CHAPTER X
A FOOL TICKLES THE NOSE OF DEATH
OLD TOM saw the first shark. He was looking for it. He had been in many calms and knew that a good way to stir up wind was to catch a shark or have a sick man die. There were no sick men. Clobb had come out of his torture a few days before, dazed and weak, but rapidly recovered and was sullenly aloof from his mates.
Old Tom knew much of sea-lore. It was an unlucky ship, due for sudden disaster some time or other, that bucked the Horn at its stormiest without leaving an offering of seaman life to the waves of endless hunger. The sea demanded sacrifices of the men that sought its favor. Ancient Phœnicians and Greeks when becalmed ritualistically gave up human life; many a man of the early last century ships was knocked overboard in the dark on suspicion that he was a Jonah; but it came to be that a shark would do very well—if there were no sick men on board.
Some of the forecastle to whom Old Tom referred contemptuously as “sup'stitious” yearned to break the calm with an arrow-head scratched on the mizzen; but were restrained, partly by fear of being caught at it and largely by the wish not to do any thing, like raising a wind, that would bring comfort to the afterguard.
Old Tom twenty times a day put head and shoulders over the high rail, staring long and watchfully into the clear water. He had become uneasy, mumbling to his mate, Benny, over the significant absence of any kind of life about the becalmed ship. He was, he complained, “used to seein' plenty of fish about”—as was likely on a barnacle-covered whaler with sea-grass two yards long.
He finally found what he had been looking for. A large lazy fellow lay under the bilge shadow of the afternoon sun and stared up with watchfully cruel eyes.
“There's yer damn shark,” Old Tom announced carelessly, as though only by accident he had chanced to glance over the side.
Men hurried sullenly to the rail. They hated the ship so much that they would not put heartiness into anything they did. Even their grumbling was dispirited. A shark was something to vary the monotony a little; but their manner toward it was disdainful, almost haughty.
Dicer was different. He did not waste time by bending over to catch a glimpse of the shark. He simply broke aft, bawling impudently at Gorvhalsen, who trod up and down the poop, swinging his long arms in breast-pounding exercise.
Gorvhalsen knew by the movement forward that the shark had been seen at last and carelessly tossed the rewarding gold piece. Dicer snatched it off the deck with a swift claw-like movement and ran to lock it in his chest. He was as acquisitive and thievish as a magpie.
Matt Ward was below, probably drunk as usual.
Adams and Swanson were on deck; and so was Jeanne, wearing flimsy opalescent textures, theatrical, gaudy, dazzling the eyes of men. With an ap pearance of idle thoughtlessness she passed and paused beside first one and the other of the mates; and as she spoke to one, would watch the other from the corners of her eyes.
Men forward had been staring back at her hungrily. She seemed to know that, too, and was not displeased.
Mrs. Gorvhalsen and Eve were under the awning, side by side. They arose and leaned from the rail at the cry of “shark.” They could clearly make out the long, slender shadowy shape, far below and nearly motionless except for the drowsy circling movement of its fins, a lone figure in the depths of the ocean.
McGuire discarded a slush-pot the moment that Gorvhalsen came shambling hurriedly on to the main deck, and perched himself on the forecastle rail, smoking tranquilly. Gorvhalsen was declaring a holiday.
All the crew knocked off the feeble pretense at work, glancing challengingly at the bosun and toward the mates. They would not dare interfere with Gorvhalsen's pleasure. Juggins swore when told to break out a shark-hook. He increased his remarks when somebody suggested a harpoon and Gorvhalsen demanded that too.
When the shark-baiting began, 'Dams boldly went up and stood by Jeanne and lied in a seamanly fashion to her with tales of shark-catches.
The large hook with the leader of chain was splashed over the side, bearing down the traditional salt pork as a lure to the twelve-foot fish that lay quietly with a faint movement of tail and fins, waiting. Gorvhalsen held the line. He wanted to feel the tug of a real fish on a hook.
Near him Old Tom and Shring began quarreling as to whether it was a gray nurse or a bull shark. Sam-O said that he “jes' didn't care what dat fellah's name was;” he “wouldn't wanta be 'lone in da watah wid 'm.”
