Chapter XV
How I have been sleeping! This relief of renewed normality is
delicious--thanks to Miss West. Now why did not Captain West, or Mr. Pike, both experienced men, diagnose my trouble for me? And then there was Wada. But no; it required Miss West. Again I contemplate the problem of woman. It is just such an incident among a million others that keeps the thinker's gaze fixed on woman. They truly are the mothers and the conservers of the race.
Rail as I will at Miss West's red-blood complacency of life, yet I must
bow my head to her life-giving to me. Practical, sensible, hard-headed, a comfort-maker and a nest-builder, possessing all the distressing attributes of the blind-instinctive race-mother, nevertheless I must confess I am most grateful that she is along. Had she not been on the Elsinore, by this time I should have been so overwrought from lack of sleep that I would be biting my veins and howling--as mad a hatter as any of our cargo of mad hatters. And so we come to it--the everlasting mystery of woman. One may not be able to get along with her; yet is it patent, as of old time, that one cannot get along without her. But, regarding Miss West, I do entertain one fervent hope, namely, that she is not a suffragette. That would be too much.
Captain West may be a Samurai, but he is also human. He was really a bit
fluttery this morning, in his reserved, controlled way, when he regretted
the plague of vermin I had encountered in my rooms. It seems he has a
keen sense of hospitality, and that he is my host on the Elsinore, and
that, although he is oblivious of the existence of the crew, he is not
oblivious of my comfort. By his few expressions of regret it appears
that he cannot forgive himself for his careless acceptance of the
erroneous diagnosis of my affliction. Yes; Captain West is a real human
man. Is he not the father of the slender-faced, strapping-bodied Miss
West?
"Thank goodness that's settled," was Miss West's exclamation this
morning, when we met on the poop and after I had told her how gloriously
I had slept.
And then, that nightmare episode dismissed because, forsooth, for all
practical purposes--it was settled, she next said:
"Come on and see the chickens."
And I accompanied her along the spidery bridge to the top of the 'midship-
house, to look at the one rooster and the four dozen fat hens in the
ship's chicken-coop.
As I accompanied her, my eyes dwelling pleasurably on that vital gait of
hers as she preceded me, I could not help reflecting that, coming down on
the tug from Baltimore, she had promised not to bother me nor require to
be entertained.
Come and see the chickens!--Oh, the sheer female possessiveness of that
simple invitation! For effrontery of possessiveness is there anything
that can exceed the nest-making, planet-populating, female, human
woman?--Come and see the chickens! Oh, well, the sailors for'ard may
be hard-bitten, but I can promise Miss West that here, aft, is one male
passenger, unmarried and never married, who is an equally hard-bitten
adventurer on the sea of matrimony. When I go over the census I remember
at least several women, superior to Miss West, who trilled their song of
sex and failed to shipwreck me.
As I read over what I have written I notice how the terminology of the
sea has stolen into my mental processes. Involuntarily I think in terms
of the sea. Another thing I notice is my excessive use of superlatives. But then, everything on board the Elsinore is superlative. I find myself continually combing my vocabulary in quest of just and adequate words. Yet am I aware of failure. For example, all the words of all the dictionaries would fail to approximate the exceeding terribleness of Mulligan Jacobs.
But to return to the chickens. Despite every precaution, it was evident
that they had had a hard time during the past days of storm. It was
equally evident that Miss West, even during her sea-sickness, had not
neglected them. Under her directions the steward had actually installed
a small oil-stove in the big coop, and she now beckoned him up to the top
of the house as he was passing for'ard to the galley. It was for the
purpose of instructing him further in the matter of feeding them.