Chapter III: Introduction: The Judges (3)

John Shadwell went to the Legislature, the youngest man in the state to hold such an office; and when the time for reelection came the fight was bitter, and into it some enemy thrust the name of Vergie Winters. So the story spread, and so the name of Vergie Winters went the way of most smalltown milliners. Millinery was a “fast” business and Vergie Winters was a “fast” woman. A committee called upon her and asked her to leave the Town. And John Shadwell did nothing. If he came to her defense, he was ruined at the very beginning of that precious career. So Vergie gave him up, but she did not leave the Town. In the little parlour with the hats in the window she received the committee, and in that calm, aloof way she told them that they could not force her to leave. They could not prove that she had broken any law. She was a free citizen. She even looked at them out of the depths of those dark, candid eyes, and lied.

“John Shadwell,” she said, “is nothing to me. If he has come here once or twice, it is only because he is my lawyer.”

She must protect John Shadwell.

And so she sent them away baffled, even perhaps a little intimidated ... a committee of red-faced, self-righteous townsmen who had known, some of them at least, far worse women than Vergie Winters.

But her trade dwindled. Women no longer came to her for hats, unless they were the shady ladies of the streets. And Vergie Winters never turned them away, perhaps because she needed desperately their trade, perhaps because it never occurred to her, in that terrible solitude to which she had dedicated her life, ever to judge them. They came and sometimes they stayed to talk. A few of them were run out of town, but new ones always took their places. They always went to Vergie Winters for their bonnets.

“She is such a lady. She has such a fine air,” they said. And, “It’s so restful sitting there in her cool parlour.”

But their trade did her no good. “It only goes to show,” said the Town.

It was really the beginning of her colossal solitude. She did not go away. She did not flee from the threats that sometimes came to her. She was sure of herself. She would not surrender. And she could wait. She effaced herself from the life of John Shadwell. And when the Town began putting two and two together, she was even forced to give up walking through the twilight in the direction of John Shadwell’s house, where from the opposite side of the street she could watch with a furtive eye the little girl who played on the lawn about the iron dogs and deer. She never went out except to buy the few things she needed to eat, and for her trade. It was about this time that a shop run by a Presbyterian elder refused to sell her a spool of thread with which to sew the bright roses on the hats of the ladies of the streets. She did not make a scene; she did not even complain. She went quietly from the shop and never again passed through its doors.

But there were always the gay ladies. They came and went; but there were always some in the town, so it must have had some need for them. They could not live without money, yet they always had it, though they toiled not nor spun, to pay Vergie Winters for their hats. Some died; one or two were murdered in saloon brawls, but Vergie Winters never turned them away. They were her only friends. One wonders what secrets, what confidences they brought to Vergie Winters, sitting there in her narrow little house. One wonders what a dark history of the Town’s citizens went into the grave when Vergie Winters was carried down those narrow, rickety steps for the last time. But she said nothing. She simply waited.

At last what she hoped--what she must have known--would happen, came to pass. One cold night while Vergie Winters sat sewing on the gay hats a key turned in the lock, and John Shadwell came back to her. He came in the face of scandal, of ruin, because he could not help himself. It had begun in a flash of lightning when Vergie Winters opened the door of her father’s house to let him in, and now John Shadwell found that it went on and on and on.... There was no stifling it.

Who can picture that return? Who can imagine the sudden upleaping in the calm, withdrawn soul of Vergie Winters--who had such faith in this love that she sacrificed all her life to it?

And so for years John Shadwell came, on the occasions when he was not in Washington, to see Vergie Winters in the narrow wooden house. She kept on with her precarious trade, for she would never while he lived accept any money from him. Besides, she could not, for his sake, afford to arouse suspicions. For herself it did not matter; she could not be worse off.

Thus Vergie Winters and John Shadwell passed into middle age, and there came a time when he no longer sought election but instead became a power behind the throne, a man who shaped the careers of other men. He held power in the palm of his hand and no longer depended on votes. He grew careless, and one night he was seen by a Negro stable boy turning his key in the back door of Vergie Winters’s house.

After that there were women who crossed the street in order to avoid passing the window with the gay bonnets; and children, hearing their parents whisper as they drove by on a summer evening, came to understand dimly that some evil monster lay hidden behind the neat fringed curtains. Once, while John Shadwell was away in Washington, boys stoned the house and broke all the windows; but Vergie Winters said nothing. In the morning a Slovak glazier, who was new to the Town and had never heard of its Scarlet Woman, came and repaired the damage; and after he had gone she was seen coming down the narrow steps, in that terrible pool of solitude, as if nothing at all had happened. So far as any one knew, she never spoke of the affair to John Shadwell. She wanted to save him, it seemed, even from such petty annoyances.

And then as the years passed she sometimes saw from her window--the only safe spot from which she might peep--the figure of John Shadwell’s adopted daughter, grown now into a girl of twenty. A thousand times she must have watched the girl, always in company with John Shadwell’s sister, a large, bony spinster, as the pair came out of the shop on the corner and crossed the street in order that a girl so young and innocent might not have to pass the house of Vergie Winters.

Thus she sat in the narrow, dun-coloured house, working at the gay bonnets, on the afternoon that John Shadwell’s adopted daughter was married to a son of the Presbyterian elder who refused to sell Vergie Winters a spool of thread. Perhaps on that afternoon she had a visit from one of the ladies of the street, who sat talking to her (she was such a lady) while the girl in her bridal dress walked down the aisle of the brick Presbyterian church--with no mother sitting in the pew on the right because John Shadwell’s wife had been too much upset by the preparations for the wedding.

