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Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction
Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide.
The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology.
Very Short Introductions available now:
ANARCHISM Colin Ward
ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw
ANCIENTPHILOSOPHY
Julia Annas
ANCIENT WARFARE
Harry Sidebottom
THEANGLO-SAXONAGE
John Blair
ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia
ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn
ARCHITECTURE
Andrew Ballantyne
ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes
ART HISTORY Dana Arnold
ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland
THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin
Atheism Julian Baggini
Augustine Henry Chadwick
BARTHES Jonathan Culler
THEBIBLE John Riches
BRITISH POLITICS
Anthony Wright
Buddha Michael Carrithers
BUDDHISM Damien Keown
BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown
CAPITALISM James Fulcher
THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe
CHOICE THEORY
Michael Allingham
CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson
CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead
CLASSICS Mary Beard and John Henderson
CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard
THE COLD WAR Robert McMahon
CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore
Continental Philosophy
Simon Critchley
COSMOLOGY Peter Coles
CRYPTOGRAPHY
Fred Piper and Sean Murphy
DADA AND SURREALISM
David Hopkins
Darwin Jonathan Howard
Democracy Bernard Crick
DESCARTES Tom Sorell
DESIGN John Heskett
DINOSAURS David Norman
DREAMING J. Allan Hobson
DRUGS Leslie Iversen
THE EARTH Martin Redfern
EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
BRITAIN Paul Langford
THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball
EMOTION Dylan Evans
EMPIRE Stephen Howe
ENGELS Terrell Carver
Ethics Simon Blackburn
The European Union
John Pinder
EVOLUTION
Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
FASCISM Kevin Passmore
FOSSILS Keith Thomson
FOUCAULT Gary Gutting
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
William Doyle
FREE WILL Thomas Pink
Freud Anthony Storr
Galileo Stillman Drake
Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh
GLOBALIZATION Manfred Steger
GLOBAL WARMING Mark Maslin
HABERMAS
James Gordon Finlayson
HEGEL Peter Singer
HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood
HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson
HINDUISM Kim Knott
HISTORY John H. Arnold
HOBBES Richard Tuck
HUME A. J. Ayer
IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden
Indian Philosophy
Sue Hamilton
Intelligence Ian J. Deary
ISLAM Malise Ruthven
JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves
JUDAISM Norman Solomon
Jung Anthony Stevens
KAFKA Ritchie Robertson
KANT Roger Scruton
KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner
THEKORAN Michael Cook
LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews
LITERARY THEORY
Jonathan Culler
LOCKE John Dunn
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John Phillips
MARX Peter Singer
MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers
MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope
MEDIEVALBRITAIN
John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths
MODERN ART David Cottington
MODERN IRELAND Senia Pasˇeta
MOLECULES Philip Ball
MUSIC Nicholas Cook
Myth Robert A. Segal
NATIONALISM Steven Grosby
NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner
NINETEENTH-CENTURY
BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and H. C. G. Matthew
NORTHERN IRELAND
Marc Mulholland
PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close
paul E. P. Sanders
Philosophy Edward Craig
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Samir Okasha
PLATO Julia Annas
POLITICS Kenneth Minogue
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
David Miller
POSTCOLONIALISM
Robert Young
POSTMODERNISM
Christopher Butler
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Catherine Belsey
PREHISTORY Chris Gosden
PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY
Catherine Osborne
Psychology Gillian Butler and Freda McManus
QUANTUM THEORY
John Polkinghorne
RENAISSANCE ART
Geraldine A. Johnson
ROMANBRITAIN Peter Salway
ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler
RUSSELL A. C. Grayling
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Catriona Kelly
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
S. A. Smith
SCHIZOPHRENIA
Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone
SCHOPENHAUER
Christopher Janaway
SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer
SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt
SOCIALANDCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
John Monaghan and Peter Just
SOCIALISM Michael Newman
SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce
Socrates C. C. W. Taylor
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Helen Graham
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John Parker and Richard Rathbone
ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman
THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea
CHAOS Leonard Smith
CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy
CONTEMPORARY ART
Julian Stallabrass
THE CRUSADES
Christopher Tyerman
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Timothy Lim
Derrida Simon Glendinning
GLOBAL CATASTROPHES
Bill McGuire
EXISTENTIALISM
Thomas Flynn
FEMINISM Margaret Walters
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Michael Howard
SPINOZA Roger Scruton
STUARTBRITAIN John Morrill
TERRORISM
Charles Townshend
THEOLOGY David F. Ford
THE HISTORY OF TIME
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
TRAGEDY Adrian Poole
THETUDORS John Guy
TWENTIETH-CENTURY
BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan
THE VIKINGS Julian D. Richards
Wittgenstein A. C. Grayling
WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman
THE WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATION
Amrita Narlikar
FUNDAMENTALISM
Malise Ruthven
HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Paul Wilkinson
JAZZ Brian Morton
MANDELA Tom Lodge
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PERCEPTION Richard Gregory
PHILOSOPHY OF LAW
Raymond Wacks
PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards
PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns
RACISM Ali Rattansi
THE RAJ Denis Judd
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Christopher Kelly
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Bernard Wood
Reason is replaced by faith
After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century Graeco-Roman ideas about the creation of the world and of humanity were replaced with the narrative set out in Genesis: reason-based explanations were replaced by faith-based ones.
