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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57910 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "An' the bridal couple 'd be holdin' hands an' gazin'
+over the spanker-boom at the full moon." [Page 242.]]
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING FREE
+
+BY
+
+JAMES B. CONNOLLY
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+NEW YORK ::::::::::::::::::::: 1917
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1913, 1915, 1917, BY
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+  Published September, 1917
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1912, 1913, 1917, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON, INCORPORATED
+  COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+The Strategists
+
+The Weeping Annie
+
+The Bull-Fight
+
+A Bale of Blankets
+
+Breath o' Dawn
+
+Peter Stops Ashore
+
+The Sea-Birds
+
+The Medicine Ship
+
+One Wireless Night
+
+Dan Magee: White Hope
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"An' the bridal couple'd be holdin' hands an' gazin' over the
+spanker-boom at the full moon" Frontispiece
+
+"All stand clear of the main entrance"
+
+"It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight"
+
+It took till the daylight was all but gone before I knocked him down
+for the last time
+
+"You doubted my courage, maybe?" I asked
+
+"'Quiscanto vascamo mirajjar,' which is Yunzano for 'I am satisfied, I
+can now die happy'"
+
+
+
+
+The Strategists
+
+I arrived in Santacruz in the early evening, and as I stepped out of
+the carriage with the children the majordomo came rushing out from
+under the hotel portales and said: "Meesus Trench, is it?  Your suite
+awaits, madam.  The Lieutenant Trench from the American warship has
+ordered, madam."
+
+There was a girl, not too young, sitting over at a small table, and at
+the name Trench, pronounced in the round voice of the majordomo,
+she--well, she was sitting by herself, smoking a cigarette, and I did
+not know why she should smile and look at me--in just that way, I mean.
+But I can muster some poise of manner myself when I choose--I looked at
+her.  And she looked me over and smiled again.  And I did not like that
+smile.  It was as if--as Ned would say--she had something on me.
+
+She and I were to be enemies--already I saw that.  She was making smoke
+rings, and she never hurried the making of a single one of them as she
+looked at me; nor did I hurry a particle the ushering of the two
+children and the maid into the hotel.  But I did ask, after I had
+greeted Nan and her mother inside: "Auntie--or you, Nan--who is the
+oleander blossom smoking the cigarette out under the portales?"
+
+It spoke volumes to me that Nan and her mother, without looking, at
+once knew whom I meant.  She was the Carmen Whiffle of whom nearly
+every other American woman waiting to be taken home on the next
+transport had been whispering--and not always whispering--for weeks in
+Santacruz.
+
+Nan, of course, had a good word for her.  Is there a living creature on
+earth she wouldn't?  "I think she is wonderfully good-looking," said
+Nan.
+
+"No woman with a jaw like that," said Nan's mother, "can be
+good-looking.  And she sat at the piano there early this evening and
+raved over the 'Melody in F'; but when she tried to play it, it was
+with fingers of wood.  What she really did play with spirit,
+Nettie--when she thought there were none of us American women around to
+hear her--was: 'I Want What I Want When I Want _It_.'"
+
+Auntie went on to tell then how this creature was a divorcee who had
+married an oil millionaire and within six months got her second divorce
+and a half-million alimony out of him.  And as a baby she was
+christened--not Carmen, but Hannah!  "Now, what's the psychology,
+Nettie," said auntie, "of a woman who changes her name from Hannah to
+Carmen?  She wants what she wants when she wants it--and she'll come
+pretty near getting it, Nettie.  If I had a husband within a thousand
+miles of her, I'd lock him up."
+
+You may understand from the foregoing that Mrs. Wedner--Nan's
+mother--is a woman of convictions; and so she is.  The Lady with the
+Wallop is what Ned tells me the men folks call her.  But I am not
+without convictions myself.
+
+"I have a husband within a thousand miles of her," I said, "and if you
+mean that for me, auntie, I won't lock him up--not even if he were the
+to-be-locked-up kind.  When I can't hold my man, auntie, against any
+specimen of her species, I won't call in the police to help me.  And I
+think I'll give her another look-over before the evening is ended."
+
+"Don't bother your head with her," said auntie.  "And sit down and have
+something to eat."  And we did have something to eat, but up-stairs in
+my suite.
+
+The children and I were eating, and Nan and auntie were giving me all
+the gossip since I'd seen them last, when the maid came in to say that
+the trunk with the children's things in it hadn't been sent up with the
+others.  There's no use leaving such things to a maid in those
+countries--I went down to see about it myself; and there it was, as I
+expected, lying in the lobby where a lazy porter hadn't yet got around
+to it.
+
+I told the fat majordomo a thing or two, and the trunk was soon on its
+upward way; and then--as I was down-stairs--I thought to take a glance
+about to see if anybody I knew had arrived in the meantime.  You must
+remember that American refugees were coming in from the interior on
+every train, the revolutionary general Podesta being expected to enter
+the city almost any day--or hour.
+
+I saw the back of a man's head, and I said to myself: "If that isn't
+Larry Trench's head as anything on earth can be!"--the shapely,
+overhanging back head and the uncrushable hair that went with it.
+There was a row of palmettos in tubs, and I walked around to make
+certain.  It was Larry.  And he was with a young woman.  And the young
+woman was Carmen Whiffle, and her heavy-lashed agate eyes were gazing
+into the steady, deep-set, blue-green eyes of Larry.  One look was all
+I needed to know what that lady's intentions were in the present case.
+"So!" I said to myself--"that's what you meant when you smiled at the
+name Trench?  Perhaps you thought Larry was my husband!"
+
+Now, I hadn't seen a single officer or man of our ships on my way from
+the station, nor while I had been down-stairs with Nan and auntie
+earlier.  Which was significant in itself, for a fleet of our
+battleships were anchored in the harbor, my Ned's among them.  I looked
+around now.  No, there wasn't one officer of ours in the dining-room,
+nor in the plaza outside.  So what was Larry, a young officer of our
+marine corps, doing all by himself ashore?
+
+And Larry was my Ned's young brother and my own little Neddo's
+godfather, and long ago I had decided that Larry should marry my own
+chum and cousin Nan, the very best girl that ever lived.  And--well, if
+ever a woman looked like the newspaper photographs of the other woman
+of a dozen celebrated cases, Carmen Whiffle was that woman.
+
+I stood there at the end of that row of palmettos, hesitating; and
+while I hesitated the orchestra struck up, and I saw the lady lead
+Larry out for a dance.
+
+I did not have to see Carmen Whiffle dance to know that she could
+dance.  If they never learn to do anything else on earth, women of her
+kind do learn to dance.  All women who have men in their minds learn to
+dance.  She could dance.  If I had never seen her lift a toe off the
+floor, the lines of her figure were there to prove that she could
+dance.  But she lifted her toe.  More than her toe.  She danced--I have
+to give her credit for it--with grace; and after she warmed up to it,
+not only with grace but with abandon; with so much abandon that all the
+other women who were trying to dance with abandon ceased their feeble
+efforts and stood against the wall to watch her.
+
+After that dance Carmen Whiffle never had another chance with me.  I
+almost ran up to my room.  Little Anna was already asleep; but Neddo,
+aged six, was wide-awake.  Nan and her mother had gone to their room,
+which was across the hall on the same floor.
+
+"Neddo, dear, do you know your uncle Larry is down-stains?" I asked him.
+
+"Oh-h, mummie!" he cried, and came leaping out of his cot bed.  "I must
+see him, mummie!"
+
+"I'm going to let you go down-stairs all by yourself, Neddo, and see
+him.  And then be sure to bring him up here, to have a look at sister.
+And then be sure to take him to the balcony at the end of the hallway
+and tell him to draw the lattices and wait there.  It's to be a
+surprise, Neddo, tell him; but not a single word more than that."
+
+I waited two minutes or so, and then followed Neddo.  I was in time to
+see Neddo throw himself at Larry, and wrap his arms around his neck and
+smother him with kisses.  "Uncle Larry!  O Uncle Larry!  Come and see
+who's up-stairs!  No telling, you know!"
+
+From where I was, on the screened balcony overlooking the
+lounging-room, I needed no ship's spy-glass to read the suspicion in
+Carmen Whiffle's eyes when she looked at little Neddo.  I do believe
+she could even suspect that innocent, affectionate child with playing a
+game.
+
+The tears were in Larry's eyes.  "My godson, my brother's boy," he
+explained.  "If you don't mind my running away for a few minutes, Miss
+Whiffle, I'll hurry back.  I'll explain to Neddo's mother that you are
+waiting and hurry right back."
+
+"Don't explain anything," said Miss Whiffle, just a bit tartly.  "Never
+mind any explaining, but come back as soon as you can.  I shall be
+waiting here."
+
+Are you at all given to the habit of fancying in human beings the
+resemblance to different kinds of birds and beasts?  Looking down on
+Carmen Whiffle just then, I could see where, if her well-cushioned
+features were chiselled away, she would look startlingly like a hawk.
+
+I may be unjust, I know, but I was thinking of more than one thing just
+then.  I was thinking of what I read in Carmen Whiffle's glance and
+smile at me when I passed under the portales of that hotel that
+evening.  A devoted, slavish wife and mother was what she was thinking
+I was; and possibly I am.  But women of her kind are altogether too
+quick to think that the devoted wife and mother hasn't any brains.
+
+And more than all the brains in the world is the wisdom that comes of
+knowing men.  Carmen Whiffle may have known several men in her day; but
+if she did it was to know them incompletely; and to know any number of
+men incompletely is never truly to know any one, while to know one man
+well is to know many.  And when that one in my case was Larry's own
+brother, why, I wasn't worrying over a battle with Carmen Whiffle,
+superbly equipped though she doubtless thought herself.
+
+Ned and his brother Larry were natively pretty much alike; but my Ned
+was trained early in a rigid profession and early assumed the
+responsibilities of marriage and a home; and--he told me so more than
+once--so saved himself more than one drift to leeward.  It is no gain
+for us women to dodge facts in this life.  To a man with a conscience,
+a wife and two children are better than many windward anchors, as Ned
+would say.  Larry was Ned, minus the wife and two children, and plus a
+little more of youth and the not yet, perhaps, disciplined Trench
+temperament.
+
+And for every child a woman bears mark her up a decade of years in
+human wisdom.  And twice a decade in hardening resolution.  It had
+already become marble in me--my resolution to save from the talons of
+this hawk this brother of my Ned's--a twenty-five-year-old man of war
+according to stupid bureau files, but in reality a little child playing
+in the garden of life with never a thought of any bird of prey hovering
+in the air above him.
+
+I watched Larry go bounding up the wide staircase with Neddo, and then
+I waited long enough for them to get well out of sight ahead; for Neddo
+to lead his uncle up the second flight, to show him baby in her bed
+asleep; and Larry--I could picture him--time to stoop over and kiss the
+dear, warm, plump little face.
+
+"And now you must hide--I'll show you, Uncle Larry--till mummie comes,"
+said Neddo, and led him back to the hall and onto the balcony, which
+looked down on the patio of the hotel.  And there Neddo left him, after
+closing him in behind the lattice, as I had told him.
+
+I then went to get Nan, who had been sentenced to read her mother to
+sleep with something out of Trollope.  Nan's mother carried volumes of
+Trollope with her as other women carry hot-water bottles.  Twenty
+minutes of dear old Trollope and she was good for her eight hours'
+sleep, she would say, as she did now; but this time without keeping Nan
+twenty minutes.
+
+"Nettie, the way you go around commandeering people, you ought to be a
+general in the army," said auntie, but with perfect good nature.  "Go
+along with her, Nan."
+
+I led Nan to where Neddo was waiting in his crib.  "Did you tell Cousin
+Nan yet, mummie?" asked Neddo in what he thought was a whisper.
+
+"Tell me what, Neddo?" asked Nan.
+
+"Neddo!" I said, and raised a finger.  "Sh-h, Neddo!" and Neddo sh-h-d,
+and I led Nan into the hall.  "I'm dying to have a talk with you," I
+whispered to Nan--"out here, where Neddo won't be kept awake and the
+maid won't hear us."
+
+And so, just when Larry was, no doubt, thinking of breaking out of his
+hiding-place, he heard a door in the hall open, and through the slats
+of the lattice saw two women's shadowy forms tiptoeing down the hall
+toward his balcony.
+
+Nan went straight to the lattice.  "Let's let the air in, Nettie."
+
+"No, no, Nan," I cried, "don't throw open the lattice!"
+
+"Why not?" she asked, her hands on the latch.
+
+"Flying things!  Tropical night-birds!  Bats!"
+
+"Bats!  Ugh-h-h!" cried Nan, and let the lattice alone.
+
+"Let's sit here," I said, setting our chairs almost against the
+lattice.  Larry could not escape then if he wanted to, because it was a
+twenty-foot drop onto a lot of marble vases or the spiked edges of some
+cactus plants, and more than a twenty-foot drop to a marble walk or
+into the depths of some kind of a spouting fountain in the patio.
+
+He had to stay, and, being an officer and a gentleman, of course, he
+was trying not to hear; but the lattice slats were loose-fitting and we
+were sitting not two feet from them.
+
+"Where did you hear of Larry last, Nan?" I began.
+
+"Oh," said Nan, "I've been getting mamma to take all kinds of trips,
+Nettie, and every trip with the one idea of seeing Larry somewhere.
+Wherever I thought any of our war-ships came, there I'd specially get
+mamma to go.  I can draw a map of this coast-line with all its ports in
+their proper places with my eyes shut.  And the places in the different
+ports I've peeked into, Nettie!--knowing how curious Larry always was
+to see everything going on and hoping to run across him in that way.  I
+even got mamma to go to a bull-fight last Sunday."
+
+"A bull-fight, Nan!" I said.
+
+"Why not?" retorted Nan.  "In our country we have prize-fights.  And
+which is worse--for men to maul beasts or to maul each other?"
+
+"I know, Nan, but women who have seen them----"
+
+"I know, Nettie--and their writing articles of the horror of it, but
+always after they've satisfied their curiosity.  The curse of our
+training to-day, Nettie, is hypocrisy."
+
+Which was just like Nan--straight from the shoulder!  But we just have
+to restrain those headstrong ones.  "I wouldn't call it hypocrisy
+altogether, Nan," I said.
+
+"What else is it?  And what else was it when every old hen in our town
+went cackling from one house to another when the papers published that
+story about Larry losing so much money at cards one night?  And some of
+these same women not able to afford a second maid and even doing their
+own fine laundering in secret--some of them playing afternoon bridge,
+Nettie, for a half of a cent a point, and all kinds of signalling to
+win.  It just makes me sick.  How do we know how many of them wouldn't
+gamble away ten thousand dollars in one night if they had it?"
+
+And just then I heard "That's you, Nan!" in Larry's fervent voice, from
+behind the lattice.
+
+Nan leaped up.  I could feel her heart beating when she fell against
+me.  "Did you hear that, Nettie?"
+
+"I did hear something," I said--"a word from one of the cooks or maids
+down-stairs it must have been.  They take the air in the patio of an
+evening when their work is done.  Remember, voices carry far in the
+tropics--especially when it is damp."
+
+"I never knew that, Nettie," said innocent Nan--"that voices carry
+farther in the tropics.  And I'm sure it is clear and lovely out."  And
+she stood up to look through the lattice.
+
+Now, the best defense to an attack, Ned always told me, is another
+attack; so "But Larry did drink too much that time, Nan," I said.
+
+"Why, Nettie Trench--from you!" cried Nan, and plumped back into her
+chair.  "When did he drink too much?  Just once--when he knew so little
+of wine that he had no idea how much would upset him.  The trouble was
+that poor Larry never knew how to hide anything he ever did.  No
+hypocrisy in him at any rate.  And I'd a good deal rather have a man
+who did what Larry did, and own to it and be sorry right out, than a
+man that you never know when he is lying to you or not, or what he is
+likely to be doing when he is out of sight.  And he gave me his promise
+in a letter that he would never touch another card or drink another
+glass of wine until I said he might.  Mother wouldn't let me answer the
+letter.  And he guessed how it was, and I don't blame him for writing
+her as he did.  Mamma was too harsh.  She paid too much attention to
+town gossip, and I told her that.  And she said: 'I think, Nan, a
+little travelling and discipline won't hurt you one bit'; and then
+Larry went and got his appointment to the marine corps, thinking there
+might be a war and some fighting for him down in this country."
+
+Now, I always have held that women, even as men of any account, are
+never so attractive as when they throw aside all affectation and stand
+forth just as they are--that is, if they're wholesome and good to begin
+with; and no surer way to hold the right kind of a boy to the line than
+to let him know that the right girl has never lost faith in him.  But
+Nan was holding forth altogether too bravely--with the boy in the case
+so handy.  A few little reservations--a few--at this particular time, I
+thought, would do no harm.  And so "Sh-h, Nan!" I warned.
+
+"I won't sh-h, Nettie Trench.  It's so and you know it.  I hate
+superior people, Nettie.  Father always did, too.  And you know how he
+liked Larry.  Dear papa!  One night, Nettie--I was never so
+surprised--mamma all at once began to cry--imagine mamma crying!  She
+was crying for papa, who had to die, she said, before she could
+appreciate the gentleness and warm heart that was in him.  And papa
+always said that no kind of people go further to the bad than those who
+really think they're better than others.  He used to say that such
+beasts, for their punishment, ought to be forced to herd by themselves."
+
+I believe in what Nan said myself, but also, thinking of the wily woman
+waiting below, I decided that a little chastening of the spirit of
+rebellious girlhood would now be in order.  So I said: "But a long
+record of the human race, Nan, proves that if we do not intend to try
+to be better than the people we happen to be with, then we ought to
+take care whom we are with."
+
+"You and your sermons!" exclaimed Nan.  "Nettie, dear, talk _with_ me,
+not _at_ me.  Oh, Nettie"--Nan threw herself on my shoulders--"I never
+had a chance to tell him I'm not mad with him.  And I'm afraid he'll do
+something desperate.  And if they get to fighting down here, as
+everybody says, he will be killed!  He's that kind, Nettie--he will be
+killed!"
+
+"And isn't my Ned likely to be killed at all?" I said, beginning to get
+frightened too; and then, seeing her so tearful: "But it will be all
+right, dear--don't you worry."
+
+"But, Nettie, why shouldn't a woman let a man know--or give him a hint?
+'What!' says mamma to me, 'would you run after him?'  But why should I
+be afraid to let him know that I do care for him?"
+
+"I don't know why not, Nan.  It depends on the man, perhaps."
+
+"Did you ever let Ned know you cared for him before he asked--did you,
+Nettie?"
+
+She was so wistful I almost forgot Larry behind the lattice, but I
+caught myself in time.  "I hope, Nan Wedner, you don't think I proposed
+to him?"--that was with such dignity as I could quickly assume.
+
+"But, Nettie"--she switched her head on my shoulder--"do you suppose
+Ned knew, Nettie?"
+
+"I'm afraid," I sighed--I thought of Larry listening, but I had to tell
+her the truth--"he would have been dull not to guess it."
+
+"And Ned isn't dull, is he?" said Nan.
+
+"Ned dull!  I guess not!" I said.
+
+And while I stood with Nan tearful and discouraged against my shoulder,
+I could hear the patter of the fountain tinkling up from the patio, and
+the voices of men and girls, and the music of some kind of a native
+instrument; and the song was of home and love by a man to a girl.  And
+do you know?--no matter what we think of their politics and so
+on--those men down that country do seem to be able to put something
+terribly sad into their voices when they sing, and somebody somewhere
+has said that no man who loves but is more often sad than gay.  And it
+made no difference--it may have been some low-built kitchen girl he was
+singing to, and he one of the hotel porters loafing on his job--not a
+mite of difference.  The melody of it rose up and clutched me.  And Nan
+clinging to me--I could feel it clutching her, too.  And I knew that
+for Larry behind the lattice--it was hard work staying where he was;
+and as for myself--I hadn't seen my Ned in almost a year, and, thinking
+of Ned and his ways, I felt all at once terribly lonesome and like
+crying with Nan.  And then a vision of the arrogant beauty down-stairs
+came suddenly to my mind.  But now without my being so afraid.  It
+would be safe enough now, I thought, to have Larry and Nan meet in her
+presence.
+
+"Let us go down-stairs now, Nan," I said.  "We can look at the dancing.
+That Miss Whiffle, they say, is a wonderful dancer."
+
+"Yes, but let me look at the children again, Nettie," said Nan.  "I
+love to see them asleep.  Isn't it wonderful to you, Nettie, to think
+of your having children of your own--nobody else's but your own?"
+
+"And Ned's," I said.
+
+"Of course.  You wouldn't give them up for anything, would you, Nettie,
+in all the world?  Why, Nettie, I'd go down on my knees and scrub
+floors like the old women in the office-buildings every night of my
+life in thankfulness to have such lovely little babies of my own!"
+
+"Hush, Nan!" I said, thinking of Larry in hiding.
+
+"And Larry, Nettie--wouldn't Larry love to have children of his own!"
+
+Before she could say any more I hurried her away to look at the
+children, and also to give Larry time to make his escape.  And after
+Nan had cuddled them we headed for the stairs, I wondering just how I
+could let Larry see us after we got there.  And while descending the
+stairs we heard a rifle-shot, and another, and another, and then dozens
+of shots.
