Alexander Key
Luck on the Ladybird
What with whisky-drinking, the skipper had no time to keep a log; and besides, he’d never have written down how his foul-weather cook conjured up a hurricane – and made it pay cash
In the red dawn of a Sunday morning in late August, the crew of the schooner Ladybird, with malice aforethought and considerable rejoicing at the moment, cast their skipper adrift in the ship’s boat.
This act, though it by no means establishes a precedent in the glorious annals of the sea, is unique upon a number of counts. The Ladybird, only one day out of Tarpon Springs with a cargo of Honduras-bound sponges and certain other articles not mentioned in her manifest, was minus her foremast and listing badly; in fact, she was in imminent danger of going to the bottom. Furthermore, the dory in which her skipper was left to contemplate his sins was the Ladybird's one and only boat.
The skipper was not altogether at fault in the events leading up to this peculiar incident. But the cardinal error was his. He had made the mistake of shipping as cook a man who called himself Olsen.
At a glance there was nothing unusual about Olsen. He was like any other big apple-cheeked Swede in any port: blond and grizzled with an air of beaming innocence seemingly untarnished by long contact with salt water. But his bleached thatch of hair looked as if it had been very red once – almost too red for a Swede – and his blue eyes were an intense and piercing blue, with a trick of turning frigid one moment and twinkling devilishly the next.
They were twinkling when he found Captain Tramm smoking on the after house the night before the Ladybird sailed.
“I bane hear dot you go to Belize, meb-be,” Olsen began. “I’m damn goot hand, fine cook.”
Tramm measured him insolently in the lantern light. “Full up,” he snapped. “Git off my deck.”
“Yah, but your cook take sick. You need new cook now.”
“What the devil do you know about my cook?”
“He sick. Yah, he drunk an’ go fightin’. I yoost see him took to hospital.”
This was a slight understatement of the facts, since Olsen himself was responsible for the cook’s unfitness for further duty, a little matter resulting from an altercation over a pair of loaded dice. Olsen saw no reason for troubling the skipper with these minor details; he waited, patiently rubbing two mighty and slightly bruised fists behind his back.
Tramm considered him dubiously. “All right,” he grunted finally. “This ain’t no pleasure liner with a lot o’ beauty space; galley’ down here in the after cabin. Port bunks’ yours, t’other’s mine. Guess I kin stand a dumb Swede as well as a garlic-sweatin’ Eyetalian. What’s your name – Olie?”
“Yah; Olie Olsen.”
“Don’t git funny. Wot’s your name?”
“Yah, yah; yoost plain Olie Olsen. Ye remember the little ditty: ‘Olie, Olie Olsen free—’”
“To hell with ditties!”
“Yah, shure; ye vant I should fix ye some goot Svenske coffee?”
Tramm glowered at him. Suddenly he stood up, scowling, and pulled Olsen into the lantern light. “Mebbe your maw did name you Olie, but there’s something kinda fishy about you. Ain’t I see you before some place?”
“Yah, mebbe. Ye bane in Helsingfors or Reykjavik?”
“Naw; I ain’t a cold-water man, an’ you don’t look like one neither. Now lissen—” Tramm, granite jowls outthrust, prodded him with a powerful thumb extending from a calloused, corded fist. “You’re a big hunk o’ smilin’ beef an’ I got a hunch you think you’re tough. But as long as you walk this deck you just remember that I weigh better’n two hundred myself; an’ don’t forgit to say ‘sir’ when you’re spoken to!”
“Yah, yah; I remember goot. Now I fix dot coffee.”
Olsen swung down the companion ladder. As his head disappeared in the shadow, his thumb went disdainfully to his nose with fingers extended.
* * *
The crew of four unpromising human derelicts weaved on board at midnight, singing happy obscenities. Before sunrise Tramm herded them from the foc’sle, muttering and sleep-fogged, to catch the tide out. With Anclote Light astern the Ladybird shaped her slow course southwestward, canvas barely filled with a catspaw of a breeze. The entire eastern sky was ablaze with scarlet, turning the long easy swells into ribbons of purple and blood-red.
