Chapter XXI
To-day, twenty-eight days out, in the early morning, while I was drinking
my coffee, still carrying the north-east trade, we crossed the line. And
Charles Davis signalized the event by murdering O'Sullivan. It was
Boney, the lanky splinter of a youth in Mr. Mellaire's watch, who brought
the news. The second mate and I had just arrived in the hospital room, when Mr. Pike entered.
O'Sullivan's troubles were over. The man in the upper bunk had completed
the mad, sad span of his life with the marlin-spike.
I cannot understand this Charles Davis. He sat up calmly in his bunk, and calmly lighted his pipe ere he replied to Mr. Mellaire. He certainly is not insane. Yet deliberately, in cold blood, he has murdered a helpless man.
"What'd you do it for?" Mr. Mellaire demanded.
"Because, sir," said Charles Davis, applying a second match to his pipe, "because"--puff, puff--"he bothered my sleep." Here he caught Mr. Pike's glowering eye. "Because"--puff, puff--"he annoyed me. The next time"--puff, puff--"I hope better judgment will be shown in what kind of a man is put in with me. Besides"--puff, puff--"this top bunk ain't no place for me. It hurts me to get into it"--puff, puff--"an' I'm gem' back to that lower bunk as soon as you get O'Sullivan out of it."
"But what'd you do it for?" Mr. Pike snarled.
"I told you, sir, because he annoyed me. I got tired of it, an' so, this
morning, I just put him out of his misery. An' what are you goin' to do
about it? The man's dead, ain't he? An' I killed 'm in self-defence. I
know the law. What right'd you to put a ravin' lunatic in with me, an'
me sick an' helpless?"
"By God, Davis!" the mate burst forth. "You'll never draw your pay-day
in Seattle. I'll fix you out for this, killing a crazy lashed down in
his bunk an' harmless. You'll follow 'm overside, my hearty."
"If I do, you'll hang for it, sir," Davis retorted. He turned his cool
eyes on me. "An' I call on you, sir, to witness the threats he's made. An' you'll testify to them, too, in court. An' he'll hang as sure as I go over the side. Oh, I know his record. He's afraid to face a court with it. He's been up too many a time with charges of man-killin' an' brutality on the high seas. An' a man could retire for life an live off the interest of the fines he's paid, or his owners paid for him--"
"Shut your mouth or I'll knock it out of your face!" Mr. Pike roared, springing toward him with clenched, up-raised fist.
Davis involuntarily shrank away. His flesh was weak, but not so his
spirit. He got himself promptly in hand and struck another match.
"You can't get my goat, sir," he sneered, under the shadow of the
impending blow. "I ain't scared to die. A man's got to die once anyway, an' it's none so hard a trick to do when you can't help it. O'Sullivan died so easy it was amazin'. Besides, I ain't goin' to die. I'm goin' to finish this voyage, an' sue the owners when I get to Seattle. I know my rights an' the law. An' I got witnesses."
Truly, I was divided between admiration for the courage of this wretched
sailor and sympathy for Mr. Pike thus bearded by a sick man he could not
bring himself to strike.
Nevertheless he sprang upon the man with calculated fury, gripped him
between the base of the neck and the shoulders with both gnarled paws, and shook him back and forth, violently and frightfully, for a full minute. It was a wonder the man's neck was not dislocated.
"I call on you to witness, sir," Davis gasped at me the instant he was
free.
He coughed and strangled, felt his throat, and made wry neck-movements
indicative of injury.
"The marks'll begin to show in a few minutes," he murmured complacently
as his dizziness left him and his breath came back.
This was too much for Mr. Pike, who turned and left the room, growling
and cursing incoherently, deep in his throat. When I made my departure, a moment later, Davis was refilling his pipe and telling Mr. Mellaire that he'd have him up for a witness in Seattle.
* * * * *
So we have had another burial at sea. Mr. Pike was vexed by it because
the Elsinore, according to sea tradition, was going too fast through
the water for a proper ceremony. Thus a few minutes of the voyage were
lost by backing the Elsinore's main-topsail and deadening her way while
the service was read and O'Sullivan was slid overboard with the
inevitable sack of coal at his feet.