+
+"Podesta!  Podesta!" we heard everybody calling out then, and the
+waiters dashed from under the portales to the corner of the plaza to
+see what was doing.  And as we hurried downstairs we heard a
+voice--Larry's voice.
+
+"This plaza is about the best-lighted place in town," Larry was saying
+to a group of diners.  "The most exposed, but also the safest place--on
+the defense--in the city.  Whatever they decide to do to us here, at
+least we can see them coming to do it."
+
+The stout majordomo was standing near Larry.  "Truly, that is so," he
+said.
+
+"And these little marble-topped tables," said Larry, "won't be bad
+little defenses against their rifle fire.  We can set them up on edge
+between the columns of the portales.  And we will have our line of
+retreat open through these big doors, which we can close behind us, and
+so on in and back and up the stairs to the roof, if they're too strong
+and the women in danger.  Let's get busy with the tables now."
+
+Everybody began to clear the little tables by sweeping whatever was on
+them to the marble floor.  The majordomo cried out: "Careful, if you
+please, señors!"  But no one minded him, and everybody then began to
+pick up the marble-topped tables, Nan and I among them, and place them
+between the portales columns.
+
+Larry, if he saw us, paid no attention to us; neither did he pay any
+attention to Carmen Whiffle when she stood at his elbow.  "There's no
+changing nature, Nan," I said--"the male in war time is a warrior first
+and a lover afterward."
+
+"Would you want him not to be?" said Nan, who had dropped grabbing
+tables to stand off and admire Larry; and while she was at that, her
+mother, in a dressing-gown of a chocolate shade, came down the wide
+stairs.
+
+"Mamma, there's Larry--look!" cried Nan.  "And he won't pay the least
+attention to us!"
+
+"Why should he?" retorted auntie.  "He has his work before him.  Let
+him do it in peace."
+
+By this time the tables were all piled up as Larry had ordered, and
+half the women in the hotel were clustering around him.  You would
+think they had a special claim on him.  But he almost rudely waved them
+away; among them Carmen Whiffle, who retired, I was pleased to see, in
+some wonderment.
+
+"Good for you, Larry!" I said; but was myself shocked a moment later
+when he said, with both hands in the air warning us:
+"Mesdames--señoras, señoritas, ladies, demoiselles--there probably
+isn't the least danger, but no harm in standing clear.  You, Nettie,"
+he added, when I was going to rush over to him, in my pride to let the
+others know who he was and I was--"you, too, Nettie, same as the rest!"
+
+"Larry Trench, why, what--" I began, and "O Larry!" began Nan.
+
+"And you, Nan--you know I'm not allowed to speak to you," said Larry.
+"I promised your mother I wouldn't"; but he gave her a glance which
+sent her trembling up against me, murmuring: "O Nettie, Nettie, I'm so
+glad!"
+
+"And you, too, Mrs. Wedner," said Larry--"all stand clear of the main
+entrance.  Perhaps you'd all better go up a flight--yes, two flights,
+up out of the way--everybody!"  And he began shooing us all toward the
+stairs.
+
+[Illustration: "All stand clear of the main entrance."]
+
+"Why, Larry Trench!" I cried, "you'd think you'd been seeing us every
+day for the last year, instead----"
+
+"Don't be silly," said Nan's mother.  "He is right.  Ladies, I think we
+would all do well to follow Lieutenant Trench's instructions."  And she
+always did look the born leader--all we women followed her when she led
+the way up-stairs.
+
+But we did not go up any two flights.  At the head of the grand
+staircase we stopped, and there waited to see what would happen next.
+
+It soon happened.  A man looked through between the tables and chairs
+of the portales.  Larry invited him in.  He was one of Podesta's
+officers, and he came in with a pistol in his belt, but very polite;
+and Larry just as much so.  They talked, and were still talking, when
+we heard the tramping of men in shoes outside in the plaza, and then--I
+couldn't believe my eyes--when I took another look there was my own Ned
+in uniform; and he stepped past the chairs and tables to where Larry
+and the native officer were; and there was a palavering all around.
+And I felt pretty proud the way Ned could talk the lingo with so many
+looking on.
+
+"Ned, Ned!" I called out; and he heard me, but gave me a sign to be
+quiet with his hand behind his back.  And by and by Ned and Larry and
+the native officer marched out, and then we rushed to the windows of
+the rooms opening on the plaza, and we saw General Podesta order his
+men to march off; and as they did our bluejackets and marines stacked
+arms in the plaza, and then we knew everything was going to be all
+right.
+
+And Ned came back into the hotel with Larry to tell us that we need
+have no further fear--that Podesta's men were to leave the city; and
+Podesta came back and bowed to us, and said it was so.
+
+And we came running down the stairs, and some of those women there
+acted as if they would kiss Ned, but I soon let them know who I was,
+especially Carmen Whiffle, who, after looking in surprise at us, turned
+to Larry.  But auntie and Nan and Larry were already strolling over to
+the row of palmettos, at which Carmen Whiffle, tossing her head and
+swaying her waist like every Carmen of every Carmen opera I ever saw,
+walked over to where Podesta had sat down at a table by himself.
+
+"Will you tell me," I asked Ned on our way up-stairs, "how Larry ever
+came to know Carmen Whiffle?"
+
+"If there is a young officer in port who doesn't know Carmen Whiffle, I
+have not met him.  She takes care of that."
+
+"But he didn't have to talk with her by the hour--and dance with her."
+
+"In the service, Nettie," said Ned, "we sometimes have to find out
+things that have nothing to do with the main engine or the turret-guns.
+And Carmen Whiffle knows General Podesta very well.  And Larry, if
+somewhat young and innocent, is not without brains.  Now don't ask any
+more."
+
+And I did not; but I went on to tell Ned how I had planned the balcony
+interview.  Ned could not keep it to himself--he told auntie.
+
+"Yes," said auntie, when he had finished, "it was very clever.  Nettie
+always is.  My door was ajar when I saw Neddo running for down-stairs,
+and I stopped him to learn what in the world he was doing.  And he told
+me the secret that I wasn't to tell Nan."
+
+She is the most annoying woman.  "If you knew so much, why didn't you
+stop it?" I asked.
+
+"Why should I stop it?" she answered, with the most exasperating calm.
+"I always wanted Nan and Larry to marry.  But I always believed in a
+little discipline, too.  When young people have merely to cry for a
+thing to get it--it doesn't do them any lasting good."
+
+To escape the quizzical eyes of auntie, I looked back down the stairs;
+and if there weren't Carmen Whiffle and General Podesta sitting at a
+table and the fat majordomo himself opening a bottle of wine for them!
+
+"Well!" I gasped to Ned.
+
+"Yes," said Ned.  "The rumor is that she may be the Señora Podesta any
+time she pleases.  And if she had learned from Ned or some other
+indiscreet young or old officer that we were to land to-night--it would
+have saved Podesta from making a rather ridiculous entry into the city,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+"What a schemer!" I cried.
+
+"Yes," smiled Ned--"everybody schemers but our own selves.  I spoke a
+word to the flag-lieutenant to-day--he's a classmate--to put in a word
+for me for the landing party to the Old Man."
+
+"Your courage and your brains," I began--"or was it your knowledge of
+the language----"
+
+"The fleet," interrupted Ned, "is crowded with officers of courage and
+brains.  And I am not alone on the language end of it.  But I was the
+only officer with a wife and two children ashore.  And, as we hadn't
+seen each other for a year, the Old Man thought it mightn't be a bad
+idea for me to come ashore and have an eye out for them."
+
+By this time Nan and Larry had passed onto the latticed balcony, and
+Nan's mother to her room; and Ned was hugging Neddo and Anna together.
+
+"Perhaps," I said, "I'm not such a strategist after all!"
+
+"Nettie," said Ned, "cheer up.  You have your share of brains.  I, your
+husband, say it.  And if your husband admits it, it must be so.  But,
+Nettie dear, don't forget that here with the children is your bidding
+suit.  Lead the play up to the children, Nettie, and they will sure
+have to hold some cards to set you."
+
+"I haven't seen you in a year--go ahead and laugh at me," I said.  But
+I didn't care--he was my own Ned, and I had him, and told him so.
+
+"And haven't I you!" said Ned--and swept me with the children into his
+arms.
+
+And Nan and Larry were sitting out on the balcony--I could hear their
+murmuring voices through an open window; and from the patio below I
+could make out the tinkle of a fountain and some kind of a native
+instrument, and a voice chanting--not of pride or glory or riches, but
+of love--human, humble, eternal love.  And before I even knew I was
+crying Ned was kissing the tears from my eyes.
+
+
+
+
+The Weeping Annie
+
+We had a baby born, and when he was old enough to almost wiggle out of
+his baby-carriage the wife asks me if I didn't think it was time to
+consider seriously the future of my growing family.  Well, she pretty
+generally told me what I ought to do, and Wheezer Mills and Scoot
+Schulte had been writing to me to come on South and share what looked
+like a good prospect to them in the wrecking line.
+
+I went South, and even after I'd inspected what they'd picked up for a
+bargain I didn't reproach them; for, after all, what's an old wrecking
+tug beside two old friends?  The _Weeping Annie_ was her name, and she
+had her virtues, but not the kind to take to sea with you.
+
+We had great hopes that fall of what we would do in the _Annie_.  But
+luck was against us.  It turned out a clear, mild winter, with wrecks
+infrequent; so coming on to spring we swapped the _Annie_ for a
+self-propelling steam-lighter with a pile-driving attachment on the
+for'ard end, called the _Happy Day_.
+
+We warned the new owner of the _Annie_ to keep a sharp eye out for her
+little tricks, but he was a wise one and we were only a bunch of young
+fellows that maybe were willing to hustle, but in his eyes didn't know
+much.  The new owner only waved his hand and said: "You boys watch out
+for the _Happy_ and I will for the _Annie_."
+
+We already guessed the _Happy Day_ must have had her secret faults, but
+also we knew that if the _Annie_ hadn't sunk under us four or five
+times while we had her it was owing to Scoot and his Leakitis.  The
+first time we ever saw any of it was one morning in a pudding-dish on
+the galley-table while Scoot was gone up the street to get some bacon
+to go with eggs for breakfast.
+
+Wheezer noticed it before I did, and we thought it was some new kind of
+a breakfast-food, especially when a note alongside it in Scoot's
+writing said: "To be tried with one part milk."  We gave it two parts
+milk--we had milk aplenty--and sprinkled a little sugar over it.
+Scoot's idea was to calk it into any open seam and let the water coming
+in swell it up.  After it swelled up it would harden till it was like
+concrete.  But that wasn't explained to us till later.  It had reached
+the swelling-up stage in both our stomachs when Scoot came back with
+the bacon for breakfast.  "Heaven's greatest gift to sufferin'
+man--stomach-pumps!" said Wheezer when we were safe over it.
+
+But the chap that took over the _Annie_ didn't have any Scoot Schulte
+for a partner.  About a week after he got her from us he went down to
+the dock one morning to go aboard, but he didn't see her anywhere.  "I
+told 'em to have her here, six sharp!" he howls; "and here it's half
+past and no sign of her."  But the _Annie_ was there all the time, only
+she was resting on bottom with only the top of her smoke-stack sticking
+up, and he didn't know it was her smoke-stack.  While her crew was
+sleeping she'd been sinking.  The men in the top bunks got out almost
+in comfort, but the chaps in the lower bunks were breathing more water
+than air when they woke up; there was nobody drowned, though.  It seems
+the Leakitis stuff had to be reapplied about once a month or it would
+soften up and float away, but Scoot forgot to tell him that.
+
+We expected to do great things with the _Happy Day_ in the lighterage
+business; but there wasn't any lighterage business to do after we took
+her over.  After one month of it, with nothing but overhead charges, we
+were ready to quit.  I told Wheezer and Scoot to sell her for anything
+they could get and send me my share.  I was going North.  I'd never let
+on in my letters to my wife but what the prospects were fine, and she'd
+been writing me of an option she'd got on a nice little single house
+with a sun-parlor that would be great for the baby to play in, and I
+saw where it was up to me to get back to some regular work.  Besides,
+I'd been seven months away and I wanted to see for myself if the baby
+was actually walking.
+
+To save borrowing money for my passage North, I shipped for deck-hand
+on an oil-ship.  I wanted to ship for seaman, but I heard the skipper
+say to a man ahead of me: "I got all the seamen I need.  What I want is
+a couple of men to swab decks and look after paint and brass-work and
+so on--deck-hands----"
+
+He looked pretty sharp at me when I stepped up.
+
+"My last job," I said before he could get started, "was rustling
+freight on a harbor lighter," and I pointed out the _Happy Day_ to him
+across the harbor.  "Oh," he said, "that's all right.  Sign here."  So
+I signed there, for deck-hand on the oil-ship _Yucatan_, Clarence
+Judkins, master.
+
+Bayport wasn't a regular oil port, but a half-dozen trainloads of oil
+had been dumped in there to head off some of our war-ships on some
+manoeuvering cruise and hadn't headed 'em off; so now it was to be
+transshipped North.  After I'd signed on I came down aboard the _Happy
+Day_ to get my dunnage.
+
+"Judkins--Clarence Judkins, did you say, is the name o' the skipper o'
+that oil-tanker you're goin' on?" asks Wheezer.  "A well-set-up,
+handsome-lookin' guy, the kind to ketch a lady's eye an' lookin' like
+he believed in ketchin' 'em, an' a noily black piece o' whisker under
+his ears?  Yes?  Then," says Wheezer, "lemme tell you about that
+lad--Slick Clarence."
+
+Wheezer generally had the asthma, but the mild winter of the South had
+cleaned out his speaking-tubes, so that at this time he could talk
+fluently.  "Judkins used to go master o' big steam-yachts, but the last
+time I seen him I was workin' for a ship-buildin' concern on the
+Delaware, 'n' we was buildin' a big steam-yacht that Judkins was
+superintendin' the buildin' of for a mult-eye millionaire.  'Anything
+Captain Judkins wants let him have: anything he wants--anything and
+everything,' says the millionaire, who had plenty o' money an' was a
+good sport.  I'd like to been workin' for him myself.
+
+"When Clarence'd get a little wine in--he never touched no beer nor
+cheap stuff--he used to like to have people listen to him talk," goes
+on Wheezer.  'D'y' s'pose I'm goin' to be standin' around 'n' lookin'
+on at those rich loafers havin' everythin' good in life an' me pikin'
+along on a hundred an' seventy-five a month?  Not much!' says Clarence.
+'Imagine a man o' my class havin' to stand to attention to a gangway
+when some o' those fat-waisted mushrooms an' their families come
+puffin' over the side!  Look at me, that's got more brains 'n' looks,
+more class to me, than any owner ever I sailed out with--yeh, four
+times as much as most of 'em.  An' some of 'em--why, I wouldn't use
+some of 'em to swab the decks o' their own yachts!  Well, I might of
+their own yachts,' Clarence adds after a while, 'but not o' no yacht o'
+mine if I owned one.  An' maybe I will be ownin' one afore long,' he
+says.
+
+"An' he did.  Outer the extra stuff he ordered for the big steam-yacht
+he built a little steam-yacht for himself 'n' sold her to a party that
+never asked him how he come to be gettin' so fine a bargain for twenty
+thousand dollars.  So there's Slick Clarence Judkins," winds up
+Wheezer.  "An' will youse tell me what he's doin' master of a
+noil-tanker at a hundred an' fifty a month?"
+
+I couldn't tell him.  But it was time to show up aboard the oil-ship,
+and I did; and we lay in the harbor for two days, and when we did put
+out, it was in weather that any longshoreman could have told was going
+to be thick even if 'twouldn't be rough outside.  About forty miles to
+the east'ard of Bayport is Horseshoe Shoal.  In thick weather inbound
+vessels once in a while went enough out of their reckoning to fetch up
+there; but anything outbound generally gave it a wide berth, because
+there was no need to be cutting close to it.  It was a long sand-spit
+shoaling up so easy that in smooth weather a deep-draft ship could
+slide up on it while she was yet a long way from where any surf showed
+on it.
+
+In less than four hours out of Bayport the _Yucatan's_ bow fetches up
+nice and easy on Horseshoe and stays there.  It was thick by now, with
+no sea to speak of; but there was a long swell and we were deep loaded,
+which meant that we were almost down to our main deck, and we carried
+an open rail amidships, which meant that when a swell heaved up against
+our side it didn't have to roll very high to roll aboard, and after
+rolling aboard it just naturally kept on rolling across our deck and
+over on the other side.  It was like seeing surf breaking over a rock
+in the ocean; and to men not used to a deep-loaded oil-ship, and not
+knowing too much of the sea anyway, it wasn't hard to understand why
+they might think they were in great danger.  Anyway, the seamen or
+deck-hands or seagoing laborers--whatever it was they shipped for--soon
+began to pick out safe, high spots and to cling tight to them.
+
+Any shipmaster that wanted to could, of course, have stopped all that
+with ten words; but says Captain Clarence, waving his hand and singing
+out from the bridge: "Have no fear, my lads.  Trust to me.  I will
+bring you safe out of this."  Which was a new one, he being, according
+to Wheezer's account of him, more often given to damning their hides
+and blue lights and in other little ways putting the fear of the bridge
+into the deck of what ships he'd ever been master of.  "Have no fear,
+my men, I'll guard your lives," says Captain Clarence.  And it sounded
+fine, only a couple of wrecking tugs would have walked her off, and
+certainly her own engines ought to have backed her off, if he'd only
+stop making speeches and try them.
+
+But Wheezer never said that Captain Clarence was any fool, and he
+probably knew what he was doing every minute.  He went for'ard now and
+hove the lead a few times, and then hove it aft, and then came back to
+the bridge looking more solemn than before; and, looking up at him,
+there was no doubt that most of the crew thought if they didn't get off
+that ship, and in a hurry, they were gone.
+
+"But fear not," says Judkins; "we shall yet escape from this peril,"
+and blows a distress signal, and right away comes an answer; and in
+about a minute and a half, from almost under our stern, comes a
+tugboat, the _Niobe_, with "Parson" Davies skipper of her.  I'd never
+met Davies, but I'd heard of him; and I'd seen the _Niobe_ laying off
+Bayport Harbor when we came out, and what would be bringing her so
+handy now, and she not hailing from Bayport at all, but from Westport,
+a hundred miles farther away?
+
+Judkins hailed the _Niobe_ to have a line ready, and then turns to us
+and says: "Men, it would be a great deed for me to imperil your lives
+to save this valuable ship and cargo to her owners; but what a nobler,
+what a far nobler, deed it is to save human lives!  Not my life, men,
+but others'--your lives, fathers of families that I know some of you
+are, or loving husbands, brothers, and sons of loving mothers.  But can
+we thus save her?  No, no; we cannot.  In a few hours it will be dark,
+and these seas, which you see breaking over this noble ship, will most
+surely batter her and all on her before morning.  It would then be too
+late to escape from her.  Not," he says, waving his hand, "that we
+shall not even now make a desperate attempt to get her off.  We shall.
+Indeed we shall!" and orders a line taken from the _Niobe_.  I made it
+my business--there was no competition--to be the man making the line
+fast to our after-bitts, and a worn and ancient piece of hemp I saw it
+was.  The _Niobe_ backed off, and the line parted.  She passed us
+another line, and that parted.  The second line was rottener than the
+first, and while she was doing it I knew there was a store-new
+200-fathom coil of a 13-inch hawser in our hold.
+
+When the second line parts, Judkins waves his arms in despair and
+orders the _Niobe_ to make fast under our high lee quarter, where it is
+smooth as milk and plenty of water for a tug of her tonnage.  "Captain
+Davies," he calls out then, "what a fortunate event for us you happened
+along!"
+
+"Yes, captain," responds "Parson," his head out of his pilot-house
+window.  "A most heavenly inspiration it was which impelled me in this
+direction in weather like this."
+
+"Doubtless, doubtless, the hand o' Providence," says Judkins in a
+downcast voice; and then, more lively: "What is your judgment of this
+gale, Captain Davies?"
+
+Gale!  A man could have almost gone motor-boating with a bunch of
+seaside hotel guests in it.
+
+"If I know anything of weather, captain," says "Parson," rolling his
+head this way and that at the sky, "she's comin' on to blow a
+hurricane.  And for you to keep your crew aboard your doomed ship
+durin' the fury of it would be nothin' less than criminal, captain.
+Not" (raising one pious hand) "that I would set my judgment over agin
+yours, captain, for your vast experience of the sea qualifies you to
+judge of these things even better than I."
+
+By this time most of our crew had left their high roosts and were
+crowding the lee rail to get aboard the _Niobe_; and Judkins says: "All
+right, men--go aboard."  And all went aboard the tug, Judkins checking
+off every man by the ship's list as we passed him at the rail.  And the
+_Niobe_ headed back to Bayport.
+
+On the run back to Bayport Judkins and Davies were alone in the cabin
+of the tugboat.  I spent all that same way back trying to figure out
+their little game.  I didn't feel too sure I had it right, but when the
+_Niobe_ hit the dock I went four bells and the jingle up the street
+looking for Wheezer, and found him where anybody in town could of a
+Wednesday or Saturday night:
+
+  TERPSICHORE HALL
+  25 Cents for Gents--15 for Ladies
+
+There was the illuminated sign hanging out over the sidewalk so that
+even a drunken sailor couldn't miss it.
