Chapter VI: The Thomas Doane

The _Thomas Doane_, seen from the wharf in the faint light of the street lamp, was a mere shape of blackness, with masts like charcoal marks against the sky, and a tangle of ropes running up to meet them. The windows of the after deck-house were illuminated, however, and as Bradley and the Captain stepped from the wharf to the rail and from that to the deck a man came up the companionway from the cabin and touched his hat.

“Howdy, Cap’n,” he said. “Glad to see you back. Everything runnin’ smooth down home?”

“Yup,” answered the skipper. “Smooth as a smelt. How’s it here?”

“Shipshape,” was the reply. “The mainsail’s been patched, and I’ve put in the new runnin’ riggin’ where you said. That fore-tops’l’s been fixed, too, as well’s we could do it. She ought to have a new one, but I s’pose Williams’ll think it’s too expensive, won’t he?”

The Captain’s answer was a grunt that might have meant almost anything.

“Brad,” he said, “this is Mr. Bailey, the first mate. He’ll be your boss, next to me, after to-morrer. Mr. Bailey, this is a new hand. He hasn’t exactly shipped yet, so you needn’t break him in to-night unless your conscience troubles you _too_ much.”

The mate held out a hand like a ham covered with red sole leather, and Bradley shook it fearfully.

“Relation of yours, Cap’n?” inquired Mr. Bailey.

“Not exactly; and still, I don’t know. He’s a Nickerson, and there’s mighty few Cape families that ain’t had a Nickerson hitched to ’em somewheres at some time. They’re all over the plate, like a b’iled dinner. Is the doctor aboard? I’m hungry and I cal’late Brad could find storage room for a little freight somewheres.”

The cook was ashore just then, but the mate said he guessed he could “scratch grub enough together for supper.” Captain Titcomb, however, declined the offer and said that he and Bradley would go up to an “eatin’ house” somewhere for this time. So, after a walk through more of the narrow, crooked streets, the pair entered a little battered restaurant with the sign “Atwood’s Oyster Saloon” over the door, and took seats in one of a row of curtained alcoves that seemed to the boy more like horse stalls than anything else. Then the Captain ordered oyster stews and, when these had come and gone, squash pie and coffee.

After the last crumb of the pie had disappeared Captain Titcomb lighted a cigar, leaned back in the corner of the “stall” and, with his eyes half-closed and an odd expression about the corners of his mouth, gazed at Bradley in silence. At length he took the cigar from his lips, flipped away the ash with his little finger, and said slowly:

“Brad, there’s a whole lot of things that a green hand has to learn when he goes to sea, and there’s a whole lot more he’s got to unlearn. I’ve been wonderin’ whether ’twas best for me to give you the course, so to speak, or let you find it out for yourself. When I was a little shaver, mother caught me with a pocket full of apples that I’d hooked from old man Pepper’s orchard that was jest over our back fence. She give me an awful talkin’ to, but dad didn’t say much. ‘Let him alone, Sarah,’ he says; ‘he’ll learn by experience.’ Sure enough, in ’bout a week, in marches Pepper, holdin’ me by the collar with one hand and a big switch in t’other. ‘Sam,’ says he to dad, ‘here’s this boy of yours been stealin’ my apples. If ’twas anybody else’s child, I’d give him a lickin’ that he’d remember.’ Dad didn’t even take his hands out of his pockets. All he said was, ‘Well, Elkanah, ’twill be your fault if he steals any more.’ Then he went in the house. Pepper didn’t know what to make of it for a minute. Then he sort of sized up matters. ‘Hum!’ he says; ‘I guess I won’t take the responsibility,’ and when he got through the switch wan’t nothin’ but a frazzled end, and I ain’t cared much for apples sence.

“That was what dad called ’learnin’ by experience.’ I learned my seafarin’ the same way, and I ain’t forgot the lesson. Maybe that’s why I’m goin’ to tell you a few things. Now, you and me on shore have been sort of chums, ain’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Bradley, puzzled to know what his companion was driving at.

“All right. _When_ we’re on shore we’ll be chums, same as ever. But when we’re ’board ship, I’m skipper and you’re a hand; understand?”

“Yes, sir; I guess so.”

