The Open Boat and Other Stories
Presently the _Foundling_ swung her course to the south-east, and the
waves pounded her broadside. The patriots were all ordered below decks,
and there they howled and measured their misery one against another.
All day the _Foundling_ plopped and floundered over a blazing bright
meadow of an ocean whereon the white foam was like flowers.
The captain on the bridge mused and studied the bare horizon. "Hell!"
said he to himself, and the word was more in amazement than in
indignation or sorrow. "Thirty-nine sea-sick passengers, the mate with
a broken arm, a stoker with a broken jaw, the cook with a pair of
scalded legs, and an engine likely to be taken with all these diseases,
if not more! If I get back to a home port with a spoke of the wheel
gripped in my hands, it'll be fair luck!"
There is a kind of corn-whisky bred in Florida which the natives
declare is potent in the proportion of seven fights to a drink. Some of
the Cuban volunteers had had the forethought to bring a small quantity
of this whisky aboard with them, and being now in the fire-room and
sea-sick, feeling that they would not care to drink liquor for two or
three years to come, they gracefully tendered their portions to the
stokers. The stokers accepted these gifts without avidity, but with a
certain earnestness of manner.
As they were stokers, and toiling, the whirl of emotion was delayed,
but it arrived ultimately, and with emphasis. One stoker called another
stoker a weird name, and the latter, righteously inflamed at it, smote
his mate with an iron shovel, and the man fell headlong over a heap of
coal, which crashed gently while piece after piece rattled down upon
the deck.
A third stoker was providently enraged at the scene, and assailed the
second stoker. They fought for some moments, while the sea-sick Cubans
sprawled on the deck watched with languid rolling glances the ferocity
of this scuffle. One was so indifferent to the strategic importance of
the space he occupied that he was kicked on the shins.
When the second engineer came to separating the combatants, he was
sincere in his efforts, and he came near to disabling them for life.
The captain said, "I'll go down there and----" But the leader of the
Cubans restrained him. "No, no," he cried, "you must not. We must treat
them like children, very gently, all the time, you see, or else when we
get back to a United States port they will--what you call? Spring? Yes,
spring the whole business. We must--jolly them, you see?"
"You mean," said the captain thoughtfully, "they are likely to get mad,
and give the expedition dead away when we reach port again unless we
blarney them now?"
"Yes, yes," cried the Cuban leader, "unless we are so very gentle with
them they will make many troubles afterwards for us in the newspapers
and then in court."
"Well, but I won't have my crew----" began the captain.
"But you must," interrupted the Cuban, "you must. It is the only thing.
You are like the captain of a pirate ship. You see? Only you can't
throw them overboard like him. You see?"
"Hum," said the captain, "this here filibustering business has got a
lot to it when you come to look it over."
He called the fighting stokers to the bridge, and the three came, meek
and considerably battered. He was lecturing them soundly but sensibly,
when he suddenly tripped a sentence and cried--"Here! Where's that
other fellow? How does it come he wasn't in the fight?"
The row of stokers cried at once eagerly, "He's hurt, sir. He's got a
broken jaw, sir."
"So he has; so he has," murmured the captain, much embarrassed.
And because of all these affairs, the _Foundling_ steamed toward Cuba
with its crew in a sling, if one may be allowed to speak in that way.
III
At night the _Foundling_ approached the coast like a thief. Her
lights were muffled, so that from the deck the sea shone with its own
radiance, like the faint shimmer of some kinds of silk. The men on deck
spoke in whispers, and even down in the fire-room the hidden stokers
working before the blood-red furnace doors used no words and walked on
tip-toe. The stars were out in the blue-velvet sky, and their light
with the soft shine of the sea caused the coast to appear black as the
side of a coffin. The surf boomed in low thunder on the distant beach.
The _Foundling's_ engines ceased their thumping for a time. She glided
quietly forward until a bell chimed faintly in the engine-room. Then
she paused with a flourish of phosphorescent waters.
"Give the signal," said the captain. Three times a flash of light went
from the bow. There was a moment of waiting. Then an eye like the one
on the coast of Florida opened and closed, opened and closed, opened
and closed. The Cubans, grouped in a great shadow on deck, burst into a
low chatter of delight. A hiss from their leader silenced them.
"Well?" said the captain.
"All right," said the leader.
At the giving of the word it was not apparent that any one on board
of the _Foundling_ had ever been sea-sick. The boats were lowered
swiftly--too swiftly. Boxes of cartridges were dragged from the hold
and passed over the side with a rapidity that made men in the boats
exclaim against it. They were being bombarded. When a boat headed for
shore its rowers pulled like madmen. The captain paced slowly to and
fro on the bridge. In the engine-room the engineers stood at their
station, and in the stoke-hold the firemen fidgeted silently around the
furnace doors.
On the bridge Flanagan reflected. "Oh, I don't know!" he observed.
"This filibustering business isn't so bad. Pretty soon it'll be off to
sea again with nothing to do but some big lying when I get into port."
In one of the boats returning from shore came twelve Cuban officers,
the greater number of them convalescing from wounds, while two or three
of them had been ordered to America on commissions from the insurgents.
The captain welcomed them, and assured them of a speedy and safe voyage.