+
+You didn't have to haul Wheezer into any dry dock to see that his lines
+weren't laid down for speed, but his first rush, when I told him what
+was in sight, carried him clear to the head of the dock.
+
+"The salvage!  O the lovely salvage!  We'll get her off!" says Wheezer.
+"We'll charter a tug, hah?"
+
+I wasn't strong for chartering any tugs and let everybody know about
+it.  We had no money to be chartering tugs, anyway, and, besides, if I
+had Judkins and Davies's little game sized up right, there'd be no
+loose tugs left to charter out of Bayport that night.  "We'll make it
+in the _Happy Day_," I says.
+
+"The _Happy Day_!" says Wheezer; and then: "Well, all right--if you
+think she'll make it."
+
+We went down to tell Scoot, and found him reading from a book he was
+holding up before him with one hand and eating crackers and cheese and
+a smoked herring from a plate atop of a galley-stove with the other.
+
+"A wonderful, wonderful man, Confucius," says Scoot to Wheezer; and
+then seeing me, too: "What!  Hasn't that oil-packet departed yet?"
+
+"Wonderful maybe, but stow him, whoever the loafer is, 'n' listen to me
+'n' the captain," says Wheezer.  And Scoot listens, and before I was
+half through he stows Confucius--a fine, fat volume, with a leaf turned
+down to mark the place--under his mattress.
+
+"I shall need a helper," says Scoot.  "And also I think it will be wise
+for me to prepare some fresh applications of Leakitis if we are to put
+out to sea in this venerable ark to-night."
+
+Up to the Blue Light saloon there was always a bum or two looking for a
+bit of change.  On the way there I passed the Bayport Hotel and saw
+that Captain Judkins and Captain Davies had already an admiring
+audience to listen to the disaster to the _Yucatan_.
+
+A hard-looking party was trying to hold the barkeeper up for a drink
+when I reached the Blue Light.  He was the only being in the place who
+looked husky enough to lift more than the weight of his elbow to the
+level of his shoulder.  I offered him ten dollars for the next
+twenty-four hours.  "To work on a hurry-up job on a steam-lighter," I
+explained.  "That's if you're tough enough for it on a windy night," I
+added.
+
+"Tough work?  William T. Coots is my name--and the T stands for tough."
+
+"Come on then," I said, "here's one dollar down."  It was the last
+dollar I had.
+
+William T. could never leave there with that dollar in his pocket.  He
+made a great fellow of himself by buying drinks for a bunch of bums,
+and then I warped him in and grappled him to me.  Passing the Bayport
+Hotel this time, I could see Judkins and Davies still talking, only by
+this time some of the crew were giving out interviews, too, and the
+audience included two or three reporters, and all hands had moved from
+the lobby to the barroom.
+
+After a peek at that cheerful party and then at the dark harbor I
+didn't blame William T. for wanting to go in and join them, but he had
+signed to go a cruise on the _Happy Day_.  I reasoned with him till he
+told me for the third time that he was William T. Coots, a tough guy,
+and was going to have one more drink.  Then I dropped fair words,
+walloped him back on to the sidewalk, ran him down aboard the _Happy
+Day_, and introduced him to Scoot.
+
+We put out.  The _Happy Day_ was an ancient craft that had been built
+right there in Bayport, and if she'd ever been outside the harbor
+before, the oldest inhabitant couldn't recall it.  How she was going to
+act outside this night none of us would bet, but we hoped she'd
+surprise us.
+
+But she acted pretty much like we figured she would.  She had a 65-foot
+hammer hoist.  We couldn't see ten feet away--it was a dark, drizzly
+night--but we could feel the runways of that hoist waving somewhere up
+in the clouds above us.  And no harm in that, if it didn't come down on
+our heads; and no harm when she wouldn't lift from a sea--she wasn't
+built to--but if only she'd let one pass!  But not a blessed one.
+She'd slue around sideways, and the next one would hit her a swipe, and
+aboard they'd come as if all the welcome in the world was waiting them.
+
+The _Happy Day_ rated a deck-house amidships, with a galley and a
+little L that Scoot had built on, with a bunk to sleep in of nights.  A
+sea coming aboard one side took the house along with it over the other
+side.  "O' course," said Wheezer, "it was nachally to be espected, but
+if she'd waited till next week I was reckonin' to had her painted red
+with blue trimmin's, an' sell her along o' the rest o' the lighter."
+
+When the house threatened to loosen up first, Scoot came up out of the
+hold to rescue Confucius from his bunk, with a brier pipe he'd bought
+years before this for a half-crown in Liverpool and a pair of
+custom-made pants he used to wear to parties.
+
+A couple of tons of water in the shape of a small sea chased Scoot back
+down the ladder.  A spry one, Scoot.  He got out of the way, holding
+Confucius and the pants high in the air.  The back of William T's neck
+happened to be about the middle of the region where most of that sea
+landed below.  After he'd coughed up what he could from his insides,
+William T. had a word to say.  Scoot had rigged up a bilge-pump which
+worked from the hold.  William T. was told to work that as well as
+shovel the coal.  What he wanted to say was that he'd shovel the coal
+or he'd stand by the pump, but not both.  "What did I ship for--what
+for?" he demanded of Scoot.
+
+Scoot was a little man, and he used to rig up a pair of big black
+horn-rimmed spectacles he owned and talk with care before strangers,
+but he wasn't so safe as he looked.  His father, a delicatessen man,
+had intended him for a chemist, and then died in time to save him from
+it.  Scoot had other notions, and only he met a Barbados negro with a
+head made of the same mixture as two parts in five Portland cement
+after it'd had two days to set--only for him Scoot said he might have
+been a light-weight champion riding around in his own auto.  After that
+fight he said he'd never raise his hand to a man again.  No, sir; it
+would be a meat-axe for him--also he was going to draw the color line.
+And the higher life for him thereafter.
+
+  "Only in toilsome essays to climb the heights
+  Does man from his baser nature rise,"
+
+Scoot used to say.  And he did essay to climb, but every once in so
+often his foot would slip and down he'd come and begin to claw around
+like anybody else.
+
+"That big brute that toted me aboard here, and that other big brute up
+on deck, mebbe they c'n lick me," said William T. now; "but no red
+chin-whiskered, toothless runt like you kin."
+
+Scoot wasn't shy any teeth.  It was the way his under jaw was hung.
+When he'd take to chewing with his front teeth, that lower jaw used to
+come up outside the upper one.  But it was true about his chin-whisker,
+and he didn't like it.
+
+"That so?" says Scoot, and stows his big horn spectacles in their case
+and selects a nice long spanner; and when William T. came at him wide
+open he tapped him--once, twice--neatly.
+
+When William came to, Scoot was waving a full-sized twenty-pound shovel
+before his eyes.  Says Scoot: "Observe, please, this instrument.  You
+insert the forward end of it under this pile of coal--so; and you
+elevate it--so: a hand here and a hand there; and you project it into
+the firebox--so.  And so on and so on, repeating ad noshum.  You
+savvy?" says Scoot.  "Cause if you don't, then you hear me, son; I'll
+whale the everlastin' livers 'n' lights outer your debased hide."
+
+"You-all are sure a bunch o' tough guys," says William T.; and
+thereafter Scoot went around applying Leakitis to the worst spots in
+peace.
+
+We were having our own recreation up on deck.  I was to the wheel, of
+course, and as long as I hung on there I was all right.  But Wheezer
+had to stay forward to keep a lookout.  We didn't have any lights, and
+we didn't want any wandering craft to be running over us in the dark
+and drizzle.  Wheezer wanted to climb up the hammer hoist to get out of
+the way of the seas, but wasn't too sure he wouldn't come down and go
+any minute over the side with it.  He wound up by lashing himself to a
+weather-deck bitt and letting most of the water in the Gulf of Mexico
+flow over him.  Being, as he said, a diver by trade, 'twas no strange
+thing for him to be under water, but being under this way, he said he
+missed the air-tube.  In the middle of it he remembered he forgot to
+say good-by to his partner at the dance-hall.  "If anything happens us,
+I hope she won't think I came out here to get lost a-purpose to get
+away from her," said Wheezer.
+
+From time to time Scoot stuck out his head to make sure we weren't yet
+washed overboard, and to report on the leaks; and also on William T.
+Scoot wouldn't call William any Olympic champion with a shovel,
+but--doubtless we had noticed it--he was producing steam.
+
+Which was so.  Four miles an hour was all we ever figured on driving
+the _Happy Day_ across smooth harbor routes, and here she was banging
+out that many in a seaway on the open gulf, making fair allowance, of
+course, for the side slips.  She was all right, the old _Happy_, and
+she brought us at daybreak to Horseshoe Shoal and the _Yucatan_, she
+still with her bow fast but her stern loose to the seas.  Without
+wasting any time, I laid the _Happy Day_ alongside, and Wheezer was
+about to go aboard her when he was met at the gangway by a cat.
+
+Wheezer always did have a terrible respect for the laws of the sea.
+"Ain't there some law about ship's cats?" he asks now; and Scoot digs
+out his case and adjusts his glasses, and after a little meditation
+says: "There are, Wheezer, many superstitions and traditions connected
+with the sea.  A marvellous vehicle of misinformation and credulous
+belief, the sea.  Reflect on the vogue which sea-serpents have enjoyed.
+Reflect on how the ferocity of sharks has been exaggerated.  It is
+doubtless the fact, Wheezer, that jaded imaginations thankfully
+accepted these ancient fallacies to render more startling the
+dénouement of their dramas.  To such, doubtless, do we owe the
+invention of the cat on abandoned ships to frustrate the hopes of those
+who would claim honest salvage."  Scoot took another breath.  "It is
+usually a black cat, but even so for a cat to rank before the law as
+the equal of a human creature is absurd.  This, I perceive" (Scoot let
+the back of his head settle on to his shoulder so's to have a good
+look) "is not a black but a gray cat, Wheezer--a lean, gray feline.  In
+the days of the ancient Persians, Wheezer, a gray cat was a symbol
+of----"
+
+"Scat, you slab-sided gray symbol!" barked Wheezer just then, and the
+cat scatted with a long leap from the rail of the oil-ship on to
+Scoot's shoulder, and from there into the hold of the _Happy Day_.
+
+"Whatever the Persians thought o' cats, this cat's off her now, Scoot,"
+said Wheezer--"she's sure abandoned now," and went aboard.
+
+"It looked hungry passing me," said Scoot, and called down to Billie T.
+to feed it a little lubricating oil on a shovel.  "It's nourishing and
+fattening," says Scoot, "and we'll keep it aboard.  Every seagoing ship
+should have one for luck."
+
+Wheezer reported not another soul aboard the oil-ship; and, under the
+laws of the sea, that made her ours to do what we pleased with.  And we
+had our own notions of how to work her off the bar.  We broke out ten
+or a dozen barrels of oil and poured them over the troubled waters.
+Then I belted and bolted Wheezer into his diving-suit, and broke out
+our steam-drill--left over from the _Weeping Annie_--and Wheezer
+dropped over and began to bore holes under the bow of the oil-ship.
+
+Scoot had never been shipmates with an oil-burner before, and he went
+below to get acquainted with this one.  I was busy wiring charges of
+dynamite for what we had to do next, so to William T. was left the job
+of pumping air to Wheezer.  Twice Wheezer came up, his cheeks bulging
+out when I unscrewed his helmet, to ask me to explain to William T.
+that pumping the air ahead of time and then resting up to wait till
+that was used up wasn't the way of it--not if Wheezer was to stay
+alive.  Regular and steady, that was the word, said Wheezer.
+
+Wheezer got all his holes bored and the dynamite planted in them.  This
+was a lot of dynamite left over when we traded the _Weeping Annie_;
+we'd kept it in the hold of the _Happy Day_, which was another reason
+for Scoot to sleep aboard her nights.  He said he wasn't going to let
+her blow up some night and no one on board to prove who did it.
+
+When we were all ready on deck, Scoot said he guessed he'd take a
+chance on her engines.  He would not bet on what would happen, but he
+guaranteed we'd get action of some kind, even if it was no more than a
+cylinder-head blown through the side of the ship, if we'd only come
+below and help him out.  So we passed him this and that, turned this
+jigger and that jigger to his orders, and by and by he lights a row of
+jets and her engines turned all right.
+
+"Any time now," says Scoot, and I touched off the dynamite, and what
+looked like a million cubic yards of mixed stuff comes splattering up
+from under her bow.  William T., who was leaning over the bow to see
+how it worked, got most of the oil, that being on top.  Then I gave
+Scoot the bells, he backed her engines, and off she came smooth and
+easy.
+
+While William T. was picking the oil and sand and mud and sea-water out
+of his eyes and ears and nose and mouth, and complaining that somebody
+oughter tipped him off, I called to him to shift the _Happy Day's_ line
+so she could drift astern of the ship.  "And whatever yuh do, son, hang
+onter her line," Wheezer warned him.  By this time William had shed his
+first independent views of things and was obeying orders fine; so when
+the _Happy Day_ went whirling astern, William was hanging on to the end
+of the line.  Down the deck he went skidding on his heels, and over the
+rail, still hanging on to the line.
+
+Finding himself overboard, he climbed up on the _Happy Day_.  By this
+time we were well off the bank in pretty good water, and I sung out to
+William that I would swing around and get him, and gave the necessary
+bells when the time came for Scoot to back her; but Scoot, I guess,
+wasn't yet full shipmates with his oil-burning machinery, for we kept
+right on going ahead till we went clean through and over the _Happy
+Day_.
+
+I remember seeing the cat climbing up the hammer hoist when it saw what
+was coming and clawing into its place up top; and how when the _Happy_
+went under and the tall hoist careened over toward us, the cat made one
+flying leap on to the oil-ship's deck.  When Scoot heard of that later,
+he said: "We'll name it Confucius--a wonderful, wise cat."
+
+When William T. saw what was coming, he took a running long dive and
+overboard from the other end of the _Happy Day_.  Wheezer stove in the
+heads of four or five more barrels of oil and dumped them over the side
+so's to make it easier for William clawing around in the seaway.  When
+he came swimming aboard, he was wanting to know wasn't there any jobs
+that didn't require him to swaller any more oil--shovelling coal or
+working bilge-pumps, he didn't care.  So we let him go down to the
+engine-room to help out Scoot.
+
+We ought to have seen the morning papers before we did to enjoy what
+happened next.  Captain Davis of the _Niobe_ was to depart at daybreak
+to make another desperate attempt to save the oil-ship in the teeth of
+the storm, the morning papers said.  And he did.  We met him on our way
+back to Bayport, and he steamed around us two or three times.  Then he
+steamed away for Westport.  He didn't say a word himself, but she
+carried the most eloquent stern, the _Niobe_, that ever I looked at
+through glasses when she was steaming away.
+
+The oil-ship was down by the head a trifle where the dynamite had
+loosened her bow-plates a little, but nothing to hurt.  We got her into
+port all right.
+
+But getting a salvaged ship into port don't always end a man's
+troubles.  There was a slick young lawyer came to us.  He said he'd
+like to handle our case.  We asked what his charge would be, and he
+said: "Oh, that will be all right--I'll make my price to suit you
+boys."  We said all right, go ahead, and "Now, boys," he says then,
+"what's the story?  Give it to me straight."
+
+I tells him the story.  He rubs his hands and chuckles, and says:
+"Good!  Great!  Nothing to it--a pipe!  But listen to me, boys.  When
+you get up there in court, don't go trying to make any joke of it the
+same as you just done to me.  Everything is all fixed up nicely for you
+to play heroes' parts.  Here are all the newspaper accounts--look--of
+Captain Davies's heroic work and seamanship, as told by Captain
+Judkins, and of Captain Judkins's humane and heroic work as told by
+Davies.  Even the crew--look--give out interviews of what heroes they
+were.  And, lemme tell you, I've seen the _Happy Day_ many a time, and
+I wouldn't go outside in her for a million dollars.  Now play it up,
+play it up--the storm, the peril, your own heroic efforts, you know."
+
+Which was all right to say; but imagine any human being getting up to
+tell of our trip and leave out the funny little parts, especially when
+we see Judkins sitting in a back bench listening, though he didn't
+listen too long.  He all at once got up and didn't come back.
+
+In the old days we'd have been awarded 50 or 60 per cent for our part,
+and she was a million-dollar ship with her cargo; but the insurance
+companies don't let any loose-footed seafarers put across anything like
+that these days.  We got thirty thousand dollars for salving the ship,
+and ten thousand more for the loss of the _Happy Day_.
+
+Our slick lawyer said we hadn't played it up right.  "But never mind,"
+he said; "I've been allowed full damages for the _Happy Day_ and awards
+for your time and some of the risk you-all ran.  There's twenty
+thousand for you boys."
+
+Wheezer and Scoot looked at me, and I looked at the lawyer.  "Twenty
+thousand?  Don't you think it's too much for us?" I asks.
+
+"Why," he says, "it is a lot o' money for you boys to be carrying away
+for one night's work.  But I generally split it that way--fifty-fifty."
+
+We were in his office.  I told Wheezer and Scoot to wait for me below.
+"Perhaps there'd better be no witnesses," I whispered to Scoot, and
+they got out.
+
+The bright young lawyer takes another look at me after I lock the door
+and come back to him.  "What do you mean to do?" he says.
+
+And I said: "First, I'm going to give you one whale of a beating."
+
+"You lay your hands on me," he says, "and I'll have you up for assault
+and battery.  I'll show every mark in open court."
+
+"I'm going to mark you," I said, "where you won't show them in any open
+court."
+
+And I did.  "And that's only the beginning," I said; but about then he
+agreed to call in Wheezer and Scoot; and, for instructing us to comport
+ourselves with dignity before the high court, we thought five hundred
+was about right, and after another little chat he agreed it was.  We
+gave William T. the same for what he'd done, and he stayed drunk for a
+week at the Blue Light, which is what we reckoned he would do.  But he
+was his own boss ashore.
+
+Before I was fairly home the wife rushes me over to the little house
+she'd the option on.  Being only two blocks south of the boulevard
+didn't make any hit with me, for the next thing I could see where she'd
+be breaking into society.  But when I see the baby that I'd left
+kicking his legs in a baby-carriage--when I see him sprinting around
+the sun-parlor on his own feet, I begin to see the beauty of
+sun-parlors.  "Take it," I said.
+
+She certainly was tickled.  "I always knew," she said, before I had
+time to say another word, "that all you needed was to apply yourself
+steadily to make your fortune."
+
+Well, she's a great little woman, and what's the good of hurrying up to
+break illusions?  I waited all of two hours before I told her how I
+made the price of the house.
+
+
+
+
+The Bull-Fight
+
+"What with these young schools aboard ship and chocolate caramels where
+bottled beer was one time in the cantine, 'tis a changed navy we've
+come to."
+
+There was Porto Bello with its painted walls, there was the liberty
+boat at the gangway, and there was Monaghan with nothing but abuse for
+all present institutions.
+
+"'Twas a good adventure the navy was once, but 'tis a kind of factory
+they would be making of it, with pay-days, not fightin' days, the grand
+thing to be lookin' for'ard to.
+
+"And oh," he sighs after a breath, "the hearty arguments a liberty
+party would find to their elbows in any foreign port of importance in
+the old days!  But now--puh!"
+
+"Monaghan," I says, "is it in human nature, do you think, to alter so
+wonderfully in one short generation?"
+
+"'Tisn't me," says Monaghan, "that reads shelves of books from the
+ship's library, includin' poetry.  Go on, you; cling to your hopeful
+views, till some day you die of them.  But for me--I'll go with you on
+no shore liberty this day."
+
+So over the side I went without Monaghan, but our executive--him we
+called Regulations--was there to speed our going from the gangway
+grating.
+
+"Remember, now," says Regulations, "no street brawlings and no ordering
+rounds of intoxicating drinks in cantinas.  Whoever isn't there when
+the liberty boat leaves the landing-pier this afternoon, and whoever
+returns aboard here under the influence of liquor I shall send 'em to
+the brig.  And don't think for one moment that any one of you can fool
+me with any cock-and-bull story of what happened you."
+
+No great evil in Regulations, but a pity, I was thinking, he would not
+leave a little more to our imagination and maybe good intentions.  Some
+of us there were, I knew, that would like to think that 'twas maybe not
+altogether fear of the ship's discipline would be holding us to our
+good behavior.
+
+Meditating, maybe sadly, I was on the distrust of Regulations and the
+defection of Monaghan, when I looked up to find myself abreast of a
+cantina that was run by an Americanized native called Tony, the same
+who one time kept a fruit-stand on West Street in New York till he
+discovered that bananas and pineapples and lemons were not the most
+staple articles of diet on the water-front of a great American port.
+"Tony," I says, "'twould grieve a certain superior officer of my ship
+exceedingly were I to order one single draft of spirituous liquor on
+this my first day of liberty in two months.  But 'tis no summer resort
+on the New England coast this is.  Will you, in God's name, give me
+something to cool the blazing throat of me?"