And one is certain that on the same night, when the festivities were ended, the figure of a middle-aged man followed the shadows of the alley behind Vergie Winters’s house, and let himself in with a key he had carried for more than twenty years. And one can hear him telling Vergie Winters who was at the wedding, and that there never was a prettier bride, and what music they played, and what there was at the wedding breakfast; and assuring her, as he touched her hand gently, that the bit of lace she had given him had been used in the bridal dress. He had told them he bought it himself.

Then, slowly, the town came to accept the state of affairs as a permanent scandal. One seldom spoke of it any longer. One simply knew that Vergie Winters and John Shadwell had been living together for years. He was rich, he was important, he was a power in politics; and now that his career no longer mattered, he had grown indifferent and a little defiant. So far as John Shadwell was concerned, he was a leading citizen nearly seventy years old, the grandfather of children by his adopted daughter.

But with Vergie Winters? She still went her solitary way, making her few bonnets, now a little old-fashioned and _démodé_ for all her sedulous reading of the fashion papers. (One can see her, slightly grayed, putting on her spectacles and peering closely at the pages.) And still, as she sat behind the lace curtains at her window, she saw the figure of John Shadwell’s daughter, remote and upright and a little buxom, crossing the street and going down the opposite side; only instead of being led by John Shadwell’s spinster sister she was leading her own children now. And night after night the figure of John Shadwell, no longer an ardent lover but an old man, following the shadows of the alley (less and less furtively as he grew older) to turn the worn key in the lock and sit there all through the evening with Vergie Winters. What did they do? What did they say to each other in those long winter evenings?

And at last, one night, John Shadwell’s wife, peevish and fretful in her tight-closed bedroom smelling of medicines, sent for him at midnight to read to her, only to be told that he had not come in. Again at two o’clock, and again at three--still he had not come in. Even when the gray light filtered through the elms on to the iron dogs and deer, he had not come back. They knew then that he would never return; for he lay dead in Vergie Winters’s narrow, dun-coloured house, behind the lace curtains and the gay bonnets. He had belonged to her always, and in that silent, powerful way of hers she had known it from the beginning. In the end he came to Vergie Winters to die....

It made great trouble and embarrassment, and they were forced to wait until midnight of the following day before they were able to take John Shadwell’s body from the house of Vergie Winters. And when they did take it, it went out of the same door that had opened so many times at the touch of the worn key, and along the shadows of the alley through which he had passed in life so many times. But even then they were not able to keep the affair a secret. The Town came to know it, and so shut out the last glimmer of tolerance for Vergie Winters. It was no longer a half-secret. It was a scandal which cast darkness upon the name of one of the men who had made the Town (as people said with a curious and non-committal tone which might have meant anything at all) “what it was to-day.” The crime was Vergie Winters’s. But she could not have cared very much.... Vergie Winters, sitting there in her terrible solitude behind the lace curtains, while the procession passed her house--first, the band playing “The Dead March from Saul,” and then the cabs containing John Shadwell’s daughter, her husband, and John Shadwell’s grandchildren, and then one by one the cabs carrying the leading citizens.

The next morning she came down the steps as she had always done, in the same clothes, with the same air of abysmal indifference. She had not betrayed him during life, and in death she would give no sign; and she must have known that on that morning every eye she passed was turned upon her with a piercing gaze, “to see how she took it.”

For twenty years longer, Vergie Winters lived in the narrow wooden house, growing poorer and poorer with the passing years. She saw the children of John Shadwell’s adopted daughter grow into men and women and have children of their own. But the scandal had grown stale now, though the legend persisted, and only a few must have remembered hazily that the old woman who sat behind the curtains was a great-grandmother. Until one morning the howling of the cat roused Rinehart, the German cobbler, who broke into the house and found Vergie Winters dead. And when they carried her down the rickety steps on her last journey she went alone, without a band to play “The Dead March from Saul,” and without a procession of carriages to follow her into that far corner of the cemetery (remote from the fine burial ground of the Shadwells) where they laid her to rest.

* * * * *

Yesterday they pulled down Vergie Winters’s house. There is no monument to her memory save the tiny stone at the head of her grave, paid for with the money saved out of what she earned by making bonnets for the gay ladies of the Town. But Vergie Winters is not dead. When one passes the gaping hole where the little house once stood, one thinks of Vergie Winters. When one passes the granite shaft raised to John Shadwell, one thinks of Vergie Winters. When one sees a Shadwell grandchild or a Shadwell great-grandchild, one thinks of Vergie Winters. For now that time has begun a little to soften the Town, the memory of Vergie Winters has been kept fresh and green with a strange aroma of vague, indefinable romance. When the names of those who crossed the street to avoid her narrow house are forgotten, the name of Vergie Winters will live. Why? Who can say? Was it because the Town never knew a woman called upon to show a faith so deep, a sacrifice so great, a devotion so overwhelming?

I can see her still, an old woman of eighty, hobbling painfully down the rickety steps of her house, with that curious, proud look upon her worn old face, and in the sharp old eyes another look which said, “Vergie Winters was right! John Shadwell belonged to her, from the very beginning!”

JUKES

BY BILL ADAMS

From _Adventure_

A boarding master’s boat was alongside by the fore rigging. The boarding master and his crimp were bringing off the crew; helping the drunken sailors over the bulwarks, and shoving or dragging them into the forecastle.

Alf Jukes came over the bulwarks last. He came without assistance. He was drunk, as were all his fellows, but his drunkenness took a turn different from theirs. As he jumped to the deck he saw the ship’s mate by the mainmast.

His attitude revengeful and defiant, Alf Jukes strode up to the mate. He stood face to face with him and cursed him.

The mate paid no attention at all to Alf Jukes. He had heard the same thing, had seen the same thing, too many times from such men as Jukes. He looked at Jukes as unconcernedly as if he looked at a coil of rope or a barrel of tallow.

