did he fix her?”
“Well,” said Jude, “it’s no harm to hold up a packet if you don’t throw her off her course—much. It’s the owners pays, and they can stand the racket. The crew likes it, and if there’s passengers aboard they just love it.”
“Do you mean to say you hold up steamers?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Yep.”
“But how do you do it?”
“Oh, it’s only now and then. What’s easier than to lay in her course with the flag half-mast? Then she heaves to.”
“And you board her and ask for potatoes, or whatever you want?”
“Not much!” said Jude. “They’d boot you off the ship. Water’s what you ask for, pretendin’ you’re dying of thirst; then you drink till you’re near bustin’ and fill the breaker you’ve brought with you. It’s all on the square. Satan would never hold a ship unless he had some fish to offer them for whatever he wants—potatoes or fruit or tobacco. He’s got the fish in the boat and hands it up. They’re always glad of fresh fish and they offer to buy it; but he won’t take money, but says, ‘If you’ve got a few potatoes handy, I don’t mind takin’ them for the fish.’ Sometimes it’s fruit he wants, or other things. Then you push off—and if it’s a passenger packet the passengers, thinkin’ they’ve saved you from dyin’ of thirst, line up and cheer. It’s no end of fun.”
“What flag do you sail under?”
“ ’Murrican, what else? You see,” went on Jude as she put the potatoes into the kettle, “fish costs nothing to us and they’re mighty glad of it, but I reckon they’d bat our heads off if they knew about the dyin’ of thirst business.”
“But suppose you struck the same ship twice?”
“It’s not a job one does every day,” said Jude, with a trace of contempt in her tone, “and Satan don’t wear blinkers, and it’s not a job you could do at all if you didn’t know the lie of the fishin’ banks by where the ship tracks run. I reckon you’ve got to learn something about things.”
“I reckon I have,” said Ratcliffe, laughing, “and I bet you’ll teach me!”
“Well, shy that over to begin with,” said Jude, giving him the pail of dirty water.
He flung the water over the side, and as he did so he took a glance at the Dryad. Satan was in the boat just pushing off. When he returned to the galley with the news, Jude was preparing to fry fish: not the early morning fish, but some caught just before Ratcliffe had come on board.
Then he went to the rail again just as Satan was coming alongside.
Satan had a cargo of sorts. His insatiable appetite for canvas and rope was evidenced by the bundle in the stern, and there were parcels. The return of the empty portmanteau had not been waste labor.
“That’s coffee,” said he to Ratcliffe, handing up the goods. “We were runnin’ short. And here’s biscuits—catch a holt—and here’s some fancy muck in cans and c’ndensed milk—I told the chap our cow died yesterday. ‘Take everything you want,’ says he. ‘Don’t mind me—I’m only the owner.’ Offered me the mainsail as I was putting off an’ told me to come back for the dinghy. I’d told him I was sweet on her—full of fun he was—and maybe I will. Claw hold of this bundle of matches—they’re a livin’ Godsend—and here’s a case of canned t’marters—and that’s all.”
Skelton’s irony was evidently quite lost on Satan, or put down to his “fun,” but Ratcliffe could appreciate it, and the fact that its real target was himself.
The canned t’marters appeared with the food at dinner, and during the meal more of Skelton came out. He had offered Satan vinous liquors, hoping, so Ratcliffe dimly suspected, to send him back a trouble to the Sarah Tyler and an object lesson on the keeping of disreputable company; but the wily Satan had no use for liquor. He was on the water wagon.
“I leave all them sorts of things to Jude,” said he, with a grin. He was referring to Jude’s boasted drunk at Havana, and Ratcliffe, who was placed opposite to the pair of them, across the table, saw Jude’s chin project. Why she should boast of a thing one moment and fire up at the mention of it at another was beyond him.
For a moment it seemed as if she were going to empty the dish of tomatoes over Satan, but she held herself in, all but her tongue.
“You’d have been doin’ better work on board here, mendin’ the gooseneck of that spare gaff, than wangling old canvas an’ rope out of that man,” said she. “We’re full up of old truck that’s no more use to us than Solomon’s aunt. It’s in the family, I suppose, seein’ what Granf’er was—”
“Oh, put a potato in your mouth!” said Satan.
“He used to peddle truck on the Canada border,” said she to Ratcliffe—“hams—”
“Close up!” said Satan.
“—made out o’ birchwood, and wooden nutmegs—”
“That was Pap’s joke,” said Satan. “And another word out of you and I’ll turn you over me knee and take down your—”
“Then what do you want flingin’ old things in my face?” cried Jude, wabbling between anger and tears. “Some day I’ll take me hook, same as mother did.”
“There’s not a Baptis’ minister would look at you,” said Satan, winking at Ratcliffe.
“Damn Baptis’ ministers! You may work your old hooker yourself. I’ll skip! Two thousand of them dollars is mine, and next time we touch Havana I’ll skip!”
“And where’ll you skip to?”
“I’ll start a la’ndry.”
“Then you’ll have to black your face and wear a turban, same as the others—and marry a nigger. I can see you comin’ off for the ship’s washin’.”
Jude began to laugh in a crazy sort of way, then all at once she sobered down and went on with her dinner. One could never tell how her anger would end—in tears, laughter of a wild sort, or just nothing.
Not another word was said about the family history of the Tylers, at least at that meal, and after it was over Jude made Ratcliffe help to wash up the plates and things in the galley.
“Satan’s Cap,” said Jude. “He never helps in the washin’ or swillin’. Not cold water!—land’s sake! where did you learn washin’ up?—hot! I’ve left some in that billy on the stove.”
She had taken off her old coat and rolled her guernsey sleeves up to the shoulders nearly, and it came to Ratcliffe as he helped that, without a word of remonstrance, naturally, and as a part adapts itself to the economy of a whole, he had sunk into the position of kitchen maid and general help to the Tyler family, taken the place of the nigger that had skipped; furthermore that Satan was less a person than a subtle influence. Satan seemed to obtain his ends more by wishing than by willing. He wanted an extra hand, and he had somehow put the spell of his wish on him, Ratcliffe. He had wished a drum of paint out of Simmons—and look at Skelton, the cynical and superior Skelton, sending off doles of coffee and “t’marters” to the dingy and disreputable Sarah Tyler, offering his mainsail to the rapacious Satan as a gibe! What had he been but a marionette dancing on the string of Satan’s wish?
Only for Jude and the Sarah and the queer new sense of freedom from all the associations he had ever known, only for something likable about Satan, the something that gave him power to wheedle things out of people and bend them to his wishes, Ratcliffe might have reacted against the Tyler hypnotism. As it was, the whole business seemed as jolly as a pantomime, as exciting as a new form of novel in which the folk were real and himself a character.
Leaving Satan and the old Sarah aside, and the extraordinary fascination