+
+"When I tended bar in a hotel one time in a prohibition State in your
+country," says West Street Tony, "we made one drink especially for
+temperance people.  I mix one now," he says; and he did.
+
+"Lemonado Porto Bello we call that down here," says Tony.
+
+"'Tis satisfying," I said; and had another, and passed on my way.
+
+'Twas truly a beautiful port--Porto Bello--in the low latitudes; and
+there were little children playing in the streets and long-tailed birds
+singing in the trees; and from one place to another I passed, having
+here and there along the way a lemonado Porto Bello by way of abating
+the heat of the hot morning.  And so, until approaching noon found me
+under the portales of a hotel on a fine high hill.
+
+'Twas in truth a hot morning.  The Hot Coast the guide-books in the
+ship's library called all that country, and no misname in that; but
+when a waiter steps up with a negligée air and a towel and swipes a
+battalion of camping flies from the marble deck of my table to the
+scuppers of the sidewalk, and says: "Vairy gooda beer on icey--two
+bottlas for-r da one-a peso," like a friendly soul who would help out a
+thirsty and innocent foreigner, I said no.
+
+"No," I said; "no intoxicating beverages will I order myself this day.
+Lemonade Porto Bello," I said: "duo"--holding up two fingers to maybe
+help out his lack of his own language.  "One for me, one for him," I
+said, and pointing to a glass a young fellow with an air of
+preoccupation and melancholy at the next table had standing empty to
+his elbow.
+
+"Bueno, bueno!" said the waiter, and in good season brought me one and
+replaced the empty glass of the abstracted young man with the other.
+
+It was, as I said, a hot day.  As to that, I've yet to see a morning in
+twenty years of cruising on that blasted coast when it wasn't hot.
+Sitting in the shade of the portales on that high hill and almost a
+breeze coming in from the waters of the Gulf--even so, all ready to
+soak iced Porto Bello lemonados into me, even so it was hot.
+
+And while I'm waiting there having another lemonade, and by and by
+another and another, a young girl enters the shade of the portales; and
+no man could carry two eyes in his head and not notice the loveliness
+of her.  Lovely and good.  I could feel it in the air when I wasn't
+looking straight at her.  Women's hats and men's cigarettes bobbed in
+high approval, and the watery eyes of two gray-whiskered old rounders
+grew almost bright and decent to look at when from over the tops of
+their newspapers they gazed after her in passing.
+
+My little table was up by the main entrance, and as if for no more than
+to let her lovely glance rest on some manly creature who might be
+sitting unattached in the neighborhood, she stopped on the lowest step
+of the hotel doorway and her eyes were slanted in my general direction.
+
+"Jeepers!" I said to myself, for even with a gray hair here and there
+impinging on the black mop above my temples--even so, I needed no
+ship's surgeon to testify that the pension-list was a long way from me
+yet.  And as for the rank, 'twas well I knew that when the heart goes
+cruising 'tis little the rank matters.  Gunner's mate, even as an
+admiral of the line, may well have his fair romance: that I knew.
+
+But what man of intelligence and natively good intentions may run riot
+through the years of tempestuous youth and not arrive some day at a
+belated wisdom?  After another upward glance I saw that not for me was
+that look of virginal yearning and distress.  The line of fire of her
+gaze had for its target the back of the head of the young fellow who so
+melancholy and abstracted was gazing on the blue waters of the Gulf
+from the next table.
+
+"Jeepers!" I said to myself, "is he asleep or what?" and above my
+lemonade I points a soft cough at him.
+
+But no sign from him, and I coughed again--the short double cough which
+is the signal among all males from Kamchatka to Punta Arenas, sailing
+east or west, north or south, great or little circles, as you
+please--for all males above the age of apprentice boys to stand to
+attention--that 'tis lovely ladies coming over the side.
+
+But never a sign of hearing from him, and "Mucho calero, mucho heato,"
+I said respectfully, and with a side look of apology, meaning in that
+way to intimate to the lovely creature that I had gone as far as the
+regulations would permit a rough and simple nature who hadn't been
+formally introduced.
+
+I thought she would step down onto the walk beside us there to speak,
+but a voice from within the hotel called out: "Marguerite!
+Marguerite!"  A firm, commanding voice it was, and with it the lovely
+vision faded somewhere into the forbidding dark between-decks of the
+hotel.
+
+By and by the chin of the young fellow at the next table lifted off his
+chest, his eyes came slowly back from the blue waters--or whatever it
+was they were staring at--to the white marble top of his table, and he
+stared, puzzled, at his full glass.  "I thought I drank that," he says,
+and has a sip of it.
+
+"I never ordered anything like that," he says, and shoves it from him,
+and then he spies me.  "Excuse me," he says, "but did you speak?"
+
+"I did," I says, "but so long ago that I've most lost the use of my
+tongue.  But no harm; I'll speak now again," and I clapped my hands and
+"Muchacho!  Boyo!" I calls.  "Oono lemonado plaino--and oono lemonado
+Porto Bello with much frio--you know--mucho iceyo and hurry like
+helleo!"
+
+And I explained to the young fellow how long years back my chum
+Monaghan had taught me how to talk these tropic languages: the way to
+do was to wave both hands, stick an "o" onto every other word and yell
+like a bo'son's mate in the morning watch, and, with the waiter maybe
+knowing a little American to help you out, you could get what you
+ordered every time.
+
+"But I'm wondering who it was called her," I said when the lemonades
+had come.  "There she was, sort of standing on one foot like she wanted
+to talk to somebody, and I know that somebody wasn't me, when
+'Marguerite!' a voice called--like that--and whing! she was gone, with
+sighs soft as the bubbles in the wake of a torpedo to mark her going."
+
+"Marguerite?" says the young fellow, coming wonderfully back to life.
+"What did she look like?"
+
+"Queen o' the Movies--nothing less for looks, but with a touch o' home
+and mother and little babies clinging to her neck."
+
+"That's Marguerite!  Why didn't you call me?" he says.
+
+He reminded me in his indignation of the rookies aboard ship when
+they're first shook up to go on night watch.  If you don't haul 'em out
+of their hammocks and throw them ten feet down the passageway by their
+necks and ankles, they bellow to the skipper at the mast next morning
+how no one called them.  But I would not tell him that.  Let him who
+has never felt the sting of the barbed arrow rub salt in the wound it
+makes.
+
+"I coughed so loud at you the second time that I had all the Johnnies
+along the row looking up over their coffee demi-tasseys, and all the
+stout señoras were eying me with more than ordinary female suspicion,"
+was all I said to that.
+
+He ran inside the hotel then.  By and by he comes back.  "She was here,
+but she's gone, the clerk doesn't know where."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that," I says; and, moved by my further words of
+sympathy, he tells me how he's been steaming in the wake of the
+beautiful young lady through seven European monarchies and four Central
+American republics, and of how, whenever he thought he was safe
+alongside, the mother would up anchor and leave him riding to a
+lonesome mooring in the dark of some foreign port.
+
+"Just ten minutes with Marguerite and her mother together and I know I
+could explain how it came about I got mixed up in what they think was a
+disgraceful row, but I can't get the chance."
+
+To my way of thinking the young lady at least wouldn't require much
+explanation; and, talking of one thing and another, we had a bite of
+lunch and after lunch a smoke, and we were absorbing, to abate the
+heat--he a plain and myself another lemonado Porto Bello--when a
+mahogany-tinted boy with a musical voice and his pants held up by one
+suspender stops in front of us to chant of a bull-fight which is to
+come off that afternoon.
+
+"Maybe," I says to my new young friend, "this bull-fight would make you
+forget your troubles for a while."  And he agrees it might.  So "Boyo!
+Muchacho!" I hail the waiter.  "Duo--two-o seatso for the bull-fighteo!
+You know--good seatso--the besto!"
+
+"Bueno, señor," says the waiter, and hurries off, and pretty soon is
+back with two yellow tickets for three pesos each, proving again what
+I'd said about talking the language.
+
+'Twas the advice of the waiter to take a blue-line trolley-car for the
+bull-ring, the same being quick and cheap.  But it was no blue or any
+other colored trolley-car that I hailed from the shadow of the hotel
+portales.  No, no.  A rakish, two-horse cruiser of low freeboard--that
+was the craft befitting two American señors of importance to go sailing
+through the streets of Porto Bello on a hot day to a bull-fight, and,
+that the inhabitants of the benighted place might be fully informed of
+our high rating, I stuck both feet over the port side.  "And I want to
+see any five-foot spig policeman try to put 'em back inboard," I said.
+
+No policeman tried to, and in due season and good order we made
+entrance to a plaza that was crowded with long-legged tables piled high
+with chile con carnes and olla podridas and various other comestibles
+indigenous to the region; and under the tables, where the shade was
+deepest, were many cases of native beer piled high with ice.
+
+From behind the tables men and women in green and yellow and red and
+blue and purple and I don't know what-all colors of clothes were crying
+out what they had to sell, and up and down the long lines of waiting
+people were men telling how they had the best seats to sell to the
+bull-fight.
+
+"Beer on ice and the speculators with the best seats out on the
+sidewalk--it makes me almost feel that I'm back on Broadway," says my
+young friend.  'Twas the first sign of life he'd shown since he'd
+jumped into the hotel to look for the young lady of his sorrows, and
+the same encouraged me to hope that maybe before the afternoon was over
+he'd remember that 'twasn't yet the Last Day--that the blue waters of
+the Gulf and the golden rays of the sun was still shining and
+sparkling, the one to the other below and above us--glory!
+
+'Twas a plaza of promise we had come to.  On a stand over by the
+bull-ring entrance was a band of hill Indians trying to jam a little
+music out of a collection of queer-looking instruments, but making a
+poor job of it, not to speak of resting up too frequently to please a
+young American bluejacket who was standing by.  A festive lad he was,
+and he climbed up on the band-stand and stepped a lively jig by way of
+speeding up the band.
+
+But the band hadn't come there to be speeded up.  It was a hot day, and
+after the crazy Americans were come and gone there would be other hot
+days--or such, I gathered, was the leader's retort.
+
+"No hurry?" says the young bluejacket.  "No hurry uppo?  Then you guys
+watch me do an imitation of a whirlin' dervish I see one time in the
+Caffey dee Joy in Cairo.  Watch!"
+
+They watched and saw him revolve himself, one, two, three, four times
+atop of the stand, and then down the steps and on to his head in the
+plaza area.  But he was of unquenchable spirit; without letting on that
+that wasn't part of it, he climbed back on to the band-stand and
+questioned the leader further.  Did he know any American music, and
+would he for a peso--or two pesos, say--play some?  Did he sabe
+Americano musico?
+
+The leader of the band did sabe, and, the two pesos being passed, out
+rolled "Marching Through Georgia."  Which pleased our dancing
+blue-jacket.  "Fine!" he says.  "My old man was with Sherman's outfit
+on that hike.  Roll her out again!"
+
+And once more was "Marching Through Georgia" rolling nobly out, and as
+it was so rolling, a young American marine--but looking too slim and
+melancholy to so much as give back talk to a scuttle-butt--detached
+himself from a file of his comrades, and, marching stiffly up onto the
+band-stand, said: "What d'you-uns mean tellin' this yer nigger to play
+that-a-one for?  I was bawn 'n' raised in Jaw-juh.  In Jaw-juh, and my
+daddy fit with Lee," and he whaled our dancing bluejacket under the ear.
+
+The band-leader was playing an instrument that sounded like a currycomb
+rubbing across a battle-hatch.  Swishy-swishy, it was going, with a
+loud r-r-rump-umph every few bars, and it was shaped like a long-necked
+pumpkin.  This the young native of Jaw-juh grabbed by its long neck and
+bent in several places over the leader's skull.  There was a platoon of
+native policemen standing by and another platoon within easy signal
+distance.  With the first shriek of the band for help that first
+platoon came limbering up, not forgetting to pass the word for their
+watchmates as they came.
+
+But waiting in line for their tickets, or sampling in their strollings
+the wares above and beneath the piled-up tables, were a few files and
+boatloads of our own marines and bluejackets, and these now came
+steaming up to the battle line, meaning harm to nobody in particular,
+but curious to know what all the ballyhooing was about and so as to be
+handy in case anything was doing.
+
+The native police came galloping up and captured the outraged Georgian
+in the first rush, and as they did so up charged in one thin khaki wave
+his marine comrades to his rescue.  And 'twas a gallant charge, even if
+all that came of it was to bury the band-stand under the falling bodies.
+
+The mind of my young friend--it pleased me to know him for being so
+thoughtful--was running in much the same groove as my own.  "Down under
+that pile that poor band-leader is still wondering what he did to get
+hit.  That marine shouldn't have bothered him," says he.
+
+"You're right," I said.  "And this everlasting looking for trouble on
+shore liberty--it gives me the needles."
+
+'Twas just then a tall policeman, with a sword and his chin stuck out
+belligerently before him gave signs for me to vamose from the plaza.
+"And what board of examiners," I says, "gave you a rating to be
+ordering me around?" and I relieved him of his sword and drove his chin
+back to front dress.
+
+Says the young fellow with me then: "Once in New York I tried to keep
+some policemen from taking a couple of friends of mine into a
+patrol-wagon, and they took me along too, and my picture was in the
+paper next morning--that's what got me in wrong with Marguerite's
+mother, and this will probably get me in wrong again.  But where a
+fellow's people are there's where he must be too, I suppose."
+
+There were almost tears in the poor boy's voice but nothing like them
+in his eyes when beside me he waded in knee-deep, and he was a
+wide-shouldered, round-chested lad with quick, strong ways to him.
+Knee-deep, I say, for by this time the uniformed natives were
+threatening to roll over us like some huge, advancing wave.  And such
+natives as weren't in uniform stood to one side and cheered, or maybe
+hove a doby brick or two at intervals.
+
+But not entirely one-sided was it, for every bluejacket or marine
+arriving by the blue-line cars, after a quick masthead view of the
+situation, took a running hop, step, and a leap into the middle of it.
+
+Our numbers were increasing, and there were other matters to aid us.
+The pedlers at the tables were hurrying to remove their wares from the
+war zones, but the quick advances of battle overtook the most of them,
+and tropical things to eat and drink from above and beneath the tables
+were soon adding a grand variety to the first plans of battle.  There
+was the ice that had been cooling the beer.  You take a lump of ice
+about the size of a small man's head, point the same carefully at a
+range of three or four feet, and hurl it with the full power of a
+moderately strong arm and--but 'tis a bad habit, boasting.  And a
+thick-bottomed bottle of native beer--'tis a useful little article,
+too, at close quarters.
+
+It was a hot day.  "Mucho calero, mucho heato, be quiet, you!" I
+admonished one of the enemy lying prone at my feet, and picked up a
+beer-bottle, taking notice that it was not empty and that the cold
+beads of a late icing still clung to it.  And I snapped free the patent
+stopper, and, for better action, loosened the blouse about my neck,
+giving thanks at the same time for the lucky man I was to have a blouse
+left on me to loosen.
+
+Now, if Regulations had been there to see, it is a fine sermon he could
+have preached on the evils of strong drink--how it brings its own
+punishment always in its wake.  And not a word but would be true.  But
+a man exalted by the clash of battle is no man to preach to.  'Tis then
+he delights in confounding the precepts of his betters.  And, man, the
+hot day it was!  In all my cruisings on that abandoned coast I never
+knew a hotter; from the melting asphalt the heat was rising in torrid
+waves.  I placed the cold bottle of beer to my lips and felt the first
+trickle of it on my swollen tongue.  But no more than felt it, when the
+enemy--who by all rights was out of the combat at my feet--stood up,
+and what it was he clouted me with on the back of my head I never
+learned, nor does it matter now; war is war.  But in falling I remember
+saying sad like to myself: "A man that would do that would ship his
+mother in the navy!"
+
+Elbow to elbow with me all this time was my new young friend, and he
+had in his hand at the moment of my fall the mahogany leg of a table,
+that fine-grained mahogany for which, as I had so often read in the
+ship's library, that Hot Coast is also justly famous.  With the table
+leg, the same being of good length and moderately thick through, the
+lad reached over and tapped on the temple the party who had exploded
+the shell, or whatever it was, on the back of my head.  And as
+McWarrish, an eye-witness, informed me later, my would-be assassin
+shared no further in the glory of that day.
+
+It had been a pleasant and not unequal prospect up to then, but by now
+they had routed the colonel of the barracks from his box-seat in the
+bull-ring, and "Fix bayonetso!" he calls to his soldiers coming on at
+the double, and they fixed bayonets.  "Advanceo!" he says, and they
+advanced and continued to advance until presently, the ice being melted
+and the beer-bottles expended--being, as I should have poetically said,
+short of ammunition--such of our bluejackets and marines as were not in
+the need of first aid to the injured might presently be seen making the
+best of their way back to their liberty boats.
+
+In good time I revived, and I could taste it even then--that one
+teaspoonful of cold beer on the end of my swollen tongue, and,
+recalling the incident, "The green-eyed spig!" I says.  "Is it any
+wonder they have revolutions every other week or so in their
+God-forsaken land?"
+
+And what did I hear then but a voice calling me, and what did I see
+when I turned my head but my young friend with his head in the lap of
+the lovely Marguerite, and the rest I knew without being told, for
+Marguerite's stern mother was pouring water onto her lace handkerchief
+and applying the same to a lump topside of the youth's ears!
+
+A large hearty-looking party was tending to my case.  McWarrish was his
+name, and he was Marguerite's mother's brother, who managed a silver or
+lead (or was it a gold?) mine on that same Hot Coast, which, according
+to the ship's library, was likewise rich in oil, rubber, pepper,
+tabasco sauce, palm-leaf fans, and all manner of vegetable and mineral
+resources: a fertile and auriferous country that needed only the
+intelligence and energy of the superior northern races to make of it a
+marvellous commercial asset.
+
+I did not have to tell McWarrish about the fight.  He had seen it with
+the ladies from the veranda of the plaza hotel.  And at dinner at the
+hotel, where in what was left of my uniform I sat in state, it
+developed that McWarrish and myself were of the one mind concerning
+Bobbie Burns.  He poured six or eight or maybe a dozen libations to the
+memory o' rantin' Robbie, and says McWarrish then: "Mon, mon," he says,
+"but 'tis inspirin' tae meet wi' sich rare friendliness," and leads me
+down to where he had his motor-boat ready to take me out to the ship.
+
+"Would ye no like tae ha' been there," says McWarrish, "the rainy nicht
+Robbie cam' ridin' on his horse frae the tavern wi' fower or five, or
+eight or ten it micht be, guid measures o' usquebaugh under his shirt
+tae keep him wet inside, wi' his cloak doon ower his shouthers tae keep
+him dry ootside, the whiles he composed the grandest song ever writ by
+the hond o' mon?  Listen!"  And he rolls out:
+
+  "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
+  Scots wham Bruce has aften led--"
+
+
+He was a large-boned man, McWarrish, with a voice that left no idle
+spaces in the air about him, and I am myself no dwarf, nor weak of
+lung; and singing in and out among the fleet we went, while marine
+guards looked over top-rails and bluejackets rolled out of their
+blankets to give us a cheerful word in passing and sailors on anchor
+watch warned us in a friendly way not to run 'em down and sink
+'em--from one battleship after another--when in the silvery night they
+would loom surprisingly up before McWarrish, who was steering.
+
+"Wull I gae aboard wi' ye, brither," he says to me when by and by we
+made my ship, "tae explain the reason o' your delay?"
+
+"Thank you, friend," I said, "but there'll be trouble enough as it is."
+And I climbed up the side the while he shoved off for the beach again.
+
+"What," says Mr. Trench, who had the deck, "shall I set down in the log
+for your overstaying your liberty after you were so strictly warned?"
+
+"Yes," says Regulations, bobbing up behind him, "what's the alibi this
+time?"
+
+And I gives them the log of the day from first to last, even as I've
+told it here, omitting, of course, the personal allusions, and all
+gravely and respectfully, as befitted an enlisted man to his officers.
+
+"M--m--," says Regulations, and considered the case.  "You say you
+bought tickets to the bull-fight, eh?  And didn't use them?
+M--m--m--then you must have the tickets yet.  Where are they?"
+
+From the inside of my cap I pulls out two yellow tickets, and passes
+them to him.  No great evil, as I've said, in the make-up of
+Regulations, and doubtless, in good time, by reason of advanced age and
+taking no mad chances, he will rise to be commander-in-chief of the
+fleet.
+
+He looks at the tickets under the deck light.  "H--m," he sniffs;
+"h--m," and leaves the deck.
+
+"Just as well, Cohalan," says Mr. Trench, "you saved those two tickets."
+
+"If I hadn't, sir," I says, "there was a hatful of them to be had for
+the picking up in the plaza when the battle was over.  And they're to
+be married next Tuesday, and I'm invited."
+
+Mr. Trench was my division officer, and this was not our first cruise
+together.  "I'll recommend you for shore liberty," says Mr.
+Trench--"providing there's no bull-fight the same day."
+
+And I'm passing on when I hear the whispering voice of Monaghan.
+
+"I was listening to you," says Monaghan, "and thinking while I listened
+of what you said one day.  'Nothing like poetry,' says you, 'to develop
+the imagination.'"