As the mate turned disinterestedly away, Jukes addressed himself to the ship. Scornfully scanning her from boom to taffrail, from deck to mastheads, from yardarm to yardarm, he cursed her. As if exasperated by her silence, as if maddened by her dignity, he raised his voice higher and higher. Like the mate, the ship paid no heed to him. The wind in her rigging whispered of clean things.

Alf Jukes lifted his eyes to the serene and cloudless sky. Craning his neck, seeming to tiptoe a little, hands clenched and arms upraised, he shouted curses. No answer came from the sky.

Jukes ceased his cursing and walked to the forecastle, in which his comrades were now gathered. Having put the last senseless seaman aboard, having collected from the skipper the price prearranged for them, having pocketed a month’s advance pay for each one of them, the boarding master with his crimp was already well on the way ashore. The tug was alongside the ship. The ship’s mate leaned on the bulwark and talked with the tugboat men.

Presently the skipper appeared and spoke to the mate, who walked forward and called the sailors from the forecastle.

Alf Jukes came last from the forecastle. Like all his comrades, he reeked of cheap and abominable liquor, but, unlike them, he walked erect and steadily, a fierce remonstrance in his step and bearing. They staggered, cursed, or grumbled listlessly. Some were tall, some short; some wide, some narrow; some bearded, others not. They were of many nations. Some wore dungarees, others shoddy cloth; one, a pair of trousers made of ship’s canvas; his upper body covered by a threadbare oilskin jacket. Some wore old cloth caps; one, a battered sun-downer; another a dented derby.

Jukes towered above his comrades. His curly brown head and bony feet were bare. His worn dungaree shirt was unbuttoned. His neatly patched dungaree trousers were gathered by a broad brass-buckled belt. His forearms, hands, and throat were rugged. His breast showed white through his unbuttoned shirt. It looked cold, like marble.

Alone of all the crew, Jukes did not look besotted. The stamp of the sea was on him as on them. But the shore had stamped him less. He scowled toward the shore as he followed his comrades from the forecastle.

Impelled almost as much by instinct as by the brief command of the mate, the crew ascended to the forecastle head, took the windlass bars from their rack and set them in their places. As they leaned their weight upon them some grunted like pigs. Some laughed stupidly. Jukes alone was silent.

The ship lifted a little to the tide beneath her. A flag at her peak fluttered. A wisp of smoke passed over her as the tugboat steamed ahead.

The crew stamped slowly round and round the windlass, heaving the anchor in. The cable clanked at the hawse pipe. Tide and cable spoke of clean and windy things.

The reek of liquor grew fainter. The wind came fresher. The mate said--

“Someone sing!”

One of the sailors began to sing a forecastle song, a chantey, a ballad with a wailing chorus. His voice, at first spiteful, sneering, and contemptuous, the voices of the others, also at first spiteful, sneering, and contemptuous, became presently attuned to the sounds of wind and tide and cable. They no longer cursed, or grunted like pigs. The stamp of the shore was falling from them.

The ship passed swiftly from the harbour heads. The tugboat let go her towline. Some of the men went aloft, to loose sail. Talking in low voices, others waited by sheet and halyard; ready to hoist when the mate’s order came. Jukes stood apart, detached, solitary, brooding. He looked like a bear lately released from an unclean cage, and still uncertain of its freedom.

The mate called--

“Hoist away, main tops’l!”

The men grasped the halyards and lay back, setting their weight upon them. Straining to raise the heavy sail, they failed. They tried, and failed again.

“You there! Lend a hand here!” called the mate to Jukes.

The men waited while Jukes slowly approached. As he laid hold on the rope he seemed to shake himself. He drew a long deep breath. He reached up, higher and higher. His great chest expanded.

The mate called--

“All together, now!--_Lay back!_”

The tackle rattled noisily through its three-fold blocks. The sail slid, threshing and filling, to its masthead.

“Bully boy!” said the mate.

A sailor repeated--

“Bully boy!”

Jukes remained silent, sombre, brow-beclouded. While sail on sail was spread, the crew all hauling to his leadership, he took no notice of anyone or anything. He paid no heed at all to their admiring comments.

The shore line faded astern. The day passed. The sun sank. Night fell.

The sailors sat in the forecastle.

“’Ow long was you ashore?” asked one.

“Three days. How long was you?” came the reply.

“I come in the same day as you, then. I been three days ashore.”

“We was five months at sea,” said the other, “three days in port, an’ I don’t know nothin’ about ’em.”

The dozen sailors discussed their stays in port. Not one of them had been ashore over five days. Each had accepted a drink from the boarding master’s bottle. Between then and now no one of them knew aught of what had taken place.

“We was two hundred days on the passage out,” said one. “We was posted missin’. Four days in port, an’ back to sea agin!”

They were from half a dozen different ships.

“How long was you ashore?” asked one, turning to Jukes. Jukes seemed not to hear him.

“He don’t know,” laughed one.

“We don’t none of us know much, or we’d not be here,” another grumbled.

“After this v’yage I quits the sea,” another asserted.

“Me, too,” another.

“Yuss!--You will!” chuckled a third.

“I’ll do wot I please,” retorted the other.

“Same as you always ’ave! Me, too,” another said. “Haw, haw, haw!”

Turning to Jukes the last speaker asked--

“Wot will you do w’en she gits in, ol’ matey?”

