Not
until she was ready for sea had Captain West come on board. I had
not seen him give an order. It looked to me that Mr. Pike and Mr.
Mellaire did the work. All Captain West did was to smoke cigars and
keep blissfully oblivious of the Elsinore's crew.
When Mr. Pike had played the "Hallelujah Chorus" from the Messiah,
and "He Shall Feed His Flock," he mentioned to me, almost
apologetically, that he liked sacred music, and for the reason,
perhaps, that for a short period, a child ashore in San Francisco, he
had been a choir boy.
"And then I hit the dominie over the head with a baseball bat and
sneaked off to sea again," he concluded with a harsh laugh.
And thereat he fell to dreaming while he played Meyerbeer's "King of
Heaven," and Mendelssohn's "O Rest in the Lord."
When one bell struck, at quarter to eight, he carried his music, all
carefully wrapped, back into his room. I lingered with him while he
rolled a cigarette ere eight bells struck.
"I've got a lot more good things," he said confidentially: "Coenen's
'Come Unto Me,' and Faure's 'Crucifix'; and there's 'O Salutaris,'
and 'Lead, Kindly Light' by the Trinity Choir; and 'Jesu, Lover of My
Soul' would just melt your heart.
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