“Don’t guess--it won’t be any conundrum. I’ll be Cap’n Titcomb, and Mr. Bailey’ll be mate, and Mr. Saunders--you haven’t seen him yet--he’ll be second mate. When one of us three says, ‘Nickerson, do thus and so,’ you _do_ it, and do it on the jump. Don’t stop to think ’bout it, or maybe you’ll learn by experience, the way I did. Aboard any vessel that I’m on there ain’t any pets. One man’s good’s another, provided he does his work. Say ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ when you git an order, and don’t guess at things. You ain’t paid to do it yet awhile. Let the officers do the guessin’. This is pretty plain talk, but I don’t want you to make any mistakes. See?”

“Yes, sir.” Bradley’s face was very solemn.

“All right. This seems tough now, but it saves you from worryin’ ’bout the future, as the feller said to the pig afore he killed him. Come on down aboard, and we’ll turn in.”

As they came out on the sidewalk the Captain looked down at the boy and smiled.

“Brace up, Brad,” he said, giving the new hand a hearty slap on the back. “You’ll do all right. Don’t worry.”

That night Bradley slept in the second mate’s room off the cabin, but it was understood that hereafter he was to bunk forward with the crew. The next morning the Captain took him up to a store on Commercial street, where a sailor’s bag was purchased, for, so the skipper said, nobody but a landlubber took a trunk to sea. It must be either a chest or a bag, and the chest would come later on. Bradley transferred such of his belongings as the Captain deemed necessary from the trunk to the bag, and the trunk itself was stored in the wharfinger’s office until its owner should call for it some time in the future.

The second mate, a thin young man, with hair and face both a flaming red, came on board in the morning, and the crew were already there. Then a tug took the _Thomas Doane_ in tow and pulled her out of the dock and around to another wharf, where she was to receive her cargo of lumber. And from the moment when the tug’s hawser was attached Bradley began to realize what Captain Titcomb had meant by his advice of the previous night.

It was “Here, boy! stand by to take a hand with that rope,” or “You, boy--what’s your name--git a bucket and swab up that mess on the deck. Lively! D’you hear?” The cook was a little Portuguese and he delighted to haze his new assistant; so when, at nine o’clock or so, Bradley tumbled into his bunk in the smoke-reeking fo’castle, he was tired enough to drop asleep even in the midst of yarns and profanity.

The lumber, in the hold and on the decks, was at last on board, and one morning the schooner, with all sail set, passed Minot’s Light, bound for New York. The afternoon of that day was a dismal experience for Bradley. The _Thomas Doane_ was heavily loaded, and she swashed and wallowed through the good-sized waves with a motion so entirely different from that of the catboats which the boy had been used to that he was most heartily and miserably seasick.

That evening, with lee rail almost awash, they were off the bank of the Cape, and the lights at Orham showed clear on the horizon. It was really a reefing breeze, but Captain Titcomb had a reputation for record trips to sustain, and he didn’t reef until there was danger of carrying away the canvas. Bradley, for a moment idle, was leaning on the bulwarks, staring dolefully at the distant lights, when a man came close beside him and said, in a half-whisper: “Well, Brad, how’d you like to be in the old maids’ dinin’-room jest about now?”

The new hand glanced hurriedly up and saw the skipper.

“Very much, sir,” he answered, truthfully.

The Captain chuckled. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “Never mind; swallow hard and hope you like it. That’s ’bout all a sailor lives on, is hope. That’s why the sign of it’s an anchor, I guess.”

A voice called from the galley.

“Boy!” it wailed. “Neeckerson! Where ees that no good boy? _Boy!_”

“Aye, aye, sir!” shouted Bradley, and jumped to receive a kettle of greasy dish water, the sight and smell of which did not make him feel any happier just then.

But seasickness and homesickness were forgotten on the day of the wonderful sail through Long Island Sound. They passed schooners of all shapes and sizes, loaded till the decks were scarcely above water, or running light and high in ballast. Sharp-nosed schooners with lines like those of a yacht, and clumsy old tubs with dirty sails, with patches--varying from new white to a dingy gray--plastered all over them. They overtook stubby sloops, heaped with cut granite or brick, and steered by a big tiller, and were in turn overtaken or met by excursion steamers, freight steamers, or an occasional ocean-going tug with a string of coal barges towing behind. The Sound was a highway, a sea street, crowded with traffic, and through it the _Thomas Doane_ picked her way serenely with a fair wind to help, and a white ribbon of foam trailing from either side of her bow.

She wasn’t a new vessel--even Bradley could see that she was old and weather-beaten--but she was kept as clean as scouring could make her, and paint was used liberally. A man with a paint bucket and another with a swab were nearly always to be seen busy about the _Thomas Doane_.