The main parts of the narrative are well known. God created humans in the form of a man, Adam, and then a woman, Eve. Because they were the result of God’s handiwork Adam and Eve must have come equipped with language and with rational and cultured minds. According to this version of human origins, the first humans were able to live together in harmony, and they possessed all the mental and moral capacities that, according to the biblical narrative, set humanity above and apart from other animals.
The biblical explanation for the different races of modern humans is that they originated when Noah’s offspring migrated to different parts of the world after the last big biblical flood, or deluge. The Latin for ‘flood’ is diluvium, so we call anything very old ‘antediluvial’, or dating from ‘before the flood’. Explanations for the creation of the living world involving successive floods had implications for the science that was to become known as palaeontology. All the animals created after a flood must inevitably perish at the time of the next flood. Thus ‘antediluvial’ animals should never coexist with the animals that replaced them. We will return to this and other implications of diluvialism later in this chapter.
The Bible also has an explanation for the rich variety of human languages. It suggests that God wanted to promote confusion among the people constructing the tower of Babel, and that he did so by creating mutually incomprehensible languages. In the Genesis version of human origins, the Devil’s successful temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden forced them and their descendants
to learn afresh about agriculture and animal husbandry. They had to reinvent all the tools needed for civilized life.
With very few exceptions Western philosophers living in and immediately after the Dark Ages (5th to 12th centuries) supported a biblical explanation for human origins. This changed with the rediscovery and rapid growth of natural philosophy that was only later called science. But, paradoxically, not long after the scientific method began to be applied to the study of human origins in the 19th and 20th centuries some religious groups responded to attempts by scientists to interpret the Bible less literally by being even stricter about their biblical literalism. This reaction was the origin of creationism, and of what, erroneously, is called ‘Creation Science’.
During the Dark Ages very few Greek classical texts survived in Europe. The few that did survive were read and valued by Muslim philosophers and scholars, and some of them were translated into Arabic. When the Muslims were driven out of Spain in the 12th century, a few medieval Christian scholars were curious enough to translate these manuscripts from Arabic into Latin. Some of these translated texts dealt with the natural world, including human origins. For example, the 13th-century Italian Christian philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, integrated Greek ideas about nature and modern humans with some of the Christian interpretations based on the Bible. The work of Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries laid the foundations of the Renaissance, when science and rational learning were reintroduced into Europe.
Science re-emerges
The move away from reliance on biblical dogma was especially important for those who were interested in what we now call the natural sciences, such as biology and the earth sciences. An Englishman, Francis Bacon, was a major influence on the way scientific investigations developed. Theologians use the deductive
Finding our place
method: beginning with a belief, they then deduce the consequences of that belief. Bacon suggested that scientists should work in a different way he called the ‘inductive’ method. Induction begins with observations, also called evidence or ‘data’. Scientists devise an explanation, called a ‘hypothesis’, to explain those observations. Then they test the hypothesis by making more observations, or in sciences like chemistry, physics and biology, by conducting experiments. This inductive way of doing things is the way the sciences involved in human evolution research are meant to work.
Bacon summarized his suggestions about how the world should be investigated in aphorisms, and set these out in his book called the Novum Organum or True Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature, published in 1620. His message was a simple one. Do not be content with reading about an explanation in a book. Go out, make observations, investigate the phenomenon for yourself, then devise and test your own hypotheses.
Anatomy starts to become scientific
Nearly three-quarters of a century before Bacon published this advice, a major change had already occurred in anatomy, the natural science closest to the study of human evolution. That change was the work of Andreas Vesalius. Born in 1514 in what is now Belgium, Vesalius finished his medical studies in 1537. In the same year he was appointed to teach anatomy and surgery in Padua, Italy.