Tramm, taking the first trick at the wheel until they were in the safety of deep water, suddenly grunted as a voice rose from the galley:
Red sky at mornin’,
Sailor’s vornin’!
The four unhappy derelicts rolling smokes on the cargo hatch sat up, blinking. “Whut de hell?” muttered the darkest one, whose blackness was absolute. “Dat ain’t Mike what’s doin’ de cookin’!”
The smallest, who was only a few shades lighter and of doubtful Cuban parentage, slid aft to investigate. “Mi viadre,” he swore gently, “we ’ave one damn beeg rosy Swede to cooka de grub!” The other two, the leanest and sourest of the quartet, sat still and pale-eyed, saying nothing. They were salt-hardened ex-snapper fishermen and it made no difference to them who cooked the grub. It was all bad anyway.
Tramm crooked a thumb at the Cuban to take over the wheel. “A little Swedish canary, are you?” he growled, poking his granite block of a head into the hatchway. “If I wanted any singin’ on this—”
“Yoost singin’ to kape up me spirrits,” said Olsen, suddenly rising in front of him and holding forth a cup. “Ye’ll take soom coffee, sor? Goot Svenske coffee!”
“You ain’t no damned Swede!” Tramm exploded, coldly eyeing a four-leafed shamrock tattooed on the smiling Olsen’s neck.
“Faith, no!” agreed Olsen. “An’ who’s the misbegotten mongoose that would be after callin’ me one?”
“Eh?” The skipper went red, then purple. A blood vessel in his neck was dangerously near to bursting before relief came in a fit of cursing. “Confound you!” he roared, knocking the coffee cup from Olsen’s hand and bunching a fist under his nose. “Come on my ship under false pretenses, did you? I’ll larn you a thing or two before we fetch Belize! This is no sweet American craft, mister; we’re sailin’ under Honduras charter an’ I’ll thank you to remember that I’m not only part owner, but the master, mate an’ bosun as well! Topside for you – an’ tell me who the hell you think you are!”
The cook swung on deck, eyes crinkling. “Now, Amos,” he purred, “ye shouldn’t be gittin’ your bile in such a state; ye might blow out a gasket. An’ don’t tell me your memory has turned as divvilish bad as your temper, an’ that ye’ve forgot your old shipmate on the Admiral Jones?”
“The Admiral Jones!” Tramm choked. “I been wonderin’ where I last seen that four-leaf clover tattooed on your thick neck.”
The Cuban at the wheel behind them emitted a squeak like a mouse who has suddenly found himself in a corner with a grinning cat. “Mil diablos, I know heem!” he wailed. “’Ee’s name is Done-van!”
“Faith, an’ why wouldn’t it be Done-van?” chuckled the erstwhile Olsen. “Have ye any objictions to the name?”
* * *
The three on the cargo hatch sidled aft. Their eyes fastened on the cook, narrowing and then widening. “Mister,” said the sourest of the two ex-fishermen, “if’n you’s the Donevan what’s known as Lucky Donevan, I’d just as soon the skipper put about an’ run fer home. I hain’t got no hankerin’ to be caught on the same deck with such as you!”
“Nor me neither!” affirmed his partner. “Cap’n, we’s—” .
“Shut your traps! ” stormed Tramm. “An’ don’t forgit I’m master on this deck! I’m a patient man, but I’ve got my limits.” He thrust a cigar in his mouth and glowered at them. “So our little apple-cheeks is Lucky Donevan, eh? An’ what’s there about Lucky Donevan to turn you into a pack o’ squawkin’ loons?”
Evidently there was a great deal about Lucky Donevan that merited attention, for the crew of the Ladybird was suddenly in an uproar. “He was cook on the Lily Girl!”... “An’ on the Prince Charlie!”... “That was the hurricane o’ ’26”... “Yeh, an’ in the hurricane o’ ’29 when the Mary Cecile was...”... “An’ the only man saved off’n the Marco—”
“Aw, divvil take the lot o’ ye!” the cook interrupted, and scattered them with a sweep of his big paw. “What they’re tryin’ to tell ye, Amos, is that I’m a most lucky varmint—”
“E-e-e-ek, no!” screamed the Cuban, “’E is no luck at all. ’E is mucha bada luck!”
