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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories of Ships and the Sea, by Jack London
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stories of Ships and the Sea
+       Little Blue Book #1169
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2006 [EBook #18062]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF SHIPS AND THE SEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1169
+
+Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
+
+
+Stories of Ships
+and the Sea
+
+Jack London
+
+
+
+HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
+GIRARD, KANSAS
+
+Copyright, 1922,
+By Charmian London.
+
+
+Reprinted by Arrangement.
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                               Page
+          Chris Farrington: Able Seaman           5
+          Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan         17
+          The Lost Poacher                       25
+          The Banks of the Sacramento            40
+          In Yeddo Bay                           54
+
+
+
+
+STORIES OF SHIPS AND THE SEA
+
+
+
+
+CHRIS FARRINGTON: ABLE SEAMAN
+
+
+"If you vas in der old country ships, a liddle shaver like you vood pe
+only der boy, und you vood wait on der able seamen. Und ven der able
+seaman sing out, 'Boy, der water-jug!' you vood jump quick, like a shot,
+und bring der water-jug. Und ven der able seaman sing out, 'Boy, my
+boots!' you vood get der boots. Und you vood pe politeful, und say
+'Yessir' und 'No sir.' But you pe in der American ship, and you t'ink
+you are so good as der able seamen. Chris, mine boy, I haf ben a
+sailorman for twenty-two years, und do you t'ink you are so good as me?
+I vas a sailorman pefore you vas borned, und I knot und reef und splice
+ven you play mit topstrings und fly kites."
+
+"But you are unfair, Emil!" cried Chris Farrington, his sensitive face
+flushed and hurt. He was a slender though strongly built young fellow of
+seventeen, with Yankee ancestry writ large all over him.
+
+"Dere you go vonce again!" the Swedish sailor exploded. "My name is
+Mister Johansen, und a kid of a boy like you call me 'Emil!' It vas
+insulting, und comes pecause of der American ship!"
+
+"But you call me 'Chris'!" the boy expostulated, reproachfully.
+
+"But you vas a boy."
+
+"Who does a man's work," Chris retorted. "And because I do a man's work
+I have as much right to call you by your first name as you me. We are
+all equals in this fo'castle, and you know it. When we signed for the
+voyage in San Francisco, we signed as sailors on the _Sophie Sutherland_
+and there was no difference made with any of us. Haven't I always done
+my work? Did I ever shirk? Did you or any other man ever have to take a
+wheel for me? Or a lookout? Or go aloft?"
+
+"Chris is right," interrupted a young English sailor. "No man has had to
+do a tap of his work yet. He signed as good as any of us and he's shown
+himself as good--"
+
+"Better!" broke in a Novia Scotia man. "Better than some of us! When we
+struck the sealing-grounds he turned out to be next to the best
+boat-steerer aboard. Only French Louis, who'd been at it for years,
+could beat him. I'm only a boat-puller, and you're only a boat-puller,
+too, Emil Johansen, for all your twenty-two years at sea. Why don't you
+become a boat-steerer?"
+
+"Too clumsy," laughed the Englishman, "and too slow."
+
+"Little that counts, one way or the other," joined in Dane Jurgensen,
+coming to the aid of his Scandinavian brother. "Emil is a man grown and
+an able seaman; the boy is neither."
+
+And so the argument raged back and forth, the Swedes, Norwegians and
+Danes, because of race kinship, taking the part of Johansen, and the
+English, Canadians and Americans taking the part of Chris. From an
+unprejudiced point of view, the right was on the side of Chris. As he
+had truly said, he did a man's work, and the same work that any of them
+did. But they were prejudiced, and badly so, and out of the words which
+passed rose a standing quarrel which divided the forecastle into two
+parties.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _Sophie Sutherland_ was a seal-hunter, registered out of San
+Francisco, and engaged in hunting the furry sea-animals along the
+Japanese coast north to Bering Sea. The other vessels were two-masted
+schooners, but she was a three-master and the largest in the fleet. In
+fact, she was a full-rigged, three-topmast schooner, newly built.
+
+Although Chris Farrington knew that justice was with him, and that he
+performed all his work faithfully and well, many a time, in secret
+thought, he longed for some pressing emergency to arise whereby he could
+demonstrate to the Scandinavian seamen that he also was an able seaman.
+
+But one stormy night, by an accident for which he was in nowise
+accountable, in overhauling a spare anchor-chain he had all the fingers
+of his left hand badly crushed. And his hopes were likewise crushed, for
+it was impossible for him to continue hunting with the boats, and he was
+forced to stay idly aboard until his fingers should heal. Yet, although
+he little dreamed it, this very accident was to give him the
+long-looked-for-opportunity.
+
+One afternoon in the latter part of May the _Sophie Sutherland_ rolled
+sluggishly in a breathless calm. The seals were abundant, the hunting
+good, and the boats were all away and out of sight. And with them was
+almost every man of the crew. Besides Chris, there remained only the
+captain, the sailing-master and the Chinese cook.
+
+The captain was captain only by courtesy. He was an old man, past
+eighty, and blissfully ignorant of the sea and its ways; but he was the
+owner of the vessel, and hence the honorable title. Of course the
+sailing-master, who was really captain, was a thorough-going seaman. The
+mate, whose post was aboard, was out with the boats, having temporarily
+taken Chris's place as boat-steerer.
+
+When good weather and good sport came together, the boats were
+accustomed to range far and wide, and often did not return to the
+schooner until long after dark. But for all that it was a perfect
+hunting day, Chris noted a growing anxiety on the part of the
+sailing-master. He paced the deck nervously, and was constantly sweeping
+the horizon with his marine glasses. Not a boat was in sight. As sunset
+arrived, he even sent Chris aloft to the mizzen-topmast-head, but with
+no better luck. The boats could not possibly be back before midnight.
+
+Since noon the barometer had been falling with startling rapidity, and
+all the signs were ripe for a great storm--how great, not even the
+sailing-master anticipated. He and Chris set to work to prepare for it.
+They put storm gaskets on the furled topsails, lowered and stowed the
+foresail and spanker and took in the two inner jibs. In the one
+remaining jib they put a single reef, and a single reef in the mainsail.
+
+Night had fallen before they finished, and with the darkness came the
+storm. A low moan swept over the sea, and the wind struck the _Sophie
+Sutherland_ flat. But she righted quickly, and with the sailing-master
+at the wheel, sheered her bow into within five points of the wind.
+Working as well as he could with his bandaged hand, and with the feeble
+aid of the Chinese cook, Chris went forward and backed the jib over to
+the weather side. This with the flat mainsail, left the schooner hove
+to.
+
+"God help the boats! It's no gale! It's a typhoon!" the sailing-master
+shouted to Chris at eleven o'clock. "Too much canvas! Got to get two
+more reefs into the mainsail, and got to do it right away!" He glanced
+at the old captain, shivering in oilskins at the binnacle and holding on
+for dear life. "There's only you and I, Chris--and the cook; but he's
+next to worthless!"
+
+In order to make the reef, it was necessary to lower the mainsail, and
+the removal of this after pressure was bound to make the schooner fall
+off before the wind and sea because of the forward pressure of the jib.
+
+"Take the wheel!" the sailing-master directed. "And when I give the
+word, hard up with it! And when she's square before it, steady her! And
+keep her there! We'll heave to again as soon as I get the reefs in!"
+
+Gripping the kicking spokes, Chris watched him and the reluctant cook go
+forward into the howling darkness. The _Sophie Sutherland_ was plunging
+into the huge head-seas and wallowing tremendously, the tense steel
+stays and taut rigging humming like harp-strings to the wind. A buffeted
+cry came to his ears, and he felt the schooner's bow paying off of its
+own accord. The mainsail was down!
+
+He ran the wheel hard-over and kept anxious track of the changing
+direction of the wind on his face and of the heave of the vessel. This
+was the crucial moment. In performing the evolution she would have to
+pass broadside to the surge before she could get before it. The wind was
+blowing directly on his right cheek, when he felt the _Sophie
+Sutherland_ lean over and begin to rise toward the sky--up--up--an
+infinite distance! Would she clear the crest of the gigantic wave?
+
+Again by the feel of it, for he could see nothing, he knew that a wall
+of water was rearing and curving far above him along the whole weather
+side. There was an instant's calm as the liquid wall intervened and shut
+off the wind. The schooner righted, and for that instant seemed at
+perfect rest. Then she rolled to meet the descending rush.
+
+Chris shouted to the captain to hold tight, and prepared himself for the
+shock. But the man did not live who could face it. An ocean of water
+smote Chris's back and his clutch on the spokes was loosened as if it
+were a baby's. Stunned, powerless, like a straw on the face of a
+torrent, he was swept onward he knew not whither. Missing the corner of
+the cabin, he was dashed forward along the poop runway a hundred feet
+or more, striking violently against the foot of the foremast. A second
+wave, crushing inboard, hurled him back the way he had come, and left
+him half-drowned where the poop steps should have been.
+
+Bruised and bleeding, dimly conscious, he felt for the rail and dragged
+himself to his feet. Unless something could be done, he knew the last
+moment had come. As he faced the poop, the wind drove into his mouth
+with suffocating force. This brought him back to his senses with a
+start. The wind was blowing from dead aft! The schooner was out of the
+trough and before it! But the send of the sea was bound to breach her to
+again. Crawling up the runway, he managed to get to the wheel just in
+time to prevent this. The binnacle light was still burning. They were
+safe!