Vesalius’ own anatomy education was typical for the time. The professor sat in his chair (hence professorships are called ‘chairs’) and read out loud from the only locally available textbook. He sat at a safe distance from a human body that was being dissected by his assistant. It did not take long for Vesalius to realize that he and his fellow students were being told one thing by their professor, and were being shown something else by the professor’s assistant. In
1540 Vesalius visited Bologna where, for the first time, he was able to compare the skeletons of a monkey and a human. He realized the textbooks used by his professors were based on a confusing mixture of human, monkey, and dog anatomy, so he resolved to write his own, accurate, human anatomy book. The result, the seven-volume De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, or ‘On the Fabric of the Human Body’, was published in 1543. Vesalius performed the dissections and sketched the drafts of the illustrations: the Fabrica is one of the great achievements in the history of biology. Vesalius’ successful efforts to make anatomy more rigorous ensured that scientists would have access to reliable information about the structure of the human body.
Geology emerges
Another field of science relevant to the eventual study of human origins, geology (now usually referred to as ‘earth science’), developed more gradually than anatomical science. One of the implications of interpreting the Genesis narrative literally is that the world, and therefore humanity, cannot have had a long history. There is a long tradition of biblically based chronologies, beginning with people like Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede in the 6th and 7th centuries, respectively. The one cited most often was published in 1650 by James Ussher, then archbishop of Armagh in Ireland. He used the number of ‘begats’ in the Book of Genesis to calculate the precise year of the act of Creation, which, according to his arithmetic, was in 4004 bc. Subsequently another theologian John Lightfoot, of Cambridge University, England, refined Ussher’s estimate and declared that the act of Creation took place precisely at 9 a.m. on 23 October 4004 bce. Geology, and especially the work of James Hutton, provided an alternative calendar, suggesting the earth and its inhabitants were substantially older than this.
The development of geology was substantially influenced by the Industrial Revolution. The excavations involved in making ‘cuttings’ for canals and railroads gave amateur geologists the
Finding our place
opportunity to see previously hidden rock formations. Pioneer geologists such as William Smith and James Hutton paved the way for Charles Lyell in 1830 to set out a rational version of the history of the earth in The Principles of Geology. Lyell’s book influenced many scientists, including Charles Darwin, and it helped establish fluvialism and uniformitarianism as alternatives to biblically based diluvial explanations for the state of the landscape. Fluvialism suggested that erosion by rivers and streams had reduced the height of mountains and created valleys and thus played a major role in shaping the contours of the earth. Uniformitarianism suggested that the processes that shaped the earth’s surface in the past, such as erosion and volcanism, were the same processes we see in action today. Lyell also championed the principle that rocks and strata generally increase in age the further down they are in any relatively simple geological sequence. Barring major and obvious upheavals and deliberate burial, the same principle must apply to any fossils or stone tools contained within those rocks. The lower in a sequence of rocks a fossil is, the older it is likely to be.
The implications of the new science of geology were profound. There was no need to invoke the biblical floods or divine intervention to explain the appearance of the earth. The pioneer geologists of the time also suggested that it would have taken the processes that are shaping the earth’s surface today a lot longer than the 6,000 years implied by the Genesis narrative to make the changes the pioneer geologists had observed.
Fossils
Classical Greek and Roman writers had recognized the existence of fossils but they mostly interpreted them as remnants of the ancient monsters that figure prominently in their myths and legends. By the 18th century geologists began to accept that life-like structures in rocks were the remains of extinct animals and plants, and that there was no need to invoke supernatural reasons for their existence. The association of the fossil evidence of exotic extinct animals with
creatures closely related to living forms in the same strata effectively refuted the diluvial theory, for as I noted earlier in the chapter the latter does not allow for any mixing of modern and ancient, or antediluvial, animals.
In addition to the important conclusions reached by pioneer geologists about the history of the earth, several other factors influenced 17th- and 18th-century scientists to consider alternatives to the Genesis account of human origins. Explorers were returning from distant lands with eye-witness accounts of modern humans living in crude shelters, using simple tools, and existing by hunting and gathering. This was so far from the state of humanity in their homeland that European travellers described the people they observed as living in a state of ‘savagery’. According to the Genesis narrative, no human beings created by God should be living in such a state.
A catalogue of life
The same explorers and traders who had returned to Europe with tales of the behaviour of primitive people also brought back descriptions and sometimes suitably preserved specimens of many exotic plants and animals. When these discoveries were added to the more familiar plants and animals from Europe, they made for a perplexing array of plant and animal life. The living world badly needed a system for describing and organizing it. Several schemes were put forward, notably one by John Ray who introduced the concept of the species. However, the one that has stood the test of time was devised by a Swede called Karl von Linné, a name we know better in its Latinized form, Carolus Linnaeus.