The cook glanced at him and the Cuban cringed silent behind the wheel. “Now, Amos,” he began again.
“Captain Tramm to you!” rasped the nearly apoplectic skipper.
“Aye, yes, to be shure. ’Tis Captain Tramm, now. I’d near forgot how ye’ve gained in aspect since the good old days. But as I was sayin’, Amos, this pack o’ side-show freaks ye call a crew are tryin’ to belittle me. Kin I help it if no dacent skipper between here an’ Aransas Pass will chance me name on the articles? Now, now, Amos; hold your temper; I’ll not be mentionin’ the Admiral Jones to thim.
“But faith, ’twas not my fault if I was the only man lived to spake of it when the Marco sthruck a coral head an’ schraped out ’er guts. I told the skipper to p’int a bit more west’ard. Nor would they take me advice on the Lily Girl; she was worm-lousy an’ they wouldn’t waste a penny on cheap putty to calk ’er. I’ll not go into me recent throubles, but as for the harricanes o’ ’26 an’ ’29, whin the Prince Charrlie blowed to bits an’ the Mary Cecile rolled out ’er spars – why, the intimperate haythens would have ye belave I’d sthirred up thim breezes o’ wind all o’ me own accord! ’Twas only by the grace o’ God an’ the pure heart in me that me own neck stayed above wather whin every other poor neck wint to the bottom.”
The cook grinned at the slack jaws around him. “Aw, ye sad ninny-goats, ye don’t recognize good luck whin it sthands before ye in the flesh! I’m the best luck in the worrld if only I’m heeded an’ taken in the right light.”
“’Tain’t your luck we’s worried about!” cried the sourest of the ex-fishermen. “It’s the bad luck what comes to the other fellers you ship with!”
“D-dat’s right!” affirmed the darkest of the miserable four. “M-Mistuh Cap’n, p-please, sah; if’n you’s a Christian man you’ll put about an’ git us a new cook ’fore hit’s too late!”
Tramm had the pained look of a bull on the verge of mayhem. Not quite responsible for his actions, he turned slowly, tore off his cap, spat into it and slammed it back upon his grizzled head. “Shut up!” he exploded suddenly. “Givin’ me orders, are you?” His voice gathered power and wrath. “I was never a good Christian, an’ I’m not startin’ now! Out o’ my way! An’ you—” He ground his cigar between his teeth as he wheeled on Donevan. “So you’re full o’ bad luck, are you? By Harry, I’ll take the last smell of it out o’ you before we fetch the first landfall! Git below an’ shake up some grub!”
“Aye, sor. An’ if ye’ll take my advice ye’ll eat aplenty while ye kin. ’Tis an evil thing for a man with no Christian sperrit to be chancin’ the wathers at the starrt o’ the harricane season.”
He ducked and slid down into the galley just ahead of Tramm’s whirling fist.
* * *
After a silent and morose breakfast, silence clamped down upon the Ladybird’s deck like a lid on a kettle that has not yet come to a boil. The breeze died and the Cuban at the wheel twitched as if he were sitting on pins. When a whistling rose from the galley, all eyes swung rebelliously in that direction.
“Cut out that racket!” snarled Tramm.
“Yoost vistlin’ for a vind,” said the cook cheerfully, and poked his round beaming face above the hatch. “Faith, an’ why shouldn’t I whistle for it, seeih’ as there ain’t none? ’Twas almost in this spot that the Lily Girl began takin’ wather, an’ ’twas just sech a sweet strumpet of a morn that preceded the harricane o’ ’26—”
The Cuban gave a sound like a death rattle; a hoarse curse came from the foc’sle head. Tramm crossed the deck in two steps and slid down the hatch after the retreating Donevan.
“Now what the dirty sin’s the idea?” rasped Tramm. “Tryin’ to demoralize my crew?”