+
+That is, he and the schooner were safe. As to the welfare of his three
+companions he could not say. Nor did he dare leave the wheel in order to
+find out, for it took every second of his undivided attention to keep
+the vessel to her course. The least fraction of carelessness and the
+heave of the sea under the quarter was liable to thrust her into the
+trough. So, a boy of one hundred and forty pounds, he clung to his
+herculean task of guiding the two hundred straining tons of fabric amid
+the chaos of the great storm forces.
+
+Half an hour later, groaning and sobbing, the captain crawled to Chris's
+feet. All was lost, he whimpered. He was smitten unto death. The galley
+had gone by the board, the mainsail and running-gear, the cook, every
+thing!
+
+"Where's the sailing-master?" Chris demanded when he had caught his
+breath after steadying a wild lurch of the schooner. It was no child's
+play to steer a vessel under single reefed jib before a typhoon.
+
+"Clean up for'ard," the old man replied "Jammed under the fo'c'sle-head,
+but still breathing. Both his arms are broken, he says and he doesn't
+know how many ribs. He's hurt bad."
+
+"Well, he'll drown there the way she's shipping water through the
+hawse-pipes. Go for'ard!" Chris commanded, taking charge of things as a
+matter of course. "Tell him not to worry; that I'm at the wheel. Help
+him as much as you can, and make him help"--he stopped and ran the
+spokes to starboard as a tremendous billow rose under the stern and
+yawed the schooner to port--"and make him help himself for the rest.
+Unship the fo'castle hatch and get him down into a bunk. Then ship the
+hatch again."
+
+The captain turned his aged face forward and wavered pitifully. The
+waist of the ship was full of water to the bulwarks. He had just come
+through it, and knew death lurked every inch of the way.
+
+"Go!" Chris shouted, fiercely. And as the fear-stricken man started,
+"And take another look for the cook!"
+
+Two hours later, almost dead from suffering, the captain returned. He
+had obeyed orders. The sailing-master was helpless, although safe in a
+bunk; the cook was gone. Chris sent the captain below to the cabin to
+change his clothes.
+
+After interminable hours of toil day broke cold and gray. Chris looked
+about him. The _Sophie Sutherland_ was racing before the typhoon like a
+thing possessed. There was no rain, but the wind whipped the spray of
+the sea mast-high, obscuring everything except in the immediate
+neighborhood.
+
+Two waves only could Chris see at a time--the one before and the one
+behind. So small and insignificant the schooner seemed on the long
+Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a
+cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward
+and down into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself in the smother
+of foam at the bottom. Then the recovery, another mountain, another
+sickening upward rush, another poise, and the downward crash. Abreast of
+him, to starboard, like a ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing
+apace with the schooner. Evidently, when washed overboard, he had
+grasped and become entangled in a trailing halyard.
+
+For three hours more, alone with this gruesome companion, Chris held the
+_Sophie Sutherland_ before the wind and sea. He had long since forgotten
+his mangled fingers. The bandages had been torn away, and the cold, salt
+spray had eaten into the half-healed wounds until they were numb and no
+longer pained. But he was not cold. The terrific labor of steering
+forced the perspiration from every pore. Yet he was faint and weak with
+hunger and exhaustion, and hailed with delight the advent on deck of the
+captain, who fed him all of a pound of cake-chocolate. It strengthened
+him at once.
+
+He ordered the captain to cut the halyard by which the cook's body was
+towing, and also to go forward and cut loose the jib-halyard and sheet.
+When he had done so, the jib fluttered a couple of moments like a
+handkerchief, then tore out of the bolt-ropes and vanished. The _Sophie
+Sutherland_ was running under bare poles.
+
+By noon the storm had spent itself, and by six in the evening the waves
+had died down sufficiently to let Chris leave the helm. It was almost
+hopeless to dream of the small boats weathering the typhoon, but there
+is always the chance in saving human life, and Chris at once applied
+himself to going back over the course along which he had fled. He
+managed to get a reef in one of the inner jibs and two reefs in the
+spanker, and then, with the aid of the watch-tackle, to hoist them to
+the stiff breeze that yet blew. And all through the night, tacking back
+and forth on the back track, he shook out canvas as fast as the wind
+would permit.
+
+The injured sailing-master had turned delirious and between tending him
+and lending a hand with the ship, Chris kept the captain busy. "Taught
+me more seamanship," as he afterward said, "than I'd learned on the
+whole voyage." But by daybreak the old man's feeble frame succumbed,
+and he fell off into exhausted sleep on the weather poop.
+
+Chris, who could now lash the wheel, covered the tired man with blankets
+from below, and went fishing in the lazaretto for something to eat. But
+by the day following he found himself forced to give in, drowsing
+fitfully by the wheel and waking ever and anon to take a look at things.
+
+On the afternoon of the third day he picked up a schooner, dismasted and
+battered. As he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks
+crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out
+among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the
+nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An
+hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft were aboard the
+_Sophie Sutherland_.
+
+Having wandered so far from their own vessel, they had taken refuge on
+the strange schooner just before the storm broke. She was a Canadian
+sealer on her first voyage, and as was now apparent, her last.
+
+The captain of the _Sophie Sutherland_ had a story to tell, also, and he
+told it well--so well, in fact, that when all hands were gathered
+together on deck during the dog-watch, Emil Johansen strode over to
+Chris and gripped him by the hand.
+
+"Chris," he said, so loudly that all could hear, "Chris, I gif in. You
+vas yoost so good a sailorman as I. You vas a bully boy und able
+seaman, und I pe proud for you!
+
+"Und Chris!" He turned as if he had forgotten something, and called
+back, "From dis time always you call me 'Emil' mitout der 'Mister'!"
+
+
+
+
+TYPHOON OFF THE COAST OF JAPAN
+
+_Jack London's First Story, Published at the Age of Seventeen._
+
+
+It was four bells in the morning watch. We had just finished breakfast
+when the order came forward for the watch on deck to stand by to heave
+her to and all hands stand by the boats.
+
+"Port! hard a port!" cried our sailing-master. "Clew up the topsails!
+Let the flying jib run down! Back the jib over to windward and run down
+the foresail!" And so was our schooner _Sophie Sutherland_ hove to off
+the Japan coast, near Cape Jerimo, on April 10, 1893.
+
+Then came moments of bustle and confusion. There were eighteen men to
+man the six boats. Some were hooking on the falls, others casting off
+the lashings; boat-steerers appeared with boat-compasses and
+water-breakers, and boat-pullers with the lunch boxes. Hunters were
+staggering under two or three shotguns, a rifle and heavy ammunition
+box, all of which were soon stowed away with their oilskins and mittens
+in the boats.
+
+The sailing-master gave his last orders, and away we went, pulling three
+pairs of oars to gain our positions. We were in the weather boat, and so
+had a longer pull than the others. The first, second and third lee boats
+soon had all sail set and were running off to the southward and
+westward with the wind beam, while the schooner was running off to
+leeward of them, so that in case of accident the boats would have fair
+wind home.
+
+It was a glorious morning, but our boat steerer shook his head ominously
+as he glanced at the rising sun and prophetically muttered: "Red sun in
+the morning, sailor take warning." The sun had an angry look, and a few
+light, fleecy "nigger-heads" in that quarter seemed abashed and
+frightened and soon disappeared.
+
+Away off to the northward Cape Jerimo reared its black, forbidding head
+like some huge monster rising from the deep. The winter's snow, not yet
+entirely dissipated by the sun, covered it in patches of glistening
+white, over which the light wind swept on its way out to sea. Huge gulls
+rose slowly, fluttering their wings in the light breeze and striking
+their webbed feet on the surface of the water for over half a mile
+before they could leave it. Hardly had the patter, patter died away when
+a flock of sea quail rose, and with whistling wings flew away to
+windward, where members of a large band of whales were disporting
+themselves, their blowings sounding like the exhaust of steam engines.
+The harsh, discordant cries of a sea-parrot grated unpleasantly on the
+ear, and set half a dozen alert in a small band of seals that were ahead
+of us. Away they went, breaching and jumping entirely out of water. A
+sea-gull with slow, deliberate flight and long, majestic curves circled
+round us, and as a reminder of home a little English sparrow perched
+impudently on the fo'castle head, and, cocking his head on one side,
+chirped merrily. The boats were soon among the seals, and the bang!
+bang! of the guns could be heard from down to leeward.
+
+The wind was slowly rising, and by three o'clock as, with a dozen seals
+in our boat, we were deliberating whether to go on or turn back, the
+recall flag was run up at the schooner's mizzen--a sure sign that with
+the rising wind the barometer was falling and that our sailing-master
+was getting anxious for the welfare of the boats.
+
+Away we went before the wind with a single reef in our sail. With
+clenched teeth sat the boat-steerer, grasping the steering oar firmly
+with both hands, his restless eyes on the alert--a glance at the
+schooner ahead, as we rose on a sea, another at the mainsheet, and then
+one astern where the dark ripple of the wind on the water told him of a
+coming puff or a large white-cap that threatened to overwhelm us. The
+waves were holding high carnival, performing the strangest antics, as
+with wild glee they danced along in fierce pursuit--now up, now down,
+here, there, and everywhere, until some great sea of liquid green with
+its milk-white crest of foam rose from the ocean's throbbing bosom and
+drove the others from view. But only for a moment, for again under new
+forms they reappeared. In the sun's path they wandered, where every
+ripple, great or small, every little spit or spray looked like molten
+silver, where the water lost its dark green color and became a dazzling,
+silvery flood, only to vanish and become a wild waste of sullen
+turbulence, each dark foreboding sea rising and breaking, then rolling
+on again. The dash, the sparkle, the silvery light soon vanished with
+the sun, which became obscured by black clouds that were rolling swiftly
+in from the west, northwest; apt heralds of the coming storm.