Classification schemes try to group similar things together in increasingly broad, or inclusive, categories. Think of the following example of a classification of automobiles. It has seven levels, or categories; it begins with the most inclusive category and ends with a small group. The levels are ‘Vehicles’, ‘Powered Vehicles’,
our place
Finding
‘Automobile’, ‘Luxury Car’, ‘Rolls-Royce’, ‘Silver Shadow’, and ‘1970 Silver Shadow II’. The Linnaean classification system also recognizes seven basic levels. The most inclusive category, the equivalent of ‘Vehicles’ in our example, is the kingdom, followed by the phylum, class, order, family, genus, with the species being the smallest, least inclusive, formal category. Linnaeus’ original seven-level system has been expanded by adding the category ‘tribe’ between the genus and family, and by introducing the prefix super- above a category, and the prefixes sub- and infra-, below it. These additions increase the potential number of categories below the level of order to a total of 12.
The groups recognized at each level in the Linnaean hierarchy are called ‘taxonomic groups’. Each distinctive group is called a ‘taxon’ (pl. ‘taxa’). Thus, the species Homo sapiens is a taxon, and so is the order Primates. When the system is applied to a group of related organisms, the scheme is called a Linnaean taxonomy, usually abbreviated to a taxonomy. The Linnaean taxonomic system is also known as the binomial system because two categories, the genus and species, make up the unique Latinized name (e.g. Homo sapiens = modern humans; Pan troglodytes = chimpanzees) we give to each species.
You can abbreviate the name of the genus, but not the species. So you can write H. sapiens and P. troglodytes, but not Homo s. or Pan t., as there can sometimes be more than one species name in that genus that begins with the same first letter, such as Homo sapiens and Homo soloensis.
Evidence of connections
Trees are common metaphors. In religion, for example in Christianity, the Great Chain of Being is sometimes represented as a tree. Modern humans are on top of the tree, with other living animals placed within the tree at heights corresponding to their level of complexity. However, in contemporary life sciences the Tree
of Life is not a metaphor: it is taken more literally. In a modern scientific Tree of Life the relative size of the part of the tree given over to any particular group of living things reflects the number of taxa, and the pattern of branching within the tree reflects the way scientists think plants and animals are related.
When the first science-based Trees of Life were constructed in the 19th century, the closeness of the relationship between any two animals had to be assessed using morphological evidence that could be studied with the naked eye or with a conventional light microscope. The assumption was that the larger the number of shared structures the closer their branches will be within the TOL. Developments in biochemistry during the first half of the 20th century meant that, in addition to this traditional morphological evidence, scientists could use evidence about the physical characteristics of molecules. The earliest attempts to use biochemical information for determining relationships used protein molecules found on the surface of red blood cells and in plasma. Both these lines of evidence emphasized the closeness of the relationship between modern humans and chimpanzees.
Proteins are the basis of the machinery that makes other molecules, like sugars and fats, and ultimately the tissues that make up the components of our bodies, such as muscles, nerves, bones and teeth. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick, with the help of Rosalind Franklin, discovered that the nature of proteins, the building blocks of our bodies, is determined by the details of a molecule called DNA (short for deoxyribose nucleic acid). Scientists have shown since that DNA transmitted from parents to their offspring contains coded instructions, called the genetic code. This, in large measure, determines what the bodies of those offspring will look like. These developments in molecular biology meant that instead of working out how species are related by comparing traditional morphology, or by looking at the morphology of protein molecules, scientists could determine relationships by comparing the DNA that dictates the structure and shape of proteins.
Finding our place
When these methods, first traditional anatomy, then the morphology of protein molecules, and finally the structure of DNA (the details of how DNA is compared are given below) were applied to more and more of the organisms in the Tree of Life it became apparent that animal species that were similar in their anatomy also had similar molecules and similar genetic instructions. Researchers have also shown that, even though the wing of an insect, and the arm of a primate look very different, the same basic instructions are used during their development. This is additional compelling evidence that all living things are connected within a single Tree of Life. The only explanation for this connectedness that has withstood scientific scrutiny is evolution; the only mechanism for evolution that has withstood scientific scrutiny is natural selection.
