The Cruise of the Dry Dock — A Closer Reading

Malone was hastily pulling his crew together in the mess room on the middle pontoon. He came by waving his short heavy arms in the direction of the long eating room.

"Get along aft; you're to sign the ship's papers!" he bawled monotonously. "Get along!"

Most of the men walked faster when the mate flung his arms at them. Leonard felt the impulse to step livelier but held himself to Caradoc's deliberate stride.

In the mess room the boys found a compact, black-haired, serious-faced young man of unknown nationality reading the ship's articles in an expressionless tone. Nobody listened, although various penalties were prescribed for desertion, quitting ship without leave, disobedience of orders, each with its particular fine or punishment. When the reader finished, the men walked around one by one and signed the register. Then a copy of the articles was pointed out on the side of the mess room, and again no one observed.

The performance was hardly completed when the gong rang for supper. There were not more than a dozen men at mess. Most were of stolid English navvy type, dirty uncouth men whose gross irregular features told of low birth and evil life. The foreign element comprised an Irishman named Mike Hogan and the Frenchman whom the boys had met when they first came aboard. The crowd called him Dashalong. Upon inquiry, Leonard found it to be Deschaillon. The young man who read the articles was named Farnol Greer. However, he proved a silent, taciturn youth, who seemed to converse with no one and to have no friends.

In the long narrow eating cabin mingled the clean smell of newly sawed lumber and the odor of poor cookery. The meal proved rather worse than ordinary steerage food. After the first taste Smith put it by, grumbling. Leonard, who was hungry, consumed about half of his.

Beef stew and boiled white fish formed the menu. Perhaps there is nothing quite so slippery and disheartening as boiled white fish grown luke warm or cold. The navvies ate ravenously enough, but Hogan and Deschaillon were not so wolfish.

Mike speared a bit on his fork and regarded it sadly. "This fish reminds me uv a fun'ril," he observed, "an' yonder lad looks to be chief mourner," he nodded toward Farnol Greer.

"He ees not mourning over the feesh," declared Deschaillon gayly. "He ees struck on heemself, and found his affection ees misplaced."

Madden laughed. The spirits of the Celt and the Gaul seemed to improve as their fare grew worse.

"Oh, av course a frog-atin' Frinchman loike you, Dashalong, would think any kind av fish a reg'lar feast."

Deschaillon leaned over to inspect his portion. "Now eet does very well--to wax zee mustache, Mike." He twirled his own.

Caradoc grunted disapproval of such doubtful table talk, arose and left the rough company and rough fare with supercilious condemnation.

"Your friend's appetite sames as dilicate as his wor-rkin' powers," observed Hogan as he watched the Englishman stoop and disappear through the doorway.

Madden smiled. "We didn't work any too hard this afternoon, did we?"

Mike and Pierre proved droll companions, ready to jibe at anyone or anything in perfect good nature, so that it was an hour before Leonard strolled outside. As he had no further duty, he climbed a long ladder to the top of the high dock wall and walked forward toward the bridge.

By this time the sun had set and left the world filled with a luminous yellow afterglow. The estuary of the Thames had widened abruptly off Sheerness, and far to the south was the dim line of chalk cliffs that England thrusts toward France. Overhead stretched a translucent yellow-green sky with the long black line of the _Vulcan's_ smoke marking it.

Leonard moved across the bridge slowly.

There was almost perfect silence over the great structure below him, save for the slow creaking of new joints in the iron plates, the softened chough-choughing of the tug ahead.

There were several paint barrels piled up on the bridge, slung there no doubt by machinery, to prevent the men having to toil up with it from below. The boy leaned against one of these barrels, gazing into the yellow flood of light that bathed everything in its own saffron. His heart beat high with a feeling of the hazard of the ocean. He tried to fancy what would happen to the huge dock as it adventured through tropic seas. His imagination readily conjured up a kaleidoscope of incidents--cannibal proas, shark fights, sea serpents, typhoons, mutinies, what not.

And at every turn of the tug's propeller all this bright dashing world of adventure drew nearer and nearer. For some reason he recalled what the bystander on the dock had said--"Everything is unreasonable at sea," and he laughed aloud.

As a sort of gloomy echo of his laugh, his ear caught a groan from the other side of the paint barrels. With the utmost surprise and curiosity, he straightened up and moved silently around the pile.