In the cramped cabin he halted, drawing in his horns a trifle at the sight of the knife which Donevan casually began tossing and catching by the point.
“Aw, Amos,” purred the cook. “Ye couldn’t demoralize the likes o’ thim what has no morals. An’ if ye’ll take my advice—”
“I don’t want your advice!”
“ – my advice an’ stharrt the motor, so ye kin git out o’ this part o’ the ocean. There’s some most unmannerly weather headin’ this way, an’ my guess is we’ll have it by midnight.”
“Gittin’ cold feet?” sneered Tramm. “Want me to put you ashore?”
“I know ye better’n that, Amos.”
“Captain Tramm to you!”
“Aye, so ’tis, me mind was on the Admiral Jones, whin I had a cleaner galley than this an’ ye was a mere swab of a bosun.” A wicked glitter came to the cook’s eyes. “Remember that night the CG bhoys dhrapped a shell in her boiler an’ she went down with a half-million in good wathered likker ’tween decks, an’ all hands but the two of us? Remember, Amos? We was havin’ a bit o’ pinochle at the moment, an’ me winnin’s had topped the two thousand marrk.”
“An’ what of it?” snarled Tramm.
“Why, ye blackguardly skinflint, with the ship in morrtal hurt ye grabbed me winnin’s an’ runned like a rat! An’ all these eighteen years I’d been thinkin’ me money had drrowned with ye. Imagine me happiness yesterday to find ye live an’ well, an’ me money more than doubled with accrued interrest!”
“So that’s why you came aboard me!”
“Shure, an’ ye didn’t think I’d be set-tin’ foot on a cranky barge like this for a lesser reason, did ye? I know ye’ve got the money, an’ I’m stickin’ by ye till I git it. An’ the quicker I git it, the luckier ye’ll be!”
Tramm went white with rage. His hand flashed suddenly into his bunk and came out with a pistol in it. “I’ve had enough of your nonsense, Donevan. Drop that knife! ”
“Aw, the divvilish thing is empty, Amos. With me childish fear o’ firearms I always unload thim as soon as I find thim.”
Tramm spun the cylinder and cursed. “I’m turnin’ back an’ put you ashore,” he said through his teeth.
“Aw, ye wouldn’t do that – or I’ll be askin’ the Revenue bhoys why a mere load o’ sponges should make ye sit so low in the wather. ’Tis the verry reason I’m so confident ye’re in the money again, Amos, an’ ’tis also the reason ye should be courtin’ me favors for the luck that’s in me. A rascal in some nefarious undertakin’ needs all the luck he kin git.”
“Bah! There’s no such thing as luck.”
The cook crossed himself piously. “Why, Amos! ’Tis a terrible thing to denounce luck! I’d as soon stick me head in a shark’s mouth as—”
* * *
Any further wisdom from the cook was abruptly cut short by a fresh gust of wind that struck the Ladybird full on her beam. It had just been born lustily in the Gulf’s ever-brewing cauldron of weather, and it was in a hurry to be on its way. The Ladybird heeled sharply, and Tramm plunged head-first into the stack of un-washed dishes in the galley. The crash was cataclysmic in itself, but like a match to a cannon, it became only a minor detail.
Tramm lunged upright, spat out a fishbone and a cup handle to clear his throat, and gave an anthropoidal bellow. He sprang at the cook with both fists whistling. Donevan, grinning, tossed his knife aside and dove under the other’s guard. They smashed into the galley, careened back and wrecked the chart rack, and crashed down kicking and biting amid a smother of bedding, broken crockery and tearing charts. Donevan was on the bottom, but that was Donevan’s best fighting stance.
The cook’s knees came up, exploded, and Tramm catapulted toward the companion ladder. Donevan sprang at him, caught him by the belt, and heaved him like a sack of meal into the startled faces clustered about the hatch.
“Now kape out o’ me sight for awhile, ye murrdherous hellion!” cried the cook. “Tonight ye kin sleep forrard with the rest o’ the louse-bitten scuts.” And before he could be stopped, the hatch cover was slammed shut over the swinging doors, and securely latched from the inside.