Presently he went again to the bridge and scanned the horizon. The sea
was lonely like the spaces amid the suns. The captain grinned and
softly smote his chest. "It's dead easy," he said.
It was near the end of the cargo, and the men were breathing like spent
horses, although their elation grew with each moment, when suddenly a
voice spoke from the sky. It was not a loud voice, but the quality of
it brought every man on deck to full stop and motionless, as if they
had all been changed to wax. "Captain," said the man at the masthead,
"there's a light to the west'ard, sir. Think it's a steamer, sir."
There was a still moment until the captain called, "Well, keep your
eye on it now." Speaking to the deck, he said, "Go ahead with your
unloading."
The second engineer went to the galley to borrow a tin cup. "Hear the
news, second?" asked the cook. "Steamer coming up from the west'ard."
"Gee!" said the second engineer. In the engine-room he said to the
chief, "Steamer coming up from the west'ard, sir." The chief engineer
began to test various little machines with which his domain was
decorated. Finally he addressed the stoke-room. "Boys, I want you to
look sharp now. There's a steamer coming up to the west'ard."
"All right, sir," said the stoke-room.
From time to time the captain hailed the masthead. "How is she now?"
"Seems to be coming down on us pretty fast, sir."
The Cuban leader came anxiously to the captain. "Do you think we can
save all the cargo? It is rather delicate business. No?"
"Go ahead," said Flanagan. "Fire away! I'll wait."
There continued the hurried shuffling of feet on deck, and the low
cries of the men unloading the cargo. In the engine-room the chief and
his assistant were staring at the gong. In the stoke-room the firemen
breathed through their teeth. A shovel slipped from where it leaned
against the side and banged on the floor. The stokers started and
looked around quickly.
Climbing to the rail and holding on to a stay, the captain gazed
westward. A light had raised out of the deep. After watching this light
for a time he called to the Cuban leader. "Well, as soon as you're
ready now, we might as well be skipping out."
Finally, the Cuban leader told him, "Well, this is the last load. As
soon as the boats come back you can be off."
"Shan't wait for all the boats," said the captain. "That fellow is too
close." As the second boat came aboard, the _Foundling_ turned, and
like a black shadow stole seaward to cross the bows of the oncoming
steamer. "Waited about ten minutes too long," said the captain to
himself.
Suddenly the light in the west vanished. "Hum!" said Flanagan, "he's
up to some meanness." Every one outside of the engine-rooms was set
on watch. The _Foundling_, going at full speed into the north-east,
slashed a wonderful trail of blue silver on the dark bosom of the sea.
A man on deck cried out hurriedly, "There she is, sir." Many eyes
searched the western gloom, and one after another the glances of the
men found a tiny shadow on the deep with a line of white beneath it.
"He couldn't be heading better if he had a line to us," said Flanagan.
There was a thin flash of red in the darkness. It was long and keen
like a crimson rapier. A short, sharp report sounded, and then a shot
whined swiftly in the air and blipped into the sea. The captain had
been about to take a bite of plug tobacco at the beginning of this
incident, and his arm was raised. He remained like a frozen figure
while the shot whined, and then, as it blipped into the sea, his hand
went to his mouth and he bit the plug. He looked wide-eyed at the
shadow with its line of white.
The senior Cuban officer came hurriedly to the bridge. "It is no good
to surrender," he cried. "They would only shoot or hang all of us."
There was another thin red flash and a report. A loud whirring noise
passed over the ship.
"I'm not going to surrender," said the captain, hanging with both hands
to the rail. He appeared like a man whose traditions of peace are
clinched in his heart. He was as astonished as if his hat had turned
into a dog. Presently he wheeled quickly and said--"What kind of a gun
is that?"
"It is a one-pounder," cried the Cuban officer. "The boat is one of
those little gunboats made from a yacht. You see?"
"Well, if it's only a yawl, he'll sink us in five more minutes," said
Flanagan. For a moment he looked helplessly off at the horizon. His
under-jaw hung low. But a moment later, something touched him, like
a stiletto point of inspiration. He leaped to the pilothouse and
roared at the man at the wheel. The _Foundling_ sheered suddenly to
starboard, made a clumsy turn, and Flanagan was bellowing through the
tube to the engine-room before everybody discovered that the old basket
was heading straight for the Spanish gun-boat. The ship lunged forward
like a draught-horse on the gallop.
This strange manoeuvre by the _Foundling_ first dealt consternation
on board of the _Foundling_. Men instinctively crouched on the instant,
and then swore their supreme oath, which was unheard by their own ears.
Later the manoeuvre of the _Foundling_ dealt consternation on board
of the gunboat. She had been going victoriously forward dim-eyed from
the fury of her pursuit. Then this tall threatening shape had suddenly
loomed over her like a giant apparition.
The people on board the _Foundling_ heard panic shouts, hoarse orders.
The little gunboat was paralyzed with astonishment.
Suddenly Flanagan yelled with rage and sprang for the wheel. The
helmsman had turned his eyes away. As the captain whirled the wheel far
to starboard he heard a crunch as the _Foundling_, lifted on a wave,
smashed her shoulder against the gunboat, and he saw shooting past a