Jukes rose and left the forecastle. For a long time he sat motionless on the bulwark, his head bowed, his great hands upon his knees, his figure dim against the starry sky. When eight bells struck and his comrades started aft to answer to the muster roll he crossed the deck and reëntered the forecastle. His step seemed to falter as he neared the dingy lamp. Looking about him to make sure that he was all alone, he drew from a pocket a small oilskin package; untied and took from it a faded kerchief--an old bandanna. Loosening the knots, he drew from its crumpled folds an envelope. The envelope, drab and dirty like the kerchief that protected it, bore the mark of a distant port, and of a yet more distant date.

A picture but little larger than a postage stamp fell to the table and lay face up. The letter, dog-eared and torn from much handling, was like the picture--commonplace, yet smiling and hopeful. As Jukes looked hungrily at the picture his face grew haggard. His lips moved as he read the old letter over.

Startled by a shout from the quarterdeck, Jukes thrust letter and picture back within the bandanna, folded the oilskin about them, and hurried out to answer to his name.

* * * * *

A month was gone. Barefooted, bare of arm, Jukes walked from the wheel. The sunset glowed in his weathered face. The sails above him shone. Below him shone the sea. He gave the course to the mate and went to join his fellows on the hatch.

“A fine man that, Mister,” said the skipper to the mate.

“’Ow would you like to ’ave a little place ashore?” asked one sailor of another on the hatch.

“I ain’t goin’ to sea no more after this passage,” answered the other.

Jukes lighted his pipe and sat among them. The sea was blue-black; the sky blue-black above. Whispering from horizon to horizon the sea crests murmured of clean, free, windy things.

“’Ow would you like to ’ave a little place ashore?” asked the last speaker of Jukes.

Jukes turned and faced the man. His eyes shining and eager, he drew the oilskin package from his pocket. They gathered round him as he opened it. They passed the picture from hand to hand.

“I wisht as I was ’im,” muttered one and another.

They looked at him enviously, seated serene and confident among them.

* * * * *

Another month was gone.

A canopy of cloud hung low over the mastheads. It was without break, or rift, uniform from horizon to horizon. It was of that cold gray that presages snow. Because it was uniform it seemed to be without motion. Beneath it the cañon hollows of the sea were black. From horizon to horizon white sea cataracts roared.

Every two hours a sailor peered from the forecastle. Watching his opportunity, leaving those behind him to close the door, he sprang to the deck. Now running a few steps, now desperately clinging to the wire-tight life line, now leaping high into the rigging to escape the raging sea, he battled a slow way to the wheel; whence the helmsman whom he relieved made an equally precarious passage to the forecastle.

It was midday when Alf Jukes opened the forecastle door. Unlike the others, he did not hesitate, or pause to scrutinize the chances of the deck. Though in the past two days no man aboard had slept, there was no sign of weariness about him. As he opened the door he looked with a casual but comprehensive glance to the gale-whipped and snow-laden sky. Then, stepping to the waist-deep smother of the forward deck, he turned and deliberately banged the door behind him. Head unbowed, gaze straightforward, light hands upon the rigid life line, he strode surefooted through the tempest’s rage. When an insweeping sea completely submerged him, the mate, who was watching from by the helmsman’s side, made for the chart room and bellowed to the skipper. Jukes’s head and shoulders reappeared as the skipper leaped out to the poop deck.

The groan of the ship’s hull, the creak and outcry of a hundred straining blocks, the clack of chains and parrals, were inaudible. Had the three masts simultaneously splintered and gone over the side, not a sound would have been heard.

The skipper and mate looked amusedly into each other’s faces. Alf Jukes’s shoulders, his gripping hands, his arms, the every motion of his entirely reckless body, appeared as the limbs and motions of a gambolling schoolboy. By the toss of his chin, by the shake of his head, by the partings and closings of his stubble-surrounded lips, the universe might observe that Jukes, on his way to relieve the wheel, was singing.

Pointing to the helmsman, the skipper yelled an order into the mate’s ear. The mate nodded. Waylaying the man, the mate dragged him into the chart room. So ordered by mate and skipper, the exhausted helmsman sought shelter in the chart house instead of attempting to reach the forecastle.

When sailors looked from the forecastle door to see what was become of Jukes, or of the man whom he had gone to relieve, it was to see the mate gesticulating to them to go back; voicelessly ordering them to remain where they were.

Afternoon passed, and no man ventured to the wheel’s relief.

Toward dusk the wind fell, its uproar ending abruptly--as if a multitude of yelling maniacs had leaped from a precipice edge to instant extinguishment. The crests of the sea died down. The horizons widened. For a little while gray ocean rolled under gray sky.

Snow fell. The horizons were blotted out.

Skipper and mate descended to the saloon. Jerking the door of the steward’s pantry open, the skipper shouted for the steward. A trapdoor in the pantry deck opened slowly, and the steward, who had laid hidden below, arose. His teeth chattered. For a moment he looked dazedly up at the skipper; then, realizing that the storm was over, that the ship still floated, and that it was long since he had served a meal, passed out to the deck and made haste to the cook’s galley.

“We’ll set sail when the moon rises,” said the skipper to the mate.

Skipper, mate, steward, cook, and sailors buried their noses in pannikins of steaming coffee. Ravenously devouring hash made of pork scraps mixed with pulverized sea biscuit, they forgot the fury of the recent storm, forgot that it was snowing--forgot Alf Jukes.

The ship rolled easily. Blocks whined. Sails flapped. A pleasant odour of tobacco smoke arose in cabin, galley, and forecastle.

The clouds lifted. The snow ceased. A wan light illumined deck and rigging.

“Loose them upper tops’ls!” bawled the mate.

Some of the sailors climbed aloft to cast the gaskets off. Others gathered at the halyards, ready to hoist away. Snow, disturbed by the feet of the climbers, fell on the heads and shoulders of those below. Flapping their arms, shaking their fists, the men on deck swore at the climbers, who, envying them the comparative comfort of the deck, replied with gibes and curses.