Satisfied that the ports were too small for invasion, Donevan found one of Tramm’s cigars, lit it, and stretched complacently on a bunk. “A right snug little spot,” he commented. “I’ve the ship’s vittles, tools an’ wather, and they kin nather eat, drrink nor break in. The crrockery is in too sad a state to bother with washin’ so I’ll jest rest on me laurels.”
He sat up after a bit, listening to an angry racket in progress overhead. “Faith, I do belave the poor wretches are tryin’ to make ’im put about. But no, by the sound o’ things he’s winnin’ ’em to his way o’ thinkin’. Sure, an’ he knows better’n to put me ashore where I might sing the wrong tune.”
The echoes of strife died and there came a heavy pounding on the hatch. “Open up!” snarled Tramm. “What’s the idea?”
“Yoost a nautical sit-down strrike,” the cook sing-songed.
Tramm kicked in one of the port lights. “You’ll open up,” he bellowed, “or you’ll be a dead man in an hour!”
“Aw, be rasonable, Amos; how kin I die with all these good vittles to kape me company? Ye’ll sthop disturbin’ me rest an’ come to terms, or not another bite o’ grub or swaller o’ wather will ye git.”
“I’ll have the heart out o’ you for this!”
“I’ll have me two thousand dollars at ten percent interrest for eighteen years, an’ a guarantee to set me safe ashorre with it on the tip o’ Cuby. Shure, ’tis a bit like usury to charge ye more’n seven percent, but ye’re puttin’ me to such inconvenience.”
“Don’t be a fool. What would I be doin’ with that much money aboard?”
“An’ how would a poor innocent like me be knowin’? But a rascal in a quistionable racket needs have plenty o’ cash on hand to butter the way, an’ I see there’s a most hefty iron box below your bunk. Now, if ye’ll jest hand over the key—”
A stream of profanity was his only answer. Tramm left, and Donevan peered briefly out of the port.
The wind was coming in gusts and there was a promise of weather in the southeast. “’Twill calm a bit first,” he mused, “an’ we’ll git it in the neck tonight. ’Tis a faint heart I have for this sit-down game, but they forced it on me. With a bit o’ luck, I kin hold me own. They’ve no weapons, as the blackguard would ne’er be trustin’ ’em with none. An’ there’s no breakin’ through the hatch without ax an’ crowbar – which I have in safe kapin’. Aw, I belave I’ll brew me a pot o’ coffee. They’ll love the smell of it.”
* * *
A half-hour later there came a tapping at the broken port. “M-mis-tuh,” spoke the crew’s darkest member. “Us ain’t ’sponsible for no fuss ’tween you an’ de skipper. Can’t you spare us some vittles an’ some coffee?”
The cook beamed. “Why, shure. An’ right gladly. Jest tie up that buck harridan for me so he can’t harrm himself, an’ I’ll give ye a feast that’ll make your hair uncurl. ’Tis no sin an’ crime to mutiny agin a skipper what’s carryin’ contrry-brand.”
Tramm interrupted this proposal with a kick; the black man went scurrying. “Unlash that cargo spar for’ard,” rasped Tramm. “I’ll show you how to git your grub!”
The cargo spar, Donevan decided, would be used to batter in the small swinging doors of the hatchway. He got out hammer and nails, broke up the chart table, and completed a rough but efficient job of carpentry within the hatch before the first blow was struck. A dozen blows proved the invincibility of his work.
“Next,” thought Donevan, “they’ll try smoking me out.”
They did try it by tossing smouldering sponges through the broken port.
“Yippee! Fire an’ brrimstone!” he cried, suddenly seizing the incautious hand thrusting in the sponges and jerking until he held the entire arm. “I’m a divvilish salamander that thrives on smoke! Burrn the ship down! An’ while she’s burrnin’ an’ blowin’ to glory with the ammynition she’s probably carryin’, I’ll cut off this schurvy member by the roots! ” He twisted the arm and began making preparatory scratches on it with the point of his knife.
The arm’s owner screamed. “Lemme go an’ I’ll leave you alone – I swear it!”
