The Belted Seas — Themes and Context

II. THE “HEBE MAITLAND.”

III. THE HOTEL HELEN MAR.

IV. SADLER IN PORTATE.

V. END OF THE HOTEL HELEN MAR.

VI. TORRE ANANIAS. WHY CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM DID NOT GO BACK TO GREENOUGH

VII. LIEBCHEN AND THE EWIGWEIBLICHE. THE LOSS OF THE “ANACONDA”.

VIII. SADLER IN SALERATUS. THE GREEN DRAGON PAGODA.

X. THE KIYI PROPOSITION. SADLER CONCLUDED.

XI. THE VOYAGE OF THE “VOODOO”.

XII. THE FLANNAGAN AND IMPERIAL.

XIII. FLANNAGAN AND STEVEY TODD. CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM RETURNS TO GREENOUGH.

XIV. CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM VISITS THE CEMETERY IN ADRIAN. ANDREW AND MADGE MCCULLOCH AND BILLY CORLISS. CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM'S NARRATIVE ENDS.

XV. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE.

The clock struck one. It was the tall standing clock in the front room of Pemberton's Hotel, and Pemberton's stands by the highway that runs by the coast of Long Island Sound. It is near the western edge of the village of Greenough, the gilt cupola of whose eminent steeple is noted by far-passing ships. On the beach are flimsy summer cottages, and hard beside them is the old harbour, guarded by its stone pier. Whalers and merchantmen used to tie up there a hundred years ago, where now only fishing boats come. The village lies back from the shore, and has three divisions, Newport Street, the Green, and the West End; of which the first is a broad street with double roads, and there are the post office and the stores; the second boasts of its gilt-cupolaed church; the third has the two distinctions of the cemetery and Pemberton's.

The hotel is not so far from the beach but you can sit in the front room and hear the surf. It was a small hotel when I used to frequent it, and was kept by Pemberton himself--gone, now, alas! with his venerable dusty hair and red face, imperturbably amiable. He was no seaman. Throughout his long life he had anchored to his own chimneyside, which was a solid and steady chimney, whose red-brick complexion resembled its owner's. His wife was dead, and he ran the hotel much alone, except for the company of Uncle Abimelech, Captain Buckingham, Stevey Todd, and such others as came and went, or townsfolk who liked the anchorage. But the three I have named were seamen, and I always found them by Pemberton's chimney. Abe Dalrimple, or Uncle Abe, was near Pemberton's age, and had lived with him for years; but Stevey Todd and Captain B. were younger, and, as I gathered, they had been with Pemberton only for some months past, the captain boarding, and Stevey Todd maybe boarding as well; I don't know; but I know Stevey Todd did some of the cooking, and had been a ship's cook the main part of his life. It seemed to me they acted like a settled family among them anyway.

Captain Thomas Buckingham was a smallish man of fifty, with a bronzed face, or you might say iron, with respect to its rusty colour, and also it was dark and immobile. But now and then there would come a glimmer and twist in his eyes, sometimes he would start in talking and flow on like a river, calm, sober, and untiring, and yet again he would be silent for hours. Some might have thought him melancholy, for his manner was of the gravest.

We were speaking of hotels, that stormy afternoon when the distant surf was moaning and the wind heaping the snow against the doors, and when the clock had struck, he said slowly:

“I kept a hotel once. It was in '72 or a bit before. It's a good trade.”

And none of us disputed it was a good trade, as keeping a man indoors in stormy weather.

“Was it like Pemberton's?”

“No, not like Pemberton's.”

“Aye, summer hotel. Always summer there.”

“Aye, she paid. It was in South America.”

“Aye, Stevey Todd and I ran her. She was put up in New Bedford by Smith and Morgan, and Stevey Todd and I ran her in South America.”

“How so? Do they export hotels to South America?”

“There ain't any steady trade in 'em.” And no more would he say just then. For he was that kind of a man, Captain Tom, He would talk or he would not, as suited him.