A man aloft called--

“All ready on the main!”

The mate said--

“Hoist away!”

The men lay back, straining on the stiff swollen rope. The sail refused to move.

“W’ere’s Alf?” asked one of the sailors.

“Jukes!” called the mate, “Jukes!”

They looked aloft, seeking Jukes.

“’Ee ain’t aloft,” said one.

“He’s at the wheel,” said the mate, remembering. “One o’ you men relieve Jukes.”

“I forgot ’im,” said one.

“Me, too,” another.

Alf Jukes came forward from the wheel. Snow was thick on his sou’wester, and on his shoulders. Snow was frozen on his sleeves and oilskin trousers. His hands, his lips, were blue.

“Lend a hand here, Jukes,” said the mate.

Jukes strode to the halyards and reached up. His great chest expanded as he reached higher and higher.

“All together--_now!_” said the mate.

Jukes laid his weight upon the halyards. The sheaves rattled. The yard began to rise.

“Bully boy!” said the mate. A sailor grunted, “Bully boy!”

Their feet tramping soundlessly in the deep snow, the men ran the topsail to its masthead.

“All ready on the fore,” called a man from aloft.

“Go eat,” said the mate to Jukes, his accents crisp and clear in the stillness.

Preceding the others, Jukes walked to the fore topsail halyards as if he had not heard.

When sail was set there was neither coffee nor hash left. The cook’s skilly pots and hash kids were washed, and hung on the taut wire above his stove. Jukes munched sea biscuit, and took a drink of cold water.

“That fellow Jukes is a good man, Mister,” said the skipper to the mate.

“Jukey ain’t afeard o’ naught,” said a sailor, “I wish as I was ’im.”

Night passed.

* * * * *

A bright sun shone on the ship at anchor. Sails were furled, ropes coiled. From the fore bulwarks, the sailors watched a boat rowed by two men approaching.

Jukes sat alone upon the forecastle head. Gazing shoreward, he saw masts and spars, steeples and roofs. Chimneys smoked. Windows glinted. Beyond the town he saw low hills, with treetops blowing. His eyes were hungry.

Noticing the approaching boat, Jukes rose to his feet. His teeth clenched, a scowl on his face, he paced to and fro. He looked like a bear come too close to the dwellings of men--suspicious, undetermined, afraid of the world and of himself.

Hands extended, eyes a-twinkle, faces beaming, a sailor’s boarding master and his crimp climbed aboard.

“Did ye have a good voyage, boys? W’ere are ye from? You’re come to a good port this time!”

The boarding master entered the forecastle. Seating himself, looking amicably up to the expectant and childish faces of the sailors, he drew a bottle from his pocket.

“The best, boys! I’d never offer ye any but the best.”

One of them grasped the bottle.

“Don’t swaller it all!” cried one of the sailors.

“’Old ’is arm!” another.

“’S’all right, boys. There’s plenty more,” grinned the boarding master.

The crimp came from the boat, bottles in his pockets.

The forecastle reeked of cheap and abominable liquor. Presently one of the sailors asked--

“W’ere’s Jukey?”

The crimp left the forecastle, to seek the missing man.

“The boys wants you,” said he, discovering Alf Jukes alone upon the forecastle head. He took a bottle from his pocket and held it out to Jukes.

Uttering a low coughing grunt, Jukes struck savagely at the crimp. The bottle fell, and broke upon the deck. Cursing Jukes, the crimp beat a hasty retreat.

With a half pannikin of unspilled liquor in it, the lower half of the bottle remained upright against the windlass.

Alf Jukes looked down. Nostrils quivering, fingers twitching, he uncertainly approached the broken bottle. He stooped, lifted the bottle, and stretched out a hand; as if to hurl it to the water. He hesitated; drew in his hand, and sniffed. Another moment and he flung the emptied fragment over the forecastle rail.

“Hey, Jukey! Come on down, ol’ son!” called one of his comrades, looking up from the forecastle.

Jukes descended and entered the forecastle. His fellows slapped him on the back. The boarding master thrust a bottle in his hand. As Jukes took it, one of his comrades tried to snatch it from him, and a bellow of laughter rose as the sailor went sprawling on the deck.

The bottles passed around.

“No more ships for me,” said one.

“Nor me, boys,” said another.

Jukes drank silently.

By and by the sailors shouldered their sea bags and followed the boarding master and his crimp from the forecastle. Jukes towering heedless among them, they shoved and elbowed one another aside, making for the boat. Pointing to other ships near by, they cursed them. They cursed the ship they left. They chattered confidingly to the boarding master, who promised them one and all an easy job on the land. As Jukes grasped the stroke oar and set the pace ashore they shouted their approval.

“Ol’ Jukey!” they cried, and “Good ol’ Jukey!”

They laughed to see the way the boat drove through the water, with Jukes’s great muscles surging her along. They jumped ashore and turned their backs forever on the sea. Without a glance behind, they followed Jukes across the street; Jukes at the boarding master’s heels, the crimp behind them all.

Hours passed. Besotted sailors lolled on dirty cots about a dirty room. They quarrelled, forgot their quarrels, and embraced each other. They smoked, and spat, and sang. The leering crimp came in, and went, and came, and went again, and called them each by name--quick-fitted names.

“’Ere, old Cork-fender, lap it up now! It’s good for sailor’s gizzards.”

“Gimme yer empty glass ’ere, Queer-fellow!”

“Young Bandy-shanks, you’ve ’ad enough! You’re young.--Another? All right, then. Wot’d yer mommer say?”

“Aw, haw! haw! haw!”

“Drink hearty, Jimmie Bilge! There’s plenty more.”

