Chapter 9 THE GAME AND THE END

Having chosen his line of conduct, Beekman, with a strength of will and purpose of which no one would have suspected him, adhered to it rigidly, and the very fact that he was unable to goad him into revolt inflamed the passion and developed the animosity and hatred of Woywod. The mate was perfectly willing and, indeed, anxious to manhandle Beekman, but that little fundamental streak of fair play made him keep his hands off when he had no cause. To be sure, he sought diligently for cause and occasion, and that he did not find it, angered him the more.

Beekman had never been face to face with a very difficult situation of any kind. Life had been too easy for him. There had been no special demands upon his character by any very pressing emergency, and perhaps that made him study the position in which he found himself more carefully. Among other things, he decided to make himself popular with the crew, and to do it by gaining their respect. Unlike Ancient Pistol, he would be by no means "base, common, and popular," if popularity was to be procured in that way only. He had always been acclaimed a leader, in athletics at any rate, both in the prep school, in the university, and afterward among his friends and acquaintances.

Without stooping to their level, without truckling to their prejudices by promises or bribery that is, he achieved that object. He was easily the most popular man on the ship. And it was no small tribute to his adaptability that one of his quality and station could gain the universal approval of so many men so radically different. In little ways that fact presently became apparent to the quarter deck, and Woywod resented that especially. It irked him exceedingly that a man against whom he imagined he had a just cause for grievance, and who had, from his point of view, entirely merited his displeasure, should be upheld and acclaimed by the rest of the men over whom he ruled with iron severity. This was an affront to him, and an additional cause for resentment, not to say hatred.

In all this, Beekman had not changed his opinion of Woywod in the least degree. In return, he hated him with a good, healthy, genuine hatred that grew with every passing hour. It became increasingly hard for him to control himself and to follow out his course in the face of Woywod's constant endeavors to arouse his temper. Indeed, quick and passionate by inheritance, and by lack of restraint since childhood, Beekman found himself marvelling at his own self-control.

If it had not been that his course so thoroughly angered the mate as in a certain sense to enable Beekman to get even with him, he would have lost that control again and again. As it was, his soul writhed under the sneers, the insults, the brutal blackguarding, the foul language of Woywod, to say nothing of the exactions, the unfair and almost impossible tasks that were heaped upon him. And Salver, taking his cue from his superior, did his little best to make life a burden to Beekman. Grim, stern, ruthless Peleg Fish rather enjoyed it, too. With natural keenness, the master of the ship realized that it was a battle and a game between the two men, and he delighted in it as a sporting proposition.

Perhaps the popularity Beekman had gained among the crew helped him to bear these things. A few of them were quick enough mentally to look beneath the surface. Jim Gersey was of that small number. The young man had completely gained that old man's confidence. Beekman had seen the uselessness of persisting in his story, and he had made no further references to it among the crew after that first day, but with Gersey he made an exception. The old boatswain was shrewd and worldly wise in a guileless sort of way. The two had many long talks together, and the younger had at last succeeded in convincing the older of the truth of his tale. Without seeming to do it, the boatswain helped the newcomer through many a difficult situation, and by ostentatiously joining in the bullying he got from the quarter deck, and by keeping secret his friendship, it was not suspected aft.

Beekman had no suspicion as to how he got on the ship. He supposed his presence was due to blind fate. He knew that once he could get on the end of a telegraphic cable he could free himself from his detestable position, but he shrewdly suspected that if there were any way to prevent that, Woywod, who acted with the consent and approval of Fish, could be depended upon to stop it. Beekman had talked that matter over with Gersey, and he had given the boatswain an address and a message which the old man had laboriously committed to memory. If Beekman were kept on the ship, Gersey would send the cable from Vladivostok, or from whatever civilized port they made. For the rest, with a reckless disregard of expenditure, Beekman discarded his filthy rags, and comfortably outfitted himself from the ship's well-equipped slop-chest, his extravagant outlay being deducted from his able seaman's pay, for which, of course, he cared nothing.

In spite of the fact that she was well found, and the men were well fed, and the passage was a quick one, and the ship fairly comfortable, by the time the cruise drew on to its end, the ship was usually a smouldering hell, and this voyage was no exception.

The men had been driven hard. A succession of westerly gales off Cape Horn had kept them beating about that dreadful point for nearly two weeks, and even after they had rounded it, for once the Pacific belied its name. The wind shifted after they passed the fiftieth parallel, so they had to face a long beat up to the line. Gale succeeded gale. Such weather was unprecedented. It had never been heard of by the oldest and most experienced seamen on board. The men were worn out; their nerves on ragged edge. The severe straining the ship had got had made her take in water, not seriously, but at a sufficiently rapid rate to require a good deal of pumping. The steam pump broke down for a time and the crew had to man the hand pumps. Their nerves were on edge and raw, and the officers ground them down worse than ever.