“Ye’re a lyin’ scrroundrel an’ I ought to cut the black tongue of ye out, but ’tis me own fraility that sets ye free. The sight o’ blood after a meal fair ruins me digestion.”
He turned, caught up the bucket of water he had previously made ready, and sloshed it over the sponges. He was choking in the smoke, so he cautiously opened a starboard port then crawled to the fore part of the cabin and sat down against the bulkhead. “The tiresome life of a rodent in a hole,” he grumbled. “’Tis frightful close in here, which makes me hope they’re raisin’ a divvilish thirst on deck.”
He spent some minutes puzzling over the several possible outcomes of his confinement, all of which were unpleasant. “Aw, hootle, an’ dhrat the worry of it,” he said finally. “I’m forgittin’ me luck; it makes no particle o’ difference what happens as long as I git me money an’ make safe away with it.”
The smoke in the cabin cleared, but the heat increased as the wind outside went down again. The Ladybird rolled in the slow swells, blocks creaking and booms swinging idly. Further assault upon the galley was temporarily abandoned.
At the musical sound of bottles clinking in the vicinity of the main hatch, Donevan crept to one of the ports. It seemed, from the brief snatches of talk he could overhear, that there had been a case or two of fine whisky in the hold – a little subsidy for a port official. Tramm was now using it to slake his thirst and make peace with the crew.
“Would ye like a little wather to cut the bite of it?” Donevan called out.
The clinking ceased. There followed a few hoarse but heart-felt adjectives concerning his ancestory.
“Faith, sech language! But that’s what likker does to a man. I remember once whin I was adrift with a shipmate for five morrtals days in an open boat, an’ all we had to drrink between the two of us was a bottle o’ Scotch. Me tongue was fair hangin’ out for it, but ’tis pure poison when ye’re thirsty in a hot sun, so I let Bill take it all. I’ll not deschribe the spell o’ hellish language an’ the horrible torments that assailed ’im ’fore he died.”
Stark silence met this fable. Donevan went on glibly: “I forgot to tell ye ’twas the Mary Cecile’s boat we was in, not that I like to bring up sech unpleasant topics in the present situation. But ’twas jest sech a craft as this, except that she was carryin’ grain instead o’ sponges, which is not near so bad whin ye spring a plank. A sponge, now, is a horrid glutton for wather an’ ye can’t pump it out. An’ if a ship happens to have a bit o’ rot in her bottom, an’ a few hidden cases o’ heavy armaments to knock it loose in a poundin’ sea, why—”
“Shut your blatherin’ mouth!” Tramm hurled at him.
“Dat cook ’e keel us yet!” the Cuban cried out. “I cut heem in little pieces!” He landed upon the hatch over Donevan’s head, cursing, clawing at the wood, kicking it in a frenzy.
“Git that spar!” rasped another tormented voice. “We’ll tear the top off’n the place! ”
They swarmed about the hatch and began battering it with the spar, a furious desperation in them now.
* * *
They were still at it when night came. It had become a labor of love and midnight brought no cessation of efforts, except time out to pass the seventh bottle of whisky around. They were in no way discouraged; in fact, they were beginning to warm to their task, lightening it with snatches of obscene verse and dire imprecations as they heaved upon the spar. Occasionally they fell in a heap together when the Ladybird rolled slightly, during these brief delays Donevan would rouse them to a minute of frenzied activity by shouting insults and advice. No one bothered to tend the wheel; there had not been a breath of air for hours.
When he was not goading them on, Donevan lay upon a bunk, happily smoking one of Tramm’s cigars. He had not troubled to equip himself with a weapon when the hatch began to weaken, though he could have had his pick from the toolbox. He had long ago learned that the easiest method of dealing with five drunks was a succession of five carefully-placed rights to the jaw. Several times he had been upon the point of opening the hatch himself in his eagerness to let them in one by one and thus terminate the affair.
“Aw hootle,” he said. “Let the mongrely riprobates have their fun while it lasts. There’s no use rushin’ me luck.” So he lay back smoking, watching the crack between the companion doors grow steadily wider. When it was over he would tie them up, start the motor, and run back to the coast.