+
+We soon reached the schooner and found ourselves the last aboard. In a
+few minutes the seals were skinned, boats and decks washed, and we were
+down below by the roaring fo'castle fire, with a wash, change of
+clothes, and a hot, substantial supper before us. Sail had been put on
+the schooner, as we had a run of seventy-five miles to make to the
+southward before morning, so as to get in the midst of the seals, out of
+which we had strayed during the last two days' hunting.
+
+We had the first watch from eight to midnight. The wind was soon blowing
+half a gale, and our sailing-master expected little sleep that night as
+he paced up and down the poop. The topsails were soon clewed up and made
+fast, then the flying jib run down and furled. Quite a sea was rolling
+by this time, occasionally breaking over the decks, flooding them and
+threatening to smash the boats. At six bells we were ordered to turn
+them over and put on storm lashings. This occupied us till eight bells,
+when we were relieved by the mid-watch. I was the last to go below,
+doing so just as the watch on deck was furling the spanker. Below all
+were asleep except our green hand, the "bricklayer," who was dying of
+consumption. The wildly dancing movements of the sea lamp cast a pale,
+flickering light through the fo'castle and turned to golden honey the
+drops of water on the yellow oilskins. In all the corners dark shadows
+seemed to come and go, while up in the eyes of her, beyond the pall
+bits, descending from deck to deck, where they seemed to lurk like some
+dragon at the cavern's mouth, it was dark as Erebus. Now and again, the
+light seemed to penetrate for a moment as the schooner rolled heavier
+than usual, only to recede, leaving it darker and blacker than before.
+The roar of the wind through the rigging came to the ear muffled like
+the distant rumble of a train crossing a trestle or the surf on the
+beach, while the loud crash of the seas on her weather bow seemed almost
+to rend the beams and planking asunder as it resounded through the
+fo'castle. The creaking and groaning of the timbers, stanchions, and
+bulkheads, as the strain the vessel was undergoing was felt, served to
+drown the groans of the dying man as he tossed uneasily in his bunk. The
+working of the foremast against the deck beams caused a shower of flaky
+powder to fall, and sent another sound mingling with the tumultuous
+storm. Small cascades of water streamed from the pall bits from the
+fo'castle head above, and, joining issue with the streams from the wet
+oilskins, ran along the floor and disappeared aft into the main hold.
+
+At two bells in the middle watch--that is, in land parlance one o'clock
+in the morning;--the order was roared out on the fo'castle: "All hands
+on deck and shorten sail!"
+
+Then the sleepy sailors tumbled out of their bunk and into their
+clothes, oilskins and sea-boots and up on deck. 'Tis when that order
+comes on cold, blustering nights that "Jack" grimly mutters: "Who would
+not sell a farm and go to sea?"
+
+It was on deck that the force of the wind could be fully appreciated,
+especially after leaving the stifling fo'castle. It seemed to stand up
+against you like a wall, making it almost impossible to move on the
+heaving decks or to breathe as the fierce gusts came dashing by. The
+schooner was hove to under jib, foresail and mainsail. We proceeded to
+lower the foresail and make it fast. The night was dark, greatly
+impeding our labor. Still, though not a star or the moon could pierce
+the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept
+along before the gale, nature aided us in a measure. A soft light
+emanated from the movement of the ocean. Each mighty sea, all
+phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of
+animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire. Higher
+and higher, thinner and thinner, the crest grew as it began to curve and
+overtop preparatory to breaking, until with a roar it fell over the
+bulwarks, a mass of soft glowing light and tons of water which sent the
+sailors sprawling in all directions and left in each nook and cranny
+little specks of light that glowed and trembled till the next sea washed
+them away, depositing new ones in their places. Sometimes several seas
+following each other with great rapidity and thundering down on our
+decks filled them full to the bulwarks, but soon they were discharged
+through the lee scuppers.
+
+To reef the mainsail we were forced to run off before the gale under the
+single reefed jib. By the time we had finished the wind had forced up
+such a tremendous sea that it was impossible to heave her to. Away we
+flew on the wings of the storm through the muck and flying spray. A wind
+sheer to starboard, then another to port as the enormous seas struck the
+schooner astern and nearly broached her to. As day broke we took in the
+jib, leaving not a sail unfurled. Since we had begun scudding she had
+ceased to take the seas over her bow, but amidships they broke fast and
+furious. It was a dry storm in the matter of rain, but the force of the
+wind filled the air with fine spray, which flew as high as the
+crosstrees and cut the face like a knife, making it impossible to see
+over a hundred yards ahead. The sea was a dark lead color as with long,
+slow, majestic roll it was heaped up by the wind into liquid mountains
+of foam. The wild antics of the schooner were sickening as she forged
+along. She would almost stop, as though climbing a mountain, then
+rapidly rolling to right and left as she gained the summit of a huge
+sea, she steadied herself and paused for a moment as though affrighted
+at the yawning precipice before her. Like an avalanche, she shot forward
+and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand
+battering rams, burying her bow to the cat-heads in the milky foam at
+the bottom that came on deck in all directions--forward, astern, to
+right and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail.
+
+The wind began to drop, and by ten o'clock we were talking of heaving
+her to. We passed a ship, two schooners and a four-masted barkentine
+under the smallest canvas, and at eleven o'clock, running up the spanker
+and jib, we hove her to, and in another hour we were beating back again
+against the aftersea under full sail to regain the sealing ground away
+to the westward.
+
+Below, a couple of men were sewing the "bricklayer's" body in canvas
+preparatory to the sea burial. And so with the storm passed away the
+"bricklayer's" soul.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST POACHER
+
+
+"But they won't take excuses. You're across the line, and that's enough.
+They'll take you. In you go, Siberia and the salt mines. And as for
+Uncle Sam, why, what's he to know about it? Never a word will get back
+to the States. 'The _Mary Thomas_,' the papers will say, 'the _Mary
+Thomas_ lost with all hands. Probably in a typhoon in the Japanese
+seas.' That's what the papers will say, and people, too. In you go,
+Siberia and the salt mines. Dead to the world and kith and kin, though
+you live fifty years."
+
+In such manner John Lewis, commonly known as the "sea-lawyer," settled
+the matter out of hand.
+
+It was a serious moment in the forecastle of the _Mary Thomas_. No
+sooner had the watch below begun to talk the trouble over, than the
+watch on deck came down and joined them. As there was no wind, every
+hand could be spared with the exception of the man at the wheel, and he
+remained only for the sake of discipline. Even "Bub" Russell, the
+cabin-boy, had crept forward to hear what was going on.
+
+However, it was a serious moment, as the grave faces of the sailors bore
+witness. For the three preceding months the _Mary Thomas_ sealing
+schooner, had hunted the seal pack along the coast of Japan and north to
+Bering Sea. Here, on the Asiatic side of the sea, they were forced to
+give over the chase, or rather, to go no farther; for beyond, the
+Russian cruisers patrolled forbidden ground, where the seals might breed
+in peace.
+
+A week before she had fallen into a heavy fog accompanied by calm. Since
+then the fog-bank had not lifted, and the only wind had been light airs
+and catspaws. This in itself was not so bad, for the sealing schooners
+are never in a hurry so long as they are in the midst of the seals; but
+the trouble lay in the fact that the current at this point bore heavily
+to the north. Thus the _Mary Thomas_ had unwittingly drifted across the
+line, and every hour she was penetrating, unwillingly, farther and
+farther into the dangerous waters where the Russian bear kept guard.
+
+How far she had drifted no man knew. The sun had not been visible for a
+week, nor the stars, and the captain had been unable to take
+observations in order to determine his position. At any moment a cruiser
+might swoop down and hale the crew away to Siberia. The fate of other
+poaching seal-hunters was too well known to the men of the _Mary
+Thomas_, and there was cause for grave faces.
+
+"Mine friends," spoke up a German boat-steerer, "it vas a pad piziness.
+Shust as ve make a big catch, und all honest, somedings go wrong, und
+der Russians nab us, dake our skins and our schooner, und send us mit
+der anarchists to Siberia. Ach! a pretty pad piziness!"
+
+"Yes, that's where it hurts," the sea lawyer went on. "Fifteen hundred
+skins in the salt piles, and all honest, a big pay-day coming to every
+man Jack of us, and then to be captured and lose it all! It'd be
+different if we'd been poaching, but it's all honest work in open
+water."
+
+"But if we haven't done anything wrong, they can't do anything to us,
+can they?" Bub queried.
+
+"It strikes me as 'ow it ain't the proper thing for a boy o' your age
+shovin' in when 'is elders is talkin'," protested an English sailor,
+from over the edge of his bunk.
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Jack," answered the sea-lawyer. "He's a perfect
+right to. Ain't he just as liable to lose his wages as the rest of us?"
+
+"Wouldn't give thruppence for them!" Jack sniffed back. He had been
+planning to go home and see his family in Chelsea when he was paid off,
+and he was now feeling rather blue over the highly possible loss, not
+only of his pay, but of his liberty.
