Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

There was an old miner, William Jones, sent thither by his physician who thought the sea air would avert tuberculosis.

There was Mattson the carpenter, who ate with the captain, lived in his carpenter shop between foremast and mainmast, and enjoyed many other privileges as well.

There was Jack Joe, picked up while drifting from Hawaii, a crippled gnarled little five footer, with hands, though twisted by rheumatism, clever and agile at the wheel.

Frank Grielen; the two Campbells, one a schoolboy on a lark out of Iowa; Barney Olsen; John Henry Stewart and others. Then there was Axel Hansen, the boatswain, best sailor of the lot, but a “sea lawyer” — hated alike by officer and crew — carrying a book of rules beneath his shirt which told in black and white and no mistake where the authority of the officers ended, a book consulted deliberately on every order, no matter how serious the need of immediate obedience.

Young Dolph, Second

“That crew,” sneered the Pedersens later on the stand, “was utterly worthless. We worked hard to train them so that they could sail the barkentine. They did little, they cared for nothing. We had to turn the hose on them to keep them clean! One man in eighty degrees heat wore thirteen shirts on his back at one time!”

They set sail properly enough from Victoria, and in spite of the increasing bullying of the captain, and the increasing swaggering of the two mates, the men never dreamed what lay ahead.

Young Dolph, sixteen, the second mate, drunk with his new authority, loved to snap his fingers in the faces of these older men, and order them about from one task to another, no matter how the ship’s progress might be retarded by this deed.

He would draw a gun and shake it playfully in their faces, threaten the men at the wheel with the tiller stick and roar at their discomfiture.

He would tell his father lies concerning what he overheard in the forecastle. For young Dolph had an imagination and a memory. He had fed them both for years on pirate tales.

All Sorts of Tortures

He told his father that the men were plotting to kill him. He hinted that the I. W. W. had hired Hansen to sink the ship, that already the men had stolen arms and handcuffs from the captain’s drawer with mutiny in mind.

The cabin boy, through a few well advised kicks and clubbings, bore out Dolph’s stories — he supplied much detail which, he said, he had gained through eavesdropping.

Dolph did everything to torment and provoke his father’s persecution complex — and all too soon Hell Fire began fearing for his very life.

His delusion increased with the miles which spun out in the wake of the Puako. And four weeks out of Victoria found him fearfully certain that the crew intended taking his life.

Caught fast in his delusion he polished his guns, left clubs about handily everywhere on deck and below, cursed and beat members of the crew whose business brought them suddenly behind him; feared for his food, never touching it until it had been tried by some other person. One day, when the ship was pitching, a sailor accidentally jolted him as he hurried on watch and Pedersen severely beat him. One beating led to another. It added to the peace of his sleep to see even one of the crew bleeding and cowed.

Then one morning old William Jones, the tubercular miner, stood at the wheel.

“You are plotting to kill me and my innocent sons,” Hell Fire snarled at him, kicking him in the shins and calling him vile names.

The second mate, standing near-by, strode up to Jones and struck him in the face with brass knuckles. “You are in the plot, you—,” they both cried. They beat him with the tiller stick, dragged him from the wheel and flung him into the lazaret, the rope locker, where he lay weak and bleeding, not, you see, benefiting so much from his sea trip as his kindly physician had planned.

Then the second mate and his father seized others of the crew and beat them, too.

The long evenings in the cabin were made merry with all sorts of tortures.

“Confess! Confess!” insisted Hell Fire. “You are all in this plot to kill me, you— You are all I. W. W.’s — Black Hands!”

They made Axel Hansen eat his I. W. W. handbook while the wounded and bleeding crew stood about. They broke ribs here and there, playfully crippled Jack Joe’s other hand to match his first one, trussed men up without food, worked them without sleep, handcuffed them, beat them, flung them into the forecastle, kicked them as they lay writhing on the floor.

“Confess, confess,” they said, and when the men begged the tyrants to tell them what to confess to, Hell Fire roared:

“Dolph, bring pencil and paper!”

What Would His Mother Think?