He had all but forgotten about the weather when he sprang suddenly to his feet, listening. Unconsciously he touched the shamrock tattooed on his neck. The wind that he had been expecting all day was now a tearing sound in the distance.
“Lay off, ye haythens!” he shouted to the merrymakers at the hatch. “There’s a squall nigh on us. Git the canvas down before it knocks us flat!”
They guffawed and went on with their labors. Donevan swore. He grabbed an ax and began cutting through the barricade of timbers he had nailed across the doors.
The squall hit them before he was through.
A Gulf squall is a prankish incubus of unpleasant parentage, and all evening this one had been winding itself up to a hurricane temper. It screamed out of the south with a bone in its teeth, tied itself in a knot or two, veered east to lift a deck cargo of lumber from a tramp steamer, and shot around again to see what could be done about the Ladybird. Had its aim been better the schooner would have gone the way of countless other craft, but the Ladybird was merely clipped across the bows. As often happens in such instances, the result was freakish.
The Ladybird was swept clean of every spar and ounce of canvas forward of the cargo hatch. Abaft that point she was practically untouched. Her mainmast and spanker remained intact, with hardly a torn grommet. The blow rolled her down on her beam, started a few seams, and tumbled her crew in a helplessly squirming mass against the bulwarks.
* * *
The night was pitch black when the cook gained the deck. The Ladybird rolled drunkenly in a choppy sea. He groped forward with the ax, and cut through the starboard shrouds that were holding a mass of pounding wreckage against her sides. Released, the ship straightened and headed into the wind. Donevan was hurrying back when he stumbled and went sprawling against a groaning figure. It sounded like Tramm.
It was Tramm. He cursed, caught the man by the shoulders, and dragged him down to a bunk in the cabin.
Turning up the lantern, he bent over to look for broken bones, then straightened with a snort as Tramm wagged a finger playfully under his nose.
“’Oo are you?” the skipper asked thickly.
“’Tis a blatherin’ idiot I am,” growled Donevan, “to be thinkin’ a mere wreck could ever hurrt a stew-bum!”
“I wanna drink,” said Tramm, and fell immediately to sleep. His cap, which he had been clutching all the while in his hand, fell to the floor.
Somewhat disgusted at the turn of affairs, the cook salvaged the cap and slammed it on his own head. He started on deck, then his eye caught sight of a key dangling from a string around Tramm’s neck.
The cook brightened instantly. “’Tis an ill wind that blows no morrtal good,” he murmured, and tried the key in the iron box below the bunk. It worked. And as he had expected, the box was filled with currency.
“Now let’s see,” he intoned slowly, brows knit with the supreme effort of multiplication. “Two thousand at ten percent is two hundred, an’ eighteen years o’ that is, hm – aw, divvil take the worry of it! ’Tis between three an’ four thousand, an’ I ought to charge the mangey ape a bit for the figgerin’. An’ four thousand plus the original two is – my, what a power o’ paper to count!”
An hour later, quite oblivious to the fact that Saint Patrick had been battling mightily against Neptune to hold a leaking ship above water, Donevan stuffed a thick sheaf of bills into his pocket and climbed on deck. He stared at the red dawn breaking over the deceitfully quiet sea, then his eyes widened as he realized that the Ladybird was listing badly. The four social misfits, whom he had thought swept to perdition in the squall, were lolling on the cargo hatch, doing their best to kill a stray bottle of whisky.
They gaped at him foggily, seeing only a bulky man in a cap. “’Ave a drink?” said one.
The cook slapped them upright. “Man the pumps!” he bit out. “Ye lolly-gaggin’ apes, can’t ye see we’re in throuble?” He shoved them out of his way, tore off the hatch cover and dropped down into the hold to see about the leak.
The four paid no attention to him. Their slapping had only served to awaken them to the thought that their night’s work must not go in vain. “So we ish in trouble, eh?” said the sourest of the two exfishermen. “An’ ’oo brung ush the trouble, I ash you?”