Uncle Abimelech was tall and old, and had a long white beard, and was thin in the legs, not to say uncertain on them, and he appeared to wander in his mind as well as in his legs. Stevey Todd was stout, with a smooth, fair face, and in temperament fond of arguing, though cautious about it. For that winter afternoon, when I remarked, hearing the whistling wind and the thunder of the surf, “It blows hard, Mr. Todd,” Stevey Todd answered cautiously, “If you called it brisk, I wouldn't maybe argue it, but 'hard' I'd argue,” and Pemberton said agreeably, “Why, when you put it that way, you're right, not but the meaning was good, ain't a doubt of it;” and Uncle Abimelech, getting hold of a loose end in his mind, piped up, singing:

“She blows aloft, she blows alow, Take in your topsails early;”

whereas there was no doubt at all about its blowing hard. But Stevey Todd was the kind of a man that liked to argue in good order.

The meanwhile Captain Buckingham had said nothing so far that afternoon, except on the subject of hotel-keeping in South America. But when Stevey Todd offered to admit that it blew “brisk, but when you say hard, I argue it;” and when Uncle Abimelech piped:

“She blows aloft, she blows alow, Take in your topsails early;”

Then Captain Buckingham, who sat leaning forward smoking, with his elbows on his knees, staring at the fire, at last, without stirring in his chair, he spoke up, and said, “She blows all right,” and we waited, thinking he might say more.

“Pemberton,” he went on, “the seaman follows his profit and luck around the world. You sit by your chimney and they come to you. And if I was doing it again, or my old ship, the _Annalee_, was to come banging and bouncing at this door, saying 'Have a cruise, Captain Buckingham; rise up!' I'd say: 'You go dock yourself.'”

“She might, if she came overland, maybe,” said Stevey Todd, “seeing it blows brisk, which I admits and I stands by, for she was a tall sailing ship was the _Annalee_.”

“She was that,” said Captain Tom; “the best ship I ever sailed in, barring the _Hebe Maitland_.”

Whereat Stevey Todd said, “_There_ was a ship!” and Uncle Abimelech piped up again, singing these singular words:

“There was a ship In Bailey's Slip. One evil day We sailed away From Bailey's Slip We sailed away, with Captain Clyde, An old, old man with a copper hide, In the _Hebe Maitland_ sailed, Hooroar! And fetched the coast of Ecuador.”

“Aye,” said Captain Tom. “Those were Kid Sadler's verses. There's many of 'em that Abe can say over, and he can glue a tune to 'em well, for he's got that kind of a memory that's loose, but stringy and long, and he always had. There's only Abe and Stevey Todd and me left of the _Hebe Maitland's_ crew, unless Sadler and Little Irish maybe, for I left them in Burmah, and they may be there. But what I was going to say, Pemberton, is, I made a mistake somewhere.”

“Why,” said Pemberton, “there you may be right.”

“For I was that kind of young one,” the captain went on, “which if he's blown up with dynamite, he comes down remarking it's breezy up there. I was that careless.”

Then we drew nearer and knew that Captain Buckingham was hauling up his anchor, and maybe would take us on a long way, which he surely did. The afternoon slipped on, hour by hour, and the fire snapped and cast its red light in our faces, and the kettle sung and the storm outside kept up its mad business, and the surf its monotone.

“I was so, when I was a lad of eighteen or nineteen,” Captain Buckingham said. “I was a wild one, though not large, but limber and clipper-built, and happy any side up, and my notion of human life was that it was something like a cake-walk, and something like a Bartlett pear, as being juicy anywhere you bit in.”

THE “HEBE MAITLAND.” CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM'S NARRATIVE.

“I was that way,” he said, “full of opinions, like one of those little terrier pups with his tail sawed off, so he wags with the stump, same way a clock does with the pendulum when the weight's gone--pretty chipper. I used to come often from the other end of Newport Street, where I was born, to Pemberton's. But that wasn't on account of Pemberton, though he was agreeable, but on account of Madge Pemberton. Madge and I were agreed, and Pemberton was agreeable, but I was restless and keyed high in those days, resembling pups, as stated.

“No anchoring to Pemberton's chimney for me,” I says. “No digging clams and fishing for small fry in Long Island Sound for me. I'm going to sea.”

And Madge asks, “Why?” calm and reasonable, and I was near stumped for reasons, having only the same reason as a lobster has for being green. It's the nature of him, which he'll change that colour when he's had experience and learned what's what in the boiling. I fished around for reasons.

“When I'm rich,” I says, “I'll fix up Pemberton's for a swell hotel.”