Then he saw the tall Englishman leaning across the bridge rail, face in hands, staring at the line of land silhouetted in black between the brazen sky and the reflecting water. Smith's whole attitude was so suggestive of trouble that Madden moved forward in generous sympathy.

The Englishman heard the movement, straightened, looked around; his long face wore a look of suffering in the colored light.

"Sorry you're so blue, old man," sympathized the American, making a guess at the cause of his bad spirits. "Let's have a turn around this old tub and forget homesickness."

"Home!" echoed Caradoc gruffly. "It's--it's all England I'm leaving. It's England and honor and--" he stiffened suddenly and snarled out: "Do you think I climbed away up here on this bridge hunting your company?"

Leonard was utterly nonplussed by this shift. "I'm sure I meant no harm--"

"Certainly not," sneered Caradoc. "You Americans have the undesired friendliness of stray puppies--you have no conception of personal reserve--you turn your souls into moral vaudevilles."

A flush of indignation swept over Madden. "That's no decent return for a friendly approach!" he declared hotly, "and I'd rather be a puppy than a hedgehog any day!"

Caradoc made no reply, but seemed to erase Madden from his mind and shifted slowly around to his staring and his thoughts.

This last bit of impudence fairly clanged on Madden's temper. He felt a desire to tell this coxcomb just what he thought of him. If Caradoc had remained facing the American, Madden might have done so, but it feels foolish to rail at a profile. Madden wheeled angrily, tramped across the bridge, then down the high side of the dock toward the ladder. From far below him came Hogan's voice, a concertina, and the sound of clacking feet. Apparently the Irishman had induced someone to dance a jig.

Fortunately for the British Towing and Shipping Company, the next few days were glassy calm, and as the _Vulcan_ coughed along the South England coast, the crew had fair opportunity to raise the coat of paint out of danger.

They had finished the ends by this time and were now working on the high exterior sides of the dock. The labor was distasteful to Leonard, not within itself, but it is disagreeable to dangle in midair over a huge iron wall, blue water gurgling below, and sit beside a man who has affronted one by calling one's manners puppyish and one's soul a vaudeville. Even if one really be fond of puppies and enjoy vaudeville, the implication is unpleasant.

On the third morning after, Caradoc wielded his brush listlessly and looked sick. His fine shoulders sagged and his eyes were hollow in his long face. Leonard, whose spirits naturally mounted with the sun, found it hard to continue the three days' silence. He wanted to talk about the splendid English coast with its gemlike villages set in green, the red-sailed fishing smacks, the social gulls feeding in the long trail behind the dock. It is difficult to be reserved under such conditions. Then, too, Caradoc was so obviously ill, Madden felt sorry for the fellow.

As for the Englishman, he paid little attention to his working mate, but languidly splashed the iron wall, and himself, with red paint. After some two hours' work, he stood up on the platform as if sore, made an irresolute start, finally climbing the rope ladder to the top. Madden wondered about the queer fellow, but was rather relieved by his absence. Within twenty or thirty minutes, however, he was back, but in perceptibly better spirits. He worked briskly for a few minutes, then dropped brush in pail and turned to Leonard as if no shadow had crossed their acquaintance.

"Well, Madden, we can hardly blame the old Phoenicians for guarding the secret of the Cassiterides, can we?"

The American almost fell off the platform in surprise.

"Why--er--no, I don't blame 'em," he blurted, not having a ghost of a notion what the Englishman was talking about. "No, I--I never blamed 'em a bit--never did."

"Those were poetic days, Madden."

The American stared, his mind as much at sea as his body.

"Think of that Phoenician sailing his galley for the Isles of Tin. The Romans follow him, day after day, week after week. But does he betray the secret of Tyre's wealth?" Caradoc made a gesture. Madden was about to answer that he didn't know, when the orator went on.

"He does not. Rather than expose the rich mines of Cornwall, he dashes his galley upon a reef and risks his life among the early English barbarians."

"Was it here where that happened?" asked Madden interestedly, fishing some such tale from the bottom of his recollection.

Caradoc stood upright on the swinging platform, hands thrust in jacket pockets, thumbs out, Oxford fashion. His tall form swayed slowly with the steady rise and fall of the dock.

"Certainly, the Cassiterides is Cornwall, and that point of land just ahead is the spot where the Tyrian wrecked his ship, so the legend goes."

Madden's eyes followed Caradoc's gesture. "I've read that story, but I never thought of seeing the place."