+
+"More beautiful than the flowers of the imagination," I says to that,
+"are the rocks of eternal truth.  You were saying only this morning how
+when yourself and myself were apprentice lads together, 'twas paroquets
+and blue monkeys 'stead o' picture post-cards as in these degenerate
+days we would be sending home to show the family and neighbors how we'd
+been in foreign parts.  And that's true, but such are only the
+temporary frivolities of the human creature and not to be measured as
+important.  I tell you, Monaghan, that in its potentials human nature
+has not changed--not yet."
+
+"Not yet?" says Monaghan.  "How much longer of this mechanical age will
+you be giving it?"
+
+"That," I said, "is to be determined.  But 'tis my belief, Monaghan," I
+says, "that let the drums beat and the banners wave and the gonfalons
+and the various other palladiums and symbols of our liberty be carried
+in marching columns before us, and, barrin' the shell-makers and the
+spellbinders and the owners maybe of newspapers with increasin'
+circulations, 'tis my belief we would march forth to war as cheerfully
+and rampageously as any band of red Indians that ever danced around a
+red fire in the full of an autumn moon."
+
+"If all you say is true," says Monaghan, "then it must 'a' been a grand
+place for an hour or two--that plaza this day.  And yourself and myself
+and that husky bridegroom-elect standin' elbow to elbow this day--man,
+but 'tis talkin' of us in the cantinas they would be for a full
+generation to come.  And, 'stead o' that, here was I, a man of my
+tonnage an' speed under forced draft, lyin' here useless as an old
+cruiser in ordinary."
+
+From the little motor-boat, the same being navigated in devious ways
+back to the pier, I could hear McWarrish:
+
+  "Oh, my luve's like a red, red rose,
+  That's newly sprung in June;
+  Oh, my luve's like the melodie--"
+
+
+Always, or so I've thought, there's something disposing to romance, or
+maybe melancholy, in the quiet that lies o'er great waters, and
+something, it may be, softening to large voices.
+
+Anyway, 'twas a lovely, moonlit tropic night--fitting close to a
+blessed day.
+
+
+
+
+A Bale of Blankets
+
+They were holding what was almost a public reception in the ward-room
+of the _Missalanna_.  The Honorable J. J. Flavin, having appeased his
+hunger and slaked his thirst, signalled the Filipino mess-boy for a
+smoke; and having decided as to what was the most expensive cigar on
+the tray, he took two, and moved on to where, through a shining
+air-port, a fresh sea-breeze might find its cooling way to his beaded
+brow, for it was a warm summer's day and at trencher-play the Honorable
+Flavin had been no laggard.
+
+As the Honorable J. J. smoked, so did he take the time to observe; and,
+observing, he vouchsafed the opinion to a thin-faced, high-shouldered
+young fellow who happened to halt near him: "These navy fellows must
+have a fat time of it, huh, Carlin?"
+
+Carlin flashed a glance on Flavin.  "How do you figure that?"
+
+"Why, look at the swell feed--and the champagne here to-day.  And
+look!"  He slid off for inspection the band of the cigar he was
+smoking.  "I paid three for a dollar for that same cigar the other day
+at a big hotel in Washin'ton.  They must have money to throw overboard
+to be givin' that kind away."
+
+Carlin knew the brand.  He also knew that only two, or it might be
+three, officers of that ward-room mess could afford to smoke that make
+of cigar regularly; but he did not tell Flavin that.  "They get those
+cigars for twelve cents apiece--buying 'em by the hundred--in Cuba, J.
+J.," he suggested mildly.
+
+"And the dealers stick us thirty-five cents for em up here!  Anyway, a
+fat time they have swelling 'round in uniforms given 'em by the
+gover'ment for the ladies to admire 'em."
+
+Two years of political reporting in his home city and two more as
+Washington correspondent for the paper of most vital circulation in
+that same home city had not made of Carlin a politician, and it is to
+be doubted if ten times four years in a political atmosphere would have
+so made him; because ancestrally implanted in Carlin's breast was an
+inextinguishable desire to speak what he thought, and usually as soon
+as he thought it.
+
+He said now--sharply: "What do you know about naval officers or navy
+life, J. J.?"
+
+The Honorable J. J. Flavin had never, not even when he was only ward
+leader and therefore much more disposed to humility than now, been able
+to reconcile Carlin's unworshipful tongue with his own sense of what
+was due a man of importance in the political world.  And Judas priest,
+he had a tongue of his own if it came to that!  "Of course, you know
+all about it!" he retorted.
+
+"No, I don't," replied Carlin promptly and placidly.  "But I probably
+know more than do you or almost anybody else who has never had the
+chance to live aboard ship and see some of it.  This afternoon the
+officers of this ship are spreading themselves according to service
+traditions to give you and me and all aboard here a good time.
+To-morrow they'll be to sea and on the job, a simple-living, busy
+crowd--working hard, taking chances, and making no talk about it."
+
+Flavin whoofed a funnel of doubting cigar smoke into the teeth of the
+air-port breeze.  "Taking chances!  How?  And where?"
+
+"Everywhere.  Day and night--battleships, destroyers, in submarines and
+aeroplanes.  Thirty men and officers killed in one turret explosion
+only last month."
+
+"Taking chances--huh!  Foolish chances!"
+
+"Anybody who isn't living to see how long he can live takes a foolish
+chance once in a while.  That turret crew were on the battle-range
+trying to make big-gun records."
+
+"And did they make 'em?"
+
+"They did.  And their seven-inch batteries made 'em, too.  Single guns
+and broadsides at ten thousand five hundred yards."
+
+"I didn't hear about that," growled Flavin.
+
+"No?  That's a shame, J. J.  The department ought to 've wired you
+about it."
+
+Flavin eyed Carlin sidewise.  No use--he would never change.  Would he
+never get on to himself?  Flavin wondered.  Carlin ought to have been
+one of the best-advertised men in his line in the country, as everybody
+around Washington said, but a fellow liable to hop out any time and bat
+somebody that could be of use to him over the eye, how could anybody go
+boosting him?
+
+"They must 'a' treated you pretty well, Carlin?" he hazarded slyly.
+
+"They treated me well--yes," snapped Carlin.  "And they're treating you
+pretty decently now, aren't they?"
+
+"I'd like to see 'em treat me, or any member o' Congress, any other
+way!"
+
+"A member of Congress--that's right.  And as a member of Congress
+you're drawing down how much, J. J.?"
+
+"Seventy-five hundred a year--and allowances," replied Flavin, looking
+around the wardroom and not caring particularly who might hear the
+figures.
+
+"And before you were sent to Washington you never made more than
+fifteen dollars a week in your life," thought Carlin.  Aloud he said,
+in as gentle a tone as he could on short-order muster: "And did you
+ever stop to think, J. J., that while you're being paid that
+seventy-five hundred a year--and allowances--the captain of this ship,
+with ten or eleven hundred lives and a twelve-million-dollar
+war-machine to look out for, gets less than five thousand a year--and
+that only after thirty-odd years of professional study and practice?
+And that almost all of these other officers you see standing around
+here will regularly have to go up on the bridge and take full charge of
+this ship and all on her, and let 'em, some night or day, make a
+mistake, lose their nerve, or close their eyes for an instant
+and--bing!  All off with the ten or eleven hundred lives, not to
+mention the twelve-million-dollar plant!  And these officers under the
+captain have had all the way from seven or eight to thirty years of
+continuous professional study and practice, and yet some of them are
+getting less than one-third of the money you get."
+
+To which the Honorable J. J. responded blandly: "Well, what of it?
+Their pay and my pay is fixed by the same gover'ment.  If they don't
+pay more, it's because the people who regulate their pay and my pay
+think they ain't worth any more."
+
+"Fine!" said Carlin--"seeing that Congress regulates them both!"
+
+"Huh!"  Flavin hadn't foreseen that.  "Here, you!" he roared to the
+mess-boy with the tray of cigars; and the little brown boy, with no
+inclining admiration for stout-waisted, loud-voiced men in splendid new
+gray trousers and frock coats, but always well drilled, floated himself
+and his tray respectfully, if not over-hurriedly, across the ward-room
+deck to Flavin.
+
+"If you worked for me I'd soon learn you to move faster," growled
+Flavin.  He began to paw through the tray.  "Where's that cigar I had
+before?  This it?"  He read the name on the band.  "Yes, that's it.
+Twelve cents apiece in Cuba, did y' say, Carlin?  I wonder couldn't I
+get somebody to get me some of 'em?  Here, ain't you having one?"
+
+"No, I've smoked enough."
+
+"Enough?--and swell smokes like this kind being passed round!"  He took
+two.
+
+Suddenly, smoking anew, Flavin cast a suspicious glance at the
+newspaper man.  "What you getting at, Carlin--trying to drive into me
+all this talk about the navy?  Is it because I'm a member of Congress?"
+
+"I don't know that I've been trying to drive anything into you,"
+retorted Carlin.  "But you made a crack about the navy, and after
+you've been in Washington awhile longer somebody will be sure to tell
+you that my favorite monologue is the navy.  They'll probably tell you,
+too, that if I couldn't get anything more intelligent to listen I'd
+hold up a row of trolley-poles and pump it into 'em.  And so long as we
+are at it--take the officers' case again.  As a member of Congress, J.
+J., you ought to know these things.  When from out of his pay an
+officer deducts the cost of his grub and uniforms, not to speak of
+other items----"
+
+"Huh!"  Flavin was thinking of a new speech.  Its theme was to be the
+soft times of certain pampered government servants, this for the
+undistinguished and unterrified voter of his district; but this item of
+grub and clothes was disturbing.  "The gover'ment don't furnish 'em
+grub and clothes?"
+
+"It doesn't.  And the special full-dress coat of that officer standing
+there, or any of those younger officers, happens to cost nearly
+one-half of one month's pay--just the coat.  And being naval officers,
+they have to live up to a certain standard aboard ship, as do their
+families, if they have any, ashore.  And a lot of other items.  Take
+this reception this afternoon--they have to pay for it out of their own
+pockets."
+
+Flavin whoofed two, three funnels of smoke thoughtfully toward the
+air-port.  That speech would sure have to be given up, or vamped up in
+some new way, or saved for prudent delivery before closed secret
+organizations--that was sure.  An impressive speech, too, he could have
+made of it.  Confound Carlin butting in with his inside information!
+And Carlin not being a politician either, what could a fellow do with
+him?
+
+Carlin waited for the words of wisdom to flow.  They flowed.  "Y' know,
+Carlin, there's nothing to be gained in my district by voting for any
+naval bill."
+
+"Is there anything to be lost?"
+
+"Suppose I could swap a vote with somebody for a federal building or
+something in my district for something in his district?"
+
+"Go ahead and swap it!" barked Carlin.  "And keep on swapping till your
+district wakes up to you and swaps you for somebody else!"
+
+Flavin shook his head in triumphant prophecy.  "They won't--not in my
+district, Carlin.  It's too solid.  A nomination is an election in my
+district, and the machine says who'll be nominated.  But I tell you
+what, Carlin--a man like you in Washin'ton could help me out a lot
+through your paper up home."  He eyed Carlin narrowly to see how he
+took that.  Carlin said nothing.  Flavin continued: "You weren't born
+in the bushes yesterday, Carlin, for all you're no pol.  You know
+enough about the game to know there's nobody giving somethin' for
+nothing in politics.  And----"
+
+Carlin raised a warning palm.  "Pull up, pull up!  You don't have to do
+any trading in this thing.  You want to remember, J. J., that I'm a
+newspaper man even before I'm a navy man, and whatever you do you'll
+get what's coming to you from me."
+
+The Honorable Flavin, not without doubt in his eyes, stared out of the
+air-port.  Presently he said: "I'll take a look over the ship, I guess.
+See you later."
+
+
+The eyes of Carlin, searching the ward-room for such officers of the
+ship as he had not yet greeted, encountered the quizzical and
+questioning glance of "Sharkey," otherwise Lieutenant Trench, United
+States Navy.  "Who is your large and sonorous friend?" queried Trench.
+Being a host he did not put it in words, but being human he could not
+help looking it.
+
+The spoken answer to the unspoken question would probably have
+horrified the Honorable Flavin.  "He's a man from up my way who made
+himself useful to the machine, and so they sent him to Washington.
+He's pretty raw, Sharkey, but I suppose he could be worse.  At least we
+know where he will always be found."
+
+"And where, Carl, will he always be found?"
+
+Carlin smiled with Trench.  "Where the votes are.  That's his idea of
+supreme political genius--playing for the votes of the moment.  I was
+talking up the navy to him, with an increased navy-pay bill in mind for
+this session.  But I don't suppose that interests you, Sharkey."
+
+"Thanks to the thrift and thoughtfulness of an acquisitive ancestry,"
+smiled Trench, "I suppose I could worry along if there was never a
+pay-day in the service.  But most of the rest of the fellows would
+surely be interested.  There's Pay Totten now.  He'd----"
+
+"Where is Pay?  I haven't seen him since I came aboard."
+
+"Nor you won't for some time again, unless you carry a longer than
+regulation glass, for Pay's by this time on the high seas and southward
+bound.  That's why I spoke of him.  But come into my room."
+
+From a pigeonhole in his desk in his room Trench pulled out several
+typewritten pages.  "Ever hear, Carl, of Pay's bale of blankets?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Ah-h--yours shall be the joy of hearing the tale from the lips of the
+poet-author himself.  You may elevate your high literary eyebrows at
+the construction, but recalling that you, or some other competent
+critic, told me once that construction was, after all,
+subordinate--that is, physical, not psychological, construction--I
+venture to tell this story in my own way.  Hark, now!"  He smoothed out
+his sheets of paper and read:
+
+  "She was the war-ship _Missalanna_, which lay out in the stream
+  Of a port in Chinese waters which translated means Cold Cream.
+  A wireless comes from the admiral--he flew two stars on blue--
+  And the message read: 'At once cast free and join me in Chee Foo.
+  But bring along all packages, all bundles, and all mail
+  Our need is great, the fleet does wait, come forced draft, do not fail.'
+
+  "And says the _Missalanna's_ commander: 'Whatever shall I do?
+  'Tis a two days' Chinese holiday, don't they know that in Chee Foo?
+  And a thousand tons of coal we'll need, and merchandise in dock
+  Fills half the tin-clad warehouse, and immovable as rock
+  Are sampan men and coolies when they've knocked off for the day--
+  And now 'tis snow and hail and sleet and a two days' holiday!'
+  "But he wakes up good old Totten
+  Sleeping soundly in his bed,
+  And showing the admiral's wireless,
+  Mutters: 'This is what he said.'"
+
+
+Trench looked over the top of his first page.  "How's it so far, Carl?"
+
+"They've put men in the brig for less.  But go ahead."
+
+"Thanks.  I proceed:
+
+  "'I was dreaming,' says good old Totten, 'I was writing to my wife
+  Of Chinese native customs and the joys of navy life.
+  But two hundred coolie men we'll need and a score of sampans wide
+  To get that coal aboard the ship and sail by morning tide.
+  No night for honest men to roam, but be sure ashore I'll go--
+  Mayhap in a shack on the water-side I'll find my friend Jim Joe.'
+
+  "Pay found his old-time Chinese friend and tells him what's to do.
+  'A thousand tons of coal I want and I'm putting it up to you.'
+  But Joe he looks at his Melican flend and he says: 'Me no can do--
+  To-night good Chinese mens they go and burn the joss-sticks--so--
+  And bad Chinese mens, my flend,' says Joe, with a wink or two,
+  'They play fan-a-tan, low-lee and mot.'  Says Joe: 'Me no can do.'
+
+      "And saying the last part over again--
+      With another wink or two,
+      'They play fan-a-tan, low-lee and mot.'
+      Says Joe: 'Me no can do.'
+
+  "Then Pay, with a grip of Joe's pigtail, 'You mind the time--you do?--
+  When I pulled you out from a gunboat's snout?--and you now say: "No can do"?
+  Two hundred coolie boys I want and twenty sampans wide,
+  And twice five hundred tons aboard, so we sail by morning tide.
+  When I left the ship the skipper says: "Now, Pay, it's up to you!"'
+  Pay gives Joe's tail a gentle twitch--'Now, Joe, you must can do!'
+
+  "And Joe, with queue curled all anew, in the sleet and hail he goes
+  And twoscore crews of coolie boys he drags out by their toes.
+  'Two hundled coolie boys me want and twenty sampans wide,
+  And tice fi' hundled tlons on ship so she sail by morning tlide.'
+  And some he tore from their honest beds and some from loud wassail,
+  But all came out, for Joe was stout, into the sleet and hail.
+
+      "And two hundred lusty coolie boys
+      With twenty sampans wide,
+      Laid twice five hundred tons to where
+      The ship in stream did ride."
+
+
+Trench laid down the sheets.
+
+"That's not the end, Sharkey?"
+
+"No, no.  But that's the end of the Jim Joe part, which was hailed as
+so masterly a performance on Pay's part--getting those sampan men and
+coolies out of their beds on a night like that and to work at coaling
+ship for us--that I, the uncrowned poet laureate of the Asiatic
+squadron, was commissioned to do it in verse, which I proceeded to do
+one night; and got that far, swinging along fine and dandy, when the
+messenger called me for the mid-watch."
+
+"And you never finished it?"
+
+"I couldn't--not in rhyme.  After that four hours' night-watch the
+rhymes were all gone from me.  It was a rough night.  A monsoon made
+out of the southeast----"
+
+"Omit the professional jargon, Sharkey, and your professional troubles,
+and remember the first law of story-telling is to tell the story."
+
+"Wizz!" murmured Sharkey.  "But, thus encouraged, I proceed.  Well,
+getting Jim Joe started with his twenty sampans and his two hundred
+coolies was only part of Pay's job that night.  The big warehouse,
+where goods for our fleet and other craft were stored, was in charge of
+a Chinaman we called Hoo Ling, and he knew less English than Joe, and
+appreciated even less than Joe the need of quick action.  The admiral's
+wireless message looked just like any other wireless message to this
+big chink, Hoo Ling.  But it's a great thing to be a student of the
+Chinese and of Chinese customs and of Chinese mental processes.  Pay
+wheedled Ling a little, bluffed him a little, touched on past
+friendships a little, on possible future business a lot, painted a
+picture of our warlike forces over to Chee Foo, touched--not too
+casually--on the so much greater love which the officers and men of the
+United States Navy bore for China than for Japan, and such other little
+subtleties as he could invoke or invent.  At last the old fellow was
+moved to open up and let Pay pick out what packages were for the fleet.
+
+"And so, with four yeomen of the ship roused from restful hammocks to
+make memoranda of the addresses as fast as he pried them loose from the
+main pile and called them out, and with twelve able seamen of the watch
+to hustle the packages along as fast as the yeomen recorded them, and
+with forty other bustling bluejackets to load them into the boats, Pay
+tore into that pile of freight, which was about as high and twice as
+long and wide as a three-apartment house.  There were probably four or
+five thousand packages of various kinds to be overhauled, and they were
+addressed in four languages--English, German, French, and Chinese.  If
+Pay was the only white man in that part of China who could have charmed
+that impassive old storekeeper out of his bamboo bed that time of
+night, he was probably likewise the only white man in port that night
+who could read those Chinese shopkeepers' addresses.
+
+"Dry goods, wet goods, hardware, grocery stuff, butcher's stuff,
+jeweller's stuff, ship's stores, bales of cotton, bales of silk,
+curios, souvenirs, bicycles, sewing-machines, sacks of rice, sacks of
+coffee, sacks of potatoes, barrels of flour and of gasolene, auto
+tires, boxes of tea, quarters of beef and of mutton, cases of
+breakfast-food and of oil, packages all the way from the size of a
+finger-ring to packages the size of an auto-truck.  You know what a
+big, husky chap Pay Totten is?  Imagine him on a slushy, snowy night,
+stripped to the waist, wading into that pile--feet, shoulders, knees,
+hands, elbows, with his teeth almost--tearing out those packages, and
+from addresses in English, French, German, and especially Chinese,
+picking out flying such as were for our ships."
+
+Trench paused.  A reminiscent smile was parting his lips.
+
+"Hurry up.  Did you sail on time next morning?" demanded Carlin.
+
+"We did.  With our coal aboard and the packages for the fleet, we made
+a record run and arrived in Chee Foo hours before the admiral was
+looking for us.  And it was the day before Christmas, and our coming
+made the whole fleet happy for Christmas week, and our skipper got
+'Well done!' from the flag-bridge, but--"  Trench looked at Carlin and
+smiled ruefully.  "There's so often a but, isn't there, to the
+otherwise happy tale?  Among the seven hundred and odd packages
+receipted for by Paymaster Totten it seems there was missing one bale
+of blankets.  What happened to the bale of blankets? they queried
+Paymaster Totten, and 'Lord!' says poor Pay, 'how do I know?  It might
+'ve been stolen on the wharf, or dropped overboard between the wharf
+and one of the ship's boats, or lost in rowing out to the ship or
+hoisting it over the ship's side.  There were a dozen ship's boats and
+two hundred ship's men coming and going, and half a mile between the
+ship and shore; and it was a black, blustering night of sleet and hail,
+and there were also hundreds of coolies and dozens of sampans on the
+coal.  It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight--how do I
+know what happened to one lone bale of blankets?'
+
+[Illustration: "It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight."]
