The watches were divided, Charlie and three other Chinamen on the port, Kitchell, Wilbur, and two Chinamen on the starboard. The men trooped forward again.
The tiny world of the schooner had lapsed to quiet. The Bertha Millner was now clear of the land, that lay like a blur of faintest purple smokeever growing fainterlow in the east. The Farallones showed but their shoulders above the horizon. The schooner was standing well out from shoreeven beyond the track of the coasters and passenger steamersto catch the Trades from the northwest. The sun was setting royally, and the floor of the ocean shimmered like mosaic. The sea had gone down and the fury of the bar was a thing forgotten. It was perceptibly warmer.
On board, the two watches mingled forward, smoking opium and playing a game that looked like checkers. Three of them were washing down the decks with kaiar brooms. For the first time since he had come on board Wilbur heard the sound of their voices.
The evening was magnificent. Never to Wilburs eyes had the Pacific appeared so vast, so radiant, so divinely beautiful. A star or two burned slowly through that part of the sky where the pink began to fade into the blue. Charlie went forward and set the side lightsred on the port rigging, green on the starboard. As he passed Wilbur, who was leaning over the rail and watching the phosphorus flashing just under the surface, he said:
Hey, you go talkee-talk one-piecey Boss, savvy Bosschin-chin.
Wilbur went aft and came up on the poop, where Kitchell stood at the wheel, smoking an inverted Tarriers Delight.
Now, son, began Kitchell, I natchly love you so that Im goin to do you a reel favor, do you twig? Im goin to allow you to berth aft in the cabin, long o me an Charlie, an beesides you can make free of my quarterdeck. Mebbee you aint used to the ways of sailormen just yet, but you can lay to it that those two are reel concessions, savvy? I aint a mush-head, like mee dear friend Jim. You aint no water-front swine, I can guess that with one hand tied beehind me. Youre a toff, thats what you are, and your lines has been laid for toffs. I aint askin you no questions, but you got brains, an I figger on gettin more outa you by lettin you have yr head a bit. But mind, now, you get gay once, sonny, or try to flimflam me, or forget that Im the boss of the bathtub, an strike me blind, Ill cut you open, an you can lay to that, son. Now, then, heres the game: You work this boat long with the coolies, an take my orders, an walk chalk, an Ill teach you navigation, an make this cruise as easy as how-do-you-do. You dont, an Ill manhandle you till yr bones come throo yr hide.
Ive no choice in the matter, said Wilbur. Ive got to make the best of a bad situation.
I ree-marked as how you had brains, muttered the Captain.
But theres one thing, continued Wilbur; if Im to have my head a little, as you say, youll find we can get along better if you put me to rights about this whole business. Why was I brought aboard, why are there only Chinese along, where are we going, what are we going to do, and how long are we going to be gone?
Kitchell spat over the side, and then sucked the nicotine from his mustache.
Well, he said, resuming his pipe, its like this, son. This ship belongs to one of the Six Chinese Companies of Chinatown in Frisco. Charlie, here, is one of the shareholders in the business. We go down here twice a year off Cape Sain Lucas, Lower California, an fish for blue sharks, or white, if we kin ketch em. We get the livers of these an try out the oil, an we bring back that same oil, an the Chinamen sell it all over San Francisco as simon-pure cod-liver oil, savvy? An it pays like a nitrate bed. I come in because its a Custom-house regulation that no coolie can take a boat out of Frisco.
And how do I come in? asked Wilbur.
Mee dear friend Jim put a knock-me-out drop into your Manhattan cocktail. Its a capsule filled with a drug. You were shanghaied, son, said the Captain, blandly.
About an hour later Wilbur turned in. Kitchell showed him his bunk with its donkeys breakfast and single ill-smelling blanket. It was located under the companionway that led down into the cabin. Kitchell bunked on one side, Charlie on the other. A hacked deal table, covered with oilcloth and ironed to the floor, a swinging-lamp, two chairs, a rack of books, a chest or two, and a flaring picture cut from the advertisement of a ballet, was the rooms inventory in the matter of furniture and ornament.
Wilbur sat on the edge of his bunk before undressing, reviewing the extraordinary events of the day. In a moment he was aware of a movement in one of the other two bunks, and presently made out Charlie lying on his side and holding in the flame of an alcohol lamp a skewer on which some brown and sticky stuff boiled and sizzled. He transformed the stuff to the bowl of a huge pipe and drew on it noisily once or twice. In another moment he had sunk back in his bunk, nearly senseless, but with a long breath of an almost blissful contentment.
Beast! muttered Wilbur, with profound disgust.
He threw off his oilskin coat and felt in the pocket of his waistcoat (which he had retained when he had changed his clothes in the focsle) for his watch. He drew it out. It was just nine oclock. All at once an idea occurred to him. He fumbled in another pocket of the waistcoat and brought out one of his calling-cards.
For a moment Wilbur remained motionless, seated on the bunk-ledge, smiling grimly, while his glance wandered now to the sordid cabin of the Bertha Millner and the opium-drugged coolie sprawled on the donkeys breakfast, and now to the card in his hand on which a few hours ago he had written:
First waltzJo.
III. THE LADY LETTY
Another day passed, then two. Before Wilbur knew it he had settled himself to his new life, and woke one morning to the realization that he was positively enjoying himself. Daily the weather grew warmer. The fifth day out from San Francisco it was actually hot. The pitch grew soft in the Bertha Millners deck seams, the masts sweated resin. The Chinamen went about the decks wearing but their jeans and blouses. Kitchell had long since abandoned his coat and vest. Wilburs oilskins became intolerable, and he was at last constrained to trade his pocket-knife to Charlie for a suit of jeans and wicker sandals, such as the coolies woreand odd enough he looked in them.
The Captain instructed him in steering, and even promised to show him the use of the sextant and how to take an observation in the fake short and easy coasting style of navigation. Furthermore, he showed him how to read the log and the manner of keeping the dead reckoning.
During most of his watches Wilbur was engaged in painting the inside of the cabin, door panels, lintels, and the few scattered moldings; and toward the middle of the first week out, when the Bertha Millner was in the latitude of Point Conception, he and three Chinamen, under Kitchells directions, ratlined down the forerigging and affixed the crows nest upon the formast. The next morning, during Charlies watch on deck, a Chinaman was sent up into the crows nest, and from that time on there was always a lookout maintained from the masthead.
More than once Wilbur looked around him at the empty coruscating indigo of the ocean floor, wondering at the necessity of the lookout, and finally expressed his curiosity to Kitchell. The Captain had now taken not a little to Wilbur; at first for the sake of a white mans company, and afterward because he began to place a certain vague reliance upon Wilburs judgment. Kitchell had reemarked as how he had brains.