+
+"How are they to know?" the sea-lawyer asked in answer to Bub's previous
+question. "Here we are in forbidden water. How do they know but what we
+came here of our own accord? Here we are, fifteen hundred skins in the
+hold. How do they know whether we got them in open water or in the
+closed sea? Don't you see, Bub, the evidence is all against us. If you
+caught a man with his pockets full of apples like those which grow on
+your tree, and if you caught him in your tree besides, what'd you think
+if he told you he couldn't help it, and had just been sort of blown
+there, and that anyway those apples came from some other tree--what'd
+you think, eh?"
+
+Bub saw it clearly when put in that light, and shook his head
+despondently.
+
+"You'd rather be dead than go to Siberia," one of the boat-pullers said.
+"They put you into the salt-mines and work you till you die. Never see
+daylight again. Why, I've heard tell of one fellow that was chained to
+his mate, and that mate died. And they were both chained together! And
+if they send you to the quicksilver mines you get salivated. I'd rather
+be hung than salivated."
+
+"Wot's salivated?" Jack asked, suddenly sitting up in his bunk at the
+hint of fresh misfortunes.
+
+"Why, the quicksilver gets into your blood; I think that's the way. And
+your gums all swell like you had the scurvy, only worse, and your teeth
+get loose in your jaws. And big ulcers forms, and then you die horrible.
+The strongest man can't last long a-mining quicksilver."
+
+"A pad piziness," the boat-steerer reiterated, dolorously, in the
+silence which followed. "A pad piziness. I vish I vas in Yokohama. Eh?
+Vot vas dot?"
+
+The vessel had suddenly heeled over. The decks were aslant. A tin
+pannikin rolled down the inclined plane, rattling and banging. From
+above came the slapping of canvas and the quivering rat-tat-tat of the
+after leech of the loosely stretched foresail. Then the mate's voice
+sang down the hatch, "All hands on deck and make sail!"
+
+Never had such summons been answered with more enthusiasm. The calm had
+broken. The wind had come which was to carry them south into safety.
+With a wild cheer all sprang on deck. Working with mad haste, they flung
+out topsails, flying jibs and staysails. As they worked, the fog-bank
+lifted and the black vault of heaven, bespangled with the old familiar
+stars, rushed into view. When all was shipshape, the _Mary Thomas_ was
+lying gallantly over on her side to a beam wind and plunging ahead due
+south.
+
+"Steamer's lights ahead on the port bow, sir!" cried the lookout from
+his station on the forecastle-head. There was excitement in the man's
+voice.
+
+The captain sent Bub below for his night-glasses. Everybody crowded to
+the lee-rail to gaze at the suspicious stranger, which already began to
+loom up vague and indistinct. In those unfrequented waters the chance
+was one in a thousand that it could be anything else than a Russian
+patrol. The captain was still anxiously gazing through the glasses, when
+a flash of flame left the stranger's side, followed by the loud report
+of a cannon. The worst fears were confirmed. It was a patrol, evidently
+firing across the bows of the _Mary Thomas_ in order to make her heave
+to.
+
+"Hard down with your helm!" the captain commanded the steersman, all the
+life gone out of his voice. Then to the crew, "Back over the jib and
+foresail! Run down the flying jib! Clew up the foretopsail! And aft here
+and swing on to the main-sheet!"
+
+The _Mary Thomas_ ran into the eye of the wind, lost headway, and fell
+to courtesying gravely to the long seas rolling up from the west.
+
+The cruiser steamed a little nearer and lowered a boat. The sealers
+watched in heartbroken silence. They could see the white bulk of the
+boat as it was slacked away to the water, and its crew sliding aboard.
+They could hear the creaking of the davits and the commands of the
+officers. Then the boat sprang away under the impulse of the oars, and
+came toward them. The wind had been rising, and already the sea was too
+rough to permit the frail craft to lie alongside the tossing schooner;
+but watching their chance, and taking advantage of the boarding ropes
+thrown to them, an officer and a couple of men clambered aboard. The
+boat then sheered off into safety and lay to its oars, a young
+midshipman, sitting in the stern and holding the yoke-lines, in charge.
+
+The officer, whose uniform disclosed his rank as that of second
+lieutenant in the Russian navy went below with the captain of the _Mary
+Thomas_ to look at the ship's papers. A few minutes later he emerged,
+and upon his sailors removing the hatch-covers, passed down into the
+hold with a lantern to inspect the salt piles. It was a goodly heap
+which confronted him--fifteen hundred fresh skins, the season's catch;
+and under the circumstances he could have had but one conclusion.
+
+"I am very sorry," he said, in broken English to the sealing captain,
+when he again came on deck, "but it is my duty, in the name of the tsar,
+to seize your vessel as a poacher caught with fresh skins in the closed
+sea. The penalty, as you may know, is confiscation and imprisonment."
+
+The captain of the _Mary Thomas_ shrugged his shoulders in seeming
+indifference, and turned away. Although they may restrain all outward
+show, strong men, under unmerited misfortune, are sometimes very close
+to tears. Just then the vision of his little California home, and of the
+wife and two yellow-haired boys, was strong upon him, and there was a
+strange, choking sensation in his throat, which made him afraid that if
+he attempted to speak he would sob instead.
+
+And also there was upon him the duty he owed his men. No weakness before
+them, for he must be a tower of strength to sustain them in misfortune.
+He had already explained to the second lieutenant, and knew the
+hopelessness of the situation. As the sea-lawyer had said, the evidence
+was all against him. So he turned aft, and fell to pacing up and down
+the poop of the vessel over which he was no longer commander.
+
+The Russian officer now took temporary charge. He ordered more of his
+men aboard, and had all the canvas clewed up and furled snugly away.
+While this was being done, the boat plied back and forth between the two
+vessels, passing a heavy hawser, which was made fast to the great
+towing-bitts on the schooner's forecastle-head. During all this work
+the sealers stood about in sullen groups. It was madness to think of
+resisting, with the guns of a man-of-war not a biscuit-toss away; but
+they refused to lend a hand, preferring instead to maintain a gloomy
+silence.
+
+Having accomplished his task, the lieutenant ordered all but four of his
+men back into the boat. Then the midshipman, a lad of sixteen, looking
+strangely mature and dignified in his uniform and sword, came aboard to
+take command of the captured sealer. Just as the lieutenant prepared to
+depart his eye chanced to alight upon Bub. Without a word of warning, he
+seized him by the arm and dropped him over the rail into the waiting
+boat; and then, with a parting wave of his hand, he followed him.
+
+It was only natural that Bub should be frightened at this unexpected
+happening. All the terrible stories he had heard of the Russians served
+to make him fear them, and now returned to his mind with double force.
+To be captured by them was bad enough, but to be carried off by them,
+away from his comrades, was a fate of which he had not dreamed.
+
+"Be a good boy, Bub," the captain called to him, as the boat drew away
+from the _Mary Thomas's_ side, "and tell the truth!"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir!" he answered, bravely enough by all outward appearance.
+He felt a certain pride of race, and was ashamed to be a coward before
+these strange enemies, these wild Russian bears.
+
+"Und be politeful!" the German boat-steerer added, his rough voice
+lifting across the water like a fog-horn.
+
+Bub waved his hand in farewell, and his mates clustered along the rail
+as they answered with a cheering shout. He found room in the
+stern-sheets, where he fell to regarding the lieutenant. He didn't look
+so wild or bearish after all--very much like other men, Bub concluded,
+and the sailors were much the same as all other man-of-war's men he had
+ever known. Nevertheless, as his feet struck the steel deck of the
+cruiser, he felt as if he had entered the portals of a prison.
+
+For a few minutes he was left unheeded. The sailors hoisted the boat up,
+and swung it in on the davits. Then great clouds of black smoke poured
+out of the funnels, and they were under way--to Siberia, Bub could not
+help but think. He saw the _Mary Thomas_ swing abruptly into line as she
+took the pressure from the hawser, and her side-lights, red and green,
+rose and fell as she was towed through the sea.
+
+Bub's eyes dimmed at the melancholy sight, but--but just then the
+lieutenant came to take him down to the commander, and he straightened
+up and set his lips firmly, as if this were a very commonplace affair
+and he were used to being sent to Siberia every day in the week. The
+cabin in which the commander sat was like a palace compared to the
+humble fittings of the _Mary Thomas_, and the commander himself, in gold
+lace and dignity, was a most august personage, quite unlike the simple
+man who navigated his schooner on the trail of the seal pack.
+
+Bub now quickly learned why he had been brought aboard, and in the
+prolonged questioning which followed, told nothing but the plain truth.
+The truth was harmless; only a lie could have injured his cause. He did
+not know much, except that they had been sealing far to the south in
+open water, and that when the calm and fog came down upon them, being
+close to the line, they had drifted across. Again and again he insisted
+that they had not lowered a boat or shot a seal in the week they had
+been drifting about in the forbidden sea; but the commander chose to
+consider all that he said to be a tissue of falsehoods, and adopted a
+bullying tone in an effort to frighten the boy. He threatened and
+cajoled by turns, but failed in the slightest to shake Bub's statements,
+and at last ordered him out of his presence.
+
+By some oversight, Bub was not put in anybody's charge, and wandered up
+on deck unobserved. Sometimes the sailors, in passing, bent curious
+glances upon him, but otherwise he was left strictly alone. Nor could he
+have attracted much attention, for he was small, the night dark, and the
+watch on deck intent on its own business. Stumbling over the strange
+decks, he made his way aft where he could look upon the side-lights of
+the _Mary Thomas_, following steadily in the rear.