Evolution – an explanation for the Tree of Life
Evolution means gradual change. In the case of animals this usually (but not always) means a change from a less complex animal to a more complex animal. We now know that most of these changes occur during speciation, which is when an ‘old’ species changes quite rapidly into a ‘new’, different, species. Although the Greeks were comfortable with the idea that the behaviour of an animal could change, they did not accept that the structure of animals, including humans, had been modified since they were spontaneously generated. Indeed Plato championed the idea that living things were unchanging, or immutable, and his opinions influenced philosophers and scientists until the middle of the 19th century.
A French scientist, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, in his Philosophie Zoologique published in 1809, set out the first scientific explanation for the Tree of Life. In the English-speaking world Lamarck’s ideas were popularized in an influential book called Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). We know that Vestiges influenced the two men, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace,
who, independently, hit upon the concept that the main mechanism driving evolution was natural selection.
Charles Darwin’s contributions to science did not include the idea of evolution. What Darwin contributed was a coherent theory about the way evolution could work. As we will see, Darwin’s theory of natural selection accounts for both the diversity and the branching pattern of the Tree of Life. Other books that influenced Darwin’s thinking were Robert Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) and Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology. Malthus stressed that resources are finite and this suggested to Darwin that imbalances between the resources available and the demand for them might be the driving force behind the selection needed to make evolution happen. Lyell’s fluvial explanation for the evolution of the surface of the earth was much like the gradual morphological change that Darwin suggested was responsible for the modification of existing species to produce new ones. Darwin was also goaded into action by the work and philosophy of William Paley. Paley was a champion of the notion that animals were so well adapted for their habitat that this cannot have been due to chance. He suggested that they must have been designed, and if so there must be a designer, and that the designer must have been God. Paley provoked Darwin to think about an alternative to the former’s creationist interpretations.
Charles Darwin made two seminal contributions to evolutionary science. The first was the recognition that no two individual animals are alike: they are not perfect copies. Darwin’s other related contribution was the idea of natural selection. In a nutshell, natural selection suggests that, because resources are finite, and because of random variation, some individuals will be better than others at accessing those resources. That variant will then gain enough of an advantage that it will produce more surviving offspring than other individuals belonging to the same species. Biologists refer to this advantage as an increase in an animal’s ‘fitness’. Darwin’s notebooks are full of evidence about the effectiveness of the type of artificial
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II
In the refuge of the captain’s room that distraught spinster, Miss Hollister, was overcome by emotions almost hysterical. Her first impressions of the Fearless had been in the nature of a nervous shock more severe than the episode of the shipwreck. Only the presence of her niece restrained her from tears and lamentations. Nora Forbes, the young person in question, was behaving with so much courage and self-possession as to set her aunt a most excellent example.
“Oh, did you ever see anything so dreadful?” moaned Miss Hollister, glancing at the captain’s shaving-glass and absently smoothing her gray hair. “There was a dead negro stretched on deck, and a white man all covered with blood, and the captain not in the least excited, actually joking about it——”
Miss Nora Forbes artfully coaxed her aunt away from the bit of mirror and proceeded to arrange her own disordered tresses as though this were more important than damp skirts and wave-soaked stockings. With hairpins twain between her pretty lips, she replied, and her accents were by no means hopeless:
“It is just too tremendously romantic for words, Aunt Katharine. I am not the least bit afraid. The captain may be a desperate villain, but he carries himself like a rough-and-ready gentleman. This is a genuine adventure, so cheer up and enjoy it.”
“But the scenes of violence—the crew of cutthroats—the bloodshed,” unsteadily resumed Miss Hollister, unable to refrain from dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “I don’t know what to say. My mind is a blank. I can only pray——”
“I should advise unpacking that bag and getting out some clean clothes,” suggested Nora. “There is no reason why we should look like a pair of drowned frights. It is an upsetting experience, Aunt Katharine, but life on shore is so tame!”
“I shall be content to be tame forevermore, Nora, if I am permitted to survive this experience. I hope Gerald can persuade the captain to land us at once.”
“They didn’t want to rescue us, so we must make ourselves as agreeable as possible. I intend to be particularly nice to the captain.”
Miss Hollister was recalled to her duty as chaperone. Her manner was reproving as she counselled:
“Be careful, Nora, you are a heedless girl at times and Gerald is very sensitive. Our plight is too serious for jesting. Of course you must be civil to the captain, but he is a perfectly impossible person. Gerald will reward him for his trouble in our behalf. We are placing ourselves under no obligations whatever.”
They were quite trim and fresh in dry clothes when the cook brought up a tray laden with the best fare the ship’s stores could provide and a pot of coffee black and hot enough to revive the most forlorn castaways that ever floated.