Night, and they were fast to a big wharf, with lights all about them; lights piled, row after row, up to meet the stars; lights fringing the river or moving up and down and across it; lights in the arching curve of the bridge that Bradley had seen so often in pictures. Whistles sounding, bells ringing, distant shoutings, and the never-ceasing undercurrent of hum and roar that is New York, breathing steadily and regularly.

On the following morning Captain Titcomb left the schooner and, after an hour or two, returned with a sharp-eyed man who smoked continuously, although the wharf-signs shouted in six-inch letters that no smoking was allowed, and who said little but looked a great deal. Bradley learned from the cook, who had been along the water front and, having fallen in with some friends, was mellow and inclined to be confidential, that the sharp-eyed man was Mr. Williams, the junior member of the firm that owned the _Thomas Doane_ and a half dozen other coasters.

Mr. Williams and the Captain had a long conversation in the cabin, and, after it was over, the skipper was a bit out of temper, and his orders were unusually crisp and sharp. As Bradley brought the dinner from the galley to the cabin that noon, he heard a remark that the Captain made in reply to a question of the first mate.

“Aw, nothin’ worth mentionin’,” he said. “It’s the old story. I let him know that I was mighty nigh sick of runnin’ this floatin’ junk shop, and wanted the new schooner when she was ready. He soft-soddered me till I felt slippery all over; told me I could git more out of an old vessel than any man he ever had, and that he jest simply couldn’t shift me till the _Thomas Doane_ was ready for the scrap heap. Said not to worry; the firm appreciated what I was doin’ and would make it right with me--and a whole lot more. Well, I can’t kick so fur’s wages go; but if it wan’t that Williams Brothers pay me more’n ha’f again what most coastin’ skippers git, I’d chuck it to-morrer and hunt a new berth.”

On one memorable evening the Captain, having previously whispered to Bradley to put on his “Sunday togs,” sent the boy on an errand to a cigar store near the wharf and told him to wait there “for further orders.” In a little while he, himself, came into the store, commanded Bradley to “lay alongside and say nothin’,” and the pair walked briskly across the city to the elevated railway station. Then they rode uptown, had a six-course dinner in a marvelous restaurant, where an orchestra played while you ate, and then went to the theatre to see a play called “The Great Metropolis.” It was all real to Bradley, and he thrilled, wept and laughed alternately; but the Captain was disgusted.

“I swan to man!” he ejaculated, as they went out, after the villain had becomingly shot himself, and the hero and heroine were clasped in each other’s arms, “blessed if them plays with sea scenes in ’em don’t make me sick. Did you notice that life-savin’ bus’ness? Ship aground in the breakers, with her bowspit stickin’ ten foot over dry land, and the crew took off in the breeches buoy! If they’d swung out on the jib-boom and dropped, they’d have landed on the roof of the life-savin’ station. And it thunderin’ and lightnin’ and snowin’ all at the same time! That kind of weather would make the Old Farmers’ Almanac jealous.”

On the way down in the elevated he said, with a whimsical smile, “Brad, I cal’late if the old maids knew I took you to the theatre they’d think you was slidin’ a greased pole to perdition, wouldn’t they?”

Bradley smiled also as he answered: “No, sir; I guess they’d think if you did it ’twas all right.”

Captain Titcomb grinned, but he made no comment on the reply. All he said was: “Well, Orham’s Orham, and New York’s New York, and the way things looks depends consider’ble on which end of the spyglass you squint through. Anyhow, p’raps you’d better not put this cruise down in the log.”

But Bradley did put it down in the log; that is to say, he wrote a full account of this, the greatest evening of his life, in his next letter to the sisters. His habit of scrupulous honesty still clung to him, and he did not evade or cover up. If he did a thing it was done because he thought it right, and other considerations counted for little.

He had received three letters from home already. One, from Miss Prissy, gave him all sorts of advice concerning his clothes, his health, and so on. Miss Tempy, through sixteen pages closely written, built one air castle after another. He was by this time, in her mind, sure to become commander of an ocean liner, and she was now busily planning a trip to Europe. As for financial matters, all was serene. She had knit nearly half a shawl already.