Ignoring their quarrels and embraces, taking no part in their noisy songs, Alf Jukes held out his glass for filling and refilling. The crimp winked at him deferentially.

Evening came. Save for loud snores, heavy breathing, and now and then a mumbled, sleepy oath, the room was quiet. Steady-handed still, Jukes stood erect amidst the wreckage of his fellows and emptied his glass.

In the barroom adjoining, the boarding master reached a black bottle from beneath the bar. Alf Jukes came from the back room as he replaced it. Resolve in his face, he stepped toward the street.

Three brimming glasses stood upon the bar. Lifting one to his own lips, the boarding master pushed another out toward Jukes.

“Here, big boy! Don’t run off so soon!” he quickly called.

Jukes stopped and hesitatingly looked toward the bar. The crimp and boarding master raised their glasses.

Jukes took the proffered glass, lifted, and drained it in one long straight swallow; then turned and strode toward the street door again. Midway, he staggered.

The boarding master and the crimp came from behind the bar. They lifted Jukes, carried him to the dusky street, and dumped him in their boat.

“That fills _her_ crew,” growled the boarding master with a nod to the riding light of a ship at anchor close inshore.

* * * * *

Dawn was breaking. Stars were fading. Mastheads of anchored ships swayed easily against the opening sky. A ship’s mate banged upon the forecastle door, rousing his crew. A drowsy sailor lurched off to the galley, fetching the morning coffee.

“How long was you ashore?” asked one sailor of another.

“Wot day is it?” came the reply. The questioner chuckled.

Some surly, some indifferent, they sipped their coffee.

The mate looked in.

“Rouse out here, now! Get up and man that windlass!”

They straggled to the deck. But Jukes lay sleeping still, his face to the bulkhead. The mate stepped in and shook him. He wakened slowly.

“Tumble out, here, you!”

Jukes climbed from the bunk and looked about him.

“Come on, now! You’re at sea, my man. Get out of here!”

With a long staggering stride, Jukes passed out to the new ship’s deck. The wind blew in his hair. The tide sang by.

Jukes turned, wild-eyed, and faced the mate. Men on the forecastle head looked down and laughed to hear him curse. He gazed up at them, vacant eyed. He looked toward the shore, saw his old ship, and shuddered.

“Come on, my man!” the mate said. “You’re at sea.”

Alf Jukes ascended to the forecastle head.

“Sing, someone!” said the mate, “sing and let’s get her away.”

A sailor leaning on a windlass bar began to sing a forecastle song, a chantey, a ballad with a wailing chorus. The tugboat’s smoke whirled by. The chorus rose and fell. The cable clanked.

“W’y don’t ye sing, shipmate?” a sailor asked of Jukes.

Alf Jukes let go his windlass bar. Fists clenched and arms upraised, his curses ringing loud above his comrades’ song, he looked upon the shore.

“Come on, my man,” the mate said. “You’re at sea.”

* * * * *

Weeks were gone by. It was black midnight. No star shone. Sails hung invisible. Long swells rolled sluggishly beneath the keel. The ship’s bow rose, dipped to deep hollows, and arose again.

Half naked in the hot night, Alf Jukes lay slumbering. The watch below slept soundly all about him. The watch on deck sat talking on the hatch without.

Sails flapped to the long roll of the ship. Chains clinked upon the lower masts. Blocks chattered squeakily. Now and again a heavy rope, a sheet or lazy tack, thud-thudded against the ship’s side. The wheel cluck-clucked. The sailors’ voices rose and fell, a mumble from the hatch.

Poring above a chart, the skipper sat in his chart room. Presently he rose, looked out to the dark night, listened awhile, and went below.

An hour passed.

High and sudden, the mate’s voice rang above the noises of the night, and, answering quick commands, gloom-hidden sailors leaped up and rushed to the braces.

The skipper ran, pajama-clad and shouting, to the deck. The watch on deck were shouting at the ropes. A deep, long, grumbling roar was all about--the growl of rollers bursting on a reef.

A sailor yelled at the forecastle door, wakening the sleepers of the watch below. Blackness was like a wall. The skipper was shouting orders. The mate was shouting; the grumbling rumble coming closer, louder.

The ship quivered. A rending sound rose sharp above the roar, died, and arose again. A topmast splintered and went overboard. Torn canvas snarled. Blocks skirled. The ship slid on, settling beyond the reef.

Last from his bunk came Jukes. Striking a match, he held it high, and by its feeble flare saw the crazed struggle of his comrades all yelling at the door. Fallen men clutched madly at the feet that trampled them. Water lapped into the forecastle. The match went out. The ship lurched heavily.

Jukes stepped from the emptied forecastle into water knee deep. As he slid barefooted to the rigging, the water rose to his waist. He gripped the shrouds and swung himself aloft. The water followed. He climbed, cat-nimble. The water followed close. He heard a last useless order from the skipper. Someone screamed, “The boat!” A shriek ended in a groan close to him. A hand clutched his bare foot. He bent to grasp the hand; but it slipped, and he touched only water.

Save for the growl and long wash of the sea there was no sound.

Alf Jukes was swimming.

Dawn came, and, treading water, Jukes gazed round the sea. He struck out, swam with strong steady strokes, and presently swung himself upon a piece of drifting wreckage.

The horizon was empty, the sky without a cloud. The sea was flat.

The sun rose. It beat on the bare white skin of Alf Jukes.

Jukes took a little oilskin package from his pocket and wedged it in the centre of the raft. He slipped off his dungaree trousers and dipped them in the sea. The dripping dungarees in his hand, he stood stark naked and once more gazed around. The sea was empty. His head by the raft’s edge, he lay down and covered himself as well as he could with the wet dungaree. The sun climbed higher.