+
+"However, Pay nor anybody else worried much about the blankets at the
+time.  Our skipper recommended, in view of Paymaster Totten's
+extraordinary exertions on that night, that the bale of blankets be not
+charged against his accounts.  And the admiral, when he heard all the
+story, approved and passed it along to Washington.  But it came back.
+And by and by it was sent on to Washington again.  And by and by it
+came back.
+
+"And forth from us it went in due time, and for the last time, we
+thought, on leaving for home by way of Suez and Guantanamo.  In the
+Mediterranean we picked up the European squadron and with them enjoyed
+several gala occasions, notably at Alexandria, Naples, Villefranche,
+and Gibraltar, at each of which ports we deemed it incumbent upon the
+service to spread itself a little.  And during these festivities Pay
+was there with the rest of us, but between the gala-days going without
+his bottle of beer with lunch, his cigar after dinner, in order that on
+the great days he might be able to contribute his share toward these
+receptions and yet not impair that sum--three-quarters of his pay it
+was--which he sent home monthly, in order that Mrs. Pay and the five
+little Pays might have food, lodging, clothes, and otherwise maintain
+the little social standard of living imposed upon a naval officer's
+family.
+
+"'Thank God,' says Pay on our last day in the Mediterranean, 'we are
+leaving here to-morrow!' and he hauls out his aged special full-dress
+suit, and looks it over, and says with a sigh: 'I'm afraid I'll have to
+lay you away, old friend; but a few thrifty months in West India winter
+quarters and I may be able to replace you with a grand new shining
+fellow, and so come up the home coast the gayly apparelled, dashing
+naval officer of tradition.'
+
+"And we went on to the West Indies and put in the rest of the winter
+there, with Pay forgetting all about the bale of blankets, until the
+night before we were to go north.  On that night a steamer from New
+York puts into where the fleet is, and in her mail for us is our old
+friend the letter of the indorsements as to the loss of the blankets,
+and now with one more indorsement since we'd last seen it, to wit: the
+department saw no reason to change its original ruling as to the
+responsibility for the loss of the bale of blankets, and Paymaster
+Totten's accounts would be charged with the loss thereof."
+
+Trench paused to allow a swift hot blast from Carlin to sweep through
+the room.  "The archaic bureaucrats!" concluded Carlin fervently.
+
+"Yes," agreed Trench, "and yet, Carl, from their point of view----"
+
+"A point of view which impairs high service is criminal."
+
+Trench knitted his brows.  "Maybe you're right, Carl, but--recalling
+your advice about story-telling--Pay Totten, foreseeing a battleship
+cruise along the North Atlantic coast this summer, with certain
+pleasant but expensive ports in sight, could see where it might well
+behoove him to ask for a change of venue--that is, if he ever hoped to
+settle for that bale of blankets.  It was costing him thirty dollars on
+the ship for his grub, which, as you know, didn't include any smokes or
+an occasional bottle of beer, nor the laundry for fifteen white
+suits--a fresh one every day in the tropics--and a few other sundry
+items, not to mention other minor but inescapable items.
+
+"So Pay thought it all over, and on his way north he put in his
+request, and two days ago he got his orders; and yesterday he left us.
+And this morning--look!"--from the pile of letters atop of his desk
+Trench selected one.  "This came.  Listen:
+
+
+"DEAR SHARKEY:
+
+"We're sailing to-day for the West African coast to look into Liberian
+matters.  And in that country, where you're likely any time to fall in
+with a member of the cabinet sitting barefooted in the middle of the
+road peeling potatoes, the wear and tear on uniforms won't probably be
+over-heavy.  And if there should happen to be any _recherché_ affairs
+when we move onto the Congo coast, I am only hoping that the natives
+won't inspect too closely any special full-dress paymaster's coat which
+should be blue but, as it happens, is green in the region of the seams.
+And after the West African sojourn we are bound for a little jaunt of a
+thousand miles or so up the Amazon, where I learn--and I've taken some
+trouble to learn--we won't have to wear full dress at all, not even
+when calling upon the tribal high chiefs.  I'll come home yet with that
+old full-dress standby--if it isn't blown off my back during some
+tropical typhoon.
+
+"It's a great thing, Sharkey, the being allowed two months' advance pay
+on leaving for foreign service.  For me it means that Mrs. Totten and
+the children can have their little place and their one little maid at
+the little beach which did them all so much good last summer, and, if
+they're economical, maybe an occasional trip to the movies.
+
+"And so I am leaving almost happy.  Of course, the good-by and that two
+years made me feel a bit lumpy and lonesome leaving them, but the race
+would be too easy if we didn't carry some little extra weight, wouldn't
+it?  As to the bale----"
+
+
+Trench looked up.  "There's something else, personal stuff, which
+doesn't concern the story."  He laid down the letter and looked up.  "I
+couldn't help hearing a word or two of what your friend the congressman
+was saying to-day--half the ward-room also heard it, I guess.  There's
+a case for him, Carl, if he's the right kind--a special bill to
+reimburse Totten."
+
+Carlin jumped to his feet.  "You're right, Sharkey.  And he isn't the
+worst in the world.  I'll put it up to him right now, if he's still
+aboard."
+
+
+Congressman Flavin was still aboard, but also was bursting with
+something to tell.  "What d'y'know, Carlin--nine hundred and odd
+sailors aboard this ship and not home once in ten years to vote."
+
+"Why----"
+
+"And you ask me to vote for bills for a lot of people that ain't ever
+home to vote.  I wouldn't 'a' known only I was speaking to a couple of
+'em happened to live in my district, and they told me."
+
+"That's all right, J. J., but forget that voting stuff for a minute and
+listen to me."  And briefly, rapidly, and not without art, Carlin
+retold the story--retold it in prose entirely--of Paymaster Totten and
+the bale of blankets.  When he had done he added: "Now, J. J., what do
+you think of a man doing a good job like that and losing out by it?"
+
+"Always the way, Carlin--always," replied the Honorable Flavin briskly.
+"What most of these fellows on these ships need is a little course in
+practical politics.  Why didn't that paymaster sit tight in his bunk,
+the time his captain came to him with that hurry-up message, and tell
+him he couldn't get any coolies or sampans?  If he'd just rolled over
+in his bunk and said, 'Captain, it can't be done,' or if he'd gone
+ashore and made a bluff it couldn't be done, he wouldn't 'a' had any
+bale of blankets to pay for--see?  This doing things you don't have to
+do, and nothing in it for yourself when you do do 'em--that's kid's
+work."
+
+"All fine, J. J., but how about Christmas for the fleet?"
+
+"Christmas?  Let 'em look out for their own Christmas!  He'd be getting
+his pay envelope every week just the same, wouldn't he?"
+
+"Fine again--and as beautifully practical as you always are, J. J.  But
+how about doing what Totten thought was his duty?"
+
+"Duty?  That ain't duty--that's foolishness.  Duty's doing what you got
+to do, not doing something just to make a good fellow of yourself."
+
+Slowly Carlin began to count: "One, two, three----"
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Flavin.
+
+"A dream I had is taking the count--eight, nine, ten, out!  Say,
+Flavin, did it ever occur to you that your duty included knowing
+something about your business--who can vote, for instance, among a
+thousand other things, and who can't?"
+
+"The mistake you make and all you wise high-brows make, Carlin"--and
+the Honorable Flavin fixed him with a knowing eye--"is in thinking I
+don't know my job.  My job ain't in being in Congress.  A hell of a lot
+they'll know at home what I'm doing in Washin'ton after I get there.
+My job is being elected to Congress.  And getting elected means to be
+able to get votes, and getting votes means being with the people who'll
+give you the votes.  And your paymaster friend"--the Honorable Flavin
+favored Carlin with a wink and another knowing smile--"and his push,
+they don't swing any votes.  But o' course that's for them.  With you
+it's different.  Now, you being in Washin'ton with a string o'
+newspapers--huh?"
+
+Carlin had walked off.
+
+"There he goes," muttered Flavin, "pluggin' the game of a lot of people
+who can never do a thing for him."
+
+
+Trench was shaking his head, half-sadly and half-smilingly, at Carlin.
+He replaced Totten's letter on the pile on his desk.  "One of the jokes
+of the mess is to accuse me of having so much money that I could
+publish my own books of foolish rhymes if I felt like it, but I haven't
+enough to pay for that bale of blankets for Pay Totten.  Aboard ship
+Pay has just as much money as I have.  But no matter--I'm one of those
+who believe that nobody beats the game in the long run.  The eternal
+laws are against it.  The people get everybody pretty near right in
+time.  And fellows like Pay will get what's due them some time.  And
+your congressional friend, too, I hope.  But"--Trench stood up--"what
+d'y'say, Carl, if we get out into the ward-room country again?  It's
+been a long watch since you and I clinked glasses together."
+
+And outside, in the mess-room, standing almost under the air-port which
+opened out to sea, Trench held his glass up to Carlin's, saying: "There
+was a boson's mate I knew one time, named Cahalan.  I used to absorb
+most of my philosophy from him.  I was on the bridge one night, and in
+one of the wings was Cahalan and another lad of the watch.  They were
+evidently having an argument about something, and Cahalan was trying to
+convince him.  I couldn't hear what his watch-mate said, but from out
+of the dark all at once I heard Cahalan.  Said Cahalan: 'When a man
+does a good job and gets rated up for it, he's a lucky geezer; when he
+does a good job and don't get rated up for it, he mayn't be a lucky
+geezer, but what th' hell, he's done a good job just the same, hasn't
+he?'  So, Carl, what d'y'say?--to Pay Totten, sailing lonesome through
+the Trades--a poor politician, but a damn good officer!"
+
+
+
+
+Breath o' Dawn
+
+It was an admiral of a great navy returning a call, and hundreds of
+bluejackets were peeking out from the superstructure.
+
+"Here he comes--spot me Lord Admiral, fellows!"
+
+"Three ruffles of the drum, three pipes o' the boson's whistle----"
+
+"--six boys an' thirteen guns----"
+
+"--and he swellin' out like an eight-inch sponson comin' over the side,
+as if it was himself and not his job the guns are for!"
+
+Young apprentice boys' voices those.
+
+There came an older voice: "You kids talk as if it was in admirals and
+at sea alone.  And ashore any day are bank presidents, head
+floor-walkers, chairmen of reception committees--yes, and bishops of
+the church--any of them on their great days stepping high to the
+salutations, as if 'twas something they had done, and not the uniform
+or the robe or the job they held."
+
+Carlin had a look at the owner of the voice.  Later he hunted up
+Trench--Lieutenant Trench--and to him he said: "Glory to the man who
+can wear his uniform without tempering hot convictions or coining free
+speech to the bureaucratic mint!  But greater glory to the man who can
+divest high office of its shining robes and see only the man beneath.
+Who's your big, rangy gunner's mate with the gray-flecked, thick black
+hair and what the apprentice boys call go-to-hell eyes?"
+
+"That's easy--Killorin."
+
+"And what's his history?"
+
+"When I first knew him--on the China station--he was stroke of the
+ship's racing crew, the best football player I ever saw, and among the
+men he had the name of being an all-big-gun ship in a fight.  A
+medal-of-honor man, too.  Later he went in for booze-fighting and
+hellraising generally and made a first-class job of that, too.  I liked
+him--all the officers did--and when I was having my first dreams of the
+day when I should be commanding the latest dreadnought, it was
+Killorin, settled down and steady, who was to be my chief gunner.  I
+told him as much one night on watch.
+
+"'A warrant-officer and wear a sword and be called Mister?' says
+Killorin.  'And will you tell me, sir, what's being a warrant-officer
+and wearing a sword and being called Mister to being all alive when my
+youth is still with me?'
+
+"I couldn't tell him; and as we grew more friendly many another
+question he asked me in the quiet of the night-watches I couldn't
+answer.  He could talk the eye out of a Chinese idol himself."
+
+Carlin peered down at Killorin.  "Did you ever ask him how--despite the
+being all alive and having his youth--he is to-day only a gunner's
+mate?"
+
+"And have him, in ten perfectly respectful words, put me back in my
+place?  I did not--not that I wouldn't like to know."
+
+"I think I half know," said Carlin.
+
+That was in a tropic port.  That same night Carlin found it too hot to
+sleep below.  He rolled off his bunk, had another shower-bath, dressed
+lightly, and went on deck, where his friend Trench was on watch.
+
+He patrolled the deck with Trench.  The men were sleeping everywhere
+around the top deck.  The tall form of Killorin rolled out from under
+the overhang of a turret and sat up.  Trench's walk brought him abreast
+of Killorin.
+
+"Pretty hot?" asked Trench.
+
+"It is hot--yes, sir."
+
+"These young lads"--Trench waved a hand toward the stretched-out shapes
+all around--"they don't seem to mind it."
+
+"They're young, sir."
+
+"Young?  I didn't think there was a tougher man, young or old, in the
+navy than you."
+
+"A man's body," said Killorin, "can take comfort atop of a hot galley
+stove--or a cold one.  A man's mind--'tis not so simply eased."
+
+"Trench," said Carlin, when they had left Killorin, "when I was a boy
+there was a great hero in our school.  Half the girls I knew carried
+his picture on their bureaus.  And most of the other half were
+suspected of hiding one away.  One of those athletic heroes, a husky
+Apollo--this Killorin makes me think of him.  But suddenly he
+disappeared from the middle of his glory."
+
+"Any crime?"
+
+"No, no crime.  Wild, but straight.  His name was Delaney."
+
+"Killorin's right name," said Trench after a while, "is Delaney."
+
+Carlin left Trench and walked around deck, in and out among the
+sleeping forms.  Here was one in a hammock, here one on a cot, but
+mostly they slept on the bare deck in their blankets.  Every odd corner
+and open space held them.  They were tucked in against hatchways, under
+turrets, inboard of boats, outboard of boats, next the smoke-pipes, in
+the lee of gypsies, of winches, cook's galley.  Everyhow and everywhere
+they slept--on their backs, their stomachs, on their sides, curled up
+and stretched out.  Some whistled, some groaned, some snored, but
+mostly they slept like babes.
+
+It was hot, as sometimes it seems to be hotter in the night than ever
+it can be in the day, even in the tropics.
+
+A young bluejacket under a cluster of deck-lights tossed, rolled,
+tossed, sat up.  A restless lad near him also sat up.  Between them
+they produced the makings and rolled a cigarette.  They lit up,
+inhaled, began to talk.
+
+"How about Bar Harbor, or Rockport, or some other little place off the
+New England coast a night like this, with a cool, fresh breeze sweeping
+in from the Atlantic?" asked the first one.
+
+"What's the matter with the little old North River?" said the other,
+"or the East River, with the Brooklyn trolleys clangin' and the train
+to Coney and a few dollars in your pocket after a visit to the
+paymaster? ... And your best girl, o' course," he added after a moment.
+
+They snuffed out their cigarettes and rolled back into their blankets.
+Killorin was still sitting up wide awake.
+
+"And your best girl?" repeated Carlin to Killorin.
+
+"Yes," responded Killorin, "as if that didn't go, like an anchor to a
+ship, without saying."
+
+"Isn't it always a girl?" said Killorin presently.  "Whatever drives
+the most of us to whatever it is we do, good or bad beyond the
+ordinary, but a woman stowed away somewhere to see what we do at the
+time or read of it later?"
+
+The Killorins of the world are not standing and delivering to men they
+never saw before; and so it was not that night, nor the next; but on
+another hot night, and the ship headed up the Gulf, with the men
+sleeping anyhow and everywhere about the deck, that Killorin sat
+outboard of the sailing-launch and, looking out over the dark waters,
+said:
+
+"Progresso astern and Veracruz ahead--always a port astern and another
+ahead, isn't it?  And so you knew old Dan Riley that kept the candy
+store up home? ... And Mary Riley?" he asked; and, after a while, began
+to talk of things that had been.
+
+
+Lovely Mary Riley!  No thought ever I had that girls were made for boys
+to notice till I saw you!
+
+Five blocks out of my way from school her father's store was, but four
+times I walked past that store window the day after the first time I
+saw her, and more than four times many a day later--to see her again.
+It was three months before I got courage to go nearer to her.  And then
+it had to be a night with snow on the ground and sleigh-bells to the
+horses, and in the faces of men and women a kinder look and in the
+heart of a boy maybe a higher hope than ordinary.
+
+Christmas eve it was and the store all decorated--candy canes, big and
+little, hanging among the bright things in the window.  There were
+other people before me, but she nodded and smiled by way of letting me
+know that she saw I was waiting.  She nodded in the same smiling way to
+a poor child and a rich man of the neighborhood.
+
+"How much for a cane?" I asked when it came my turn, and I that nervous
+I exploded it from me.
+
+"Canes?"  She turned to the window.  They were all prices, but I didn't
+hear what she said.  I was listening to her voice and trembling as I
+listened.
+
+There was a great big brute of a cane, tied with blue ribbons and
+hanging from a gas fixture.  "How much for that one?" I asked.
+
+"That?"  She had violet eyes.  She opened them wide at me.  "That is
+two dollars."
+
+"Let me have it," I said.
+
+Her thin red lips opened up and the little teeth inside them shined out
+at me.  "But you don't want to be buying that," she said; "we keep that
+more for show than to sell."
+
+To this day a thing can come to my mind and be as if it happened before
+my eyes.  "She thinks I'm one who can't afford to spend two dollars for
+that cane, and she's going to stop me," I says to myself.  "She thinks
+I am a foolish kind who would ruin himself to make a show."  If there
+had been less truth in what she thought, maybe I would have been less
+upset.  "I'll take it," I said.  "I want it for a Christmas tree for my
+little nephew."
+
+There was no nephew, little or big, and no Christmas tree, and that two
+dollars was every cent I had to spend for Christmas.  But her eyes were
+still wide upon me, and I paid and walked out with the cane--without
+once turning at the door or peeking through the window in passing, for
+fear she would be looking after me, and I wouldn't have her think that
+a two-dollar candy cane wasn't what I could buy every day of my life if
+it pleased me.
+
+I hoped she would remember me, but took care not to pass the store for
+a week again, for fear she would see me and think I was courting her
+notice because I had bought the big cane.
+
+I was going to high school then.  One Saturday afternoon there came
+high-school boys from all that part of the country to compete for
+prizes in a great hall near by.  I wasn't in them.  I liked to run and
+jump and put the shot well enough, but to go in training, to have a man
+tell me what time to go to bed and what time to get up, and what to eat
+and what not to eat, and after a couple of months of that to have to
+display yourself before crowds of people--that was like being a
+gladiator in the Colosseum I used to read about, and performing for the
+pleasure of the mob--patricians and the proletariat alike!
+
+I would spend hours in the alcove of the school library reading of
+belted knights in the days of tourneys and crusades--but that was
+different.  I could see myself addressing the kings of the land and the
+queens of the court of beauty, the while the heralds all about were
+proclaiming my feats of valor.  A knight on a great charger in armor
+and helmet, with my lance stuck out before me--never anything less
+glorious could I be than that.
+
+But all loyal sons of our school took a ticket for the games.  I went
+to them; and there I saw Mary Riley waving her banner and cheering a
+gangling-legged young fellow that lived in the same street as myself.
+No special looks did he have, and no more brains than another, but he
+was winning a hurdle race and she was cheering him.  And there came
+another, the winner of the high jump, and she cheered him, too.
+
+To see a girl you are night and day thinking of--to see and hear her
+cheering some one else--!  I went in for winning prizes.  And when the
+season came around I played football.  And my picture used to be in the
+papers, those same papers saying what a wonder I would be when I went
+to college.  And all the time I wondering was she seeing the pictures
+and reading the words of me.
+
+My people had no money to send me to any college, but from this college
+and that came men to explain to me how the money part could be
+arranged.  And so to college I went.  I paid enough attention to my
+studies to get by--no great attention did it take--but I paid special
+attention to athletics, and before long my picture was sharing space in
+the papers with presidents and emperors and the last man to jump off
+the Brooklyn Bridge.  And is there any surer way to spoil a
+nineteen-year-old boy's perspective of life than to keep telling him
+that well-developed muscles--whether they be in his back or his legs or
+inside his head--will make a great man of him?
+
+I came home from college for the summer.  I'd seen Mary a few times
+since that Christmas eve, but made no attempt to get acquainted.  Maybe
+I was too shy.  Maybe I was too vain, or overproud--waiting for the day
+when I would be of some account, when the notice of neither men nor
+women would I have to seek--they would be coming to me.
+
+But pride is a poor food for heart hunger.  I went to have a look into
+her store on my first night home.  I had a wild idea that I would go in
+and introduce myself and she would know of me, and maybe I would walk
+home with her.
+
+There was a young fellow in a navy uniform--a chief petty officer's
+coat and cap--leaning on the counter talking to her, and he had a red
+rose in the buttonhole of his uniform coat.  By and by, when her father
+came to close up the store, the young fellow walked home with her.
+Standing on the opposite corner, I watched them pass.  It was something
+serious they were talking about--no smile to either of them.
+
+I stood on the corner after they had passed for as long as I could
+stand it.  Then I walked up to where I knew she lived.  They were
+standing at the steps of her house.  It was a quiet street, and the
+sound of my footsteps caused them both to turn.  The young fellow stood
+up straight and strong on the lowest step, but she stepped into the
+shadow of the doorway.  I saw her eyes looking out on me as I passed.