Gus wrote town gossip, spiced with comment. In one paragraph she said: “The whole village is talking about your sailing with Captain Ezra. Everybody thinks it is a good joke on the ‘old maids.’ Some people think it is dreadful and that you are sure to be ruined. Melissa Busteed told grandmother that the idea of trusting an innocent young man to such a ‘worldly critter’ as the Captain was a ‘cryin’ sin.’ She said somebody ought to warn Prissy and Tempy against him, and that she didn’t know but it was her duty to do it herself. I don’t think it would be very healthy for her if she did, do you?”

Occasions like the theatre trip were few and far apart. For the most part, Captain Titcomb was skipper and Bradley was the “hand.” With every voyage, sometimes to Portland, to Portsmouth, to Boston, and, of course, to New York, the boy learned new things about his chief officer and to understand him better.

He learned why it was that the Captain received so many presents and was considered such a “slick article.” His acquaintance among seafaring men and ship owners was large, and he was always ready to do “little favors.” Sometimes a captain, just in from a foreign cruise, had, hidden away, two or three pieces of silk, or jewelry, or even, in one case, a piano, that were intended for gifts to the folks at home, and to the cost of which the custom house duty would be an uncomfortable addition. Then Captain Titcomb visited that ship, purely as a social function, and when he came away the jewelry or silk came with him. In the piano affair, it was bribery pure and simple, with the addition of a little bullying of an inspector who had made a few slips before that the Captain knew of. Petty smuggling like this Captain Titcomb did not consider a sin worth worrying about. There was a smack of adventure in it and the fun of “taking chances,” that Captain Eri had mentioned.

Then, as a bargainer and a driver of sharp trades with shipping merchants and others, the Captain was an expert. He liked, as he said, to “dicker,” and, besides, he was always on the lookout to further the interest of his owners. Looking out for the owners was his hobby and explained, in a measure, why Williams Brothers were willing to pay him more than they paid their other skippers.

He was a “driver” with his crews, and every particle that was in the rickety _Thomas Doane_ he got out of her. He was easy so long as a man obeyed orders, but at the slightest hint of mutiny things happened. There was one instance of this on Bradley’s first trip out of New York to Portland.

There was a big Swede among the crew, a new hand, who had shipped in Boston. He had been as meek and as docile as a truck horse all the way over, but early on the morning when the schooner was passing through Vineyard Sound bound east, Bradley, from the door of the galley, saw Saunders, the second mate, in consultation with Mr. Bailey. The pair looked troubled and kept glancing at the fo’castle hatch.

Finally the first mate walked forward and called down the hatch, “Hey, you, Swensen! Tumble up here, lively!”

The watch on deck looked interested. From the fo’castle came a growl from Swensen, and a smothered laugh from some one else.

“Lively, now! d’you hear?” shouted Mr. Bailey. “Tumble up! If I come down there you’ll have to be carried.”

After a moment of silence there was the sound of heavy boots on the ladder and the Swede appeared. His eyes were bloodshot and ugly and he staggered a little as he walked. Mr. Saunders stepped forward and stood at the side of his fellow-officer.

“Where’d you git your rum?” demanded Bailey. “Roust out that bottle and heave it overboard.”

Swensen looked sullen, but didn’t answer.

“Roust out that bottle,” repeated the first mate. “D’you hear?”

The Swede clenched his fists. His little eyes were half closed and he glanced swiftly at the two mates. The sailors on deck had stopped work to watch the proceedings, and there was a head or two at the hatch. It was no time for argument. Both mates sprang at the rebel. Swensen roared and jumped to meet them. His enormous fist caught Saunders under the chin and the second mate struck the deck with a thump and lay still, completely “knocked out.”

Mr. Bailey--he was an old man whose fist-fighting days were over--turned and ran to the after companion. Just as he was about to descend, he was met by Captain Titcomb. The latter was in his stocking feet and without a coat.

“What’s the row?” he asked.

“That darned Swede is drunk and raisin’ the devil,” shouted the excited first mate. “Jest let me git my revolver. I’ll l’arn him somethin’.”

“Revolver nothin’,” said Captain Ezra. “You don’t need a revolver.”

He walked briskly forward and confronted the giant, who was, at the moment, in a mood where murder was a pleasure. “Put down your hands!” commanded the Captain.

“Look out for him,” warned Mr. Bailey. “He’s an ox. He’s jest hit Saunders; and killed him, too, for what _I_ know.”

“Put down your hands!” repeated the skipper, calmly.

Instead of putting them down the Swede struck his two fists together and, with a howl, leaped at the little man in front of him. The Captain calmly stepped aside, stuck out his foot, and the giant, tripping over it, fell headlong. As he struggled, swearing, to his knees, he was hit just under the eye and fell again.

