A thousand deaths by Jack London

and plunging ahead due south.

“Steamer’s lights ahead on the port bow, sir!” cried the lookout from his station on

the forecastle-head. There was excitement in the man’s voice.

The captain sent Bub below for his night-glasses. Everybody crowded to the leerail

to gaze at the suspicious stranger, which already began to loom up vague and

indistinct. In those unfrequented waters the chance was one in a thousand that it

could be anything else than a Russian patrol. The captain was still anxiously

gazing through the glasses, when a flash of flame left the stranger’s side, followed

by the loud report of a cannon. The worst fears were confirmed. It was a patrol,

evidently firing across the bows of the Mary Thomas in order to make her heave

to.

“Hard down with your helm!” the captain commanded the steersman, all the life

gone out of his voice. Then to the crew, “Back over the jib and foresail! Run

down the flying jib! Clew up the foretopsail! And aft here and swing on to the

main-sheet!”

The Mary Thomas ran into the eye of the wind, lost headway, and fell to

curtesying gravely to the long seas rolling up from the west.

The cruiser steamed a little nearer and lowered a boat. The sealers watched in

heart- broken silence. They could see the white bulk of the boat as it was slacked

away to the water, and its crew sliding aboard. They could hear the creaking of

the davits and the commands of the officers. Then the boat sprang away under the

impulse of the oars, and came toward them. The wind had been rising, and

already the sea was too rough to permit the frail craft to lie alongside the tossing

schooner; but watching their chance, and taking advantage of the boarding ropes

thrown to them, an officer and a couple of men clambered aboard. The boat then

sheered off into safety and lay to its oars, a young midshipman, sitting in the stern

and holding the yoke-lines, in charge.

The officer, whose uniform disclosed his rank as that of second lieutenant in the

Russian navy, went below with the captain of the Mary Thomas to look at the

ship’s papers. A few minutes later he emerged, and upon his sailors removing the

hatch- covers, passed down into the hold with a lantern to inspect the salt piles. it

DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES

21

was a goodly heap which confronted him—fifteen hundred fresh skins, the

season’s catch; and under the circumstances he could have had but one

conclusion.

“I am very sorry,” he said, in broken English to the sealing captain, when he again

came on deck, “but it is my duty, in the name of the tsar, to seize your vessel as a

poacher caught with fresh skins in the closed sea. The penalty, as you may know,

is confiscation and imprisonment.”

The captain of the Mary Thomas shrugged his shoulders in seeming indifference,

and turned away. Although they may restrain all outward show, strong men, under

unmerited misfortune, are sometimes very close to tears. just then the vision of his

little California home, and of the wife and two yellow-haired boys, was strong

upon him, and there was a strange, choking sensation in his throat, which made

him afraid that if he attempted to speak he would sob instead.

And also there was upon him the duty he owed his men. No weakness before

them, for he must be a tower of strength to sustain them in misfortune. He had

already explained to the second lieutenant, and knew the hopelessness of the

situation. As the sea-lawyer had said, the evidence was all against him. So he

turned aft, and fell to pacing up and down the poop of the vessel over which he

was no longer commander.

The Russian officer now took temporary charge. He ordered more of his men

aboard, and had all the canvas clewed up and furled snugly away. While this was

being done, the boat plied back and forth between the two vessels, passing a

heavy hawser, which was made fast to the great towing-bitts on the schooner’s

forecastle-head. During all this work the sealers stood about in sullen groups. It

was madness to think of resisting, with the guns of a man-of-war not a biscuit-toss

away,— but they refused to lend a hand, preferring instead to maintain a gloomy

silence.

Having accomplished his task, the lieutenant ordered all but four of his men back

into the boat. Then the midshipman, a lad of sixteen, looking strangely mature and

dignified in his uniform and sword, came aboard to take command of the captured

sealer. just as the lieutenant prepared to depart, his eyes chanced to alight upon

Bub. Without a word of warning, he seized him by the arm and dropped him over

the rail into the waiting boat; and then, with a parting wave of his hand, he

followed him.

It was only natural that Bub should be frightened at this unexpected happening.

All the terrible stories he had heard of the Russians served to make him fear them,

and now returned to his mind with double force. To be captured by them was bad

enough, but to be carried off by them, away from his comrades, was a fate of

which he had not dreamed.

DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES

22

“Be a good boy, Bub,” the captain called to him, as the boat drew away from the

Mary Thomas’s side, “and tell the truth!”

“Aye, aye, sir!” he answered, bravely enough by all outward appearance. He felt a

certain pride of race, and was ashamed to be a coward before these strange

enemies, these wild Russian bears.

“Und be politeful!” the German boat-steerer added, his rough voice lifting across

the water like a fog-horn.

Bub waved his hand in farewell, and his mates clustered along the rail as they

answered with a cheering shout. He found room in the sternsheets, where he fell

to regarding the lieutenant. He didn’t look so wild or bearish, after all—very much

like other men, Bub concluded, and the sailors were much the same as all other

man-of-war’s men he had ever known. Nevertheless, as his feet struck the steel

deck of the cruiser, he felt as if he had entered the portals of a prison.

For a few minutes he was left unheeded. The sailors hoisted the boat up, and

swung it in on the davits. Then great clouds of black smoke poured out of the

funnels, and they were under way—to Siberia, Bub could not help but think. He

saw the Mary Thomas swing abruptly into line as she took the pressure from the

hawser, and her side-lights, red and green, rose and fell as she was towed through

the sea.

Bub’s eyes dimmed at the melancholy sight, but—but just then the lieutenant

came to take him down to the commander, and he straightened up and set his lips

firmly, as if this were a very commonplace affair and he were used to being sent

to Siberia every day in the week. The cabin in which the commander sat was like

a palace compared to the humble fittings of the Mary Thomas, and the

commander himself, in gold lace and dignity, was a most august personage, quite

unlike the simple man who navigated his schooner on the trail of the seal pack.

Bub now quickly learned why he had been brought aboard, and in the prolonged

questioning which followed, told nothing but the plain truth. The truth was

harmless; only a lie could have injured his cause. He did not know much, except

that they had been sealing far to the south in open water, and that when the calm

and fog came down upon them, being close to the line, they had drifted across.

Again and again he insisted that they had not lowered a boat or shot a seal in the

week they had been drifting about in the forbidden sea; but the commander chose

to consider all that he said to be a tissue of falsehoods, and adopted a bullying

tone in an effort to frighten the boy. He threatened and cajoled by turns, but failed

in the slightest to shake Bub’s statements, and at last ordered him out of his

presence.

By some oversight, Bub was not put in anybody’s charge, and wandered up on

deck unobserved. Sometimes the sailors, in passing, bent curious glances upon

DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES

23

him, but otherwise he was left strictly alone.

Nor could he have attracted much attention, for

he was small, the night dark, and the watch on

deck intent on its own business. Stumbling

over the strange decks, he made his way aft

where he could look upon the side-lights of the

Mary Thomas, following steadily in the rear.

For a long while he watched, and then lay

down in the darkness close to where the hawser

passed over the stern to the captured schooner.