+
+For a long while he watched, and then lay down in the darkness close to
+where the hawser passed over the stern to the captured schooner. Once
+an officer came up and examined the straining rope to see if it were
+chafing, but Bub cowered away in the shadow undiscovered. This, however,
+gave him an idea which concerned the lives and liberties of twenty-two
+men, and which was to avert crushing sorrow from more than one happy
+home many thousand miles away.
+
+In the first place, he reasoned, the crew were all guiltless of any
+crime, and yet were being carried relentlessly away to imprisonment in
+Siberia--a living death, he had heard, and he believed it implicitly. In
+the second place, he was a prisoner, hard and fast, with no chance to
+escape. In the third, it was possible for the twenty-two men on the
+_Mary Thomas_ to escape. The only thing which bound them was a four-inch
+hawser. They dared not cut it at their end, for a watch was sure to be
+maintained upon it by their Russian captors; but at this end, ah! at his
+end--
+
+Bub did not stop to reason further. Wriggling close to the hawser, he
+opened his jack-knife and went to work. The blade was not very sharp,
+and he sawed away, rope-yarn by rope-yarn, the awful picture of the
+solitary Siberian exile he must endure growing clearer and more terrible
+at every stroke. Such a fate was bad enough to undergo with one's
+comrades, but to face it alone seemed frightful. And besides, the very
+act he was performing was sure to bring greater punishment upon him.
+
+In the midst of such somber thoughts, he heard footsteps approaching. He
+wriggled away into the shadow. An officer stopped where he had been
+working, half-stooped to examine the hawser, then changed his mind and
+straightened up. For a few minutes he stood there, gazing at the lights
+of the captured schooner, and then went forward again.
+
+Now was the time! Bub crept back and went on sawing. Now two parts were
+severed. Now three. But one remained. The tension upon this was so great
+that it readily yielded. Splash the freed end went overboard. He lay
+quietly, his heart in his mouth, listening. No one on the cruiser but
+himself had heard.
+
+He saw the red and green lights of the _Mary Thomas_ grow dimmer and
+dimmer. Then a faint hallo came over the water from the Russian prize
+crew. Still nobody heard. The smoke continued to pour out of the
+cruiser's funnels, and her propellers throbbed as mightily as ever.
+
+What was happening on the _Mary Thomas_? Bub could only surmise; but of
+one thing he was certain: his comrades would assert themselves and
+overpower the four sailors and the midshipman. A few minutes later he
+saw a small flash, and straining his ears heard the very faint report of
+a pistol. Then, oh joy! both the red and green lights suddenly
+disappeared. The _Mary Thomas_ was retaken!
+
+Just as an officer came aft, Bub crept forward, and hid away in one of
+the boats. Not an instant too soon. The alarm was given. Loud voices
+rose in command. The cruiser altered her course. An electric
+search-light began to throw its white rays across the sea, here, there,
+everywhere; but in its flashing path no tossing schooner was revealed.
+
+Bub went to sleep soon after that, nor did he wake till the gray of
+dawn. The engines were pulsing monotonously, and the water, splashing
+noisily, told him the decks were being washed down. One sweeping glance,
+and he saw that they were alone on the expanse of ocean. The _Mary
+Thomas_ had escaped. As he lifted his head, a roar of laughter went up
+from the sailors. Even the officer, who ordered him taken below and
+locked up, could not quite conceal the laughter in his eyes. Bub thought
+often in the days of confinement which followed that they were not very
+angry with him for what he had done.
+
+He was not far from right. There is a certain innate nobility deep down
+in the hearts of all men, which forces them to admire a brave act, even
+if it is performed by an enemy. The Russians were in nowise different
+from other men. True, a boy had outwitted them; but they could not blame
+him, and they were sore puzzled as to what to do with him. It would
+never do to take a little mite like him in to represent all that
+remained of the lost poacher.
+
+So, two weeks later, a United States man-of-war, steaming out of the
+Russian port of Vladivostok, was signaled by a Russian cruiser. A boat
+passed between the two ships, and a small boy dropped over the rail upon
+the deck of the American vessel. A week later he was put ashore at
+Hakodate, and after some telegraphing, his fare was paid on the
+railroad to Yokohama.
+
+From the depot he hurried through the quaint Japanese streets to the
+harbor, and hired a sampan boatman to put him aboard a certain vessel
+whose familiar rigging had quickly caught his eye. Her gaskets were off,
+her sails unfurled; she was just starting back to the United States. As
+he came closer, a crowd of sailors sprang upon the forecastle head, and
+the windlass-bars rose and fell as the anchor was torn from its muddy
+bottom.
+
+"'Yankee ship come down the ribber!'" the sea-lawyer's voice rolled out
+as he led the anchor song.
+
+"'Pull, my bully boys, pull!'" roared back the old familiar chorus, the
+men's bodies lifting and bending to the rhythm.
+
+Bub Russell paid the boatman and stepped on deck. The anchor was
+forgotten. A mighty cheer went up from the men, and almost before he
+could catch his breath he was on the shoulders of the captain,
+surrounded by his mates, and endeavoring to answer twenty questions to
+the second.
+
+The next day a schooner hove to off a Japanese fishing village, sent
+ashore four sailors and a little midshipman, and sailed away. These men
+did not talk English, but they had money and quickly made their way to
+Yokohama. From that day the Japanese village folk never heard anything
+more about them, and they are still a much-talked-of mystery. As the
+Russian government never said anything about the incident, the United
+States is still ignorant of the whereabouts of the lost poacher, nor has
+she ever heard, officially, of the way in which some of her citizens
+"shanghaied" five subjects of the tsar. Even nations have secrets
+sometimes.
+
+
+
+
+THE BANKS OF THE SACRAMENTO
+
+          "And it's blow, ye winds, heigh-ho,
+           For Cal-i-for-ni-o;
+           For there's plenty of gold so I've been told,
+           On the banks of the Sacramento!"
+
+
+It was only a little boy, singing in a shrill treble the sea chantey
+which seamen sing the wide world over when they man the capstan bars and
+break the anchors out for "Frisco" port. It was only a little boy who
+had never seen the sea, but two hundred feet beneath him rolled the
+Sacramento. "Young" Jerry he was called, after "Old" Jerry, his father,
+from whom he had learned the song, as well as received his shock of
+bright-red hair, his blue, dancing eyes, and his fair and inevitably
+freckled skin.
+
+For Old Jerry had been a sailor, and had followed the sea till middle
+life, haunted always by the words of the ringing chantey. Then one day
+he had sung the song in earnest, in an Asiatic port, swinging and
+thrilling round the capstan-circle with twenty others. And at San
+Francisco he turned his back upon his ship and upon the sea, and went to
+behold with his own eyes the banks of the Sacramento.
+
+He beheld the gold, too, for he found employment at the Yellow Dream
+mine, and proved of utmost usefulness in rigging the great ore-cables
+across the river and two hundred feet above its surface.
+
+After that he took charge of the cables and kept them in repair, and
+ran them and loved them, and became himself an indispensable fixture of
+the Yellow Dream mine. Then he loved pretty Margaret Kelly; but she had
+left him and Young Jerry, the latter barely toddling, to take up her
+last long sleep in the little graveyard among the great sober pines.
+
+Old Jerry never went back to the sea. He remained by his cables, and
+lavished upon them and Young Jerry all the love of his nature. When evil
+days came to the Yellow Dream, he still remained in the employ of the
+company as watchman over the all but abandoned property.
+
+But this morning he was not visible. Young Jerry only was to be seen,
+sitting on the cabin step and singing the ancient chantey. He had cooked
+and eaten his breakfast all by himself, and had just come out to take a
+look at the world. Twenty feet before him stood the steel drum round
+which the endless cable worked. By the drum, snug and fast, was the
+ore-car. Following with his eyes the dizzy flight of the cables to the
+farther bank, he could see the other drum and the other car.
+
+The contrivance was worked by gravity, the loaded car crossing the river
+by virtue of its own weight, and at the same time dragging the empty car
+back. The loaded car being emptied, and the empty car being loaded with
+more ore, the performance could be repeated--a performance which had
+been repeated tens of thousands of times since the day Old Jerry became
+the keeper of the cables.
+
+Young Jerry broke off his song at the sound of approaching footsteps. A
+tall, blue-shirted man, a rifle across the hollow of his arm, came out
+from the gloom of the pine-trees. It was Hall, watchman of the Yellow
+Dragon mine, the cables of which spanned the Sacramento a mile farther
+up.
+
+"Yello, younker!" was his greeting. "What you doin' here by your
+lonesome?"
+
+"Oh, bachin'," Jerry tried to answer unconcernedly, as if it were a very
+ordinary sort of thing. "Dad's away, you see."
+
+"Where's he gone?" the man asked.
+
+"San Francisco. Went last night. His brother's dead in the old country,
+and he's gone down to see the lawyers. Won't be back till tomorrow
+night."
+
+So spoke Jerry, and with pride, because of the responsibility which had
+fallen to him of keeping an eye on the property of the Yellow Dream, and
+the glorious adventure of living alone on the cliff above the river and
+of cooking his own meals.
+
+"Well, take care of yourself," Hall said, "and don't monkey with the
+cables. I'm goin' to see if I can pick up a deer in the Cripple Cow
+Cañon."
+
+"It's goin' to rain, I think," Jerry said, with mature deliberation.
+
+"And it's little I mind a wettin'," Hall laughed, as he strode away
+among the trees.