Now and again Jukes splashed his great hands in the water, wetting his head and upper limbs afresh. Except upon the raft there was no motion anywhere in sky or sea.

By and by Jukes rose. His eyes searched the horizon. It was empty. He dropped the dungarees and dived deep. He swam down and down, seeking the cooler depths. He glimmered white, far under the unrippled blue water. When he rose to the surface again he held to the edge of the raft. The raft gave no shade. He reached for, and covered his head with, the dungarees. The sun was overhead when he drew himself up, and, holding to the edge of the raft, looked all about again.

Suddenly Jukes hurled himself upon the raft. His body, glistening in the sun, he watched a long green shape dart under him.

For the rest of the day Jukes dipped his dungarees in the sea and covered himself as best he could. All day a sharp green fin cruised slowly round. When the sun dipped there were red fiery patches on the marble-white skin of his back, on his thighs and shoulders.

Stars wakened. Long after day was gone Jukes curled himself in the middle of the raft and went to sleep. Thirst wakened him. He dipped the dungarees in the sea and wrapped them round his neck.

Night passed. At dawn the horizon was empty. Fins cruised to and fro on all sides. Snouts broke the still blue water. The sky was cloudless.

When Jukes dipped his dungarees, jaws snapped on them. He wrenched, and a leg of the dungarees remained in his hands. He wrapped it about his neck, and crouched down. The sun climbed higher.

Jukes rocked a little to and fro. Now and again a low coughing grunt escaped him.

Day passed. Night came, starry and still. Snouts nosed around the raft’s edge. Fins darted to and fro, rippling the windless water. Jukes slept fitfully, dreamed, wakened, dozed, and dreamed again. Night passed.

At dawn Jukes climbed unsteadily to his feet. His lips were black, his skin scarlet. He moaned. His tongue was swollen.

A quarter of a mile from the raft a dense black cloud was slowly crossing the equatorial sky. A sheer wall of water fell from the cloud to the sea. Flying fish leaped at the rain’s foot. White birds preyed on them from above, silver-bellied fish from below. The snouts were gone, to join in the preying.

Staring at the rain wall, Jukes listened to the just-audible _s-s-s-s_ of the doldrum squall.

The squall passed by, came within an eighth of a mile of the raft, dipped under the sea rim, and was gone. The sun rode high in a blue cloudless sky. The snouts were back. Fins rippled the water all about. Jukes crouched, with the wet scrap of dungaree about his neck. Day passed. Night came.

Jukes lay prostrate, face downward. Hours passed. Long after midnight he lifted his head and tried to climb to his knees. A dim green light winked on the sea far off. He toppled over and was still. Wind ruffled his hair and blew cool upon his brow.

Alf Jukes saw houses with smoking chimneys, windows aglint. Saw masts and spars along a waterfront. Heard singing, far away. A wind blew through green treetops.

* * * * *

When Jukes came to himself he lay in a lamplit forecastle. From near by came the voices of sailors. “I seen a boat wi’ two dead men in her one time. None ever knowed wot ship they was from.”

“If you follers deep water long enough, it’ll git ye.”

“Aye. ’Ow many _old_ sailors ’ave you ever seed?”

Jukes raised his head painfully and listened. From neck to ankles his body was a fiery blister.

“I been eleven blasted year at sea. I got nuthin’.”

“You never will ’ave.”

“W’oo cares?”

“There don’t no one care. You an’ me is dogs.”

“This here’ll be my last v’yage.”

“Aye.--That’s wot you says.--Wait.”

“Wait yerself. I’m done.”

“Haw, haw, haw!”

“There’s one as had ought to be cured leastways,” and a nod toward the forecastle.

Jukes climbed from the bunk and tottered out into the starlight.

“’Ow are ye, matey?”

“Bring ’im some water.”

Jukes gulped cold water down.

“’Ere, mate--you ’ad it in yer ’and.”

Jukes took the little oilskin package. They led him back and laid him in the bunk again. They smeared more grease on his burned limbs. They gave him more water.

“Look at ’im!--I’m done.”

“Me, too.”

As Jukes with fumbling fingers untied the package, they gathered round. He nodded his head. His lips moved. A sailor bent above him, listening.

“’E’s done. No more o’ships fer ’im.”

Jukes dozed away. They passed the picture from hand to hand. They read the dog-eared letter over.

“Look at ’ere,” said one, and pointed to the date.

“Three year ago! ’Ee’s been a long time----”

“Shanghaied, maybe.”

“Them crimps.”

“I’m done.”

“Haw, haw, haw! Maybe!”

* * * * *

It was the dog-watch time. The sun was setting. Warm, pearly little clouds passed overhead. A low wind murmured.

The sailor on lookout leaned on the forecastle rail, watching his comrades on the deck below. Skipper and mate looked forward from the poop. The cook and carpenter lolled in the galley doorway.

A dozen sailors gambolled by the hatch, trying themselves, pitting their strength and skill against each other’s. Alf Jukes was there, with head and shoulders higher than the rest.

“Here, Jukes!” called one, a lad with an unshaven downy face. “I’ll race you to the masthead!--Up and back. A pound of baccy to the winner. You take the main, and I’ll go up the fore.”

“’Ere, Chips! Come on an’ start ’em,” called an eager sailor; and Chips, the carpenter, stepped up.

“One--two----”

“I’ll bet a pound o’ baccy on young Limbertoes!”

“Me, too.”

Turning to the mate, the skipper said:

“The young fellow’ll win.”

“Aye,” said the mate, “he’s young. It’s in his favour.”

Jukes at the main, the other at the fore shrouds, stood waiting “three.”