The shark stirred sluggishly, but ignored the bait. Gorvhalsen cursed him. That was not the way that sharks were supposed to act. He hauled the line about in an effort to be tempting.
The fish lay quietly as if waiting for more desirable meat.
Old Tom loudly declared that the Chinks had spoiled the food so that not even a gray nurse would touch it.
“A bull, ye mean,” Shring snapped.
“I dun't!” and they were at it again.
Gorvhalsen wanted Benny, who had been a harpooner, to take a throw at the disdainful fish; but Benny said he was too deep.
Gorvhalsen turned to the Kanakas. He had heard stories of how natives were not afraid of sharks and would fight them, knife to teeth. He offered twenty dollars to the one that would go over the side. The three of them grinned and shook their heads. They knew that long, darkly dappled body with the broad nose.
Clobb, apart from the men with a short-stemmed pipe thrust between his swollen black lips and one eye blindingly bruised, growled:
“Go over yourself if you wants. Be good riddance.”
Gorvhalsen heard, glanced at him and laughed explosively. Clobb did look almost grotesque with his battered features. But Gorvhalsen's laugh was not amusement. It was insulting. Clobb stared murderously through his one eye, also swollen.
Young Corydon, attracted by the excitement, came out of the cabin, a little red-backed book of Aurelian Meditations in his hand, a finger marking the place.
Voice suggested that he be put on the hook. He passed with deaf ears and stood by McGuire.
“Try a little salt horse. Got more uva a stink,” some one shouted at Gorvhalsen, who jerked the pork bait about.
He was impatient of anything that displeased: a poor fisherman indeed and cursed the shark, then began hauling in the line, disgusted.
As the hook rose a little fish, long and slender, shot with an eel-like movement from under the bilge shadows and wheeled up and around the bait.
Instantly voices babbled: “There's his pilot!” “Belay!” “'E'll tyke 'er now!” “Pay out a bit!” “'Aul in. Myke 'im want hit!”
The shark with a lazy sweep of tail glided upward toward the hook, almost touched it with his nose, passed on.
Gorvhalsen swore. Damn such a fish! That wasn't like what he had heard of sharks.
But men, with the excitement of sport on them, threw monosyllabic advice to hold it, to wait.
The shark leisurely dived, made a long graceful circle, headed upward and with a powerful drive of tail, rose. A flash of white came through the water from its upturned belly as the shark rolled over lazily; and while “Now you've got 'im!” was being half-whispered, the blotch of dull white on the hook disappeared and the line burned through Gorvhalsen's hands as the fish sounded.
He had got a real fish on his hook and let out a yell of satisfaction as he brought up against the bulwark. He scorned to fasten the line to pin or cleat. If the fish could get away, let him.
Many hands would have given him a haul; for the joy of capturing something and helping in the capture is hard to resist. But he wanted to fight the fish alone; and he did, uproariously.
He tugged and cursed, swore at it, damned it with praise of oaths as a worthy foe. It was not the capture but the fight that he wanted. He pretended to believe that it was the same shark that had tried to nab him when he bathed from a hawser over the stern weeks before; and the crew wondered, feeling sure that he was crazy to have such a thought in his head. They had never seen such fishing and did not understand why they were not told to bear a hand so the shark could be hauled up and a bowline got on him.
McGuire smiled. There was a vague mist-like quality about his smile. One could hardly see the line of the mouth curve, but knew that he was smiling. Corydon looked at him then as often before with frank puzzlement.
The crew with sulky aloofness began to stand apart from Gorvhalsen, watching, but leaving him to get his shark on board in his own way; hoping the shark would get free. Some offered among themselves to bet that it would, saying they wouldn't give the weight of a little finger to hold the fish.
Gorvhalsen did not ask for it. He jerked and tugged and heaved. Sweat ran from his forehead on to his great black beard. He puffed and blew, roared mightily in triumph with every arm's length of slack that he drew in, while the fish thrashed and pulled, rose, plunged. The hook had lodged deep and firmly.
For an hour and something over the fight was on. Gorvhalsen was tireless. Then the shark unaccountably grew sullen and the sport went out of the struggle. Gorvhalsen heaved against dead weight until the fish was hard against the Heraldr.