+Her hat was off and there was a red rose in her hair--and none in his
+coat.
+
+Some pictures fade quick, some never.  The picture of Mary Riley in
+that doorway, with his rose in her hair--that hasn't faded yet.
+
+They had been talking before I reached them, but as I passed on I could
+feel the silence between them.  For many steps after I passed on I
+could feel that silence and their eyes following me up the street.
+
+Next day there was an outdoor bazaar for the benefit of some flood
+sufferers.  There was an athletic programme and I was the star of the
+meet, with my picture on the bill-boards.
+
+I went.  Surrounding the athletic field and track were tables for the
+sale of this thing and that, and behind the tables were women and girls
+using every female guile to coax money from men's pockets.
+
+There were big tables and little tables.  At one of the little tables
+was Mary Riley.  Sidewise out of my eyes I saw her, standing atop of a
+chair behind the table to look out on the games.  When the games were
+over and I was dressed up in my street clothes again, I walked over to
+her table.  My three first-prize cups in their three chamois bags were
+carried behind me by a multi-millionaire's son named Twinney.  He was
+an athletic rooter, with an ambition to be known as the friend of some
+prize-ring or football or sprinting champion.  In my coat pocket were
+two gold prize watches.
+
+Mary Riley was standing behind her table.  The young chief petty
+officer was there, too--in front of the table.  They were auctioning
+the last of the things off.  With a smile and a word of thanks Mary
+would hand over the things as they were bought.  But she wasn't taking
+in too much money.  She was the daughter of a man of no great
+importance in the community, and she didn't have the grand articles
+that the women at the other tables had.  Her little stock was made up
+of things that she had begged or made herself.
+
+The auctioneer was a whiskered old man with a great flow of gab.  He
+holds up a piece of lace--to put on a bureau or a dresser it was--made,
+as he put it, by beautiful Miss Riley herself.  And she was beautiful!
+Violet eyes and blue-black hair, and--I've seen Chinese ivory since
+that her face was the color of, only no Chinese ivory that ever would
+take on the warmer waves of color as I looked at it.
+
+"How much for this lovely lace cover?" the auctioneer was asking, and
+"Two dollars," some one said.  And right away the chief petty officer
+said "Five!"
+
+I looked at him then--for the first time fairly.  He was one of those
+quiet-looking, thoughtful kind--of good height, well made and well set
+up--maybe twenty-two years old.
+
+There was another chief petty officer with him; and this one began
+telling a bystander how that young fellow who'd just bid was Jack
+Meagher the gun-captain--the same Meagher, yes, that the papers had
+been talking about--who'd dropped from his turret to his handling-room
+and in through a fire and shut himself up in a magazine and maybe saved
+the ship and the whole crew from being blown up.  He'd got burnt,
+pretty bad--yes, but was all right now.
+
+"He's got his medal of honor for it, but he's not one to carry it
+around and show it," said Meagher's friend.
+
+Meagher was bidding--some one had said six dollars for the lace.
+Meagher had said ten, and Mary Riley's violet eyes were glowing.  I had
+five dollars--no more--in my pocket.  But there was Twinney with his
+tens-of-thousands allowance in the year.  He always carried plenty of
+money around with him.
+
+"Twinney," I said, "how much money have you?"
+
+"Oh, a couple of hundred or so," and pulled it out and began to count
+it.
+
+"I'll bid on the lace piece," I said, "and you pay for it."
+
+"Ten dollars I'm offered for this lovely piece of lace," the auctioneer
+was drooning.  "Do I hear----?"
+
+"Twenty," I said.
+
+Meagher looks over at me and a light comes into his eyes.  "Forty,"
+says Meagher.
+
+"Sixty," I said.
+
+"Eighty," says Meagher.
+
+The fat auctioneer looked from one to the other of us.  He had not had
+a chance to speak since the bidding was at ten dollars.  He was about
+to open his mouth now when----
+
+"One hundred dollars!" I said and looked over at Meagher.
+
+Meagher turns to his chum.  Before he could speak the chum was emptying
+his pockets to him.  When he had it all counted--his chum's and his
+own----
+
+"Two hundred fifty dollars," he said; "we might as well throw in the
+change--two hundred and sixty-five dollars," and laid it down on the
+table before Mary Riley.
+
+Gold of angels, but there was class to the way he did it.  No
+millionaire's money, but the savings of an enlisted man's pay.
+
+I turned to Twinney.  "He's through--make out your check for three
+hundred and give to me."
+
+"Three hundred dollars," he says, "for that piece of lace!  Three
+hundred--why, five dollars would be enough for it!"
+
+"Make out your check for three hundred, Twinney, and those cups you've
+got and the two watches in my pocket, every medal and cup I've got at
+home, my championship gold football--they're yours to keep."
+
+"But three hundred dollars!"
+
+"Yes, and three thousand if I had your money!"
+
+"But what do you want it for?"
+
+"Gr-r-r--!" I snarled, and shoved my spread hand into his face.  He
+landed on his back ten feet away.  The C.P.O. friend of Meagher's
+started to smile at me, but before he could get the smile well under
+way I wiped it off.  He fell where he stood.  Meagher looked at me and
+I at him.
+
+"That wasn't right," said Meagher.
+
+"I'll make it right," I said, "with you or him or whoever else doesn't
+like it, now or later."
+
+He went white; and the kind that go white are finish fighters.  And he
+was a good big man with more than muscle under his coat.
+
+"Make it right now," he said.  "But not here--some place where the
+crowd won't be."
+
+We moved over to under the grand stand.  That was at half past five
+o'clock and it was a long summer's day, but it took till the daylight
+was all but gone before I knocked him down for the last time.
+
+[Illustration: It took till the daylight was all but gone before I
+knocked him down for the last time.]
+
+He couldn't talk; he couldn't get to his feet.  His C.P.O. friend--a
+game one, too--shook his fist at me across his body.  "Only a week out
+of the hospital and you had to beat him up.  But, beaten or not
+beaten--go ahead, smash me again if you want to, you big brute--he's
+still a better man than you are or ever will be!"
+
+A score of people had found their way in under the seats.  None who
+cared to know but would hear a word of every blow that was passed in
+that fight.  Going home after the fight it was borne in on me that less
+than ever was I the hero I was wishful to make myself out to be.
+
+I slept little that night, and in the morning--nothing within the four
+walls of a house suited me any more--I slipped out into the sun and
+walked along the docks; and walking the docks I reached the gates to
+the navy-yard.  I went in.
+
+A ship!--'tis like nothing else in the world.  Ships!  In the romances
+I'd been reading since ever I could read, there had been tales of ships
+and of the sea.  Phoenician galleys, Roman triremes, the high-prowed
+boats of the Vikings, carved Spanish caravels--they had carried the men
+who made history.  Great ships were they, and yet here were ships that
+could take--any one of them here--could take a score, a hundred, of the
+ancient craft with all their shielded men at arms and stand off--a
+mile, two miles, ten miles off--and with one broadside blow them from
+the face of the waters.  Dreams of what had been and what might
+be--what use were they?  Things as they are--that was it!
+
+What most people, maybe, would call common sense was coming to me; and
+maybe something finer than all the common sense in the world was flying
+from me.  So I've often thought since of that morning.
+
+I enlisted in the navy.  And it was good for me.  To look out on the
+wide 'waters--day or night--'tis to calm a man's soul, to widen his
+thought.
+
+I had no ambition to rise.  The blazing life of the four quarters of
+the world was soaking into me.  My eyes, perhaps, were seeing too much,
+and my mind pondering on what I saw too much, to be breaking any ship
+records for efficiency.
+
+But I was getting my rating when it was time and I was forgetting old
+shore troubles, when there was a warrant-officer came to our ship.  His
+name--no matter his name--he's no longer in the navy.  He was the--
+But you've seen the little man on the big job?--the sure sign of it
+being the pompous manner and the arrogant word.  There he was, licking
+the boots of those above him and setting his own boots on the necks of
+those below!  He strutted like a governor-general.  Maybe you know what
+sort of talk is passed along the gun-decks when such a one is parading
+by!
+
+The ridiculousness of him was too wide a target for any man with an eye
+in his head to miss.  I was never short of an eye, nor oil for the
+trunnions of my tongue, and no ship's company ever lacked a messenger
+to carry the disturbing word.  For the fun I poked at him my bold
+superior had me spotted for his own target later.
+
+There was a chest of alcohol on the lower flag bridge and there was a
+marine sentry standing by it night and day.  As much for the devilment
+as for the drink, four or five of the lads in our gun crew one night
+rushed the ladder to the bridge, stood the sentry on his head, broke
+open the chest, grabbed the alcohol, and got away.
+
+My warrant-officer says he saw me among 'em.  'Twas a hot night, like
+to-night, and in the tropics too, and he couldn't sleep, he said, and
+had to leave his room and come on deck.  And so it was he happened to
+be where he could see me.  He couldn't name the others.  Indeed, he
+would not care to name others when he was not positive, and so do
+possibly innocent men an injustice, and so on.  But he was positive
+about me.
+
+I was called.  The sentry looked me over.  He wouldn't swear it was me,
+but there was one man in the party about my height and build, and, like
+me, he was a very active man, judging by the way he went down the
+bridge ladder.
+
+Now, I knew who did it--I had been invited to be of the party, and I
+wasn't a bit too good for it; but I didn't feel like going and I didn't
+go.  The man the sentry took for me was the man who had been the
+heavyweight slugger of the ship before I was drafted to her.  We had
+already had the gloves on, and I had beaten him at a ship's smoker long
+before this.  I waited to see would he speak up.  He didn't, and I took
+my sentence--disratement and thirty days in the brig, ten of it on
+bread and water.
+
+I didn't mind the disrating, nor the brig and the bread and water; but
+I did mind being made out a liar.
+
+The first liberty I made after that--in Hong Kong--I caught my boxing
+rival ashore.  I gave him a proper beating.  He took it as something
+coming to him, without complaint.  The next liberty I made--in Nagasaki
+it was--I caught my warrant-officer ashore.
+
+He was not on duty and so not in uniform, and, pretending to mistake
+him for somebody else, I gave him a grand beating.  Six or eight of
+their little ju-jutsu policemen clung to my legs and back, but that
+didn't stop me from finishing my job on him.  I left him in such a
+ridiculous fix that he was ashamed to complain, but the Japanese
+authorities weren't satisfied.  I spent a night in one of their jails,
+and aboard ship next day I was masted and once more disrated--this time
+with a sermon from the captain on my disorderly ways.
+
+I didn't mind the captain's lecture--I had rated that--but I did mind
+being drafted to another ship with a record as a disturber.  I had not
+taken more than four or five drinks in my time up to then, and then
+more out of curiosity than desire, but on my next liberty--in Manila--I
+took a drink.  I didn't like the taste of it--I don't yet--but there's
+never any use in half-doing a thing--I took another, and more than
+another.  From then on I began making liberty records.
+
+Officers were good to me.  It is only a skunk of an officer who will
+take pride in crowding an enlisted man, and I've met few skunks among
+our officers.  So long as I could hold my feet coming over the
+gang-plank, a friendly shipmate buckled to either side of me and I able
+to answer "Here!" to the roll-call--so long as I could do that, there
+were deck officers who looked no further.  'Twas a friendly way, but
+bringing no cure to me.
+
+By and by Meagher was assigned to our ship.  He had married Mary, and
+this was maybe a year later.  He was a warrant-officer--had been for
+five years--a chief gunner, wearing his sword and being called Mister.
+And wearing it with credit--all the gun crews spoke well of him.
+
+He never let on that he remembered me, until one day the handling-room
+was cleared of all but the two of us, and then it was me who spoke to
+him.  "I'd like to have a word with you, Mr. Meagher," I said, "if you
+don't bear too much of a grudge."
+
+"Why should I bear you a grudge?" he said.  "You licked me, and licked
+me good.  You left no argument as to who won that fight.  If I ever
+bear you any grudge, it will be for the drinking and brawling record
+you're making, with never a thought of the manhood you're wasting."
+
+"It's easy for you to talk so--you that won what I'd die ten times over
+to get."
+
+"Die?  You die?  Give up your life?  Why, you haven't even the courage
+to give up your consuming pride!"
+
+He looked at me and I at him.  I was all but leaping for him.  "Go
+ahead," he says, "beat me up again!"
+
+"You're my officer," I said.
+
+"Cut the officer stuff!"  He threw his cap on the deck.  He took off
+his coat and threw that on the deck.  "Now I bear no mark of the
+officer--come on now and beat me up!  And you'll have to beat me till I
+can't speak or see again--and then you can leave me here, and I'm
+telling you now no one will ever know who did it.  You're many pounds
+heavier and half as strong again as when you licked me before, but go
+ahead and turn yourself loose at me.  There's no alibi left you now--go
+ahead, turn yourself loose at me!"
+
+I was all that he said--a brute that felt equal to ripping the
+three-inch planking off the quarterdeck, and he wasn't himself near the
+man he had been when I fought him before--he had never got well over
+the burning in the handling-room fire; but he stood there telling me
+what some one should have told me long before.
+
+"Jack Meagher," I said, "Mary Riley made no mistake--you're a better
+man than I am."  And I left him and ran up the ladder--up to where
+winds were blowing and seas singing and the stars rolling their eternal
+circles.  All night long I walked the deck.
+
+It did me good--what he had said to me.  But a man doesn't change his
+ways overnight.  I stopped maybe to have a backward look more often
+than I used to, and friendly deck officers maybe didn't have so often
+to look hard at the liberty lists; but being in the same ship with
+Meagher did me good.
+
+I used to take to watching him, to studying his ways--the ways of the
+man Mary Riley had married.
+
+He used to come out of the after turret and look out on the sea, when
+maybe he'd finished up his work for the afternoon.  He was there one
+afternoon late; and we were in the China Sea, a division of us, bound
+up to Cheefoo for a liberty.  A monsoon was blowing, and there we were,
+pitching into it, taking plenty of water over ourselves forward, but so
+far very little aft.
+
+Meagher was in rain-coat and rubber boots, leaning against a
+gypsy-head, when this big sea rolled up over our quarter-deck.  She had
+a low quarter, our ship, and the solid water of this sea rolled
+turret-high.  When it had passed on, Meagher and four others were gone.
+
+I was in the lee of the superstructure.  I ran onto her quarter-deck.
+I saw an officer's cap and took a running high jump over the rail.
+While I was still in the air I said to myself: "You're gone!  Her
+starb'd propeller will get you--you're gone! ...
+
+"And if I am, what of it?" I recalled later saying to myself; but
+before my head was fairly under I was kicking out hard from the ship's
+side.
+
+Meagher was the only man of the five to come up.  When I saw him he was
+struggling to unhook the metal clasps of his rain-coat.  I reached him
+and kicked out for the life-buoy that the marine sentry had heaved
+over.  We made the buoy and I shoved him up on it--he still trying to
+clear himself of his heavy rain-coat.
+
+"I kicked off my rubber boots right away, but the buckles of this thing
+they don't come so easy."  That was Meagher's first word,
+and--heavy-spoken because of weariness--he said it by way of apology
+for causing so much trouble.  "But I'd never got clear in time--you
+saved me from going, that's sure."  Not till then did he have a chance
+to look at me.  When he saw who it was he went quiet.
+
+"You're surprised, Jack Meagher?" I said.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"You doubted my courage, maybe?" I asked.
+
+[Illustration: "You doubted my courage, maybe?" I asked.]
+
+"No," he said to that, "not your courage--never your courage.  But your
+good intentions--yes."
+
+We were lying with our chests across the buoy, and we could easily see
+the ship, and we knew that the ship could see us so long as our buoy
+light kept burning--her whistles were blowing regularly to let us know
+that.  But she would have to have a care in manoeuvring because of the
+other ships so near, and it was too rough to lower a boat for us.
+
+Then at last the blue light of our buoy burned itself out, for which we
+were almost thankful--it smelled so.  And then night came, and darkness.
+
+Tossing high up and then down, like a swing in the sea, we went, lying
+on our chests across the buoy one time and hanging on by a grip of our
+fingers another time.  And when the sea wasn't washing over my head I
+would shout; though I doubt if, in the hissing of the sea and the
+roaring of the wind, my voice carried ten feet beyond the buoy.
+
+By and by a search-light burned through the dark onto us.  Meagher was
+by then in tough shape.  For the last half-hour I'd been holding him
+onto the buoy, and it was another half-hour before they could launch a
+boat.  We had been three hours in the water, and I was glad to be back
+aboard.  It is one thing not to mind dying; it is another thing to
+fight and fight and have to keep on fighting after your strength is
+gone.  When a man's strength goes a lot of his courage goes with it.
+
+Meagher's courage was still with him.  He protested against being taken
+to the sick bay, but there they took him; and when he left the sick
+bay, it was to take a ship for home.  I went to see him the last day.
+On my leaving him, he said: "I'm taking back a lot I said to you.  If
+you had been washed over I doubt if I'd gone after you."
+
+He would have gone after me--or anybody else.  And I told him so, my
+heart thumping as I said it, for I'd come to have a great liking for
+him.
+
+"I still doubt it," he said.  "Anyway, I owe my life--what there is
+left of it--to you."
+
+"If you think you owe me anything," I said, "then don't tell your wife
+anything about me.  Don't tell her where I am or what my name is now."
+
+"I won't tell her or anybody else where you are or what your name is,
+but I will tell her how you saved my life."
+
+I never saw him again.  I heard they gave him a shore billet when he
+was discharged from the hospital; I heard, too, that within a year he
+was retired on a pension.  But that he was dead--I never knew that till
+you told me to-night.
+
+
+Killorin had come to a full stop.
+
+Carlin recalled the last time he had seen Meagher--when they both knew
+he had not long to live.  "She has been a wonderful wife to me.  Not
+much happiness I have had that she has not made for me," Meagher had
+said.
+
+"I don't doubt he told her of my going over the side after him in the
+gale--he wasn't a man to lie," said Killorin.
+
+"He told her," said Carlin.  "And he told me something more.  That
+night you passed them on the steps he had proposed to her.  He thought
+she was going to say yes.  She had stuck his rose into her hair and was
+about to say the word--so he thought--and then you came by.  And it was
+six years again before she said the word.  If you had not left home----"
+
+"Thank God," said Killorin, "I left home!  Thank God on her account.
+The consuming pride--it had to burn itself out in me."
+
+It was still dark night, but ahead of the ship a cluster of pale yellow
+lights could be seen.
+
+"Veracruz?" asked Carlin.
+
+"Veracruz, yes--the port ahead.  And how was she when you saw her last?"
+
+"A lonesome woman--more lonesome and weary than a good woman should be
+at her age.  Her eyes are still violet and her cheeks like ivory, but
+the color doesn't come and go in them now."
+
+"I had to leave home to learn," said Killorin, "that the bright color
+coming and going like a flood means the blood running high in the
+heart.  Men should have a care for such.  Such natures feel
+terribly--either joy or sorrow."
+
+It had been night.  In a moment the red sun rose up from the oily sea,
+and it was day.  There was a moment of haze and vapor, and then emerged
+a city ahead--a pink-and-white city, with here and there a touch of
+cream and blue.
+
+"Beautiful!" murmured Carlin.
+
+"They're all beautiful," said Killorin, "in the dawn."
+
+A faint breeze was stealing over the Gulf.  Through the black sea
+little crests of white were breaking--pure white they were, and a whiff
+of pure air was coming from them.  The sleepers around the deck began
+to stir, to roll over, to sit up, and, with thankful sighs, to inhale
+the fresh, sweet air.
+
+"The breath o' dawn!" murmured Killorin--"like a breath o' heaven after
+the hot tropic night....  As you say, that port ahead is beautiful.
+But when that port is astern and some other one ahead!  That will be
+the sight, man--New York harbor after all these years!  The breath and
+the color o' dawn then--'twill be like a bride's blush and her whisper
+stealing over the waters o' New York Bay."
+
+
+
+
+Peter Stops Ashore
+
+The Pentle place had been closed up and the servants were gone; but
+Mrs. Pentle's car was still waiting at the gate, and Mrs. Pentle
+herself--old John Ferguson, on his way to the lookout, could see Mrs.
+Pentle perched up on her flat rock and looking out on Gloucester harbor
+and the sea.
+
+There was a fishing-schooner sailing out.  John put his glasses on her
+and was entering her in his book when he heard some one's step on the
+ladder leading to his tower, and then the hatch sliding back.  It was
+Mrs. Pentle.
+
+"I've heard of your book, John.  May I look at it?"
+
+"Surely, ma'am, surely."  He passed it to her.  "For seventeen years
+now I've been keeping it--the account o' the fishing-vessels sailin'
+out o' Gloucester, ma'am.  A column for the day o' departure, one for
+the name o' the vessel, one for the master, and one for the day she
+comes back home."
+
+She was turning the pages.
+
+"So many never come back home, do they?"
+
+"Nacherally--they bein' fishermen, ma'am."
+
+"Ah-h, here's the year!"  She ran her finger down the page.  "And
+here!" and read: "'_Valorous_--sailed December seventeenth--and never
+returned.'"