"Cornwall is entrancing if you care for antiquities," went on Smith in the polished style of a collegiate. "Four or five miles up that cape are the Boskednan Circles and the Dawns-un, old Druidic stone temples. Just across the peninsula is St. Ives, where the virgin Hya appeared miraculously. It is really regrettable, Madden, that you are leaving England before you tour Cornwall. A wonderful little island, England. A land to live for--or to die for, God willing."

Caradoc stared toward the coast, frowning, with the old familiar look of pain coming into his eyes. His hearer and his extemporaneous lecture plainly slipped out of his mind.

"You've been along here before," suggested Madden with a hope of diverting Smith's mind.

"Oh, yes," replied the Englishman gloomily.

"Not another dry dock, I trust," laughed Madden, turning to work.

Leonard nodded at his painting. "Fishing smack, I'll bet."

The cross-questioning was interrupted by a raucous voice overhead, and both boys looked up to see the mate's thick torso hanging over the rail. He was shaking his fist at the tall Englishman.

"W'ot you think we brought you along for?" he bawled savagely. "To give lectures? If you don't paint and quit blowin', you win' bag, I'll ship you at Penzance!"

Caradoc's face went white, leaving threadlike purple veins showing on nose and cheeks. "I'm willing to do my duty," he said with a quiver in his tone. He glanced at his empty paint bucket. "If I'm to work, bring me paint--I'm out!"

Caradoc seemed to be able to make the mate madder and do it quicker than anyone else.

"Paint! Bring you paint!" roared Malone, apoplectic. "Git out an' git your paint, or I'll put a longer, uglier head than that on your shoulders."

Caradoc gave a shrug, stooped for the bucket, then began composedly climbing the ladder straight at the sputtering officer.

"Be careful there, Smith," warned Madden in an undertone; "he'd as soon as not slug you without giving you a dog's chance."

Caradoc said nothing but continued his climbing. The men on the platform fore and aft ceased work, watching the mate and the climbing man intently. The silence following the usual drone of conversation was noticeable.

Caradoc was just reaching up to climb into Malone, when at that moment something happened that drew and held everybody's attention.

The whole face of the sea around the dock broke into a sort of sputtering. The ocean seemed to boil. To his astonishment, Madden saw the commotion was caused by millions of small fishes leaping and running along the surface.

Cries came from all over the dock at once: "Pilchards! Pilchards are shoaling! Pilchards are shoaling!"

The few gulls in the sky now seemed to multiply and settled in a fluttering cloud to strike such easily captured food. Among the press of little fish leaped cod, hake, dog fish, all feasting on the annual migration of the pilchards. The crew on the dock scrambled up and over the sides, flung down boxes, buckets, anything and scooped the fish from the sea.

The diversion saved the Englishman from any bellicose intention of the mate, who hurried off to take a hand in the sport. Madden sat on his platform watching the fun, for it was a remarkable sight. Caradoc swung around on the ladder facing Leonard.

"There, Madden," he cried, "is a sight characteristic of no other sea. Every season Cornish fisheries capture millions of these fish. They pickle 'em, can 'em. They even sell them to you Yankees for sardines. You are fortunate to have seen this phenomenon."

Leonard studied the novel sight. Hundreds of fishing smacks converged on the area where the pilchards were breaking, their red sails glowing warmly against the green of the land and the blue of the sea. Gulls whirled about the tall dock, filling the air with thin creakings. Madden admired the sudden picturesque activity. Some of the smacks were so close now that he could see their long trawls stringing out behind, and little figures running about their decks, winding in nets, bringing in a flood of silver fishes.

The metallic noise of the gulls grew so loud as to blanket all else. In the midst of this fluttering and shrieking, Leonard heard the shouting of human voices. He paid little attention. Then some of the men on top of the dock's side began yelling. At that moment, Caradoc shouted down Madden's name. Madden looked up. On the instant the swinging platform under him tipped violently.

Next moment, Madden saw right beneath him a smack. The vessel was floating by, and the peak of its boom scraped the high iron wall of the dock. This boom had struck his platform.

Madden clutched impotently at the blank iron wall, then flung an arm for one of the supporting ropes and missed.

"Jump to me!" yelled Smith. The Englishman was still on the rope ladder, but had climbed down rapidly when he saw his mate in distress. The boom was tilting the platform straight up and down. The deck of the smack below promised to mash the American into a pulp. The fishermen were shouting. Leonard made a falling leap toward Caradoc's extended hand. He caught it in both his own. The Englishman's other hand gripped the rope rung. Unfortunately Madden's body flung out with a twisting motion, and he could feel Smith's arm grow tense in an effort to keep from being wrenched.