He then took a turn of the line around a pin and breathed noisily but contented. His tremendous vitality was not wearied. He bawled cheerfully over the rail, praising the shark for the fight it had made, but damning it for sulking; and he vowed that if it would get off the hook a half-ton of meat would be thrown over by way of reward.
The men growled. They were, or thought they were, underfed.
“Them Chinks spoil what we do get anyhow,” Old Tom had said many times.
But the shark, with its shovel-like nose right up to the water's surface and its lidless eyes staring, waited watchfully, as though it had something that men could never guess in its head. Its fins scarcely moved.
“Now—twenty dollars,” said Gorvhalsen toward the Kanakas.
They looked uncomprehendingly.
“Kill him right there on the line. Easy as butchering calf.”
He eyed them compellingly with a good deal of disdain in his manner.
The natives grinned shyly, looked at one another, edged back a few inches and one after another bashfully shook his head. It was easy enough to kill the shark, but they didn't want to do anything for that fellow.
A voice floated down softly:
“Make it two bottles o' gin?”
Gorvhalsen turned his big black-bearded face all around, unable to identify the man who had spoken. He stared from one to another eagerly, then caught sight of McGuire, perched like a lazy monkey on the rail.
“Gin, eh?” he shouted good-naturedly.
McGuire nodded idly, then, drawling: “Or brandy.”
Gorvhalsen gave a loud roar, a noise that passed with him for laughter. He took a long shuffling stride closer and said that McGuire could have it and right in the cabin too, if the shark was given two fathoms of line.
McGuire simply looked away and puffed slowly. He was not even interested. It wasn't worth considering.
“What do you say?”
“Nothin'. I don't want a game o' tag—not with him. I want a drink.”
Gorvhalsen laughed. The fellow's lazily impudent manner amused him.
“Just give the shark his head then—and all you can drink?”
McGuire asked it with emphasis: “All?”
Gorvhalsen was delighted. Something in the shrewd indolence of McGuire, perched on the rail, haggling with a careless indifference, pleased him greatly. He ran claw-like fingers meditatively through his long beard and scrutinized the scarecrow figure, red-headed, homely, in a ragged dirty shirt and short canvas trousers, also very dirty. His hands were smeared with stuff from the slush-pot.
“Four feet of slack,” said Gorvhalsen.
“Not four inches,” McGuire replied emphatically.
“Two feet?”
McGuire shook his head.
“All right. Over you go. But you have to get into the water yourself.”
Old Tom was saying that sharks were mightily overestimated critters; that he had seen men fall into the water a dozen times when sharks were tearing at a whale's flanks and never a man got bit.
“But them wasn't bull sharks,” said Shring.
“Worser'n bulls—nurses, like him.”
McGuire jumped lightly to the deck, slowly peeled his shirt and spoke to one of the Kanakas, who handed him a long sheath-knife from his own hip.
Brundage had eyed McGuire disapprovingly, but said nothing. He picked up the harpoon that had been laid across the hatch and climbed into the shrouds to be ready to throw if the shark even tried to break from the hook. Many were the times that he was angry at that red-topped wastrel; often he cursed him, but Brundage would have died for him as for his own son.
Corydon's eyes had followed McGuire's every move. The boy's face had a curious expression of alarm and disappointment.
“Throw over that hawser,” McGuire said to one of the natives. “I may be in a hurry as I come back.”
He turned to mount on to the rail.
Corydon clutched at his bare arm, whispering tensely: “Risk your life for rum!”
McGuire paused, with head over shoulder, and smiled, saying: “No. For gin.”
Gorvhalsen had heard. His laughter boomed. He threw a heavy hand on McGuire's shoulder approvingly and subsided into derisive chuckles at Corydon, whose face had become scarlet.
The boy was disappointed to the depths of his soul. In an unreasoning humiliated mood he felt that McGuire had turned against him. And after a moment's hesitation with a stubborn light in his eyes he turned on his heel and walked away, awkwardly angry.
The crew's laughter followed him. He was ridiculous, his irate dignity amusing.
The boy was preposterous, crude, ungraceful, timid, but stubborn. His anger was pure pain. He was hurt. McGuire had come to be a friend and suddenly seemed a friend no more. But there was more piety in the devil than vindictiveness in Corydon.