“Th’ cap’n’s compliments,” said George, entering with a cakewalk shuffle, “an’ he tells me to inform you that if th’ grub is burnt or don’t taste right he’ll hang me up by mah thumbs an’ peel off mah no-’count hide with a rope’s end.”
Miss Hollister appeared so ready to believe the worst that the rascally George could not forbear to add:
“Of cou’se, I’se jes’ fillin’ in till th’ regular cook gits well. Mebbe you seen him when you come aboard. He was all spraddled out. It mighty near done for big Jiminez, I’se a-tellin’ you.”
“What happened to him?” breathlessly demanded Miss Hollister, her hands clasped.
“He done fetch th’ cap’n a cup of cold coffee, ma’am.”
“How awful! And what was the matter with the white man in the khaki uniform?”
“He tried to say a good word for th’ cook. And th’ cap’n done give him his. This is a lively ship, ma’am.”
He could not help grinning as he turned to leave, and Nora Forbes caught him in the act.
“You are an utterly shameless prevaricator,” cried she, “and I have a notion to report you to the captain.”
“No need of it,” exclaimed O’Shea himself, who appeared in time to grasp the luckless George by the neck and pitch him down the stairway to the lower deck.
“He is a good cook, but his imagination is too strong for him at times,” explained O’Shea as he stood in the door-way, declining Nora’s invitation to enter. “The both of ye look as lovely as a May morning. It agrees with you to be shipwrecked.”
Miss Hollister thawed a trifle, although she was strongly inclined to accept the cook’s story as after the fact. But it was hard resisting the blarneying sailor with the merry eyes.
“Is such severity necessary? I feel that I ought to protest—” she began, spurred by the prompting of a New England conscience.
“And what was that slippery divil of a cook deludin’ ye about?”
The spinster mustered courage to explain. Captain O’Shea roared with glee, and turning to Nora Forbes, as if recognizing a sympathetic listener, exclaimed:
“Would ye know the truth about the big nigger? Then I will introduce you to-morrow to the man that laid him out, and a better one never stood on two feet than this same Jack Gorham, the melancholy sharp-shooter who captures ’em alive with the butt of his gun.”
Afraid of delaying their meal, he made an abrupt bow and vanished on deck. Presently Mr. Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen stood gloomily regarding them. Nora made room for him on the cushioned locker and cheerily asked:
“How are you getting on with the assorted pirates? Are they a rum lot and do they sing ‘Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest’?”
“I am not getting on at all,” sadly quoth he. “I have met only the chief engineer and the captain, and I should call them a very rum lot indeed. This is a floating mad-house. By Jove! I was never so angry in my life.”
“I think I understand, Gerald,” soothingly observed Miss Hollister. “But I am sure you can extricate us from this alarming situation. You are a young man of courage and resources and the name of Van Steen carries great weight everywhere.”
“This wild Irishman never heard of it,” said Gerald. “And when I talked money he almost crawled across the table to assault me.”
“Then he refuses to put us on shore at once?” tremulously cried the chaperon. “What do you mean, Gerald?”
“He doesn’t care a hang about us. I made no impression on him at all. The more I argued the hotter he got. He intends to carry us about with him until he has dumped his cargo of guns somewhere on the Cuban coast. And then I presume he will make his way back to the United States, if the tug isn’t sunk with all hands in the meantime.”
“But the captain can’t afford to let us interfere with his plans,” protested Nora, who looked by no means so unhappy as the circumstances warranted. “Do be reasonable, Gerald. Aunt Katharine and I are quite comfortable.”
“I am not,” vehemently exclaimed young Mr. Van Steen. “The brute of a skipper tells me I must sleep on two sacks of coal. Fancy that!”
“I am afraid you were not tactful,” was Nora’s mirthful comment.
“We are in the captain’s power,” sighed Miss Hollister.
“We are kidnapped. That’s what it amounts to,” strenuously affirmed Van Steen.
Later in the afternoon the trio sought the railed space on the roof of the deck-house, just behind the small bridge which was Captain O’Shea’s particular domain. The mate had found two battered wooden chairs and rigged an awning. Such consideration as this was bound to dull the edge of Miss Hollister’s fears and she gazed about her with fluttering interest and reviving animation. Through an open door they could see Captain O’Shea standing beside the man at the wheel. He wore no coat, his shirt-sleeves were rolled up and displayed his brown, sinewy forearms, and a shapeless straw hat was pulled over his eyes. His binoculars attentively swept the blue horizon ahead and abeam.
Presently he went on the bridge and searched the shimmering sea astern. His demeanor was not so uneasy as vigilant and preoccupied. So long did he stand in the one position with the glasses at his eyes that Gerald Van Steen became curious and tried to descry whatever it was that had attracted the captain’s notice. At length he was able to make out a trailing wisp of brown vapor, like a bit of cloud, where sea and sky met.
