: Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean by Paine Ralph Delahaye Schoonover Frank E Illustrator - Adventure stories; Treasure troves Fiction; Caribbean Area Fiction

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Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

THE VOICE OF THE SPANISH MAIN

The romance of the sea! Damned rubbish, he called it. The trade of seafaring was one way to earn a living. This was about all you could say for it. He had been lured into the merchant service as the aftermath of an enlistment in the Naval Reserve for the duration of the war. There was a great hurrah, as you will recall, over the mighty fleet of new cargo ships which were to restore the Stars and Stripes to blue water--Columbia's return to the ocean, and all that--a splendid revival of the days of Yankee ships and sailors of long ago--a career for ambitious, adventurous American youth.

This was true enough until the bubble broke. The painful malady of deflation suddenly afflicted the world's commerce. Much of Columbia's mighty fleet rusted at its moorings. Ambitious American youth walked the streets in quest of jobs afloat or relinquished the sea to the Briton and the Scandinavian. It could not be said that the nation was deeply stirred by this calamity. In a manner of speaking, it had long since turned its back to the coast and could not be persuaded to face about.

This Richard Cary was one of the young men who had not been cast high and dry by the ebb tide of maritime affairs. No auspicious slant of fortune favored him. He earned what came to him in the way of employment and promotion. All he knew was the hard schooling of North Atlantic voyages in bull-nosed brutes of war-built freighters that would neither steam nor steer.

During the period of booming prosperity, the supply of competent officers fell far short of the demand. Any ancient mariner with a master's license and fairly sound legs could get a ship. Foreign skippers were given "red ink tickets" and shoved aboard big American steamers.

The iron discipline and austere traditions of the sea were jeered at by motley crews, alien and native-born, who had easier work and better treatment than sailormen had ever known. Mutiny ceased to be sensational. Noisy Slavs preached Bolshevism in the forecastle. Every dirty loafer had a grievance. Ships limped into port with drunken stokers who refused to ply shovel and slice-bar unless they happened to feel like it. Wise gentlemen ashore diagnosed it as the poison of social unrest.

Amid these turbulent conditions, such an officer as Richard Cary was worth his weight in gold. For one thing, the Navy had hammered into his soul certain ideas which he declined to regard as obsolete. These pertained to order, fidelity, and obedience as essential to the conduct of a ship. He was a young man unvexed by complex emotions. Life consisted in doing the day's work well, and the Lord help the subordinate who held opinions to the contrary.

It was a doctrine which had vouchsafed its own rewards. At twenty-five years of age he was chief officer of a ten-thousand-ton steamer of the Shipping Board fleet. There was something more to this rapid advancement than the old-fashioned virtues referred to. A natural aptitude for the sea was a large factor. Linked with this was a strong serenity of temper that few besetments could ruffle. Chief Officer Richard Cary moved on his appointed way with a certain ponderous momentum of mind and body.

He was sprung from that undiluted pioneer stock which is still to be found in the rural New England that is remote from the wash of later immigration. It was the English strain, fair-haired and blue of eye, that throws back to the Saxon blood. There had been men of rare height and bulk among his ancestors. This was his goodly inheritance, that his head should brush the ceiling beams of his cabin on shipboard and his shoulders fill the width of the doorway. Mutinous or sulky sailors ceased to bluster about their rights when this imperturbable young man laid hands on them. This was not often necessary. What he called moral suasion was enough to quell a very pretty riot. He had this uncommon gift of leadership, of mastering men and circumstances, when he was compelled to display it.

There was lacking, however, the driving power of ambition, the keen-edged ardor that cuts its way through obstacles to reach a destined goal. This large placidity of outlook betokened a dormant imagination, a sort of spiritual inertia. There was no riddle of existence, so far as he was concerned. The romance and mystery of the sea? Silly yarns written by lubbers for landsmen to read! They ought to jam across the Western Ocean in the dead of winter with a doddering old fool of a skipper on the bridge and a crew of rotten scoundrels who deserved to be hung.

While enthusiastic crusaders were proclaiming the glorious resurgence of the American merchant marine, surplus tonnage began to pile up in every port. Richard Cary's huge scow of a freighter could find no cargo and was condemned to idleness with a melancholy squadron of her sister craft. The chief officer decided to look around a bit before seeking another berth. One or two offers came from shipping men who knew him by reputation. Already he stood out from the crowd. Waterfront gossip had passed along various tales of the reign of law and order upon the decks which big Dick Cary trod. He was no cursing, bullying bucko mate, mind you. Six and a half feet of soothing influence is a fairer phrase.

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