Part 33 (1/2)
Hamilton appeared to extract some melancholy pleasure from it all, and Cranze remained unvaryingly drunk. Cranze pa.s.sed insults to casual strangers who came on board and did not know his little ways, and the casual strangers (after the custom of their happy country) tried to knife him, but were always knocked over in the nick of time, by some member of the _Flamingo's_ crew. Hamilton said there was a special providence which looks after drunkards of Cranze's type, and declined to interfere; and Cranze said he refused to be chided by a qualified teetotaller, and mixed himself further king's pegs.
Messrs. Bird, Bird and Co., being of an economical turn of mind, did not fall into the error of overmanning their s.h.i.+ps, and so as one of the mates chose to be knocked over by six months' old malarial fever, Captain Kettle had practically to do a mate's duty as well as his own. A mate in the mercantile marine is officially an officer and some fraction of a gentleman, but on tramp steamers and liners where cargo is of more account than pa.s.sengers--even when they dine at half-past six, instead of at midday--a mate has to perform manual labors rather harder than that accomplished by any three regular deck hands.
I do not intend to imply that Kettle actually drove a winch, or acted as stevedore below, or sweated over bales as they swung up through a hatch, but he did work as gangway man, and serve at the tally desk, and oversee generally while the crew worked cargo; and his watch over the pa.s.sengers was at this period of necessity relaxed. He tried hard to interest Hamilton in the mysteries of hold stowage, in order to keep him under his immediate eye. But Hamilton bluntly confessed to loathing anything that was at all useful, and so he perforce had to be left to pick his own position under the awnings, there to doze, and smoke cigarettes, and scribble on paper as the moods so seized him.
It was off one of the ports in the peninsula of Yucatan, toward the Bay of Campeachy, that Cranze chose to fall overboard. The name of the place was announced by some one when they brought up, and Cranze asked where it was. Kettle marked it off with a leg of the dividers on the chart.
”Yucatan,” said Cranze, ”that's the ruined cities shop, isn't it?”--He shaded his unsteady eyes, and looked out at a clump of squalid huts just showing on the beach beyond some three miles of tumbling surf. ”Gum!
here's a ruined city all hot and waiting. Home of the ancient Aztecs, and colony of the Atlanteans, and all that. Skipper, I shall go ash.o.r.e, and enlarge my mind.”
”You can go if you like,” said Kettle, ”but remember, I steam away from here as soon as ever I get the cargo out of her, and I wait for no man.
And mind not to get us upset in the surf going there. The water round here swarms with sharks, and I shouldn't like any of them to get indigestion.”
”Seem trying to make yourself jolly ob--bub--jectiable's morning,”
grumbled Cranze, and invited Hamilton to accompany him on sh.o.r.e forthwith. ”Let's go and see the girls. Ruined cities should have ruined girls and ruined pubs to give us some ruined amus.e.m.e.nt. We been on this steamer too long, an' we want variety. V'riety's charming. Come along and see ruined v'riety.”
Hamilton shrugged his shoulders. ”Drunk as usual, are you? You silly owl, whatever ruined cities there may be, are a good fifty miles in the bush.”
”'S all you know about it. I can see handsome majestic ruin over there on the beach, an' I'm going to see it 'out further delay. 'S a duty I owe to myself to enlarge the mind by studying the great monuments of the past.”
”If you go ash.o.r.e, you'll be marooned as safe as houses, and Lord knows when the next steamer will call. The place reeks of fever, and as your present state of health is distinctly rocky, you'll catch it, and be dead and out of the way inside a week easily. Look here, don't be an a.s.s.”
”Look here yourself. Are you a competent medicated pract.i.tioner?”
”Oh, go and get sober.”
”Answer me. Are you competent medicated pract.i.tioner?”
”No, I'm not.”
”Very well then. Don't you presume t'lecture me on state of my health.
No reply, please. I don' wan' to be enc.u.mbered with your further acquaintance. I wish you a go' morning.”
Hamilton looked at Captain Kettle under his brows. ”Will you advise me,”
he said, ”what I ought to do.”
”I should say it would be healthier for you to let him have his own way.”
”Thanks,” said Hamilton, and turned away. ”I'll act on that advice.”
Now the next few movements of Mr. Cranze are wrapped in a certain degree of mystery. He worried a very busy third mate, and got tripped on the hard deck for his pains; he was ejected forcibly from the engineers'
mess-room, where it was supposed he had designs on the whisky; and he was rescued by the carpenter from an irate half-breed Mosquito Indian, who seemed to have reasons for desiring his blood there and then on the spot. But how else he pa.s.sed the time, and as to how he got over the side and into the water, there is no evidence to show.
There were theories that he had been put there by violence as a just act of retribution; there was an idea that he was trying to get into a lighter which lay alongside for a cast ash.o.r.e, but saw two lighters, and got into the one which didn't exist; and there were other theories also, but they were mostly frivolous. But the very undoubted fact remained that he was there in the water, that there was an ugly sea running, that he couldn't swim, and that the place bristled with sharks.
A couple of lifebuoys, one after the other, hit him accurately on the head, and the lighter cast off, and backed down to try and pick him up.
He did not bring his head on to the surface again, but stuck up an occasional hand, and grasped with it frantically. And, meanwhile, there was great industry among the black triangular dorsal fins that advertised the movements of the sharks which owned them underneath the surface. n.o.body on board the _Flamingo_ had any particular love for Cranze, but all hands crowded to the rail and s.h.i.+vered and felt sick at the thought of seeing him gobbled up.