PAGE 11
Shovels And Bricks
by
For three stormy days the ship had been charging along before a wind that had increased to a gale, and a following sea that threatened to climb aboard. The jib-topsail, the skysails and royals, the lighter middle staysails, and the fore and mizzen topgallantsails had been blown away, and the ship was practically under topsails, a bad equipment of canvas with which to claw off a lee shore. The lee shore developed at daylight of the fourth stormy morning, a dim blue heightening of the horizon to the east, dead ahead; and Captain Williams, who had been unable to get a sight with his sextant for six days, could only determine that his dead reckoning, based upon the wild steering of his crew, had brought him too far to the north, and that the land he saw was the coast above Mizen Head.
After breakfast, when factory hours began, he called all hands to the braces; and they came, bracing the yards for the starboard tack, to keep away from that menacing lee shore; but, during the work, Murphy, by way of encouragement, called the crew’s attention to the dim blot of blue to leeward.
“The Imerald Isle, boys,” he declared. “Wark, ye watchmakers, wark, and git home.”
They worked nobly, but wondered why the ship was heading away from the Emerald Isle, and expressed their wonder loudly and profanely. In vain did Murphy explain that Queenstown was around the corner to the south, and it was to Queenstown that they were bound. Their dissatisfaction grew, and at dinner-time lifted them above the weakening influence of the “sign language.”
They had never taken account of the days when meat was due, ascribing the fixed hiatuses to the unkindness of the Chinese cook; and when they mustered at the galley door at noon and the cook handed them a huge pan of bean soup they raged at him, incoherently, but vehemently.
“Whaur’s th’ mate–the mate? Giv’s the mate, ye haythen! giv’s the mate, domyersool!”
The cook shrank back before their gleaming eyes and threatening fists, and they crowded into the galley, where, as fate determined, the mild little steward was gathering up the cabin dinner. He seized his brick.
“Now, here, you men,” he said, bravely, “you get right out of this galley. Do you hear?” And he waved his brick threateningly.
“Whaur’s the mate? Giv’s the mate, ye man-killers.”
“The mate is aft. You know that well as I do. Go right out of this galley.”
“Whaur’s the mate?”
“Aft in the cabin, I told you. Get out of here.”
Even now things might have been well, for a few of them showed a willingness to go aft for the “mate.” But the men of the other county came to the other galley door, and, menaced from both sides, the steward unwisely threw his brick. It struck the head of the foremost Irishman (it was the man on his wedding trip) and almost knocked him down. The cook frantically followed suit, and carnage began. The two gangs crowded into the narrow apartment, and the cook and steward soon went underfoot before the shower of fist-blows and kicks. They would assuredly have been injured in the melee had not a Limerick face approached too temptingly close to a Galway fist and diverted the storm. In utter fear of death the two crawled to the stove and pried up a couple of bricks while the rival factions fought each other. But their action was observed, and with whoops and oaths the combatants armed themselves, while the cook and steward crawled under the galley table for safety.
The captain and first mate were in the cabin, waiting for their dinner. The second mate was near the wheel, admonishing the Irish helmsman, as he dared, in the way of better steering “by-the-wind.” Hennesey was in the port forecastle, just turning out after his forenoon watch below, and Murphy was amidships; but the sound of oaths, shrieks of rage and pain, and the incessant hammering of bricks upon the bulkheads and the pots and pans of the galley brought all to the scene, the captain and mates with their pistols.