The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (45 page)

“Saxon’s relieved the lookout, Sir. Lamps is burnin’ bright,” came a hoarse voice from somewhere between me and the lee ladder.

“Very good,” I said, and the man retreated down the ladder to the maindeck and stumbled away forrard.

“An’ we’re goin’ there, laddie,” said Captain Dang suddenly, reverting at that moment to his other method and manner. “Accidental like, so as to make no silly talk among the hands, damn their souls. We’ll in for water, maybe, hey laddie?” And he shook with easy and uncalled-for laughter. “Maybe the freighters ’ll think we’re a bit overdue this trip, laddie, I’m thinkin’,” he added, shaking again like a great boy stuffed with high spirits.

I suspected then that he must have a very great deal of influence with his company, else surely he would never dare to delay the ship, as was plainly his intention.

“An’ maybe we’ll find out a thing or two, laddie,” he concluded. “Maybe we shall have something to remember. It’s a mighty strange place, the sea. Aye, a mighty strange place is the great big, blue, blue sea, laddie—a mighty strange big unknown place. An’ no one knows better just how little known it is, laddie. I could tell you things, sonny, I could that; I could that . . . ”

He broke off into a momentary silence; then turned abruptly from me.

“Good night, laddie,” he said, as he moved aft to go below. “Tell Chips in the morning to rig my punch-ball ring in the old place; he knows. I shall want it by seven o’clock. Good night, laddie.”

“Good night, Sir,” I said to this extraordinary man, and therewith he left me, just as the First Mate—who was a little late in turning out—came up to relieve me.

It was, of course, my morning watch from four to eight; and at four bells (six o’clock) I sent word along to Chips that the Old Man wanted his punch-ball ring rigged by seven, which message brought master Chips aft in a great fluster, for he would have to stretch his lazy bones to do the job in the time. He had, I regret to say, the impudence to assert that I ought to have told him earlier, and as I perceived that his attitude to me was plainly indicative of his belief that I was but a callow youth, I stepped up to him, and assured him that I would pull his nose out long enough for a muffler, if he tried that kind of thing with me. At which, Chips, being an uncommon big man, became even more violently rude, which ended in my hitting him once, a little harder than was perhaps considerate, for which I can only plead the youth of which the Carpenter suspected me; but certainly not the callowness.

My blow was certainly a good one, and it drove big Mister Chips stern foremost down the lee ladder, howling strangely. His noise was answered by a bellow of enormous laughter from the companionway, and turning, I saw that Captain Dang was standing in the companionway in his flannel drawers and shirt, shaking with a huge delight at the Carpenter’s sudden and shocked removal.

Chip’s face appeared once more into view as he came up the lee ladder, blustering vengeance in a half-frightened fashion, but at sight of the Captain, he silenced in the strangest and most cringing fashion and went instantly to work at rigging the punch-ball ring.

“Chips! Chips!” said Captain Dang, chuckling hugely. “You made a wee mistake that time, my mannie. Mister Morgan is no very big, but he’s uncommon well made, Chips my lad. Use your eyes more, my mannie. It’s the well-made ones that can hit the hardest.” Then, suddenly changing his tone in the most extraordinary fashion, he said slowly and grimly: “Mr. Morgan is one of my officers, my lad. If that ring isn’t rigged by six bells, God Almighty help you, for I’ll show you your place in this packet, my lad, as I’ve shown it to you once before.” And with and without a word further, he turned slowly and descended into the cabin, moving, as I remember noticing, like a great cat, more than a human. And it was this unusual quality of movement in Captain Dang that gave me some inkling of how enormously high must be his nerve vitality and his muscular development.

Chips completed the rigging of the ring by five minutes to seven, working with trembling, feverish hands, and the sweat running down his face, all of which told to me that there was a grimmer side to Captain Dang than any that I had seen prior to the last hour. Punctual to the stroke of the bell, Captain Dang appeared in a huge, checked dressing gown. In his right hand he carried a huge, leather punching-ball, and in his left a pair of very strongly made punching-bag gloves.

