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I cried. "What abominable luck to come through such a terrible experience like that and then lose your finger!" "That's what I thought, sir," Mr. Mellaire agreed. "What did you do?" I asked. "Oh, just held it up and looked at it, and said 'My goodness gracious! and took another drink." "And you didn't get the cholera afterwards?" "No, sir.
Except for a tiny leak down in the fore-peak, with which we sailed from Baltimore and which is bailed out with a pail once in several weeks, the Elsinore is bone-dry. Mr. Pike tells me that had a wooden ship of her size and cargo gone through the buffeting we have endured, she would be leaking like a sieve. And Mr. Mellaire, out of his own experience, has added to my respect for the Horn.
Mellaire was a quarter of an hour ahead of time, and he climbed the poop-ladder and stood beside us while the mate concluded his tale. "I didn't mind it," Mr. Pike continued, "as long as he'd got life and was serving his time. But when they pardoned him out after only seven years I swore I'd get him. And I will.
He'd have padded cells, straitjackets, night and day nurses, and violent wards, I suppose and a convalescents' home in a Queen Anne cottage on the poop. "Oh dear, oh dear," Mr. Mellaire sighed. "This is the funniest voyage and the funniest crew I've ever tackled. It's not going to come to a good end. Anybody can see that with half an eye.
When I made my departure, a moment later, Davis was refilling his pipe and telling Mr. Mellaire that he'd have him up for a witness in Seattle. So we have had another burial at sea. Mr. Pike was vexed by it because the Elsinore, according to sea tradition, was going too fast through the water for a proper ceremony.
As it was, I merely thought it a very marvellous thing that Mr. Mellaire should have lived so many years with such a hole in his head. We talked on, and he gave me many details of that particular happening, and of other happenings at sea on the part of the lunatics that seem to infest the sea. And yet I could not like the man.
Mellaire had the deck, and he went below and reported the change to Captain West. "We'll wear ship at four, Mr. Pathurst," the second mate told me when he came back. "You'll find it an interesting manoeuvre." "But why wait till four?" I asked. "The Captain's orders, sir.
Mellaire, and talked with him, and smiled, and exchanged amenities, I was aware of the feeling that comes to one in the forest or jungle when he knows unseen wild eyes of hunting animals are spying upon him. Frankly I was afraid of the thing ambushed behind there in the skull of Mr. Mellaire. One so as a matter of course identifies form and feature with the spirit within.
Pike, across the poop, leaping with incredible swiftness, sending his snarl before him. "Ease that wheel there! What the hell you gawkin' at? Steady her as I tell you. That's all you got to do!" From for'ard came a cry, and I knew Mr. Mellaire was on top of the for'ard-house and managing the fore-yards. "Now!" from Mr. Pike. "More spokes! Steady! Steady! And be ready to check her!"
Not another word was spoken. Captain West resumed his stroll on the weather side of the poop, and Mr. Mellaire, ascending the ladder, went to pacing up and down the lee side. I continued along the bridge to the forecastle head and purposely remained there half an hour ere I returned to the cabin by way of the main deck.
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