If Beekman had not improved in his physical condition, he could not have stood his share of the work. He had been an athlete at college, not heavy enough to buck the center on a football team, but a marvelously speedy end, and a champion at the lighter forms of athletics demanding agility, alertness, and skill. In his after-college life, athletics had continued to interest him if desultorily. He was still an A-1 tennis player and a dashing horseman, but not much else.

With the hard work, the coarse but substantial food, and at first the regular hours, he developed amazingly. He got to be as hard as nails. He had always been a fair boxer. It was a science about which Woywod knew nothing, and although the mate was twenty pounds heavier and several inches taller, to say nothing of broader shouldered, than Beekman, the latter began to feel that in a twenty-foot ring with foul fighting barred, he could master the officer. There was no possibility of a meeting of that kind, however, so the two, under the varying positions of an unusually trying cruise, fought the battle of will and wit down one ocean and half-way up the other, until the break came, the marvel being not that it came when it did, but that it had been postponed so long.

One of the members of the crew was a young Dutchman named Jacob Wramm. He was not exactly half-witted. He could hardly be called defective, even, but he was a dull, slow-thinking, very stupid lad who had been shipped by the crimp as an A.B., but who would never be rated higher than a landsman. Beekman, who rapidly learned knot-and-splice seamanship, and all the ordinary and extraordinary duties of a sailor; who could get to the main royal yard or the flying jibboom end as quickly as any man on the ship; who could pass a weather earring in a howling gale as securely as the most accomplished seaman; who could do his trick at the wheel and hold her up to her course against a bucking, jumping head sea with the best quartermaster afloat, endeavored to teach and train Wramm in the niceties of the sailor's art. He made some progress with him until Salver caught him instructing the stupid Dutchman, who was in the second mate's watch. He mentioned it casually in the cabin to Woywod, and the latter at once found a new object upon which to vent his spleen and to provoke Beekman.

It was fortunate for Wramm that he was in the starboard watch. It was only when all hands were called and Salver went forward, Woywod taking charge amidships, where Wramm was stationed at the main mast, that he got a chance at him. The slightest blunder on the part of the Dutchman was treated as a crime. He was rope's ended, rattaned, kicked, beaten like a dog. Only a certain slow, stubborn obstinacy and determination in his disposition kept the unfortunate man from jumping overboard. Probably if Beekman had been in the same watch with Wramm and both had been under Woywod's command, something would have happened sooner, but except when all hands were called, Beekman was never near Wramm, and even then Beekman's station was aloft in taking in sail.

Wramm was not trusted on the yards. His duties were at the fife-rails around the masts where the various ropes which led from above were belayed. It was a responsible position, but Beekman had gone over and over every bit of every rope belayed to the iron pins in the fife-rails with him. When Wramm once got a thing in his head after a slow process, it was apt to stay there, and the Dutchman finally became letter perfect. He could put his hands on the various sheets, halliards, clewlines, buntlines, and others unerringly even in the dark. That is, he could if he were let alone and not hurried unduly.

One night, the starboard watch being on deck in the midwatch, at four bells, or two in the morning, the port watch was called, all hands being necessary for the taking in of sail. As usual, Captain Fish, annoyed beyond measure at his bad luck and the head winds, had been holding on to take advantage of a favorable slant in a whole-sail breeze, which was developing into a hard gale. He had time and distance to make up and he was going to lose no opportunity with either.

As the wind was rising, and the sea, too, he had remained on deck during Salver's watch, and at one o'clock in the morning the watch had taken in the royals and the flying jib. At two o'clock the captain, staring up through the darkness at the jumping, quivering to'gall'nt masts, decided that the time had come to furl the light canvas and take a double reef in the tops'ls, in preparation for the blow obviously at hand. He waited so long, however, before coming to this decision, that he realized that he had perilously little time left in which to get the canvas off her without losing a sail or perhaps a spar or two.

Like every man of his temperament, he held on till the last minute and then summoned the port watch, which came tumbling up from below at the call of the boatswain's mate, to find Captain Fish storming on the bridge at their slowness. Salver went forward to the forecastle to attend to the foremast. Mr. Woywod, in the natural bad humor that comes to any one who is awakened from a sound sleep in the only four hours of that particular night appointed for rest, took charge of the main, while the captain himself looked out for things aft. The helm was shifted. The ship forced up into the wind to spill the canvas. The braces were tended. The sheets were manned. The order was given to round in and settle away.

Wramm was the last man to get to his station. The men not stationed at some place of observation during the watch on deck had snugged down in such places as they could find for sleep until called. Wramm was a heavy sleeper. He had not been feeling well and had been awake even during his watches in the night before. He slept like a log. Woywod saw that he was not at his place at the main fife-rail. Just before the order was given for the light yard and topmen to lay aloft and furl and reef, Woywod, raging like a lion, discovered Wramm sleeping in the lee scuppers under the main pin-rail. He savagely kicked him awake, dragged him to his feet, got his hand on his throat, shook him like a rat, and finally flung him, choked and half-dazed, against the fife-rail, with orders for him to look alive and stand by or he would get the life beaten out of him.

When the order was given to slack away the main to'gall'nt halliards, the slow-thinking, confused Dutchman made a grievous mistake. He cast off and eased away the main top'sl halliards, the descent of the yard began just as the ship fell away a bit under the pressure of a heavy sea. The main to'gall'nts'l filled again, the men at the lee and weather braces, supposing everything was right, easing off and rounding in, respectively, until the yard whirled about, pointing nearly fore and aft. The starboard to'gall'nt sheet gave way first under the drag of the main tops'l yard, but not before the tremendous pressure of the wind had snapped the to'gall'nt mast off at the hounds. There was a crash above in the darkness. They caught a glimpse of white cloud toppling overhead and streaming out in the darkness, and then the mast came crashing down on the lee side of the main top and hung there threshing wildly about in the fierce wind.

When the main topmen were sent aloft to clear away the wreck, the tops'l halliards were belayed and then led along the deck and the tops'l hoisted again. For once on the cruise Beekman was not at his station, for the mate, instantly divining what had occurred, as every experienced man on the ship had done, had leaped to the fife-rail, with a roar of rage, and had struck the bewildered Dutchman, almost unaware of what had happened, with a belaying pin, which he drew from the rail, and had knocked him senseless to the deck. Even as Woywod rapidly belayed the tops'l halliards, which Wramm had been easing off, he took occasion to kick the prostrate man violently several times, and one of the kicks struck him on the jaw and broke it.

Beekman, stopping with one foot on the sheer pole of the weather main shrouds, had seen it all. The reason why he had not gone aloft with the rest was because he had instantly stepped back to the rail, leaped to the deck, and had run to the prostrate form of poor Wramm, which he had dragged out of the way of the men, who had seized the halliards at the mate's call. As it happened, the angry mate had struck harder than he had intended. Wramm's skull was fractured, his jaw broken, and his body was covered with bruises from Woywod's brutal assault.

When the wreck was cleared away, the canvas reduced, the ship made snug, and the watch below dismissed for the hour of rest that still remained to them, Woywod came forward. The watch had taken Wramm into the forecastle and laid him out on his bunk.

"Where is that"--he qualified Wramm's name with a string of oaths and expletives, the vileness of which also characterized him typically--"who caused a perfectly good mainto'gall'nt mast to carry away?" said Woywod, stopping halfway down the ladder leading into the forepeak.

There was a low murmur from the watch below, a murmur which was not articulate, but which nevertheless expressed hate as well as the growl of a baited animal does. Woywod was no coward. He was afraid of nothing on earth. Bullies are sometimes that way, in spite of the proverb. It was Beekman who spoke.

"He's here, sir," he began, in that smooth, even, cultivated voice which Woywod hated to hear. "I think his skull is fractured. His jaw is broken."

"An' a good thing, too. Perhaps the crack in his thick skull will let some sense in him."

"It will probably let life out--sir," answered Beekman, with just an appreciable pause before the sir.

"Mutinous, inefficient, stupid hound," said Woywod, but there was a note of alarm in his voice, which Beekman detected instantly, and which some of the others suspected. "Show a light here," he continued, coming down to the deck and bending over the man. "One of you wash the blood off his face," he said, after careful inspection. "I'll go aft an' git at the medicine chest. He's too thick headed to suffer any serious hurt. This'll be a lesson to him, an' to all of you. I'll be back in a few minutes."

The mate was really alarmed, although he did his best not to show it.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said Beekman, "but I want to speak to the captain."

"What you got to say to him?"

"I want to speak to him, sir."

"You can't do it now. Come to the mast tomorrow."

"I want to speak to him tonight."

"Let him speak to the cap'n," shouted Templin, one of the most reliable men on the ship.

Instantly, as if given a cue, the whole watch broke into exclamations.

"We'll all go aft with him to speak to the cap'n."

"That won't be necessary," said Beekman, quietly, although every nerve was throbbing with indignation and resentment. "Mr. Woywod will grant my request. There's no need for the rest of you mixing up in this. Won't you, Mr. Woywod?"