“There is some kind of a steamer astern of us,” said Van Steen to Nora Forbes. “Perhaps it is a German or English mail-boat. If so, I can see no objection to transferring us aboard.”
Captain O’Shea overheard the remark and called to them:
“No mail-steamer is due on this course. And it is not a cargo tramp or she would not be steaming faster than we are.”
“Then what can it be?” asked Nora.
“I cannot tell ye, Miss Forbes, nor am I anxious at all to let her come close enough to find out.”
On the lower deck the Cubans were flocking to the overhang or climbing on the rail to gaze at the distant smoke astern. They talked excitedly, with many gestures. Evidently here was an event of some importance. Little by little the other steamer cut down the miles of intervening space until her funnel was visible. The Fearlesshad been making no unusual effort to increase her own speed, but now
Captain O’Shea said a few words into the engine-room speakingtube, and Johnny Kent came trundling up from below, wiping his face with a bunch of waste.
The captain took him by the arm and imparted:
“I do not like the looks of her, Johnny; she is too fast to be healthy for us. I got the word in New York that two of the Almirante cruiser class were coming out from Spain to join the blockadin’ fleet and make it hot for our business. There is nothing on the coast that can do over twelve knots, is there?”
“Only the JulioSanchez, Cap’n Mike, and she’s laid up at Havana with her boilers in awful shape. I suppose you want me to hook up and burn my good coal.”
“I think this is a poor place to loaf in, Johnny. There was something said about a reward of fifty thousand dollars to the Spanish navy vessel that overhauled the Fearless and sunk her at sea. Better crack on steam and maybe we can lose that fellow yonder after nightfall.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n Mike, I’ll put the clamps on the safety-valves, and take care not to look at the gauges. I’ll need more help below.”
“Grab the deck-hands. Get to it.”
“And I was just crawlin’ into my bunk to finish the most excitin’ novel you ever read,” mourned Johnny Kent as he footed it down the ladder. “It’s all about adventures. The situations are hair-raisin’, Cap’n Mike.”
Young Mr. Van Steen had edged within ear-shot so that he heard part of this dialogue. Returning to the ladies, he thrust his hands in his pockets and tried to hide his perturbation. Nora questioned him eagerly, and he answered with a shrug and a laugh:
“We’re going to have a race with the steamer behind us. I imagine they told a few whoppers for my benefit. The chief engineer remarked in the most casual way that he intended to put clamps on
the safety-valves. That is absurd, of course. The boilers might blow up.”
“I am inclined to think he meant it,” said Nora, who was looking at Captain O’Shea. “This is not a yachting cruise, Gerald.”
“But if the silly old ass of an engineer really meant it, and we are pursued by a hostile man-of-war,” stubbornly persisted Van Steen, “why did he talk about wanting to finish a novel because it was full of exciting adventures? Isn’t this exciting enough?”
“You are stupid,” impatiently exclaimed Nora. “These extraordinary men can’t see that they are living the most thrilling adventures. It is all in the day’s work with them. I am going to ask Captain O’Shea to tell me the truth.”
Her aunt objected, but with no great spirit. Her poor, tired brain was bewildered by this new turn of events. She had begun to hope to survive the voyage, but now she was beset by fresh alarms, fantastic and incredible. Imminent danger menaced the lawless tug. It could be felt in the buzzing excitement which pervaded the crowded decks. The only calm place was the bridge, where Captain O’Shea walked steadily to and fro, six paces to port and six paces to starboard, a ragged cigar between his teeth. Already the hull was vibrating to the increasing speed of the engines and the smoke gushed thick and black from the hot funnel.
Nora Forbes had mounted the bridge before Van Steen could make angry protest. Clinging to the canvas-screened rail, she paused to catch a bird’s-eye glimpse of the swarming decks which spread beneath her from the sheering bow to the overhang that seemed level with the following seas. Captain O’Shea snatched a coat from the wheel-house and flung it over the girl’s head and shoulders, for the red cinders were pelting down from the funnel-top like hail. For the life of him he could not keep the caressing note out of his pleasant voice when he was talking to a pretty woman.
“’Tis a bright day and a fine breeze, Miss Forbes, and the old Fearless is poundin’ through it at thirteen knots. Are ye enjoying
yourself?”
“Every minute of it,” she replied, and the joy of living made her cheek glow. “Are you really afraid of that steamer behind us? Mr. Van Steen thought you were joking with the chief engineer. Really you can be frank with me. I promise not to make a scene.”
