CAPÍTULO I

PLANEO UN VIAJE

Por el legado de un hermano mayor, me quedó suficiente dinero para asistir a una pequeña universidad en Ohio y asegurarme cuatro años en una escuela de medicina en el Este. Por qué elegí la medicina, apenas lo sé. Posiblemente la carrera de cirujano atrajo el elemento aventurero en mí. Quizás, viniendo de una familia de médicos, simplemente siga la línea de menor resistencia. Puede ser, indirectamente pero inevitablemente, que yo esté en el yate Ella en aquella terrible noche del 12 de agosto, hace más de un año.

Salí de alguna manera. Jugué como mariscal de campo en el equipo de fútbol y gané algo de dinero como entrenador. En verano hacía lo que estaba a mi alcance, desde alquilar un velero en un lugar de veraneo y llevar pasajeros, con tanta ventaja, hasta buscar pepinos en Indiana en busca de una salmuera occidental.

Estaba prácticamente solo. La graduación me dejó un diploma, un traje nuevo, una biblioteca médica desactualizada, una caja de instrumentos quirúrgicos de la misma fecha que los libros y un caso incipiente de fiebre tifoidea.

Tenía veinticuatro años, seis pies de alto y cuarenta pulgadas de pecho. Además, había vivido limpio, trabajado y jugado mucho. Finalmente superé la fiebre, casi todo hueso y apetito; pero - vivo. Gracias a la universidad, mi atencion hospitalaria no habia costado nada. Fue algo bueno: solo tenía siete dólares en el mundo.

El yate Ella yacía en el río, no lejos de las ventanas de mi hospital. No era un yate cuando lo vi por primera vez, ni en ningún momento, técnicamente, a menos que use la palabra en el sentido amplio de un barco de recreo. Era un bimaestre y, cuando lo vi por primera vez, estaba tan sucio y de mala reputación como la mayoría de los barcos de cabotaje. Su rejuvenecimiento fue la historia de mi convalecencia. El día que se presentó con su primera capa de pintura blanca, cambié mi bata por ropa que, por muy holgada que me quedara, seguía siendo ropa. Sus nuevas velas marcaron mi ascenso a bistec, sus rieles de latón y sus toldos fueron mi primera excursión independiente arriba y abajo del corredor frente a mi puerta y, de paso, mi regreso a un cuello y una corbata.

The river shipping appealed to me, to my imagination, clean washed by my illness and ready as a child’s for new impressions: liners gliding down to the bay and the open sea; shrewish, scolding tugs; dirty but picturesque tramps. My enthusiasm amused the nurses, whose ideas of adventure consisted of little jaunts of exploration into the abdominal cavity, 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 a stiff 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. “And the ship is probably swarming with rats.”

“Rats,” I affirmed, “add to the local color. Ships are their native habitat. Only sinking ships don’t have them.”

But her answer was to retort that rats carried bubonic plague, and to exit, carrying the sugar-bowl. I was ravenous, as are all convalescent typhoids, and one of the ways in which I eked out my still slender diet was by robbing the sugar-bowl at meals.

That day, I think it was, the deck furniture was put out on the Ella - numbers of white wicker chairs and tables, with bright cushions to match the awnings. I had a pair of ancient opera-glasses, as obsolete as my amputating knives, and, like them, a part of my heritage. By that time I felt a proprietary interest in the Ella, and through my glasses, carefully focused with a pair of scissors, watched the arrangement of the deck furnishings. A girl was directing the men. I judged, from the poise with which she carried herself, that she was attractive - and knew it. How beautiful she was, and how well she knew it, I was to find out before long. McWhirter to the contrary, she had nothing 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 had graduated together in June, and in October he was to enter a hospital in Buffalo as a resident. But he was as indigent as I, and from June to October is four months.

“Four months,” he said to me. “Even at two meals a day, boy, that’s something over two hundred and forty. And I can eat four times a day, without a struggle! Wouldn’t you think one of these overworked-for-the-good-of-humanity dubs would take a vacation and give me a chance to hold down his practice?”

Nothing of the sort developing, McWhirter went into a drugstore, and managed 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 chewing gum, which he assured me was excellent to allay the gnawings of hunger, and later, as my condition warranted it, small bags of gum-drops and other pharmacy confections.

McWhirter it was who got me my berth on the Ella. It must have been about the 20th of July, for the Ella sailed on the 28th. I was strong enough to leave the hospital, but not yet physically able for any prolonged exertion. McWhirter, who was short and stout, had been alternately flirting with the nurse, as she moved in and out preparing my room for the night, and sizing me up through narrowed eyes.

“No,” he said, evidently following a private line of thought; “you don’t belong behind a counter, Leslie. I’m darned if I think you belong in the medical profession, either. The British army’d suit you.”

“The - what?”

“You know - Kipling idea - riding horseback, head of a column - undress uniform - colonel’s wife making eyes at you - leading last hopes and all that.”

“The British army with Kipling trimmings being out of the question, the original issue is still before us. I’ll have to work, Mac, and work like the devil, if I’m to feed myself.”

There being no answer to this, McWhirter contented himself with eyeing me.

“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 small salary until I got my strength; then he became dubious; and finally, so well did I paint my picture of long, idle days on the ocean, of sweet, cool nights under the stars, with breezes that purred through the sails, rocking the ship to slumber - finally he waxed enthusiastic, and was 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, he informed me, and doing it under the personal direction of the owner’s wife.

“I’ve made a hit with her,” he confided. “Since she’s learned I’m a graduate M.D., she’s letting me do the whole thing. I’ve made up some lotions to prevent sunburn, and that seasick prescription of old Larimer’s, and she thinks I’m the whole cheese. I’ll suggest you as ships 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, except that I am honest.”

“You’ll have to wash decks, probably.”

“I am filled with a wild longing to wash decks,” I asserted, smiling at his 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 the Ella consisted of three lights, he insisted on the opera-glasses, and was persuaded he saw her. Finally he put down the glasses and came over, to me.

“Perhaps you are right, Leslie,” he said soberly. “You don’t want charity, any more than they want a ship’s doctor. Wherever you go and whatever you do, whether you’re swabbing decks in your bare feet or polishing 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 cover his embarrassment. Soon after that he took his departure, and the following day he telephoned to say that, if the sea was still calling me, he could get a note to the captain recommending me. I asked him to get the note.

¡Buen viejo Mac! El mar me llamaba, es cierto, pero sólo la extrema necesidad me impulsaba a navegar ante el mástil: la necesidad y quizás lo que, a falta de un nombre mejor, llamamos destino. Pues qué es el destino sino ley inevitable, consecuencia inevitable.

La agitación de mi sangre, generaciones separadas de un antepasado marinero; mi enfermedad, no una causa, sino un resultado; McWhirter, llenando recetas detrás de la mampara de cristal de una farmacia y equipando, en frascos de porcelana, el botiquín del Ella; Turner y su esposa, Schwartz, el mulato Tom, Singleton y Elsa Lee; todo junto, una mezcolanza de caracteres, motivos, pasiones y tendencias hereditarias, a través de una ley inevitable que trabaja en conjunto hacia esa terrible noche del 22 de agosto, cuando el infierno parecía suelto en un mar pintado.