+
+Jerry's prediction concerning rain was more than fulfilled. By ten
+o'clock the pines were swaying and moaning, the cabin windows rattling,
+and the rain driving by in fierce squalls. At half past eleven he
+kindled a fire, and promptly at the stroke of twelve sat down to his
+dinner.
+
+No out-of-doors for him that day, he decided, when he had washed the few
+dishes and put them neatly away; and he wondered how wet Hall was and
+whether he had succeeded in picking up a deer.
+
+At one o'clock there came a knock at the door, and when he opened it a
+man and a woman staggered in on the breast of a great gust of wind. They
+were Mr. and Mrs. Spillane, ranchers, who lived in a lonely valley a
+dozen miles back from the river.
+
+"Where's Hall?" was Spillane's opening speech, and he spoke sharply and
+quickly.
+
+Jerry noted that he was nervous and abrupt in his movements, and that
+Mrs. Spillane seemed laboring under some strong anxiety. She was a thin,
+washed-out, worked-out woman, whose life of dreary and unending toil had
+stamped itself harshly upon her face. It was the same life that had
+bowed her husband's shoulders and gnarled his hands and turned his hair
+to a dry and dusty gray.
+
+"He's gone hunting up Cripple Cow," Jerry answered. "Did you want to
+cross?"
+
+The woman began to weep quietly, while Spillane dropped a troubled
+exclamation and strode to the window. Jerry joined him in gazing out to
+where the cables lost themselves in the thick downpour.
+
+It was the custom of the backwoods people in that section of country to
+cross the Sacramento on the Yellow Dragon cable. For this service a
+small toll was charged, which tolls the Yellow Dragon Company applied
+to the payment of Hall's wages.
+
+"We've got to get across, Jerry," Spillane said, at the same time
+jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his wife. "Her
+father's hurt at the Clover Leaf. Powder explosion. Not expected to
+live. We just got word."
+
+Jerry felt himself fluttering inwardly. He knew that Spillane wanted to
+cross on the Yellow Dream cable, and in the absence of his father he
+felt that he dared not assume such a responsibility, for the cable had
+never been used for passengers; in fact, had not been used at all for a
+long time.
+
+"Maybe Hall will be back soon," he said.
+
+Spillane shook his head, and demanded, "Where's your father?"
+
+"San Francisco," Jerry answered, briefly.
+
+Spillane groaned, and fiercely drove his clenched fist into the palm of
+the other hand. His wife was crying more audibly, and Jerry could hear
+her murmuring, "And daddy's dyin', dyin'!"
+
+The tears welled up in his own eyes, and he stood irresolute, not
+knowing what he should do. But the man decided for him.
+
+"Look here, kid," he said, with determination, "the wife and me are
+goin' over on this here cable of yours! Will you run it for us?"
+
+Jerry backed slightly away. He did it unconsciously, as if recoiling
+instinctively from something unwelcome.
+
+"Better see if Hall's back," he suggested.
+
+"And if he ain't?"
+
+Again Jerry hesitated.
+
+"I'll stand for the risk," Spillane added. "Don't you see, kid, we've
+simply got to cross!"
+
+Jerry nodded his head reluctantly.
+
+"And there ain't no use waitin' for Hall," Spillane went on. "You know
+as well as me he ain't back from Cripple Cow this time of day! So come
+along and let's get started."
+
+No wonder that Mrs. Spillane seemed terrified as they helped her into
+the ore-car--so Jerry thought, as he gazed into the apparently
+fathomless gulf beneath her. For it was so filled with rain and cloud,
+hurtling and curling in the fierce blast, that the other shore, seven
+hundred feet away, was invisible, while the cliff at their feet dropped
+sheer down and lost itself in the swirling vapor. By all appearances it
+might be a mile to bottom instead of two hundred feet.
+
+"All ready?" he asked.
+
+"Let her go!" Spillane shouted, to make himself heard above the roar of
+the wind.
+
+He had clambered in beside his wife, and was holding one of her hands in
+his.
+
+Jerry looked upon this with disapproval. "You'll need all your hands for
+holdin' on, the way the wind's yowlin'."
+
+The man and the woman shifted their hands accordingly, tightly gripping
+the sides of the car, and Jerry slowly and carefully released the brake.
+The drum began to revolve as the endless cable passed round it, and the
+car slid slowly out into the chasm, its trolley wheels rolling on the
+stationary cable overhead, to which it was suspended.
+
+It was not the first time Jerry had worked the cable, but it was the
+first time he had done so away from the supervising eye of his father.
+By means of the brake he regulated the speed of the car. It needed
+regulating, for at times, caught by the stronger gusts of wind, it
+swayed violently back and forth; and once, just before it was swallowed
+up in a rain squall, it seemed about to spill out its human contents.
+
+After that Jerry had no way of knowing where the car was except by means
+of the cable. This he watched keenly as it glided around the drum.
+"Three hundred feet," he breathed to himself, as the cable markings went
+by, "three hundred and fifty, four hundred; four hundred and----"
+
+The cable had stopped. Jerry threw off the brake, but it did not move.
+He caught the cable with his hands and tried to start it by tugging
+smartly. Something had gone wrong. What? He could not guess; he could
+not see. Looking up, he could vaguely make out the empty car, which had
+been crossing from the opposite cliff at a speed equal to that of the
+loaded car. It was about two hundred and fifty feet away. That meant, he
+knew, that somewhere in the gray obscurity, two hundred feet above the
+river and two hundred and fifty feet from the other bank, Spillane and
+his wife were suspended and stationary.
+
+Three times Jerry shouted with all the shrill force of his lungs, but no
+answering cry came out of the storm. It was impossible for him to hear
+them or to make himself heard. As he stood for a moment, thinking
+rapidly, the flying clouds seemed to thin and lift. He caught a brief
+glimpse of the swollen Sacramento beneath, and a briefer glimpse of the
+car and the man and woman. Then the clouds descended thicker than ever.
+
+The boy examined the drum closely, and found nothing the matter with it.
+Evidently it was the drum on the other side that had gone wrong. He was
+appalled at the thought of the man and woman out there in the midst of
+the storm, hanging over the abyss, rocking back and forth in the frail
+car and ignorant of what was taking place on shore. And he did not like
+to think of their hanging there while he went round by the Yellow Dragon
+cable to the other drum.
+
+But he remembered a block and tackle in the tool-house, and ran and
+brought it. They were double blocks, and he murmured aloud, "A purchase
+of four," as he made the tackle fast to the endless cable. Then he
+heaved upon it, heaved until it seemed that his arms were being drawn
+out from their sockets and that his shoulder muscles would be ripped
+asunder. Yet the cable did not budge. Nothing remained but to cross over
+to the other side.
+
+He was already soaking wet, so he did not mind the rain as he ran over
+the trail to the Yellow Dragon. The storm was with him, and it was easy
+going, although there was no Hall at the other end of it to man the
+brake for him and regulate the speed of the car. This he did for
+himself, however, by means of a stout rope, which he passed, with a
+turn, round the stationary cable.
+
+As the full force of the wind struck him in mid-air, swaying the cable
+and whistling and roaring past it, and rocking and careening the car, he
+appreciated more fully what must be the condition of mind of Spillane
+and his wife. And this appreciation gave strength to him, as, safely
+across, he fought his way up the other bank, in the teeth of the gale,
+to the Yellow Dream cable.
+
+To his consternation, he found the drum in thorough working order.
+Everything was running smoothly at both ends. Where was the hitch? In
+the middle, without a doubt.
+
+From this side, the car containing Spillane was only two hundred and
+fifty feet away. He could make out the man and woman through the
+whirling vapor, crouching in the bottom of the car and exposed to the
+pelting rain and the full fury of the wind. In a lull between the
+squalls he shouted to Spillane to examine the trolley of the car.
+
+Spillane heard, for he saw him rise up cautiously on his knees, and with
+his hands go over both trolley-wheels. Then he turned his face toward
+the bank.
+
+"She's all right, kid!"
+
+Jerry heard the words, faint and far, as from a remote distance. Then
+what was the matter? Nothing remained but the other and empty car, which
+he could not see, but which he knew to be there, somewhere in that
+terrible gulf two hundred feet beyond Spillane's car.
+
+His mind was made up on the instant. He was only fourteen years old,
+slightly and wirily built; but his life had been lived among the
+mountains, his father had taught him no small measure of "sailoring,"
+and he was not particularly afraid of heights.
+
+In the tool-box by the drum he found an old monkey-wrench and a short
+bar of iron, also a coil of fairly new Manila rope. He looked in vain
+for a piece of board with which to rig a "boatswain's chair." There was
+nothing at hand but large planks, which he had no means of sawing, so he
+was compelled to do without the more comfortable form of saddle.
+
+The saddle he rigged was very simple. With the rope he made merely a
+large loop round the stationary cable, to which hung the empty car. When
+he sat in the loop his hands could just reach the cable conveniently,
+and where the rope was likely to fray against the cable he lashed his
+coat, in lieu of the old sack he would have used had he been able to
+find one.
+
+These preparations swiftly completed, he swung out over the chasm,
+sitting in the rope saddle and pulling himself along the cable by his
+hands. With him he carried the monkey-wrench and short iron bar and a
+few spare feet of rope. It was a slightly up-hill pull, but this he did
+not mind so much as the wind. When the furious gusts hurled him back and
+forth, sometimes half twisting him about, and he gazed down into the
+gray depths, he was aware that he was afraid. It was an old cable. What
+if it should break under his weight and the pressure of the wind?
+
+It was fear he was experiencing, honest fear, and he knew that there was
+a "gone" feeling in the pit of his stomach, and a trembling of the knees
+which he could not quell.