He regarded her rather wistfully for an instant, felt unusually hesitant, and told her the truth because he could not bring himself to tell her anything else.
“If it is a Spanish cruiser yonder, as I mistrust, she may make short work of us. But she has to catch us first. And if I was easy to catch I would not be here at all. Sooner than risk a hair of your head, Miss Forbes, I would give up meself and my ship. But a man’s duty comes first.”
“You are not to give me—to give us, one thought,” she warmly assured him, and her head was held high. “Thank you for being honest with me, Captain O’Shea. Do you wish us to stay on deck?”
Perplexed and unhappy, he answered:
“There is no safe place to stow you if the Spaniard gets within shooting range. The hold is full of cartridges and dynamite and such skittish truck.”
The steamer astern was still slowly gaining on the Fearless. Her forward mast was now discernible, and the tiny ring around it was unmistakably a fighting-top. If the vessel belonged to any other navy than that of Spain, she would be jogging along at a cruising gait, instead of crowding in chase with a reckless consumption of coal. Captain O’Shea ran below to see how matters fared in the sooty, stifling kingdom of Johnny Kent. The Fearless could not turn and fight. All hopes of safety were bound up in those clanking, throbbing, shining engines, in the hissing boilers, in the gang of halfnaked, grimy men who fed the raging furnaces and wielded the glowing slice-bars and shifted the coal from the cavernous bunkers.
The quivering needles of the gauges already recorded more steam than the law allowed, and they were creeping higher pound by pound. The heat in the fire-room was so intense that the men had to be relieved at brief intervals. There was no forced ventilation, and the wind was following the ship. The deck-hands, unaccustomed to grilling alive, stood to it pluckily until they collapsed and were hauled out by the head and the heels. Back and forth, between the engine-room and this inferno, waddled Johnny Kent, raining perspiration, an oil-can in one hand, a heavy wrench in the other, and with the latter he smote such faint-hearted wights as would falter while there was strength in them.
“Hello, Cap’n Mike,” he roared as the skipper sidled into the engine-room. “Is the other vessel still gainin’ on us, and what does she look like?”
“She looks like trouble, Johnny. We are doing better. How are things with you?”
“I need a couple of husky men. No use sendin’ me those limpsy patriots.”
“I will look for them, Johnny. Will your boilers hold together? Can you get any more out of her?”
“Of course I can. She’s licensed to carry a hundred and eighty pounds, and I aim to push her to two hundred and fifty.”
Captain O’Shea hastened on deck, glanced forward and aft, and grinned as he caught sight of Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen. To this pampered young man he shouted:
“You are a well-built lad. Jump below, if you please, and the chief will introduce ye to a shovel.”
“But I don’t want a shovel. I refuse to go below,” haughtily replied Van Steen. “It has occurred to me that if you will quit this silly race and let the other steamer come within signalling distance I can explain the case to her commander, and he will be glad to take
us on board. Van Steen & Van Steen have influential banking connections with the Spanish government.”
“’Tis no time to deliver orations,” swiftly spake O’Shea. “The other steamer will shoot first and explain afterward. Come along and work your passage.”
“Do not resist, Gerald,” quavered Miss Hollister.
“Be a good sport and play the game,” slangily advised Nora Forbes.
Captain O’Shea did not appear to use violence. He seemed to propel Van Steen with a careless wave of the arm, and the indignant young man moved rapidly in the direction of the stoke-hole ladder. Johnny Kent pounced on him with profane jubilation, instantly stripped him of coat and shirt, and shot him in to join the panting toilers. There was a plucky streak in this victim of circumstances, and he perceived that he must take his medicine. The fire-room gang was reinforced by a strong pair of arms, a stout back, and the stubborn endurance of the Dutch.
The afternoon was gone and the sun had slid under the lovely western sea. The Spanish cruiser was spurting desperately to overtake her quarry before darkness. The speed of the quivering, clangorous Fearless had crept up to a shade better than fifteen knots. The cruiser was in poor trim to show what she could do. Captain O’Shea knew the rated speed of every craft on the Spanish naval list and if his surmise was correct this particular cruiser should be doing eighteen knots. But he knew also that a foul bottom, slovenly discipline, and inferior coal counted against her, and that he had a fighting chance of escape.
It was immensely trying to watch and wait. Of all the company on deck that stood and stared at the small outline of the cruiser etched against the shining sea, only Captain O’Shea realized that this was the grimmest kind of a life-and-death tussle. He was your thoroughbred gambler who comprehends the odds and accepts
