The After House
by
Mary Roberts Rinehart
CONTENTS
I I PLAN A VOYAGE II THE PAINTED SHIP III I UNCLENCH MY HANDS IV I RECEIVE A WARNING V A TERRIBLE NIGHT VI IN THE AFTER HOUSE VII WE FIND THE AXE VIII THE STEWARDESS'S STORY IX PRISONERS X "THAT'S MUTINY" XI THE DEAD LINE XII THE FIRST MATE TALKS XIII THE WHITE LIGHT XIV FROM THE CROW'S NEST XV A KNOCKING IN THE HOLD XVI JONES STUMBLES OVER SOMETHING XVII THE AXE IS GONE XVIII A BAD COMBINATION XIX I TAKE THE STAND XX OLESON'S STORY XXI "A BAD WOMAN" XXII TURNER'S STORY XXIII FREE AGAIN XXIV THE THING XXV THE SEA AGAIN
CHAPTER I
I PLAN A VOYAGE
By the bequest of an elder brother, I was left enough money to see methrough a small college in Ohio, and to secure me four years in amedical school in the East. Why I chose medicine I hardly know.Possibly the career of a surgeon attracted the adventurous element inme. Perhaps, coming of a family of doctors, I merely followed the lineof least resistance. It may be, indirectly but inevitably, that Imight be on the yacht Ella on that terrible night of August 12, morethan a year ago.
I got through somehow. I played quarterback on the football team, andmade some money coaching. In summer I did whatever came to hand, fromchartering a sail-boat at a summer resort and taking passengers, at somuch a head, to checking up cucumbers in Indiana for a Western picklehouse.
I was practically alone. Commencement left me with a diploma, a newdress-suit, an out-of-date medical library, a box of surgicalinstruments of the same date as the books, and an incipient case oftyphoid fever.
I was twenty-four, six feet tall, and forty inches around the chest.Also, I had lived clean, and worked and played hard. I got over thefever finally, pretty much all bone and appetite; but--alive. Thanks tothe college, my hospital care had cost nothing. It was a good thing: Ihad just seven dollars in the world.
The yacht Ella lay in the river not far from my hospital windows. Shewas not a yacht when I first saw her, nor at any time, technically,unless I use the word in the broad sense of a pleasure-boat. She was atwo-master, and, when I saw her first, as dirty and disreputable as aremost coasting-vessels. Her rejuvenation was the history of myconvalescence. On the day she stood forth in her first coat of whitepaint, I exchanged my dressing-gown for clothing that, however looselyit hung, was still clothing. Her new sails marked my promotion tobeefsteak, her brass rails and awnings my first independent excursionup and down the corridor outside my door, and, incidentally, my returnto a collar and tie.
The river shipping appealed to me, to my imagination, clean washed bymy illness and ready as a child's for new impressions: liners glidingdown to the bay and the open sea; shrewish, scolding tugs; dirty butpicturesque tramps. My enthusiasm amused the nurses, whose ideas ofadventure consisted of little jaunts of exploration into the abdominalcavity, and whose aseptic minds revolted at the sight of dirty sails.
One day I pointed out to one of them an old schooner, red and brown,with patched canvas spread, moving swiftly down the river before astiff breeze.
"Look at her!" I exclaimed. "There goes adventure, mystery, romance!I should like to be sailing on her."
"You would have to boil the drinking-water," she replied dryly. "Andthe ship is probably swarming with rats."
"Rats," I affirmed, "add to the local color. Ships are their nativehabitat. Only sinking ships don't have them."
But her answer was to retort that rats carried bubonic plague, and toexit, carrying the sugar-bowl. I was ravenous, as are all convalescenttyphoids, and one of the ways in which I eked out my still slender dietwas by robbing the sugar-bowl at meals.
That day, I think it was, the deck furniture was put out on theElla--numbers of white wicker chairs and tables, with bright cushionsto match the awnings. I had a pair of ancient opera-glasses, asobsolete as my amputating knives, and, like them, a part of myheritage. By that time I felt a proprietary interest in the Ella, andthrough my glasses, carefully focused with a pair of scissors, watchedthe arrangement of the deck furnishings. A girl was directing the men.I judged, from the poise with which she carried herself, that she wasattractive--and knew it. How beautiful she was, and how well she knewit, I was to find out before long. McWhirter to the contrary, she hadnothing to do with my decision to sign as a sailor on the Ella.
One of the bright spots of that long hot summer was McWhirter. We hadgraduated together in June, and in October he was to enter a hospitalin Buffalo as a resident. But he was as indigent as I, and from Juneto October is four months.