Madge says, “It's nice as it is,” and acted low in her mind. But if she thought the less of me for wanting to go to sea, I couldn't say. Maybe not.

I left Greenough in the year '65, and went to New York, and the wharves and ships of East River, and didn't expect it would take me long to get rich.

There were fine ships and many in those days in the East River slips. South Street was full of folk from all over the world, but I walked there as cocky as if I owned it, looking for a ship that pleased me, and I came to one lying at dock with the name _Hebe Maitland_ in gilt letters on a board that was screwed to her, and I says, “Now, there's a ship!” Then I heard a man speak up beside me saying, “Just so,” and I turned to look at him.

He didn't seem like a seaman, but was an old man, and grave-looking, and small, and precise in manner, and not like one trained to the sea, and wore a long, rusty black coat; and his upper lip was shaven.

“You like her, do ye?” he said. “Now I'm thinking you know a good one when you see her.”

I said I thought I did, speaking rather knowing. But when he asked if I'd been to sea, I had to say I hadn't; not on the high seas, nor in any such vessel as the _Hebe Maitland_. She was painted dingy black, like most of the others, and I judged from her lines that she was a fleet sailer and built for that purpose, rather than for the amount of cargo she might carry.

“Why, come aboard,” he said, and soon we were seated in a cabin with shiny panels, and a hinge table that swung down from the wall between us. He looked at me through half-shut eyes, pursing his dry lips, and he asked me where I came from.

That was my first meeting with Clyde. I know now that my coming from Connecticut was a point in my favour; still I judge he must have taken to me from the start. He surely was good to me always, and that curiously.

“You want a job,” he says. “You've sailed a bit on fishing smacks in the Sound. But more'n that, the point with you is you're ambitious, and not above turning a penny or two in an odd way.”

“That depends on the way,” I says pretty uppish, and thinking I wasn't to be inveigled into piracy that way.

“Maybe I've got scruples,” I says, and not a bit did I know what I was talking about. Captain Clyde rapped the table with his knuckles.

“I'm glad to hear you say it. Scruples! That's the word, and a right word and a good word. I don't allow any vicious goings-on aboard this ship. Wherever we go we carry the laws of the United States, and we stand by them laws. We're decent and we stick to our country's laws as duty is. Why now, I'm thinking of taking you, for I see you're a likely lad, and one that will argue for his principles. Good wages, good food, good treatment; will you go?” The last was shot out and cut off close behind, his lips shutting like a pair of scissors. I says, “That's what I'll do,” and didn't know there was anything odd about it. It might have been the average way a shipmaster picked up a man for aught I knew. I shipped on the bark _Hebe Maitland_ as ordinary seaman.

The shipping news of that week contained this item:

“Sailed, Bark, _Hebe Maitland_, Clyde, Merchandise for Porto del Rey.”

Now, there is such a place as Porto del Rey, for I was there once, but not till twenty years later.

The _Hebe Maitland_ didn't always go to the place she was billed for, and when she did she was apt to be a month late, and likely couldn't have told what she'd been doing in the meantime. Somebody had been doing something, but it wasn't the _Hebe Maitland_. Ships may have notions for aught I know, and the _Hebe Maitland_ was no fool, but if so, I judge she couldn't have straightened it out without help; and if she argued and got mad about it, that was no more than appropriate, for we all argued on the _Hebe Maitland_.

I've spoken of Captain Clyde. The crew, except one man called “Irish,” were all Yankee folk that Clyde had trained, and most of them had been caught young and sailed with him already some years. I never saw so odd an acting crew in the way of arguing. I've seen Clyde and the bos'n with the Bible between them, arguing over it by the hour. It was a singular crew to argue. Stevey Todd here, who was cook, was a Baptist and a Democrat, and the mate he was a Presbyterian and Republican, and the bos'n he was for Women's Rights, and there was a man named Simms, who was strong on Predestination and had a theory of trade winds, but he got to arguing once with a man in Mobile, who didn't understand Predestination and shot him full of holes, supposing it might be dangerous. It was a singular crew, and especially in the matter of arguing.

They were all older than I. Stevey Todd was a few years older. I recognised Abe Dalrimple here, for he came from Adrian, though I'd seen him but seldom before. Three more I'll name, Kid Sadler, J. R. Craney, and Jimmy Hagan, who was called Irish; for they were ones that I had to do with later. I never met another crew like the _Hebe Maitland's_. I guess there never was one.