He walked up to where the ring was fixed by an iron bracket to the fore-side of the jigger-mast, and reaching up to the heavy teak ring, struck it violently with his open hand, nodding approvingly on discovering that Chips had done his work thoroughly. Then he bent the ball on to the ball joint and, stepping back, slipped off his dressing gown. My word! What a gladiator of a man he was! I have never seen a man quite like him, anywhere. The arms were nothing short of miracles; but even more astonishing was the state of development to which he had brought the vast masses of his trunk muscles. And with it all, considering his lack of height, he was most amazingly shapely.

He put on the gloves, and then stepping up to the ball, hit it a gentle-seeming tap with his left; but the tremendous sound of the impact of the ball on the teak ring, showed both how powerful had been the blow and how heavy the tightly blown bag must be. He caught the ball, with a full swing with his right as it came back, and therewith the whole length of the jiggermast vibrated with the thud of the ball upon the ring; whilst I stood off from him a few paces, lost in an utter delight of the trained coordination of his muscles and resultant perfect movements, and the play of the multitudinous muscles themselves beneath his slightly sun-bronzed skin—a colour that showed how often he must have trained in the open air in his present attire, which consisted of nothing but a pair of black running-drawers.

For half an hour he punched the ball, using not only his hands, elbows and head; but also his shoulders, and showing in a very vivid manner the tremendous and dreadful blow that can be given by the shoulder in a close rough-and-tumble. The movement of his shoulders was astonishing. At the conclusion of his bout, he stripped off his running-drawers and rubbed down, after which he had the bo’sun play the hose over him for quite five minutes.

“That’s the way, laddie, to keep fit,” he said to me, as he finally finished towelling. He proceeded to throw half a dozen back-springs fore and aft along the weather side of the poop—a truly extraordinary but physically splendid sight, the great muscles working and rippling and bunching marvelously under his perfect skin. He walked up to me and told me to put my hand on his naked chest in order to feel his heart.

“Runnin’ sweetly, laddie,” he said. “That’s what comes of right livin’, in the main, laddie, in the main! We’re none of us always able to win over the flesh and the natural desires.”

He went across and picked up his big dressing gown. As he slipped into it, he beckoned towards the punch-ball.

“Off with your coat an’ shirt, laddie, an’ let’s see how you shape.” At which invitation, being in no wise loath to show that I also had some claim to be counted strong, I off with my upper gear and stripped to the waist. Then, going up to the ball, I gave it a light, preliminary blow, and was astonished to find how heavy it was. Indeed, I saw that if I hit it full strength a few times without some protection, I should bruise my hands badly. Captain Dang realized the same thing and tossed me his gloves; whereupon I put in ten minutes creditable work at the ball; for I had trained many an hour with one.

“Very good, laddie,” said Captain Dang from where he had taken a seat on the skylight to watch me. “You’ve a pretty way with your hands, an’ you strip surprisin’ well. You’ll be a hefty lad in a few more years, though you’ll always lack weight. I’d back you now again any man aboard, savin’ maybe that big Russian. I’m not countin’ the Mate or me, laddie. The Mate’s surprisin’ well-made for such a long devil, sonny.”

And with that he left me.

As it chanced, that very day I had opportunity to see another side of Captain Dang that was yet connected with the above. It was in the end of the second dog-watch, and I had been down taking a pull on the braces. Captain Dang and the Mate were walking the poop. Whilst I was slacking off the fore-braces, I caught a mutter of grumbling from the men to leeward, sufficiently loud to tell me that it was an intentional impertinence aimed at me. I knew then that my time had come—the moment every youthful officer in the merchant service has face to face, when his men will definitely test his power to maintain his authority. In plain English, they will be insolent, and if he takes it “lying down,” then he had better be dead than aboard that vessel for the rest of the voyage. And these men knew, what all the world could see; that I was young; but maybe they underrated my experience and—may I say it—my sand.

I looked across at the men and noticed that Jarkoff, the big Russian mentioned by Captain Dang, was the man at the front of the rope. And he was the man who was “doing the grumble,” in a nasty, sulky, insolent growl, looking sideways to wind’ard at me.