Madden was scrambling with his legs for a foothold on the ladder when the boom dragged past the platform and the whole thing swung back on the distressed boys. A flying end caught Madden in the side. The blow sickened him. He clung desperately to Caradoc's hand, his grip weakening, his senses swimming with the feeling of an awful void beneath him. The strength in his fingers gave way, and he felt a chill sensation before the coming downward plunge. But even in his twisted, straining position, the Englishman's long fingers did not loose Madden's wrist. A moment later, Leonard had lost consciousness completely, swung in midair, limp as a bag.

The American had a dim impression of being drawn to the top of the side wall, and the crew clustering about him. Someone splashed water in his face and the world cleared up before his eyes. The young fellow called Greer was whisking on the water, but when Madden opened his eyes, he set the bucket down and returned silently to his work.

"There, ye're bether now," grinned Hogan stooping over the wounded man. "That platform caught yez a little love lick in the slats--break any of 'em?"

Leonard reached across and felt his side. "How came the smack there?" he inquired weakly. "Why didn't I see it?"

"Ye was lookin' astern, an' th' vissil barely turned the bow of th' dock an' her boom kissed us all th' way down. I yilled at ye, so did Dashalong an' th' silent man. Thin I got so interested in l'arnin' he could say a worrd, I quit lookin' at you complately."

"I couldn't hear for the gulls--I'll be all right in a minute."

Leonard looked around and saw Caradoc massaging his twisted arm. He had an impulse to thank the Briton, but he changed it to, "I hope your arm isn't badly wrenched, Smith."

"Quite all right," assured the tall fellow cheerfully.

The men began to scatter to work again.

That day at lunch the ship's fare was garnished with an abundance of delicious pilchards. The whole crew wore a holiday air. During the afternoon the men sang at their work and labored so merrily and so well that a broad wash of paint was added to the outside wall.

Leonard, whose side was sore enough from the thump, did not work. Even the mate suggested that he take a leave of absence, and stay in his bunk if he would.

The boy went at once to his cabin and began hunting in his suit case for a little medicine chest which he always carried. He wanted arnica for his bruised side. To his surprise he could not find it. He gave his bag a thorough search, tumbling garments, trinkets, souvenirs, curiosities, helter skelter over his bunk, but failed to find his case.

The loss of the medical carry-all distressed Madden. It had proved useful in the past. However, he hunted up the mate and begged a liniment, which must have had a wonderful virtue if a powerful odor was any indication.

Leonard rubbed the stuff on his side and turned into his bunk. His side grew so sore he wondered whether or not his ribs really were broken after all. In his dark den he could still hear the gulls wailing, although the tug had passed the major portion of the shoaling pilchards. There also came to him the constant creaking of the dock, the slow dull recurrence of the ground swell against her bow. The boy's mind centered fretfully on his lost medicine chest. No doubt it was stolen, and he began wondering which of the crew had taken it. His suspicion played idly over the crew, and then settled on the youth called Greer. His reason for this was that Greer said very little. Madden thought this must be the sign of a guilty conscience.

He did not brood long, however, as the monotonous sounds exerted a hypnotic effect on his senses. Once or twice as he was almost falling asleep, he felt himself clinging desperately to Caradoc's hand, his grip weakening, the fearsome void gaping under him, then he would awake with a start that sent a knife of pain through his bruised ribs. After that he would be forced to feel once more to test his costal region for broken bones. Finally the vision failed to paint itself, or did not rouse him, and he slept.

After an indeterminate interval, he was awakened by someone entering the room. It was fairly dark now and by lifting a head over the side of his berth, he saw the outline of the Frenchman standing by the door. Madden thought of the stolen medicine chest and remained silent.

The Gaul was about to withdraw when Madden called out.

"What is it, Deschaillon?"

"I just came by to say your frien' ees in trouble. Zay play cards in zee salon. Smeeth he win _beaucoup_. Zay quarrel, perhaps zay fight. He ees your frien', and--"

Leonard smiled when he heard the mess hall dignified into a salon; but at the latter end of the sentence he sat up suddenly in his bunk and began pulling on his jacket despite the twinges in his side.

"Eh, how's that--fight?"