Aboard and under Clyde's eye they were a quiet crew, even Sadler, who wasn't what you'd call submissive by nature, but in port, Clyde would now and then let them run riotous. He was a little, old, dried up, and odd man with a vein of piousness in him, and he could handle men in a way that was very mysterious.

The fourth day out of New York, as I recollect it, was fair, the sun shining, and everything peaceful except on board the _Hebe Maitland_. But on the _Hebe Maitland_ the men were running around with paint pots and hauling out canvas from below. Nobody seemed to tell me what was the matter. The _Hebe Maitland's_ hull was any kind of a dingy black, but the rails, canvas, tarpaulins, and companion were all white. By the end of the day almost everything had modified. They'd got a kind of fore-shortening out of the bowsprit, and another set of canvas partly up that was dirty and patched. The boats were shifted and recovered, cupola taken off the cabin, and the whole look of the ship altered in mid-sea. Then Clyde came out of his cabin with a board in his hand, and they unscrewed the _Hebe Maitland's_ name from forward under the anchor hole, and the _Hebe Maitland_ in gilt was the _Hawk_ in white.

I went off and sat down on a coil of rope, and the more I thought it over, the more I didn't make it out.

After that I heard lively talking forward a little, and there was Captain Clyde, the bos'n, mate, Stevey Todd, and some others arguing.

The bos'n was saying he hadn't “sworn no allegiance to no country but the United States, an' there ain't no United States laws,” he says, “against dodging South American customs that I ever see nohow, and being I never see a South American man that took much stock in 'em either, I ain't so uppish as to differ.”

Then Stevey Todd chimed in and made a tidy argument, quoting Scripture to prove that “actions with intent to deceive, and deception pursuant,” weren't moral, and, moreover, he says: “Shall we lose our souls because S. A. customs is ridiculous? Tell me that!”

“Shucks!” says the mate; “we're saved by grace!”

Then Captain Clyde took it up and his argument was beautiful. For he said S. A. customs were oppressive to the poor of that country by wrongfully preventing them from buying U. S. goods; so that, having sworn to the U. S., we weren't bound by S. A. laws further than humanity or the Dago was able to enforce; “which,” he says, “I argue ain't either of 'em the case.”

“That's a tart argiment, Captain Clyde,” says the bos'n. “I never heerd you make a tarter.”

They went on that way till it made my head ache, and before I knew it I was arguing hard against the bos'n, the captain egging me on.

I sailed with that crew four years. They were smugglers. I'm free to say I loved Clyde, and liked the crew. For, granting he was much of a miser and maybe but a shrewd old man, to be corrupting folks with his theories, though I'm not so sure about that, not knowing what he really thought; yet, he was a bold man, and a kind man, and I never saw one that was keener in judgment. You might say he had made that crew to suit him, having picked out the material one by one, and they were most of all like children of his bringing up. I judge he had a theory about arguments, that so long as they talked up to him and freed their opinions, there wouldn't be any secret trouble brewing below, or maybe it was only his humour. It was surely a fact that they were steady in business and a rare crew to his purpose, explain it as one may. He taught me navigation, and treated me like a son, and it's not for me to go back on him. I don't know why he took to me that way, and different from the rest. He taught me his business and how he did it. I was the only one who knew. He was absolute owner as well as captain, and his own buyer and seller as well. He carried no cargoes but his own, which he made up for the most part in New York or Philadelphia, and would bill the _Hebe Maitland_ maybe to Rio Janeiro. Then the _Hawk_ would maybe deliver the biggest part off the coast of Venezuela in the night, and the _Hebe Maitland_ would, like as not, sail into Rio by-and-by and pay her duty on the rest, and take a cargo to New York as properly as a lady going to church.

There were a good many countries in South America to choose from. It wasn't wise to visit the same one right along, though there was apt to be a new government when we came again. Clyde knew all about it. I'm not saying but what an odd official of a government here and there was acquainted with the merits of a percentage, being instructed in it by the same. For all that there was excitement. It was a great life. Sometimes I catch myself heaving a sigh for the old man that's dead, and saying to myself, “That was a great life yonder.”