I took a turn with the braces and sung out to the men to leeward to belay; then I walked across to them.

“Jarkoff,” I said quietly, “what is the matter with you?”

The great hulking brute turned and glowered down at me, sneering in all his bulk at the youth in me.

“You vas sweat us for noding on der braces!” he said at last with a surly growl. “You vas vish to show you vas Second Mate, He! He!” He laughed, sneering, and one or two of the men joined in, half-hesitatingly.

I know now that it was no use hesitating or talking any more. They had got to learn something immediately; and I had got to do the teaching. That something was that I was Master, with a big “M,” in spite of the sin of my youthfulness. I took two quick steps up to the big Russian, and as he swung to meet me, insolently careless, I hit him hard in the neck, and then, instantly, twice on the mark. I got the blows home good and solid, and the man went down on to the spare topmast with a most comfortable little moaning. He rolled from there to the deck, quite inert. I never managed a better knockout in my life.

“Pick him up and put him on the hatch!” I said, and two of the men jumped to do what I directed. There was no longer any thought of insolence. My lesson was given and already learnt.

As I returned again to the weather braces, I noticed that Captain Dang was leaning over the rail across the break of the poop, looking quietly down on to the main-deck. Yet he made no sign to show that he had been watching anything out of the ordinary, nor, when I returned to the poop in a few minutes, did he make any reference to the affair.

But for all that, Captain Dang made no comment. Presently I had sufficient proof that he had seen the whole business, for a certain exhilaration seemed to be in his blood, stirring him to little acts of vigour—a symptom that I have often observed in very vigorous men after witnessing a fight. It is the fighting-part of them waked . . . the fighting-pride of the cock, that knows it is truly cock of the walk.

So it was with Captain Dang. His step was lighter and more cat-like than usual in its easy, muscular litheness. From time to time he would grip at belaying-pins in the pin-rails, as he passed, pulling them. Every action was an unconscious expression of the additional fuel being burned within him—of the extra energy thus liberated. He felt his upper arms, hardening them time after time, and walked with his chest thrown out, as was his habit when dressed for the shore.

This continued until eight bells, when the roll was called and my watch relieved. The Mate came up a little late, as usual, and we stood talking for a time. All the while Captain Dang walked springily up and down the weather side of the poop, feeling first one enormous biceps and then the other in the most sublimely unconscious fashion possible. I saw the Mate watching him in a way that he suggested he recognized the symptoms. Yet he made no comment to me except that he gave me a sudden look and a suppressed, curious smile, continuing his talk the while.

Suddenly, Captain Dang ceased his walk near to me and began methodically to take off and fold his coat, which he put on the top of the sail-locker hatch.

“Laddie,” he said, and I saw the Mate glance quickly at me, “yon’s stirred the blood in me,” and I knew he referred to my trouble with the big Russian. “I must go forrard an’ have a word with the men.”

He went down the weather ladder onto the main-deck, rolling up his shirt sleeves carefully, and began to go forrard, bumming away cheerfully at “But the Lord is Mindful.” Presently I heard his voice forrard in the fo’cas’le, the words floating aft plainly:

“If there’s any of you lads thinks himself a likely man, just step out on deck here with me.”

Captain Dang paused.

“Any two of you.”

Captain Dang paused again.

Then an enormous bellow of delight came from him, and the sounds of a rush of heavy feet out on deck. There came a tremendous noise of scuffling, blows, shouts of pain and anger from some of the crew, a further exultant bellow from Captain Dang, and the sounds of more feet rushing out of the fo’cas’le.

I turned, meaning to run forrard, but the Mate caught me by the arm, grinning.

“Let it be, Mister,” he said. “Th’ Old Man don’t need you, an’ he don’t want you. He’ll feel more comfortable after this. I guessed he’d got the fit on him. He spoils for a bit of rough an’ tumble once in a way. . . . My word, Mister!” he added. “You’ve got a rare good arm on you for a youngster.”

As he spoke, there came Captain Dang’s voice again: