Hes got their goat, the steward early concluded to himself; but, thereafter, try as he would, he failed to get the Ancient Mariners goat.
Charles Stough Greenleaf was the Ancient Mariners name. This, Daughtry got from him, and nothing else did he get save maunderings and ravings about the heat of the longboat and the treasure a fathom deep under the sand.
Theres some of us plays games, an some of us as looks on an admires the games they see, the steward made his bid one day. And Im sure these days lookin on at a pretty game. The more I see it the more I got to admire.
The Ancient Mariner dreamed back into the stewards eyes with a blank, unseeing gaze.
On the Wide Awake all the stewards were young, mere boys, he murmured.
Yes, sir, Daughtry agreed pleasantly. From all you say, the Wide Awake, with all its youngsters, was sure some craft. Not like the crowd of old uns on this here hooker. But I doubt, sir, that them youngsters ever played as clever games as is being played aboard us right now. I just got to admire the fine way its being done, sir.
Ill tell you something, the Ancient Mariner replied, with such confidential air that almost Daughtry leaned to hear. No steward on the Wide Awake could mix a highball in just the way I like, as well as you. We didnt know cocktails in those days, but we had sherry and bitters. A good appetizer, too, a most excellent appetizer.
Ill tell you something more, he continued, just as it seemed he had finished, and just in time to interrupt Daughtry away from his third attempt to ferret out the true inwardness of the situation on the Mary Turner and of the Ancient Mariners part in it. It is mighty nigh five bells, and I should be very pleased to have one of your delicious cocktails ere I go down to dine.
More suspicious than ever of him was Daughtry after this episode. But, as the days went by, he came more and more to the conclusion that Charles Stough Greenleaf was a senile old man who sincerely believed in the abiding of a buried treasure somewhere in the South Seas.
Once, polishing the brass-work on the hand-rails of the cabin companionway, Daughtry overheard the ancient one explaining his terrible scar and missing fingers to Grimshaw and the Armenian Jew. The pair of them had plied him with extra drinks in the hope of getting more out of him by way of his loosened tongue.
It was in the longboat, the aged voice cackled up the companion. On the eleventh day it was that the mutiny broke. We in the sternsheets stood together against them. It was all a madness. We were starved sore, but we were mad for water. It was over the water it began. For, see you, it was our custom to lick the dew from the oar-blades, the gunwales, the thwarts, and the inside planking. And each man of us had developed property in the dew-collecting surfaces. Thus, the tiller and the rudder-head and half of the plank of the starboard stern-sheet had become the property of the second officer. No one of us lacked the honour to respect his property. The third officer was a lad, only eighteen, a brave and charming boy. He shared with the second officer the starboard stern-sheet plank. They drew a line to mark the division, and neither, lapping up what scant moisture fell during the night-hours, ever dreamed of trespassing across the line. They were too honourable.
But the sailors no. They squabbled amongst themselves over the dew-surfaces, and only the night before one of them was knifed because he so stole. But on this night, waiting for the dew, a little of it, to become more, on the surfaces that were mine, I heard the noises of a dew-lapper moving aft along the port-gunwale which was my property aft of the stroke-thwart clear to the stern. I emerged from a nightmare dream of crystal springs and swollen rivers to listen to this night-drinker that I feared might encroach upon what was mine.
Nearer he came to the line of my property, and I could hear him making little moaning, whimpering noises as he licked the damp wood. It was like listening to an animal grazing pasture-grass at night and ever grazing nearer.
It chanced I was holding a boat-stretcher in my hand to catch what little dew might fall upon it. I did not know who it was, but when he lapped across the line and moaned and whimpered as he licked up my precious drops of dew, I struck out. The boat-stretcher caught him fairly on the nose it was the bosn and the mutiny began. It was the bosns knife that sliced down my face and sliced away my fingers. The third officer, the eighteen-year-old lad, fought well beside me, and saved me, so that, just before I fainted, he and I, between us, hove the bosns carcass overside.
A shifting of feet and changing of positions of those in the cabin plunged Daughtry back into his polishing, which he had for the time forgotten. And, as he rubbed the brass-work, he told himself under his breath: The old partys sure been through the mill. Such things just got to happen.
No, the Ancient Mariner was continuing, in his thin falsetto, in reply to a query. It wasnt the wounds that made me faint. It was the exertion I made in the struggle. I was too weak. No; so little moisture was there in my system that I didnt bleed much. And the amazing thing, under the circumstances, was the quickness with which I healed. The second officer sewed me up next day with a needle hed made out of an ivory toothpick and with twine he twisted out of the threads from a frayed tarpaulin.
Might I ask, Mr. Greenleaf, if there were rings at the time on the fingers that were cut off? Daughtry heard Simon Nishikanta ask.
Yes, and one beauty. I found it afterward in the boat bottom and presented it to the sandalwood trader who rescued me. It was a large diamond. I paid one hundred and eighty guineas for it to an English sailor in the Barbadoes. Hed stolen it, and of course it was worth more. It was a beautiful gem. The sandalwood man did not merely save my life for it. In addition, he spent fully a hundred pounds in outfitting me and buying me a passage from Thursday Island to Shanghai.
* * * * *Theres no getting away from them rings he wears, Daughtry overheard Simon Nishikanta that evening telling Grimshaw in the dark on the weather poop. You dont see that kind nowadays. Theyre old, real old. Theyre not mens rings so much as what youd call, in the old-fashioned days, gentlemens rings. Real gentlemen, I mean, grand gentlemen, wore rings like them. I wish collateral like them came into my loan offices these days. Theyre worth big money.
* * * * *I just want to tell you, Killeny Boy, that maybe Ill be wishin before the voyage is over that Id gone on a lay of the treasure instead of straight wages, Dag Daughtry confided to Michael that night at turning-in time as Kwaque removed his shoes and as he paused midway in the draining of his sixth bottle. Take it from me, Killeny, that old gentleman knows what hes talkin about, an has been some hummer in his days. Men dont lose the fingers off their hands and get their faces chopped open just for nothing nor sport rings that makes a Jew pawnbrokers mouth water.
CHAPTER XI
Before the voyage of the Mary Turner came to an end, Dag Daughtry, sitting down between the rows of water-casks in the main-hold, with a great laugh rechristened the schooner the Ship of Fools. But that was some weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled his duties that not even Captain Doane could conjure a shadow of complaint.
CHAPTER XI
Before the voyage of the Mary Turner came to an end, Dag Daughtry, sitting down between the rows of water-casks in the main-hold, with a great laugh rechristened the schooner the Ship of Fools. But that was some weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled his duties that not even Captain Doane could conjure a shadow of complaint.
Especially did the steward attend upon the Ancient Mariner, for whom he had come to conceive a strong admiration, if not affection. The old fellow was different from his cabin-mates. They were money-lovers; everything in them had narrowed down to the pursuit of dollars. Daughtry, himself moulded on generously careless lines, could not but appreciate the spaciousness of the Ancient Mariner, who had evidently lived spaciously and who was ever for sharing the treasure they sought.
Youll get your whack, steward, if it comes out of my share, he frequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness on the latters part. Theres oodles of it, and oodles of it, and, without kith or kin, I have so little time longer to live that I shall not need it much or much of it.
And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, from the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent of treasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key stole the ships daily position from Captain Doanes locked desk, to Ah Moy, the cook, who kept Kwaque at a distance and never whispered warning to the others of the risk they ran from continual contact with the carrier of the terrible disease.