“_Three!_” snapped the carpenter.

“Go!--go!--go!”

“Go, Limbertoes! My baccy’s on you!”

“Go, Jukes!--Go, Jukes!”

“Show ’im a sailor! Show ’im, Limber, now!”

Over the futtock shrouds, together, neck and neck, went Jukes and Limber.

“Two pound o’ baccy--’oo takes me on?--two pound on Limber!”

“Done--an’ my Sunday whack o’ duff thrown in!”

“Lord!--look at that there Jukes! ’Ee’s like a monkey.”

“Some sailor, that,” the skipper said. “Look at him go!”

“But the young man wins,” the mate replied.

“Bully for Limber!”

The youngster touched a hand upon the fore royal truck a touch ahead of Jukes upon the main.

“Down!--down!--down!” roared all the sailors.

Alf Jukes came sliding down the main royal stay. Down the fore royal stay came Limbertoes.

“Come on, Limber!”

“Limber wins!”

“A tie! They’re neck and neck.”

“No.--Limber wins!”

A bellow rose from every sailor. Full forty feet above the deck, Alf Jukes let go and dropped. Hands up and arms above his head, he fell straight as a plummet and landed on his feet.

“That fellow’s like a bear,” the skipper said.

“There was a feller on my last ship as’d beat both of ’em,” said a sailor.

“Oh, aye! There’s always fellers on a man’s last ship,” answered another.

“To-morrer we’ll be in, an’ you’ll ’ave one more last ship,” another laughed.

“Jukes, was you ever beat at anything?”

Without an answer Jukes walked slowly off and sat alone upon the bulwarks. His face was grim.

The bell struck eight. The crew strolled aft to answer to the muster roll. Last came Jukes. He looked like a bear that, peering from sheltering wilds, wonders what lies in the valleys beyond its great freedom.

* * * * *

Sails were furled, ropes coiled; the ship at anchor. A chill wind thrummed in her rigging. Cold rain beat down.

The sailors sat in the forecastle, amidst them a boarding master. While they drank from his bottles, Alf Jukes paced up and down the deck outside, alone. Now and again a sailor looked from the forecastle and called to him. He paid no heed.

The boarding master’s crimp came out, bottle in hand.

“The boys sent it ye, matey,” said he, and held the bottle temptingly toward Jukes. Jukes answered with a growl. His great right fist shot out, and, as the bruised crimp climbed to his feet, the sailors looked, laughing, from the forecastle ports.

The crimp reëntered the forecastle. The boarding master passed the bottles round. The sailors cursed the ship, all ships, and damned the sea. Soon, crowding at his heels, they all swarmed out, and clambered down into the boat ahead of him. Paying no heed to their loud farewells, Jukes walked up and down in the wind and the rain. Last, loitering from the forecastle, came the crimp.

The shouts of the sailors faded away. The ship was silent. The wind and the rain beat on her.

Jukes entered the deserted forecastle. It was gloomy and chill. Water dripped from him. He sat down, shivering a little. He drew out his oilskin package and untied it. Dark fell.

Presently, lighting the lamp, Jukes saw a bottle on the table. He scowled. He picked it up, and stepped to the door. The wind soughed drearily. The rain whipped by. He hesitated in the doorway, the bottle in his outstretched hand.

A boat drew noiselessly alongside the ship. The boarding master and his crimp climbed back aboard and peered unseen through one of the forward forecastle ports.

Bottle in hand, Jukes leaned in the doorway and looked out into the night. To-morrow he would be forever done with the sea.

Shore lights glimmered, winking through the rain. The sound of music reached him, faint upon the wind. Singing came indistinctly from the waterfront. It was very solitary, very cold in the forecastle.

Jukes moved closer to the lamp and held the bottle up. The crimp nudged the boarding master.

Alf Jukes put the bottle to his nose. Something to warm him a little; then toss it over the side.

Jukes tipped the bottle. His Adam’s apple rose and fell. He took the bottle from his lips, and listened. He looked about him, making sure that he was all alone.

Jukes sat down, bottle in hand. Outside the wind wailed drearily. The cold rain hissed. His Adam’s apple rose and fell again.

The boarding master entered the forecastle, the crimp at his heels. Jukes turned and leaped to his feet. Lifting the bottle to hurl it, he swayed uncertainly.

The crimp was laughing.

Jukes clutched at the bulkhead. The lamp was grown suddenly dim. The boarding master and the crimp had disappeared.

Someone struck Alf Jukes just behind the ear. Someone laughed near by.

Stars whirled in a pitch-black sky. The boarding master knelt over Jukes.

Everything was dark.

FEAR

BY JAMES WARNER BELLAH

From _Saturday Evening Post_

It was a little spot, that fear, but it had ached in his heart for months--ever since his first solo flight at Upavon Airdrome. It had come suddenly one morning like the clean pink hole of a steel-jacketed bullet--a wound to be ashamed of--a wound to fight against--a wound that never quite healed. Always it was there to throb and to pinch like the first faint gnawing of cancer. It came with him to the theatre and rankled his mind: “Enjoy this--it may be your last play.” It crept into his throat at meals, sometimes, and took away the poor savour that was left to the foods of wartime.

The fear of the men who fly. Sometimes he pictured it as an imp--an imp that sat eternally on his top plane and questioned him on the strength of rudder wires, pointed to imaginary flaws in struts, suggested that the petrol was low in the tank, that the engine would die on the next climbing turn.

It was with him now as the tender that was to take him up to his squadron jolted and bounced its way across the _pavé_ on the outskirts of Amiens. The squadron was the last place he had to go to. All the months that were gone had led up to this. These were the wars at last. This was the place he would cop it, if he was to cop it at all.