+
+But he held himself bravely to the task. The cable was old and worn,
+sharp pieces of wire projected from it, and his hands were cut and
+bleeding by the time he took his first rest, and held a shouted
+conversation with Spillane. The car was directly beneath him and only a
+few feet away, so he was able to explain the condition of affairs and
+his errand.
+
+"Wish I could help you," Spillane shouted at him as he started on, "but
+the wife's gone all to pieces! Anyway, kid, take care of yourself! I got
+myself in this fix, but it's up to you to get me out!"
+
+"Oh, I'll do it!" Jerry shouted back. "Tell Mrs. Spillane that she'll be
+ashore now in a jiffy!"
+
+In the midst of pelting rain, which half-blinded him, swinging from side
+to side like a rapid and erratic pendulum, his torn hands paining him
+severely and his lungs panting from his exertions and panting from the
+very air which the wind sometimes blew into his mouth with strangling
+force, he finally arrived at the empty car.
+
+A single glance showed him that he had not made the dangerous journey in
+vain. The front trolley-wheel, loose from long wear, had jumped the
+cable, and the cable was now jammed tightly between the wheel and the
+sheave-block.
+
+One thing was clear--the wheel must be removed from the block. A second
+thing was equally clear--while the wheel was being removed the car would
+have to be fastened to the cable by the rope he had brought.
+
+At the end of a quarter of an hour, beyond making the car secure, he had
+accomplished nothing. The key which bound the wheel on its axle was
+rusted and jammed. He hammered at it with one hand and held on the best
+he could with the other, but the wind persisted in swinging and twisting
+his body, and made his blows miss more often than not. Nine-tenths of
+the strength he expended was in trying to hold himself steady. For fear
+that he might drop the monkey-wrench he made it fast to his wrist with
+his handkerchief.
+
+At the end of half an hour Jerry had hammered the key clear, but he
+could not draw it out. A dozen times it seemed that he must give up in
+despair, that all the danger and toil he had gone through were for
+nothing. Then an idea came to him, and he went through his pockets with
+feverish haste, and found what he sought--a ten-penny nail.
+
+But for that nail, put in his pocket he knew not when or why, he would
+have had to make another trip over the cable and back. Thrusting the
+nail through the looped head of the key, he at last had a grip, and in
+no time the key was out.
+
+Then came punching and prying with the iron bar to get the wheel itself
+free from where it was jammed by the cable against the side of the
+block. After that Jerry replaced the wheel, and by means of the rope,
+heaved up on the car till the trolley once more rested properly on the
+cable.
+
+All this took time. More than an hour and a half had elapsed since his
+arrival at the empty car. And now, for the first time, he dropped out of
+his saddle and down into the car. He removed the detaining ropes, and
+the trolley-wheel began slowly to revolve. The car was moving, and he
+knew that somewhere beyond, although he could not see, the car of
+Spillane was likewise moving, and in the opposite direction.
+
+There was no need for a brake, for his weight sufficiently
+counterbalanced the weight in the other car; and soon he saw the cliff
+rising out of the cloud depths and the old familiar drum going round and
+round.
+
+Jerry climbed out and made the car securely fast. He did it deliberately
+and carefully, and then, quite unhero-like, he sank down by the drum,
+regardless of the pelting storm, and burst out sobbing.
+
+There were many reasons why he sobbed--partly from the pain of his hand,
+which was excruciating; partly from exhaustion; partly from relief and
+release from the nerve-tension he had been under for so long; and in a
+large measure for thankfulness that the man and woman were saved.
+
+They were not there to thank him; but somewhere beyond that howling,
+storm-driven gulf he knew they were hurrying over the trail toward the
+Clover Leaf.
+
+Jerry staggered to the cabin, and his hand left the white knob red with
+blood as he opened the door, but he took no notice of it.
+
+He was too proudly contented with himself, for he was certain that he
+had done well, and he was honest enough to admit to himself that he had
+done well. But a small regret arose and persisted in his thoughts--if
+his father had only been there to see!
+
+
+
+
+IN YEDDO BAY
+
+
+Somewhere along Theater Street he had lost it. He remembered being
+hustled somewhat roughly on the bridge over one of the canals that cross
+that busy thoroughfare. Possibly some slant-eyed, light-fingered
+pickpocket was even then enjoying the fifty-odd yen his purse had
+contained. And then again, he thought, he might have lost it himself,
+just lost it carelessly.
+
+Hopelessly, and for the twentieth time, he searched in all his pockets
+for the missing purse. It was not there. His hand lingered in his empty
+hip-pocket, and he woefully regarded the voluble and vociferous
+restaurant-keeper, who insanely clamored: "Twenty-five sen! You pay now!
+Twenty-five sen!"
+
+"But my purse!" the boy said. "I tell you I've lost it somewhere."
+
+Whereupon the restaurant-keeper lifted his arms indignantly and
+shrieked: "Twenty-five sen! Twenty-five sen! You pay now!"
+
+Quite a crowd had collected, and it was growing embarrassing for Alf
+Davis.
+
+It was so ridiculous and petty, Alf thought. Such a disturbance about
+nothing! And, decidedly, he must be doing something. Thoughts of diving
+wildly through that forest of legs, and of striking out at whomsoever
+opposed him, flashed through his mind; but, as though divining his
+purpose, one of the waiters, a short and chunky chap with an
+evil-looking cast in one eye, seized him by the arm.
+
+"You pay now! You pay now! Twenty-five sen!" yelled the proprietor,
+hoarse with rage.
+
+Alf was red in the face, too, from mortification; but he resolutely set
+out on another exploration. He had given up the purse, pinning his last
+hope on stray coins. In the little change-pocket of his coat he found a
+ten-sen piece and five-copper sen; and remembering having recently
+missed a ten-sen piece, he cut the seam of the pocket and resurrected
+the coin from the depths of the lining. Twenty-five sen he held in his
+hand, the sum required to pay for the supper he had eaten. He turned
+them over to the proprietor, who counted them, grew suddenly calm, and
+bowed obsequiously--in fact, the whole crowd bowed obsequiously and
+melted away.
+
+Alf Davis was a young sailor, just turned sixteen, on board the _Annie
+Mine_, an American sailing-schooner, which had run into Yokohama to ship
+its season's catch of skins to London. And in this, his second trip
+ashore, he was beginning to snatch his first puzzling glimpses of the
+Oriental mind. He laughed when the bowing and kotowing was over, and
+turned on his heel to confront another problem. How was he to get aboard
+ship? It was eleven o'clock at night, and there would be no ship's boats
+ashore, while the outlook for hiring a native boatman, with nothing but
+empty pockets to draw upon, was not particularly inviting.
+
+Keeping a sharp lookout for shipmates, he went down to the pier. At
+Yokohama there are no long lines of wharves. The shipping lies out at
+anchor, enabling a few hundred of the short-legged people to make a
+livelihood by carrying passengers to and from the shore.
+
+A dozen sampan men and boys hailed Alf and offered their services. He
+selected the most favorable-looking one, an old and beneficent-appearing
+man with a withered leg. Alf stepped into his sampan and sat down. It
+was quite dark and he could not see what the old fellow was doing,
+though he evidently was doing nothing about shoving off and getting
+under way. At last he limped over and peered into Alf's face.
+
+"Ten sen," he said.
+
+"Yes, I know, ten sen," Alf answered carelessly. "But hurry up. American
+schooner."
+
+"Ten sen. You pay now," the old fellow insisted.
+
+Alf felt himself grow hot all over at the hateful words "pay now." "You
+take me to American schooner; then I pay," he said.
+
+But the man stood up patiently before him, held out his hand, and said,
+"Ten sen. You pay now."
+
+Alf tried to explain. He had no money. He had lost his purse. But he
+would pay. As soon as he got aboard the American schooner, then he would
+pay. No; he would not even go aboard the American schooner. He would
+call to his shipmates, and they would give the sampan man the ten sen
+first. After that he would go aboard. So it was all right, of course.
+
+To all of which the beneficent-appearing old man replied: "You pay now.
+Ten sen." And, to make matters worse, the other sampan men squatted on
+the pier steps, listening.
+
+Alf, chagrined and angry, stood up to step ashore. But the old fellow
+laid a detaining hand on his sleeve. "You give shirt now. I take you
+'Merican schooner," he proposed.
+
+Then it was that all of Alf's American independence flamed up in his
+breast. The Anglo-Saxon has a born dislike of being imposed upon, and to
+Alf this was sheer robbery! Ten sen was equivalent to six American
+cents, while his shirt, which was of good quality and was new, had cost
+him two dollars.
+
+He turned his back on the man without a word, and went out to the end of
+the pier, the crowd, laughing with great gusto, following at his heels.
+The majority of them were heavy-set, muscular fellows, and the July
+night being one of sweltering heat, they were clad in the least possible
+raiment. The water-people of any race are rough and turbulent, and it
+struck Alf that to be out at midnight on a pier-end with such a crowd of
+wharfmen, in a big Japanese city, was not as safe as it might be.
+
+One burly fellow, with a shock of black hair and ferocious eyes, came
+up. The rest shoved in after him to take part in the discussion.
+
+"Give me shoes," the man said. "Give me shoes now. I take you 'Merican
+schooner."