"Four months," he said to me. "Even at two meals a day, boy, that'ssomething over two hundred and forty. And I can eat four times a day,without a struggle! Wouldn't you think one of theseoverworked-for-the-good-of-humanity dubs would take a vacation and giveme a chance to hold down his practice?"
Nothing of the sort developing, McWhirter went into a drug-store, andmanaged to pull through the summer with unimpaired cheerfulness,confiding to me that he secured his luncheons free at the soda counter.He came frequently to see me, bringing always a pocketful of chewinggum, which he assured me was excellent to allay the gnawings of hunger,and later, as my condition warranted it, small bags of gum-drops andother pharmacy confections.
McWhirter it was who got me my berth on the Ella. It must have beenabout the 20th of July, for the Ella sailed on the 28th. I was strongenough to leave the hospital, but not yet physically able for anyprolonged exertion. McWhirter, who was short and stout, had beenalternately flirting with the nurse, as she moved in and out preparingmy room for the night, and sizing me up through narrowed eyes.
"No," he said, evidently following a private line of thought; "youdon't belong behind a counter, Leslie. I'm darned if I think youbelong in the medical profession, either. The British army'd suit you."
"The--what?"
"You know--Kipling idea--riding horseback, head of a column--undressuniform--colonel's wife making eyes at you--leading last hopes and allthat."
"The British army with Kipling trimmings being out of the question, theoriginal issue is still before us. I'll have to work, Mac, and worklike the devil, if I'm to feed myself."
There being no answer to this, McWhirter contented himself with eyeingme.
"I'm thinking," I said, "of going to Europe. The sea is calling me,Mac."
"So was the grave a month ago, but it didn't get you. Don't be an ass,boy. How are you going to sea?"
"Before the mast." This apparently conveying no meaning to McWhirter,I supplemented--"as a common sailor."
He was indignant at first, offering me his room and a part of his smallsalary until I got my strength; then he became dubious; and finally, sowell did I paint my picture of long, idle days on the ocean, of sweet,cool nights under the stars, with breezes that purred through thesails, rocking the ship to slumber--finally he waxed enthusiastic, andwas even for giving up the pharmacy at once and sailing with me.
He had been fitting out the storeroom of a sailing-yacht with drugs, heinformed me, and doing it under the personal direction of the owner'swife.
"I've made a hit with her," he confided. "Since she's learned I'm agraduate M.D., she's letting me do the whole thing. I've made up somelotions to prevent sunburn, and that seasick prescription of oldLarimer's, and she thinks I'm the whole cheese. I'll suggest you asship's doctor."
"How many men in the crew?"
"Eight, I think, or ten. It's a small boat, and carries a small crew."
"Then they don't want a ship's doctor. If I go, I'll go as a sailor,"I said firmly. "And I want your word, Mac, not a word about me, exceptthat I am honest."
"You'll have to wash decks, probably."
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"I am filled with a wild longing to wash decks," I asserted, smiling athis disturbed face. "I should probably also have to polish brass.There's a great deal of brass on the boat."
"How do you know that?"
When I told him, he was much excited, and, although it was dark and theElla consisted of three lights, he insisted on the opera-glasses, andwas persuaded he saw her. Finally he put down the glasses and cameover, to me.
"Perhaps you are right, Leslie," he said soberly. "You don't wantcharity, any more than they want a ship's doctor. Wherever you go andwhatever you do, whether you're swabbing decks in your bare feet orpolishing brass railings with an old sock, you're a man."
He was more moved than I had ever seen him, and ate a gum-drop to coverhis embarrassment. Soon after that he took his departure, and thefollowing day he telephoned to say that, if the sea was still callingme, he could get a note to the captain recommending me. I asked him toget the note.
Good old Mac! The sea was calling me, true enough, but only direnecessity was driving me to ship before the mast--necessity and perhapswhat, for want of a better name, we call destiny. For what is fate butinevitable law, inevitable consequence.
The stirring of my blood, generations removed from a seafaringancestor; my illness, not a cause, but a result; McWhirter, fillingprescriptions behind the glass screen of a pharmacy, and fitting out,in porcelain jars, the medicine-closet of the Ella; Turner and hiswife, Schwartz, the mulatto Tom, Singleton, and Elsa Lee; all throwntogether, a hodge-podge of characters, motives, passions, andhereditary tendencies, through an inevitable law working togethertoward that terrible night of August 22, when hell seemed loose on apainted sea.