United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was a force of the mind, or soul, that Holy Joe employed; it was a moral force that poured out of the clean spirit of the man and subdued the brute force pitted against him. "Put down that weapon!" Holy Joe repeated. Slowly, the mate lowered his arm. The parson turned to the squareheads; aye, he turned his back full upon the bucko, and the latter made no move against him.
"Obey your orders, men," Holy Joe said to the sailors. "Go to your work as he commands. I will stay with the boy." The squareheads obeyed without question. They knew, just as all of us knew, that their little champion was in no danger of mishandling, at least not at that moment. They trooped aft, heavy-footed, murmuring, but docile, and joined the stiffs at the lee braces.
By "our little friend" Newman meant Holy Joe. The squareheads idolized him. For one thing, his being a parson gave him, from the beginning, standing with them. They were decent, simple villagers, with an inbred respect for the cloth. But more important, was the service he had rendered their dead shipmate.
The port watch Sails, who stood nearest to me, was armed with a heavy sheet pin, and he stood with his face half turned towards the starboard side. Aye, they were canny fighters if it came to blows they would not be taken in the flank by surprise. Mister Fitzgibbon was swearing over the heads of the squareheads. He threw his words into foc'sle.
The wheel and lookout had been relieved, but the mate did not summon his watch to labor, as was his custom; he kept to the poop, and we heard not a peep from him. The squareheads had taken a lamp from the lamp-locker and a sack of coal from the peak, and Lindquist had the body of Nils upon the forehatch preparing it for sea-burial. He stitched away in silence, his mates watched him in silence.
In my watch, Newman, myself, and four square-heads could be called seamen. But the squareheads knew not a dozen words of English between them. The other nine were stiffs, various kinds of stiffs, broken men all, with the weaknesses of dissolute living stamped upon their inefficient faces. Except two men.
I'll put you all in your bunks!" he would tell them. The sight of their young landsman in agony stirred the berserk in the squareheads of the crew. It made them ripe for revolt, drove them to lawless acts, as their shanghaiing and the brutality of the officers could not have done. These squareheads were no strangers to each other. They were all friends and old shipmates.
That was my problem. How indeed? The evil choice was inevitably mine; and I considered it the lesser evil. If I killed Swope, Newman would be safe. Perhaps the mutiny would collapse, would never come off. This last was something Boston and Blackie, blinded by their greed, quite overlooked. But I knew it was hate and fear of Swope, rather than greed, that impelled the squareheads to revolt.
You know what sort of men we were in that foc'sle; save Newman and the parson, we were ignorant men, and superstitious. We all believed implicitly in ghosts, I, and the squareheads, Nigger and Cockney, and even the stiffs who had not the sea in their blood. Aye, even Blackie and Boston believed in haunts. It seemed reasonable to us that Nils should come back to the scene of his earthly misery.
He spoke with authority, in a deep, commanding voice, and the squareheads instantly gave him the obedience they had refused the mate. They did not, indeed, tumble aft in the wake of the stiffs; but they did spread out and make a lane through their midst down which Holy Joe advanced with quick and firm step. Right up to Fitzgibbon he walked, and stopped, and said to the bucko's face,
Word Of The Day