McGuire fitted the knife's handle to the heel of his wrist, the blade along his forearm and out of the way until wanted. He clawed himself upright on to the rail and dived with a graceful leap.
In the cool green water he could be seen as clearly as in a mirror.
He loved the water as a king's mistress loves her perfumed bath, overhung with silk; and the great buoyancy of mid-ocean depth delighted his lazy limbs. He was not merely knifing a helpless shark but taking a swim.
From the poop Eve stared in half-terror and half admiration with a handkerchief pressed tightly against her mouth. Her underlip was between her teeth and she bit it almost to blood.
Jeanne leaned so far over the rail that Adams laid a guarding hand on her arm. He saw nothing but the woman beside him, felt nothing but the warmth of her flesh through the flimsy textile under his calloused hand.
The ocean was calm and clear as a crystal ball. McGuire was seen to go down and down, as though he would never turn, then slowly to bend his body; but from under the bilge shadow a leisure phantom shape sixteen feet long moved into view.
The gray nurse, also sometimes known as a bull shark, is a lone wolf of the sea. McGuire knew it. But the one on the hook had a companion, as great a fish of its kind as may be found and of a kind as terrible as the sea holds.
A shrill cry of terror, a woman's voice, stirred the awed hush of the deck. Eve had screamed.
A moment's muttered confusion of oaths and broken words, then silence, the tense staring silence of helpless men who watch the doom of one well known to them.
Brundage, grim, immobile, with hand grasping the harpoon and arm uplifted, could not throw. The distance and depth were too great for a cast; besides the fish lay to the right of him, almost athwart the mizzen.
There was the chance, a meager one, that McGuire might gain the ship's side and snatch the hawser if the shark did not want him.
There are few things, if any, more swift than a gray nurse. Apparently it had not seen him; but appearances were worth nothing. It may not be by sight, and it probably is not by smell, but some amazingly accurate sense keeps deep-water sharks aware of everything that goes on around them.
The chances of miraculously escaping unperceived vanished at once as the shark leisurely lowered its head, sinking, tipping itself slightly.
They could tell that McGuire had seen it too, for he was turning again in the water, face upturned. Then the Kanaka, whose knife McGuire carried, cried out eagerly, almost in triumph. Muffled incredulous curses burst on the lips of the men; and they were silent again, staring. Gorvhalsen, more than half over the side, roared in astonishment:
“Great God!”
Brundage's hard wrinkled face set even more firmly and he lowered the harpoon.
It came down within a few inches of old Benny's face.
In a second the instinct of a lifetime's use of the harpoon awakened within him and he snatched it from Brundage's hand, whipping a sheath-knife's edge to the line to escape the risk of a snarl, and bounding amidships, was climbing out on to the main channel in time to see McGuire streaking upward through the water straight for the shark.
Nothing could appear more pitifully hopeless to all who watched, except the Kanakas. They knew that a shark will run at least a little way if attacked head-on by a man in the water. So did McGuire. But how far it would run was something unknown; and whether with a half-circle of its great body it would come under him, belly up and jaws agape, largely depended on the shark's hunger—never wholly satisfied.
The powerful fish made a sinuous sweep of tail and flashed away in a long curve, disappearing under the ship; and they saw McGuire's body bend in the water as he turned with dexterous stroke to follow it.
He had then been under water close on to two minutes and his lungs were empty of air. He turned again and with long overhand reaches cut up through the water, shooting out almost to his waist and gulping the air with a sob-like gasp heard all over the deck.
Yells and cheers went up; advice too. He was forty feet or more from the ship's side. Some one flung over the end of a line, but he did not reach for it.
They could not understand what he was about or why he did not make for the ship; and the men grew silent again, watching him.
He lay almost flat on the smooth surface of the sea, breathing hard but continually dipping his face watchfully down into the water and keeping his head pointed toward the side of the ship.
With slow strokes of legs and a fin-like movement of one hand he was floating parallel with the ship's side, not coming closer, but moving up toward the bow.
Voices called at him that a line was at hand, that he did not need make for the hawser. He did not seem to hear.
Some one threw over a life-buoy.
