natives, Martin discovered, had all been with the s.h.i.+p for years, were old retainers of Captain Dabney. The four white men, and the cook, who rejoiced in the name of Charley Bo Yip, had been newly s.h.i.+pped in San Francisco.

Martin's watchmates were five of the natives. Martin suspected they composed the mate's watch because they were all old, tractable hands.

They were the Maori, Rimoa, a strapping, middle-aged man, Oomak, the Koriak, the man with the tattooed and scarified face whom Martin had seen at the wheel the first day at sea, the two Kanakas, and the Aleut.

They talked to each other, he found, in a strange pidgin--a speech composed mainly of verbs and profanity, a language that would have shocked a purist to a premature grave. But Martin found his watchmates to be a brave, capable, though rather silent group.

Martin's initiation into the joys of sea life was a strenuous one. The gale that had sent the _Coha.s.set_ flying from San Francisco, died out, as Ruth had predicted. Followed a couple of days of calm.

Then came another heavy wind, in the boatswain's words, "a snortin'