Now, Beekman was in his rights in appealing to the captain at any time. Woywod cast a glance back at the still, unconscious figure of Wramm and decided that perhaps it would be best for him to temporize. He wanted to strike Beekman down, and if it had not been for Wramm's condition and the mutinous outbreak of the men, he would have done so. He realized instantly what Beekman's popularity meant.

"If Cap'n Fish ain't turned in," he said, surlily, "and is willin' to see you, you can speak to him; if not, you'll have to wait till mornin'."

"I think it's probable that he's still awake, sir," said Beekman. "He'll undoubtedly want to know what the condition of Wramm is."

"I'll tell him."

"No, I'll tell him myself."

"You will," shouted Woywod, raising his fist.

Beekman never moved. The men came crowding around.

"By sea law," said Templin, "he's got a right to see the master of the ship, an' we proposes to see that he gits that right."

"You mutinous dogs," cried Woywod, confronting them.

But they were not overawed, and they did not give back.

"Come along," he said to Beekman, "an' you'll be sorry you ever done it."

Without looking behind him, he sprang up the ladder and, followed closely by Beekman, he went aft, descended the companionway, and found Captain Fish seated at the cabin table, on which a huge joint of cold meat and bread were spread out, with some bottles and glasses to bear them company. The captain was not alone. The steward, a Spanish half-caste, named Manuel, had just brought in a steaming pot of coffee from the galley.

"Well, Mr. Woywod," began Fish, "what about that infernal lubber that caused the loss of the mainto'gall'nt mast?"

"Smith, here, has come aft demandin' to see you an' p'r'aps he'll tell you. Will you see him?"

"What is it, Smith?" said the captain, sharply.

"Seaman Wramm," began Beekman, "is probably dying. I'm not a doctor, but so near as I can make out he has a fractured skull; his jaw is certainly broken and he is covered with bruises."

"How came he in that condition?" asked the captain.

"That murdering blackguard yonder struck him over the head with a belaying pin, kicked him when he was down and--"

"By God!" cried Woywod, springing forward, "you dare refer to me in that way?"

"Steady, Mr. Woywod," said Fish, his eyes gleaming. "I know how to deal with this man. Are you aware--you pretend to be a gentleman of education--that your language is in the highest degree mutinous, that I can have you put in double irons, and--"

"Am I to stand by and see a poor, helpless, dull-witted man, who has been hazed to death every day of this cruise by your blackguardly assessors, beaten to death, killed without a word?"

"You'd better look out for yourself rather than for him."

"I don't care what becomes of me. I've had just about enough of it. If that man dies, I'm going to bring a charge of murder against this bullying scoundrel, and if you don't put him in irons I'll bring it against you, too."

Beekman was beside himself with wrath. His temper was gone. His control had vanished in thin air. The cumulative repression of three months had been lost. He stepped forward, shaking his fist in the captain's face.

"Manuel," said the captain, "tell Mr. Salver to send a couple of men down here. Tell him to have the bo's'n fetch me some double irons." Fish was white with wrath. "Do you think I'll allow any wharf rat like you to talk like that to me on my own ship? I've no doubt but that thick-headed Dutchman will recover, but whether he does or not I'll deal with him. You'll prefer charges against me, will you? By God, you can count yourself lucky if you're not swinging at a yardarm tomorrow. For two cents I'd run you up now."

"With your permission, cap'n," began Woywod. "Keep fast, Manuel, I can handle him alone. I've been itchin' fer this chance ever since he came aboard. Now, Smith," he laughed, evilly, "I've got you. I knew you couldn't keep your temper."

Woywod stepped toward him. Beekman did not give back an inch.

"If you lay a hand on me," he shouted, "if I have to die for it the next minute, I'll--"

But Woywod, who did not give him a chance to finish the sentence, with fist upraised leaped forward. Beekman hit him. It was a much more powerful blow than the first he had delivered to the mate on the day that he waked up and found himself shanghaied. Three months of hard work and clean living and plain food had made a different man of him. Woywod was lucky. He partly parried the blow, but it struck him full on the chest and drove him smashing back against the bulkhead by the side of Manuel. The frightened steward hauled him to his feet.

The captain had arisen and was bawling for the officer of the watch. He was oblivious to the fact that one of the men was peering down into the cabin over the combing of the skylight. There was a trample of feet on the deck above. Salver himself appeared on the companion ladder, but Woywod had got to his feet. He was black with rage, mad with passion. He reached into the side pocket of his short peajacket and drew forth a heavy revolver.

"You're witnesses that he struck me," he cried, as he raised the weapon, but again Beekman was too quick for him.

A big, broad-bladed carving knife was lying by the side of a piece of salt beef on the table. Beekman clutched it, and as Woywod pulled the trigger, he leaped forward and buried it to the hilt in the mate's breast.