But Mr.Burns found another way, a way of his own which had, at all events, the merit of saving his breath, if no other.
1
Nothing more came.
"What's the matter?...Can't you tell after being nearly two years in the ship?" I ad-dressed him sharply.
He looked as startled for a moment as though he had discovered my presence only that very mo-ment.But this passed off almost at once.He put on an air of indifference.But I suppose he thought it better to say something.He said that a ship needed, just like a man, the chance to show the best she could do, and that this ship had never had a chance since he had been on board of her.Not that he could remember.The last captain....
He paused.
"Has he been so very unlucky?" I asked with frank incredulity.Mr.Burns turned his eyes away from me.No, the late captain was not an unlucky man.One couldn't say that.But he had not seemed to want to make use of his luck.
Mr.Burns--man of enigmatic moods--made this statement with an inanimate face and staring wilfully at the rudder casing.The statement itself was obscurely suggestive.I asked quietly:
"Where did he die?"
"In this saloon.Just where you are sitting now," answered Mr.Burns.
I repressed a silly impulse to jump up; but upon the whole I was relieved to hear that he had not died in the bed which was now to be mine.Ipointed out to the chief mate that what I really wanted to know was where he had buried his late captain.
Mr.Burns said that it was at the entrance to the gulf.A roomy grave; a sufficient answer.But the mate, overcoming visibly something within him --something like a curious reluctance to believe in my advent (as an irrevocable fact, at any rate), did not stop at that--though, indeed, he may have wished to do so.
As a compromise with his feelings, I believe, he addressed himself persistently to the rudder-casing, so that to me he had the appearance of a man talking in solitude, a little unconsciously, however.
His tale was that at seven bells in the forenoon watch he had all hands mustered on the quarter-deck and told them they had better go down to say good-bye to the captain.
Those words, as if grudged to an intruding per-sonage, were enough for me to evoke vividly that strange ceremony: The bare-footed, bare-headed seamen crowding shyly into that cabin, a small mob pressed against that sideboard, uncomfortable rather than moved, shirts open on sunburnt chests, weather-beaten faces, and all staring at the dying man with the same grave and expectant expression.
"Was he conscious?" I asked.
"He didn't speak, but he moved his eyes to look at them," said the mate.
After waiting a moment, Mr.Burns motioned the crew to leave the cabin, but he detained the two eldest men to stay with the captain while he went on deck with his sextant to "take the sun." It was getting toward noon and he was anxious to obtain a good observation for latitude.When he returned below to put his sextant away he found that the two men had retreated out into the lobby.
Through the open door he had a view of the captain lying easy against the pillows.He had "passed away" while Mr.Burns was taking this observa-tion.As near noon as possible.He had hardly changed his position.
Mr.Burns sighed, glanced at me inquisitively, as much as to say, "Aren't you going yet?" and then turned his thoughts from his new captain back to the old, who, being dead, had no authority, was not in anybody's way, and was much easier to deal with.
Mr.Burns dealt with him at some length.He was a peculiar man--of sixty-five about--iron gray, hard-faced, obstinate, and uncommunicative.He used to keep the ship loafing at sea for inscrutable reasons.Would come on deck at night sometimes, take some sail off her, God only knows why or wherefore, then go below, shut himself up in his cabin, and play on the violin for hours--till day-break perhaps.In fact, he spent most of his time day or night playing the violin.That was when the fit took him.Very loud, too.
It came to this, that Mr.Burns mustered his courage one day and remonstrated earnestly with the captain.Neither he nor the second mate could get a wink of sleep in their watches below for the noise....And how could they be ex-pected to keep awake while on duty? He pleaded.
The answer of that stern man was that if he and the second mate didn't like the noise, they were wel-come to pack up their traps and walk over the side.
When this alternative was offered the ship hap-pened to be 600 miles from the nearest land.
Mr.Burns at this point looked at me with an air of curiosity.I began to think that my predecessor was a remarkably peculiar old man.
But I had to hear stranger things yet.It came out that this stern, grim, wind-tanned, rough, sea-salted, taciturn sailor of sixty-five was not only an artist, but a lover as well.In Haiphong, when they got there after a course of most unprofitable peregrinations (during which the ship was nearly lost twice), he got himself, in Mr.Burns' own words, "mixed up" with some woman.Mr.Burns had had no personal knowledge of that affair, but positive evidence of it existed in the shape of a photograph taken in Haiphong.Mr.Burns found it in one of the drawers in the captain's room.
In due course I, too, saw that amazing human document (I even threw it overboard later).