It struck within ten feet of him, and McGuire nearly leaped out of the water. He thought the shark had him; but his head and knife in hand came up together. He looked toward the ship and his lips moved as if with oaths.
At once a flash passed from under the Heraldr's shadow—a massive dark streak indistinct in its swiftness.
Cries came too late. Old Benny's harpoon sped wide of the mark.
Then the shark's white belly gleamed and it came a full third of its length out of the water with the buoy in its mouth; the buoy was bitten in two by jaws that had the pressure of mill-stones. Its great body swept glancingly against McGuire, rasping the skin from side and arm, knocking him as though he had been caught broadside in a breaker. His knife might as well have been a toothpick. The kind of sharks that fearless native swimmers kill are not sixteen-foot nurses.
A shark's spine may be severed; it will swim and fight and the wound heal; it may be disemboweled, but it will swim and kill what lesser food comes near; it may have its head cut off and the flesh be in the stew-pots, the precious liver rendered, yet hours later the gaping jaws of that head will close on whatever is thrust between them, and they can mot be opened with anything but saw and ax. A hungry shark will eat anything, living or dead, flesh, bone or metal, and is nearly invulnerable except for a small soft spot on the crown of its head. There a slight blow from club or sharp-pointed edge brings instantaneous death to a creature as tenacious of life as any that God has permitted to live.
The most miraculous of luck could not have given McGuire a chance to sink his knife between such a monster's eyes. He struck out blindly, but cut only water.
Sharks are incomprehensibly timid as well as the boldest things in the sea. McGuire had often been with natives who frightened them with splashing; and he set up a great thrashing of the water with arms and legs almost within a finger's touch of it, and the great fish sounded.
It dived with shadow-like rapidity out to sea away from the ship.
At once with long overhand strokes McGuire seemed fairly crawling over the water, swimming as he had not dared to swim when the fish lay under the Heraldr, certain to cut him off if he approached and now almost as sure to make a strike for him.
But he at least had a chance; or rather he had to take his chance.
He had grasped the hawser beside the hooked shark that was now thrashing and jerking about as if to beat him to death with its tail; but its nose was against the ship's timbers.
Men were cheering and tugging to haul him in—then came warning cries.
McGuire, not half out of the water, paused, glancing back; for a moment the impulse to jump back was on him. He could see nothing, but he knew those above him had sighted the shark. It was coming. His legs seemed unaccountably long and the feeling that he would not get them safely out of the water sent shivers clear to his toe-nails. He was not sure but that the fish would leap out of the water after him.
He acted without thought, knowing something of sharks and their ways. The hooked shark was thrashing beside him, now belly up, now righted, and jerking. With a panicky recklessness that had the appearance of great courage, he swiftly swung himself from the hawser to the line on which the hooked shark struggled and with feet braced against the side of the ship, leaned down, stabbing. He had something between him and the monster shark anyway, though if a foot slipped into that hooked mouth he would have no more foot. Again and again he struck and at last the point of the knife went into the soft crown; then with an upward sweep he cut the line where it was bent on to the chain and just below where his left hand gripped it.
Then, dropping the knife, he started up, hand over hand. With slow placid movement the fish, deadly wounded, began to sink, its fins stirring slowly in a weak rotary motion; and its monster companion struck.
As the pack devours a wounded wolf, so the shark eats the unfortunate of its kind.
McGuire, panting and exhausted, was eagerly helped over the rail. Gorvhalsen, lifting him as a strong man lifts a little child, set him on the deck, praising him to his face. There was courage for anybody, said the great black-bearded giant.
Physical daring, strength, audacity, was what touched Gorvhalsen's admiration, always; and nothing else that men might do moved him.
McGuire gasped convulsively. He shook, nervous, almost lifeless, weakened by the relief that had come at last; but wearily he turned his eyes, sleepily lidded, and presently the misty smile came to his lips. He spoke slowly, with effort, breathing heavily between phrases in a way that unconsciously emphasized the laziness of his tone; and he said:
“This day I know why I've been a good boy—all my life!”
And glancing up at a shadow that had moved to his side, he unexpectedly looked into the tense whitened face of little Eve Corydon. She had dragged her aunt forward to see him and make sure that he was not terribly hurt; and she had heard what he said, but did not understand irony.