The black man swayed toward the galley, pointing. “De good book say: ‘If’n you got trouble, pluck hit out – an’ cash hit ’pon de waters.”
“Dash right. Put ’im in the li’l boat; let ’im drif’ an’ drif’ an’ drif’! Ye-e-ow! Let’s git ’im!”
With one accord they started for the galley.
* * *
Donevan, erupting from the cargo hatch several minutes later, was astounded to see the Ladybird’s boat drifting away like a chip astern. In it was the solitary figure of Captain Tramm, blinking owlishly at the sunrise. The four human derelicts who had cast him adrift were merrily wishing him bon voyage from the after deck.
Donevan tore off his cap and hurled it at them. “Ye intimperate blaspheming ninny-goats!” he exploded. “D’ye know what ye’ve done? With us takin’ wather like a sieve an’ doomed to go down in ten minutes, ye would throw away the only boat!”
They turned, shocked partially sober, and four jaws gaped wide. The black man cried out as if he had seen a ghost and fell praying to his knees.
Donevan jerked him up and slapped him forward. He slapped the rest of them vigorously and propelled them to the pumps, then tumbled down the after hatch to see if he could start the motor. It would not start, for the simple reason that it was half awash in brine.
“Oh, what a horrible dish o’ throuble!” he cried. “To have come into me money in sech a woeful plight as this!”
Suddenly he crossed himself as he caught sight of the big mainsail slatting overhead. “Forgive me impiety,” he begged. “In this hour o’ travail ’tis harrd to see the outstretched hand o’ luck. If I kin jest clew this bit o’ canvas forrard an’ wear the ship about ...”
He dove for the halliard, brought the sail on deck, and began slashing it free from the boom lashings and mast rings. “Kape pumpin’ if ye would live!” he admonished the four miserable ones, and ran forward dragging the foot of the sail behind him. He lashed the clew to the forward bitts and made a line fast to the tack, thus turning it around and converting it into a rough-and-ready staysail placed well in front of the mast. Raised and trimmed, it was sufficient to bring the schooner slowly about.
The Ladybird settling by inches, moved sluggishly downwind toward the small boat containing Tramm.
As they drew close to the dory, Donevan gave the wheel a final turn and the dying Ladybird swung slightly to starboard. For a second or two the small boat was almost under her transom. Donevan had only to swing down beside the peacefully snoring Tramm. The others came on the run, but they were too late.
“Ye kin jump, or ye kin go down with the ship,” the cook sang out to them. “Faith, I’d as soon have ye on me conscience as have ye in the flesh.”
They jumped. The four were hardly in the water when a swell broke over the Ladybird’s deck. She dove slowly out of sight like a discouraged porpoise to join her vast sisterhood below.
Donevan disdainfully drew the swimmers over the small boat’s gunwale. “Now that ye’re properly washed,” he grumbled, “perhaps I kin sthand the smell o’ ye. An’ I hope ye appreciate the monumental luck that’s been the savin’ o’ ye this fair morn.”
A tramp steamer – the one that had lost her deck cargo in the squall – sighted them before the sun was an hour high. Her captain, besides being interrupted at his breakfast, had put in a bad night. He glared at them from the bridge as they were hauled on board.
“What the devil have we here?” he snapped to his bosun.
“I don’t know, sir, but it looks like five stew-bums and a Swede.”
“Aw hootle, ye little mongoose,” Donevan growled at him. “Am I bein’ rescued only to have me ancestry questioned?”
The bosun was a Gulf man. He looked again at Donevan, hard, and swallowed. “I beg pardon, sir,” he said to his captain. “I’m afraid we’ve salvaged a certain character well-known in these waters as Lucky Donevan. I regret to tell you, sir, but he’s bad medicine to have around. If you’ll take my advice, sir, you’ll put about—”
“I don’t want your damned advice!” flared the irascible one on the bridge. “What kind of idiotic nonsense are you trying to hand me?”
The bosun looked sick. “I’m afraid, sir, that you’ll be finding out long before we fetch Tampico.”
1939
(Argosy, vol. 289, #2, March 25, pp.102-111)
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