“Put down your hands!” repeated the Captain, in exactly the same calm, matter-of-fact tone.

“You go----” began Swensen, but the back of his head struck the deck so emphatically that he didn’t finish. After two more of these acrobatic performances he concluded not to get up, and lay still, looking rather dazed and very much surprised.

“Ready to put down your hands?” inquired Captain Ezra.

“Yas, sir,” said Swensen.

“Ready to turn to and obey orders?”

“Yas, sir.”

“All right. Where’s the rum?”

“In my chist.”

“One bottle or more?”

“Yust--yust von, sir, I tank.”

“You _tank_? O’Leary,” to one of the crew at the hatch, “go to this feller’s chist and bring up that bottle and heave it overboard. If there’s any more liquor aboard here anywheres, bring that, too. Don’t forgit to find all there is, or your mem’ry’ll be freshened up in a hurry. Lively now!”

Two bottles--one a third full of Jamaica rum and the other half full of gin--were brought out and thrown overboard.

“Humph!” grunted the Captain. “I jedge somebody else felt the need of a little eye-opener this mornin’. There’s consider’ble of this hulk here, but he didn’t stow away all that’s missing from them bottles.” Then his tone changed and he turned savagely to the rest of the crew.

“Is there anybody else here that doubts who’s runnin’ this schooner?” he asked. “If there is, now’s his time to be argued with. No? Well, all right. I jedge, then, that you’re willin’ to do your drinkin’ on shore. Mr. Bailey, set that feller,” pointing to Swensen, “to work and _keep_ him at work till we git to the dock. If he quits, send for me. When I can’t handle a drunk without a revolver, let me know, will you?”

As he passed the galley and saw Bradley’s pale, frightened face looking out at him, the Captain did not smile nor speak, but his left eyelid quivered for an instant. It was a most reassuring wink and argued for the serenity and self-confidence of the winker. Bradley had idolized his captain before; he would have jumped overboard for him cheerfully after that.

* * * * *

And so the _Thomas Doane_ passed and repassed Cape Cod on her short voyages, and Bradley, with every trip, learned more of the sea and the seaman’s life. At the end of his three months he went home for a week’s stay, but he had already made up his mind to return to the schooner again. Captain Titcomb had said that he was pleased with him, and hinted at a steady rise in wages and promotion, later on. He was earning his living now--it cost little to live--and he sent home a few dollars to the “old maids” every now and then.

His first home-coming was a great event. The supper that first night was almost equal, in the amount of food on the table, to his dinner with the Captain at the New York restaurant. In fact, Bradley, released from salt junk and fo’castle grub, ate so much that he suffered with the nightmare and groaned so dismally that the alarmed sisters pounded on his chamber door, and Miss Tempy insisted that what he needed was a dose of “Old Dr. Thomas’ Discovery”--her newest patent medicine--and a “nice hot cup of pepper tea.”

There was no music during the meal, but the “old maids” talked continuously. The hemming and the shawl industry were bringing in some money, though not yet what Miss Tempy anticipated, and they had had a windfall in the shape of a contribution from the Sampson fund.

“You see,” explained Miss Tempy, “it come so sudden that it seemed almost like Providence had heard us talkin’ that night and provided for us same as it did for Jonah in the Bible, when the robins fed him.”

“’Twan’t Jonah,” broke in Miss Prissy, “’twas Elijah, and they wan’t robins but ravens.”

“Never mind, ’twas birds and they fed somebody. I’m sure poor Jonah needed it, after the time he had, bein’ eat up by whales and things. Well, anyway, Prissy got a letter from the Sampson folks, and they said that there was a fund for mariners’ children--of course, we ain’t children any more--but then----”

“We’re all the children father had,” interrupted the older sister. “The letter said that there was money due us from the fund, and that we was entitled to so much every year, most a hundred dollars. Now I knew about the Sampson thing, but _I_ thought ’twas charity for poor people, and Tempy and me have got to livin’ on charity--not yet, I _hope_. But it seems, ’cordin’ to the letters I had from ’em, that the money b’longed to us, so----”

“So we get a check every once in a while,” cried Miss Tempy. “And how they knew and wrote jest at this time! It’s miraculous, that’s what it is, miraculous!”

Bradley thought of his conversation with Captain Titcomb and the affair did not seem so miraculous, but he knew the Captain would not wish him to explain, and so said nothing.