Part 13 (1/2)
”'Tis the hand of God, I'm tellin' you,” is the way Louis sees it ”'Tis a visitation for his black-hearted deeds, and there's more behind and comin', or else-”
”Or else,” I proh it's me as shouldn't say it”
I was races of all Not only does Thoe continue to hateme It took me no little while to puzzle it out, but I finally discovered that it was because I was entleman born,” he put it
”And still no more dead men,” I twitted Louis, when Smoke and Henderson, side by side, in friendly conversation, took their first exercise on deck
Louis surveyed rey eyes, and shook his head portentously ”She's a-comin', I tell you, and it'll be sheets and halyards, stand by all hands, when she begins to howl I've had the feel iv it this long ti iv a dark night She's close, she's close”
”Who goes first?” I queried
”Not fat old Louis, I prohed ”For 'tis in the bones iv azin' in the old mother's eyes, weary atchin' iv the sea for the five sons she gave to it”
”Wot's 'e been s'yin' to yer?” Tho home some day to see his mother,” I answered diplomatically
”I never 'ad none,” was the cockney's coazed with lustreless, hopeless eyes into mine
CHAPTER XIV
It has dawned upon me that I have never placed a proper valuation upon woh not aree so far as I have discovered, I was never outside the atmosphere of women until now My mother and sisters were always aboutto escape them; for they worried me to distraction with their solicitude for my health and with their periodic inroads on my den, when my orderly confusion, upon which I prided h it looked neat enough to the eye I never could find anything when they had departed But now, alas, hoelcome would have been the feel of their presence, the frou-frou and swish-swish of their skirts which I had so cordially detested! I aet hoain They ht, and dust and sweep and put hts every minute of the day, and I shall only lean back and survey it all and be thankful in that I am possessed of a mother and so Where are the mothers of these twenty and odd men on the Ghost? It strikes me as unnatural and unhealthful that h the world by theery are the inevitable results These hters; then would they be capable of softness, and tenderness, and sympathy As it is, not one of them is married In years and years not one of theood woman, or within the influence, or redemption, which irresistibly radiates from such a creature There is no balance in their lives Their masculinity, which in itself is of the brute, has been over-developed The other and spiritual side of their natures has been dwarfed-atrophied, in fact
They are a corowing dailyIt seems to me impossible sometimes that they ever had mothers It would appear that they are a half-brute, half-hu as sex; that they are hatched out by the sun like turtle eggs, or receive life in some similar and sordid fashi+on; and that all their days they fester in brutality and viciousness, and in the end die as unlovely as they have lived
Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas, I talked with Johansen last night-the first superfluous words hich he has favoured hteen, is now thirty-eight, and in all the intervening time has not been home once He had met a towns-house in Chile, so that he knew his mother to be still alive
”Shelance at Harrison, as steering a point off the course
”When did you last write to her?”
He perforhty-two, eh? no-eighty-three? Yes, eighty-three Ten years ago Fro
”You see,” he went on, as though addressing his neglected oing hoood to write? It was only a year And each year soo But I am mate, now, and when I pay off at 'Frisco, maybe with five hundred dollars, I will shi+p myself on a windjaive e from there home Then she will not do any more work”
”But does she work? no old is she?”
”About seventy,” he answered And then, boastingly, ”We work from the time we are born until we die, inI will live to a hundred”
I shall never forget this conversation The words were the last I ever heard hioing down into the cabin to turn in, I decided that it was too stuffy to sleep below It was a cal ahead barely a knot an hour So I tucked a blanket and pillow under my arm and went up on deck
As I passed between Harrison and the binnacle, which was built into the top of the cabin, I noticed that he was this ti that he was asleep, and wishi+ng him to escape reprimand or worse, I spoke to hi He seereatly perturbed, unable to reply to me
”What's the matter?” I asked ”Are you sick?”