The Crimp

The law as set down for sailing masters offers a fair measure of protection for seamen.

Captain Gully, of the steam whaler Bowhead, was familiar with this law. It prevented him from completing his crew. Men of any kind were scarce in San Francisco. Cargoes rotted in ships’ holds while the wages of ordinary seamen mounted to impossible heights.

The Bowhead was ready to steam for the Arctic and Bering Sea whaling grounds. Her boat-steerers, harpooners, mates, engineers, and twelve of a crew were aboard. Captain Gully dared not cat the anchor without eighteen men before the mast. He needed six more hands in the fo’c’s’le.

“Hansen,” he told his first mate, “lower the dingey and go to the Blubber Room on East Street. Ask for Abie Kelly. Bring Abie out with you.”

“The crimp?”

“You know him.”

“Ja! I dank I know him.”

“Bring him to me!”

Hansen returned at nightfall. He steadied the bosun’s ladder that hung from the taffrail and watched Abie Kelly climb to the deck.

Captain Gully greeted the crimp like a long-lost son. They descended to the whaler’s cabin while Hansen was hooking the dingey’s bow to a dangling fall.

“To be brief as possible,” said Gully after pouring out a generous portion of rum, “I want six men before midnight, when the tide turns.”

“What kind of men, cappin?”

“Any kind, so long as they are husky—Chinks, Kanakas, dock-rats, mission-stiffs.”

Abie the Crimp, as he was known along the Barbary Coast, upended the rum, wiped his mouth, and stared at the skipper of the Bowhead.

Captain Gully was tall, thin, and weather-beaten. Abie was slight. He had hawk eyes, black as beads; a hawk’s long nose and a disappearing chin. He had been born in San Francisco. His mother owned the dive known from the Golden Gate to Vladivostok as the Blubber Room.

“Cap,” said Abie, “I’d like to assist you, but you know the law.”

“Time was when you didn’t speak to me of any law.”

“That time is gone, cap. The Seamen’s Union is hostile to shanghaiin’. The crews of all ships going out must sign before the proper authorities.”

Captain Gully knew Abie’s former price.

“There’s a hundred dollars advance for every man you bring aboard who won’t care what he signs.”

“Blood money?”

“Yes. I’ll pay it to you out of hand.” Captain Gully touched his right breast, where a bulging pocket showed.

Abie the Crimp needed money. Six hundred dollars was a fair figure to pay for six men.

“There’s only one way to get them,” he said.

“What is that way, Abie?”

“Th’ same way I fixed up old Cappin Pike of th’ Norwhale, season before last. He went north with twenty-two good men. I furnished them all except three.”

There was pride in Abie’s voice. Captain Gully worked on this. He suggested:

“I only want six. Why, that ain’t many for a runner like you.”

“Not many? I should say it was, the way things are ashore—Seamen’s Union, Coaster Unions, Shipping Board paying eighty dollars a month for ordinary sailors. No, it isn’t many, but they are going to be hard to get. Make it one hundred and twenty-five dollars a man.”