+
+Alf shook his head, whereat the crowd clamored that he accept the
+proposal. Now the Anglo-Saxon is so constituted that to browbeat or
+bully him is the last way under the sun of getting him to do any certain
+thing. He will dare willingly, but he will not permit himself to be
+driven. So this attempt of the boatmen to force Alf only aroused all the
+dogged stubbornness of his race. The same qualities were in him that are
+in men who lead forlorn hopes; and there, under the stars, on the lonely
+pier, encircled by the jostling and shouldering gang, he resolved that
+he would die rather than submit to the indignity of being robbed of a
+single stitch of clothing. Not value, but principle, was at stake.
+
+Then somebody thrust roughly against him from behind. He whirled about
+with flashing eyes, and the circle involuntarily gave ground. But the
+crowd was growing more boisterous. Each and every article of clothing he
+had on was demanded by one or another, and these demands were shouted
+simultaneously at the tops of very healthy lungs.
+
+Alf had long since ceased to say anything, but he knew that the
+situation was getting dangerous, and that the only thing left to him was
+to get away. His face was set doggedly, his eyes glinted like points of
+steel, and his body was firmly and confidently poised. This air of
+determination sufficiently impressed the boatmen to make them give way
+before him When he started to walk toward the shore-end of the pier. But
+they trooped along beside more noisily than ever. One of the youngsters
+about Alf's size and build, impudently snatched his cap from his head;
+and before he could put it on his own head, Alf struck out from the
+shoulder, and sent the fellow rolling on the stones.
+
+The cap flew out of his hand and disappeared among the many legs. Alf
+did some quick thinking, his sailor pride would not permit him to leave
+the cap in their hands. He followed in the direction it had sped, and
+soon found it under the bare foot of a stalwart fellow, who kept his
+weight stolidly upon it. Alf tried to get the cap by a sudden jerk, but
+failed. He shoved against the man's leg, but the man only grunted. It
+was challenge direct, and Alf accepted it. Like a flash one leg was
+behind the man and Alf had thrust strongly with his shoulder against the
+fellow's chest. Nothing could save the man from the fierce vigorousness
+of the trick, and he was hurled over and backward.
+
+Next, the cap was on Alf's head and his fists were up before him. Then
+he whirled about to prevent attack from behind, and all those in that
+quarter fled precipitately. This was what he wanted. None remained
+between him and the shore end. The pier was narrow. Facing them and
+threatening with his fist those who attempted to pass him on either
+side, he continued his retreat. It was exciting work, walking backward
+and at the same time checking that surging mass of men. But the
+dark-skinned peoples, the world over, have learned to respect the white
+man's fist; and it was the battles fought by many sailors, more than his
+own warlike front, that gave Alf the victory.
+
+Where the pier adjoins the shore was the station of the harbor police,
+and Alf backed into the electric-lighted office, very much to the
+amusement of the dapper lieutenant in charge. The sampan men, grown
+quiet and orderly, clustered like flies by the open door, through which
+they could see and hear what passed.
+
+Alf explained his difficulty in few words, and demanded, as the
+privilege of a stranger in a strange land, that the lieutenant put him
+aboard in the police-boat. The lieutenant, in turn, who knew all the
+"rules and regulations" by heart, explained that the harbor police were
+not ferrymen, and that the police-boats had other functions to perform
+than that of transporting belated and penniless sailormen to their
+ships. He also said he knew the sampan men to be natural-born robbers,
+but that so long as they robbed within the law he was powerless. It was
+their right to collect fares in advance, and who was he to command them
+to take a passenger and collect fare at the journey's end? Alf
+acknowledged the justice of his remarks, but suggested that while he
+could not command he might persuade. The lieutenant was willing to
+oblige, and went to the door, from where he delivered a speech to the
+crowd. But they, too, knew their rights, and, when the officer had
+finished, shouted in chorus their abominable "Ten sen! You pay now! You
+pay now!"
+
+"You see, I can do nothing," said the lieutenant, who, by the way, spoke
+perfect English. "But I have warned them not to harm or molest you, so
+you will be safe, at least. The night is warm and half over. Lie down
+somewhere and go to sleep. I would permit you to sleep here in the
+office, were it not against the rules and regulations."
+
+Alf thanked him for his kindness and courtesy; but the sampan men had
+aroused all his pride of race and doggedness, and the problem could not
+be solved that way. To sleep out the night on the stones was an
+acknowledgment of defeat.
+
+"The sampan men refuse to take me out?"
+
+The lieutenant nodded.
+
+"And you refuse to take me out?"
+
+Again the lieutenant nodded.
+
+"Well, then, it's not in the rules and regulations that you can prevent
+my taking myself out?"
+
+The lieutenant was perplexed. "There is no boat," he said.
+
+"That's not the question," Alf proclaimed hotly. "If I take myself out,
+everybody's satisfied and no harm done?"
+
+"Yes; what you say is true," persisted the puzzled lieutenant. "But you
+cannot take yourself out."
+
+"You just watch me," was the retort.
+
+Down went Alf's cap on the office floor. Right and left he kicked off
+his low-cut shoes. Trousers and shirt followed.
+
+"Remember," he said in ringing tones, "I, as a citizen of the United
+States, shall hold you, the city of Yokohama, and the government of
+Japan responsible for those clothes. Good night."
+
+He plunged through the doorway, scattering the astounded boatmen to
+either side, and ran out on the pier. But they quickly recovered and ran
+after him, shouting with glee at the new phase the situation had taken
+on. It was a night long remembered among the water-folk of Yokohama
+town. Straight to the end Alf ran, and, without pause, dived off cleanly
+and neatly into the water. He struck out with a lusty, single-overhand
+stroke till curiosity prompted him to halt for a moment. Out of the
+darkness, from where the pier should be, voices were calling to him.
+
+He turned on his back, floated, and listened.
+
+"All right! All right!" he could distinguish from the babel. "No pay
+now; pay bime by! Come back! Come back now; pay bime by!"
+
+"No, thank you," he called back. "No pay at all. Good night."
+
+Then he faced about in order to locate the _Annie Mine_. She was fully a
+mile away, and in the darkness it was no easy task to get her bearings.
+First, he settled upon a blaze of lights which he knew nothing but a
+man-of-war could make. That must be the United States war-ship
+_Lancaster_. Somewhere to the left and beyond should be the _Annie
+Mine_. But to the left he made out three lights close together. That
+could not be the schooner. For the moment he was confused. He rolled
+over on his back and shut his eyes, striving to construct a mental
+picture of the harbor as he had seen it in daytime. With a snort of
+satisfaction he rolled back again. The three lights evidently belonged
+to the big English tramp steamer. Therefore the schooner must lie
+somewhere between the three lights and the _Lancaster_. He gazed long
+and steadily, and there, very dim and low, but at the point he expected,
+burned a single light--the anchor-light of the _Annie Mine_.
+
+And it was a fine swim under the starshine. The air was warm as the
+water, and the water as warm as tepid milk. The good salt taste of it
+was in his mouth, the tingling of it along his limbs; and the steady
+beat of his heart, heavy and strong, made him glad for living.
+
+But beyond being glorious the swim was uneventful. On the right hand he
+passed the many-lighted _Lancaster_, on the left hand the English tramp,
+and ere long the _Annie Mine_ loomed large above him. He grasped the
+hanging rope-ladder and drew himself noiselessly on deck. There was no
+one in sight. He saw a light in the galley, and knew that the captain's
+son, who kept the lonely anchor-watch, was making coffee. Alf went
+forward to the forecastle. The men were snoring in their bunks, and in
+that confined space the heat seemed to him insufferable. So he put on a
+thin cotton shirt and a pair of dungaree trousers, tucked blanket and
+pillow under his arm, and went up on deck and out on the
+forecastle-head.
+
+Hardly had he begun to doze when he was roused by a boat coming
+alongside and hailing the anchor-watch. It was the police-boat, and to
+Alf it was given to enjoy the excited conversation that ensued. Yes, the
+captain's son recognized the clothes. They belonged to Alf Davis, one of
+the seamen. What had happened? No; Alf Davis had not come aboard. He was
+ashore. He was not ashore? Then he must be drowned. Here both the
+lieutenant and the captain's son talked at the same time, and Alf could
+make out nothing. Then he heard them come forward and rouse out the
+crew. The crew grumbled sleepily and said that Alf Davis was not in the
+forecastle; whereupon the captain's son waxed indignant at the Yokohama
+police and their ways, and the lieutenant quoted rules and regulations
+in despairing accents.
+
+Alf rose up from the forecastle-head and extended his hand, saying:
+
+"I guess I'll take those clothes. Thank you for bringing them aboard so
+promptly."
+
+"I don't see why he couldn't have brought you aboard inside of them,"
+said the captain's son.
+
+And the police lieutenant said nothing, though he turned the clothes
+over somewhat sheepishly to their rightful owner.
+
+The next day, when Alf started to go ashore, he found himself surrounded
+by shouting and gesticulating, though very respectful, sampan men, all
+extraordinarily anxious to have him for a passenger. Nor did the one he
+selected say, "You pay now," when he entered his boat. When Alf prepared
+to step out on to the pier, he offered the man the customary ten sen.
+But the man drew himself up and shook his head.
+
+"You all right," he said. "You no pay. You never no pay. You bully boy
+and all right."
+
+And for the rest of the _Annie Mine's_ stay in port, the sampan men
+refused money at Alf Davis's hand. Out of admiration for his pluck and
+independence, they had given him the freedom of the harbor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 5, "spice" changed to "splice" (reef und splice)
+
+Page 35, "undego" changed to "undergo" (undergo with one's)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Stories of Ships and the Sea, by Jack London
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