+
+"I mind her, ma'am, with the proud name--George's handlin'."
+
+"I know.  My father was one of her crew....  But here"--she stopped in
+her turning of the pages--"isn't this the entry of one they've just
+given up for lost?"
+
+"That's her, ma'am--the _Conqueror_.  It's queer what bad luck goes
+with those proud names, ma'am.  Peter Crudden was master of her."
+
+"Peter Crudden!  I played with Peter Crudden when we were children
+together.  And he's lost?"
+
+"When they print the names o' the crew in the Gloucester papers, it's a
+hundred to one they're gone, ma'am.  A married sister o' Peter's is a
+neighbor o' my married daughter's up in Boston, and they're cryin'
+their heart out a'ready, she writes me--Peter's sister an' her
+children."
+
+Mrs. Pentle closed the book.
+
+"We live such sheltered lives here ashore, most of us, don't we, John?
+And we complain at the smallest little discomfort--many of us, I mean.
+And those brave men sail out to the dangerous waters in their little
+boats, where the best of it is hardship and death comes so often.  It
+must be born in me--I just can't help feeling different toward those
+fishermen from what I do toward the men I meet in my business in the
+city."
+
+She left; and, watching her swing down the ladder, John Ferguson was
+thinking that for a woman of her build--full-bosomed and no
+slimling--she was cert'nly light on her feet, and wondering why a young
+and good-looking widow as she was--dang good-looking--why more o' those
+wealthy young men she must know hadn't hooked her afore that.  "Must
+be," mused John, "none of 'em's used the right bait."
+
+John turned, just naturally to have another look out to sea,
+and--"Well, you old gadabout!" muttered John and hurried to point his
+glasses at what he saw wabbling in.
+
+"Dang me if she c'n be!" cried John.  "Dang me, but she is!"
+
+It was the _Conqueror_--her foremast gone half-way to the deck, her
+mainmast gone clean to the deck, and her bowsprit broken off at the
+knight-heads.  And she was a foot thick, or more, in ice; and in her
+jury-rigging was her flag--at half-mast.
+
+"That's one, ye ravenous sea, dang ye, ye didn't get!" muttered John.
+"And she'll have a tale to tell!"  And wondering how many of 'em were
+gone, and who they were, he entered the month and day of her return.
+
+
+The _Conqueror_ had fitted out at Duncan's; and Duncan's wharf and
+store had not changed in twenty years.  Mr. Duncan did not like changes.
+
+The old shelves of canned goods in Duncan's, the long packages of
+blue-papered macaroni, the little green cartons of fish-hooks, the
+piled-up barrels of flour and boxes of hardtack--they were all of the
+same old reliable brands.  And the woollen mitts in strings!  And in
+back was an area of kegs of red lead and hanks of tarred ground-line
+and coils of stout rope, and oilskins and sou'-westers, and rubber
+boots and the heavy leather redjacks--the smell of them was all over
+Duncan's.
+
+Fred Lichens, who had kept books for thirty years for Mr. Duncan, was
+looking down the wharf at the _Conqueror_ warping into the slip when
+Mrs. Pentle arrived in her car.  Her arrival was not surprising.  She
+had half a dozen small charities in Gloucester, and she came regularly
+to Mr. Duncan's for advice about them.
+
+Fred knew all this exactly, because he kept the books for the
+Gloucester end of these things--drawing a few extra dollars a month
+therefor--and he had known Mrs. Pentle since she was a little girl and
+used to come with her mother, and without her as she grew older, to Mr.
+Duncan's to draw, against whatever would be her father's share, the
+stores which the family needed to keep them alive while the father was
+out to sea.
+
+Fred remembered when the girl who was now Mrs. Pentle left high school
+to go to work in Boston.  She was a bouncingly pretty girl, and within
+two years married Pentle, the millionaire department-store man.
+
+Fred dusted a chair for Mrs. Pentle and set it in her favorite spot,
+which was beside a window in Mr. Duncan's own office looking out on the
+harbor.  Sitting there, she saw an iced-up wreck of a vessel and some
+of her crew leaping up onto the wharf, where a crowd was surrounding
+them.  She asked what vessel it was, and Fred told her--the
+_Conqueror_, Peter Crudden; and she said No! and Fred said Yes, ma'am,
+it was.
+
+"I wonder if I should know him now," she said; and then: "Which is
+Peter Crudden?"
+
+"Captain Crudden," said Fred, "is the one Mr. Duncan is bending toward
+to hear better."
+
+The crowd was moving up toward the store.  Mrs. Pentle jumped up on her
+chair so as to be able to look over the glazed lights of glass between
+the private office and the store as they came in.
+
+Peter Crudden was a hard-looking figure of a man, coming into Duncan's
+store that day.  He had not shaved for days, and his thick hair looked
+enormous--it was so tangled.  He had not slept in a week; and when he
+took his seat on the long store bench and let his head settle wearily
+back against the wall he looked old.
+
+He was telling about the big gale coming on and how her spars went,
+which maybe saved her from going into the shoals and being lost right
+there, and how they worked her way clear o' the shoals under jury-rig,
+how they were lookin' for a little ease and comfort, when aboard comes
+this unlucky sea, with no more warning than a shooting star out of the
+sky, and sweeps--cleaner than ever you could sweep the floor o' the
+store--her deck and all, everything.  And atop o' that a sea to fill
+her cabin full.  Four of 'em makin' for the deck were thrown back into
+the cabin again--smashed afoul o' the stove one, and atop o' the
+lockers and into a looard bunk another; and how they picked themselves
+up and made the deckhand when they got there--as if a clean-swept deck
+warn't hard luck enough--there was Dave Elwell that was to the wheel,
+his breast smashed again' the wheel spokes and he dead.
+
+"And the two on the deck gone--gone, sir, so quick that we never even
+got a sight o' them or a smothered hail from them goin'," concluded
+Peter.  "An' cold!  And ice!  And--"  But once more he let his head
+fall back against the wall.
+
+Fred was so wrapped up in Peter's story that he forgot Mrs. Pentle till
+he found her beside him and heard her saying in a low voice:
+
+"When I was a little girl I listened to fishermen on that same bench,
+with their stories of toil and death.  And I remember how I would
+linger, making believe to retie my packages into a tighter bundle, to
+hear more of what they had to say.  It was a man sitting on that bench,
+Mr. Lichens, in just that way, not knowing who I was, who brought word
+of my father's vessel gone down--and all hands with her."
+
+"I cal'late the hard tales told from that same bench would fill more
+books than was ever writ about Gloucester, an' there's been a many--an'
+some foolish ones among 'em," said Fred.
+
+"Those two men washed overboard"--Peter was speaking again--"some one
+has got to tell their people how they come to be lost.  And poor Dave
+in the ice-house aboard the vessel--some one has got to 'tend to him."
+
+"I'll 'tend to Dave," said Mr. Duncan.
+
+"That'll help," said Peter.  "And now--I'm through with
+fishin'--through with goin' to sea!  I'm goin' to stop ashore!"
+
+It was then Mrs. Pentle ran from beside Fred and into the store.
+"Captain Crudden----"
+
+"This is Mrs. Pentle, captain," said Mr. Duncan.
+
+"Celia Curtin that was," explained Mrs. Pentle.  "I knew you as a boy."
+
+"I know," said Peter.  And then he almost smiled: "And no girl in
+Gloucester ever better able to take care of herself!"
+
+"If I could get you something to do in my store, would you take it,
+captain?  If it was fit work, I mean, for a man?"
+
+"It wouldn't have to be fit--I'll trim bonnets for ladies before I go
+back to fishin'," said Peter, "and thank you for the chance."
+
+Peter passed out with his crew.
+
+Mrs. Pentle turned to Mr. Duncan.
+
+"So that's settled!  I shall telephone you, Mr. Duncan, about Captain
+Crudden's place in my store--the work will not be disagreeable."
+
+Mr. Duncan and Fred watched Mrs. Pentle's car racing up the street; and
+then Fred said:
+
+"Mr. Duncan, Peter didn't look like any magazine cover of a hero I've
+seen lately, but--sitting there on that bench awhile ago--did you take
+a look at Mrs. Pentle's face while he was telling the story of that
+wreck?"
+
+Mr. Duncan looked at his old bookkeeper.
+
+"Reef down your imagination, Fred.  She's a woman who likes to manage
+things and to do good; but what I'm afraid she'll do now will be to
+ruin the makings of a smart young skipper with her soft job ashore."
+
+
+Mr. Henston, the manager of Pentle's, brought Peter Crudden to Flaxley,
+the head shipper.
+
+"Flaxley, you are to break in this man," said Henston, "and he's to go
+on the pay-roll at twenty dollars per week."
+
+Flaxley wondered why a new man, who was to be only a shipper's helper,
+should go on the payroll for twenty dollars a week; and he wondered yet
+more why Henston should be telling him about the pay-roll, which was
+made up in the office and not in the shipping-room.  He wondered, too,
+why the manager himself should take the trouble to introduce the new
+man.
+
+"You needn't make it easy for him on my account," whispered Henston,
+going out.
+
+Flaxley had seen a lot of things happen in Pentle's, where he had been
+so long that, when Mrs. Pentle wanted to know about anything that went
+back beyond the memory of even the ancient cashier Herrick, she would
+send down for Flaxley.
+
+He was no older than Herrick, but he had started to work in the store
+younger.
+
+Flaxley was like something that went with the store.  He had
+privileges; and he did not like Henston and would not have minded
+telling him so, but that he had great respect for Mrs. Pentle and
+thought--what many more in the store thought--that Henston was dressing
+his windows so as to catch Mrs. Pentle's eye, and some day--you can't
+tell about women, especially young widows--some day Henston might marry
+her.
+
+Flaxley looked Peter over and rather liked his make-up, and pointed out
+a big dry-goods case and told him what he wanted done.  Flaxley saw the
+new man hook into the box, which weighed eight hundred pounds, up-end
+it, claw-hammer it, and toss the heavy bolts of cloth out onto the long
+table.
+
+"Jeepers!" said Flaxley.  "He did that while some o' the other young
+fellows here would be peeking around for help!"  He studied Peter for
+two days more, and from then on wearied the head shippers of other
+emporiums, whenever he met one, with his tales of the strength and
+niftiness of the new man he'd "picked up."
+
+Peter took his lunch in the basement where he worked, the same being
+put up by his married sister in a package made to look like a
+camera-box.
+
+He had bought this lunch-box in Pentle's--he remembered it was sold to
+him by a pretty girl with a pleasant manner.  It was just the thing for
+lunch--she had said--all the girls in Pentle's carried 'em; and there
+was ten per cent off for employees.  It was the first time in his life
+that Peter ever got anything off on anything he'd ever bought, and he
+said so; and the salesgirl looked at him again and then smiled.
+
+"You're not a city man?" she said.  Peter said he wasn't; and then his
+change came and he went off.
+
+It was his third day in Pentle's.  He sat on a stool by the door
+leading into a passageway, to eat his lunch.  Just across the
+passageway was the door into the girls' rest-room, where there were
+lounges and chairs and a big heater on which they set their cans of
+coffee to warm up.
+
+"My new helper, girls--height five feet eleven, weight a hundred
+ninety, thirty-two teeth in his head and not married--look him over,"
+said old Flaxley, making Peter blush.  "And now warm his coffee for
+him--he's been too shy to ask," and Flaxley handed Peter's coffee
+across the passageway.
+
+They looked him over, some of them saucily.  And hearing Flaxley call
+him Peter, in a week or so some of them were calling him Peter and
+offering him pickles and doughnuts from their lunch-boxes; and there
+were always three or four ready to take his coffee from him when he
+reached it across the passageway to be heated.
+
+One day a group of them, with their heads bunched in the doorway as
+usual, chaffed him across the passageway.  Peter was looking at a
+lovely white neck and dark little head, back of the row of heads in the
+door, and wondering where he had seen that girl before.  And biting
+into a thick corned-beef sandwich, he remembered where--it was the girl
+who had sold him the lunch-box.
+
+"Ten per cent off for employees," shouted Peter; "all the girls carry
+'em!" and held up the lunch-box.  The others caught the idea and
+laughed uproariously--except the one who had sold it.  She only blushed
+scarlet and disappeared, and did not come back.
+
+"She must 'a' thought I was tryin' to get acquainted," said Peter later
+to old Flaxley, "and didn't like it."
+
+That same afternoon Mrs. Pentle looked into the shipping-room.  It was
+one of those warm days in winter and, of course, the steam was on.
+Peter was wearing only a sleeveless white jersey above his belt.  Peter
+was wide-shouldered and trim-waisted, with the easy lines of the man
+who is quick as well as powerful in action.
+
+Flaxley saw Mrs. Pentle in the doorway.  Henston was with her and,
+because Henston was with her, Flaxley stepped quickly over to the door.
+If Mr. Henston had anything to say about Peter he wanted to be there to
+hear it.
+
+Mrs. Pentle was watching Peter at work.
+
+"He doesn't look like the same man," said Mrs. Pentle.  "When I last
+saw him his jaws were set like steel, his eyes like hard lights back in
+his head, and his voice was rough.  And his skin was like something
+worn raw by the beating of hammers on it.  He looked like a middle-aged
+man then, and now--why, he doesn't look twenty-two now!"
+
+"He ain't much more," said Flaxley.
+
+Just then Peter up-ended a big dry-goods case, ripped off a boarded
+side, tore away a layer of thick paper, and tossed onto a table ten
+feet away a bolt of cloth that Mrs. Pentle knew weighed fifty pounds;
+and he did not even bend his knees to do it.
+
+"A powerful brute," said Henston.
+
+"Brute?" said Mrs. Pentle.
+
+"I mean--" said Henston; but Mrs. Pentle had stepped inside the
+shipping-room door.
+
+Peter was whistling; but he had to up-end another case.  It took a
+little effort, this one, and he stopped his whistling.
+
+"Up--up--upsie boy!" cooed Peter.  It did not up.  He set himself and
+tugged.  He grew impatient.  "Come here, you loafer!" he shouted, and
+braced and heaved.  The case came up.
+
+"When Peter takes to heavin' in earnest they generally come," said
+Flaxley.
+
+While old Flaxley stood there looking from Peter to Mrs. Pentle he
+couldn't help thinking--much as he respected her--he couldn't help
+wondering if she was comparing Peter to Pentle that was dead and gone.
+
+"If she is," thought Flaxley, "Lord help the memory o' Pentle--who was
+never any Apoller for build and about as much blood in him as a man'd
+find in four pounds of excelsior packin'."
+
+Peter was whistling again and carolling and heaving facetious comment
+at anybody and everybody, when he felt the silence.  He looked round
+and saw Mrs. Pentle.
+
+"How do you do, captain?"
+
+Peter shifted his cotton-hook from right hand to left and shook her
+extended hand.
+
+"I'm cert'nly glad to see you again, Mrs. Pentle."
+
+"How are you getting on, captain?"
+
+"Fine--fine!"
+
+"The work is not too hard?"
+
+"Hard?"  Peter smiled.  "Often enough I think of those fellows out on
+the Banks turning out on a good, cold, blizzardy day in winter, Mrs.
+Pentle--turning out at four o'clock in the mornin' and goin' into a
+cold hold with the ice and baitin' up, so's to be ready to go over the
+side in the dory by the first o' the daylight.  And then all day long
+it's heave and haul trawls, with maybe a sea that they don't know what
+minute'll get 'em.  An' dressin' down a deck-load o' fish on top o'
+that afore they turn in of a night--an' maybe standin' watch in the
+night again, standin' to the wheel beatin' home in a nor'wester, when
+it's so cold you have to wear a woollen mask over your face with two
+holes to see through and another to breathe through, and your
+watch-mates have to relieve you--and you them--every six or eight
+minutes to keep from freezin' to death!
+
+"Hard work, Mrs. Pentle!"  It was too ridiculous--Peter laughed aloud
+this time.
+
+"I live with my married sister, Mrs. Pentle, and goin' home these cold
+winter nights I sit down to supper, and after supper I slip into my
+slipshods, an' I get out my pipe, an' I spread my feet out before a
+nice, hot fire, in a rockin'-chair, an' the sister's six children they
+climb up all over me and we have one good time together.  Some nights I
+take one or two of the oldest of 'em to the movies."
+
+"You like children, then, captain?"
+
+"The man, Mrs. Pentle, that ain't got children is bein' cheated out o'
+something," said Peter.  "An' sittin' there after the children are put
+to bed, I say to myself: 'Well, Peter Crudden, you're cert'nly one
+lucky dog.  Here's you into your warm, dry bed every night, an' work
+that there's about enough of to exercise you, an' no matter how the
+weather is--no matter about sea and wind so rough you can't
+fish--there's your pay-envelope every week with the same old reg'lar
+amount in it.'"
+
+"I'm glad you like it here, captain, and--I'm partners with Mr. Duncan
+in a new vessel to be named after me."
+
+"I hope," said Peter earnestly, "that she won't shame her name--that
+she'll be fast an' weatherly--and always find her way back home."
+
+"I hope so, captain.  And now--if there is anything about your work you
+do not like, let me know."  There was a tramping of girls hurrying
+through the passageway.  Two or three were gazing curiously in from the
+doorway.
+
+"Closing-up time, is it?"  Mrs. Pentle had suddenly become nervous.
+"Good-by."  She passed out with Henston.
+
+Old Flaxley looked kindly at Peter.  "No airs to her, Peter; all men
+look alike to her," said old Flaxley.
+
+"She's all right," said Peter.  "But as for hard work--Lord!"
+
+And he was chuckling over that all the while he was washing up and
+still smiling at the thought of it when he overhauled a girl in the
+passageway on his way out.  He said good evening politely and was
+hurrying by when the figure said: "Good evening, captain."
+
+It was something in the voice that held him.  He had another look--it
+wasn't very light in the passageway.  Well, if it wasn't the girl who
+had sold him the lunch-box!
+
+Peter walked to the corner with her; when her car came along, it
+happened to be his car.  She lived not very far from Peter's sister.
+He walked to her door with her.  Her name was Sarah Hern.
+
+After work next day Peter waited at the door of the shipping-room.
+When she came out of the girls' room he fell into step with her and
+they rode home together.  Sarah invited him in.  Peter stepped in for a
+minute and met Sarah's mother.
+
+He stayed to supper.  There must have been eight or nine Hern boys and
+girls, some grown up, with a widowed mother.  And they all but the
+mother sat down together; and the girls kept bouncing up and down,
+hopping back and forth between table and kitchen when things didn't
+come fast enough.
+
+Peter felt as if he had known them for years; and after supper, an
+older brother passed Peter a cigar and up-stairs in the living-room
+talked in a casually friendly way on baseball, prize-fighting, the big
+war, the latest movies.  One of Sarah's sisters played the piano and
+Sarah and another sister sang.  Other young men called.  Peter was a
+good listener until a little brother of Sarah's peeked in and finally
+came over by Peter and shyly said:
+
+"Won't you tell something, captain, about the big ocean?"
+
+Peter told them a little about the big ocean, as he knew it, and
+stopped.  He himself wanted to hear more songs--"Annie Laurie," or "The
+_Robert E. Lee_," or something like them--but they asked him to keep
+on.  He told more--he would have told them more, in the first place,
+but he had no idea shore-going people, especially girls, cared much for
+rough fishing life.  In a little while he was warmed up and going good.
+When he stopped this time they were all bent over and staring at him.
+The big brother straightened up first and pulled out his watch and said:
+
+"What d'y'know--I'm chairman o' the house committee down to the club,
+and we had a meeting scheduled for an hour and a half ago!"
+
+Sarah sang "Asthore" and "Mother Machree" and there was more playing.
+And they all had ice-cream and cake, and the older brother gave Peter a
+great grip of the hand going; and they all asked him to call again soon
+and waved him good night from the doorway.  And Peter, walking up the
+street, began to think that maybe he had been sticking round his
+sister's too much nights.
+
+Mrs. Pentle called into the shipping-room on a tour of inspection the
+next day again and regularly after that; and regularly Peter rode home
+with Sarah and one night he asked her if she would go to the theatre
+with him.  She looked so pleased that he was sorry he hadn't got his
+courage up sooner.
+
+
+It was to a musical show that Peter took Sarah.  All the time he was
+there he felt uncomfortable--some of the people on the stage cert'nly
+did carry some things pretty far.
+
+However, it was over, and Peter suggested supper at a restaurant.
+
+Peter knew nothing of the night restaurants of the city.  He picked out
+one he saw advertised in the theatre programme and because it also
+happened to be on the way to their trolley-line.  He felt Sarah shrink
+a little going in; and after he was inside and seated he wished he had
+paid more attention to her shrinking.  But he had been too excited to
+notice.  He had been lashed to the wheel of his vessel steering her in
+a living gale and not half so much excited as he was now.  It wasn't
+just the kind of place, maybe, to bring a young girl; but they were in
+there now and he guessed they would weather whatever happened.  He
+asked Sarah if she would have a glass of beer or anything like that.
+He didn't want her to think him too slow.  He was pleased when she said
+no.
+
+What would she have to eat?  Sarah picked up the card.  "Suppose we try
+a tarble dote?" she said.
+
+"All right.  Where is it?"
+
+Sarah pointed it out:
+
+  TABLE D'HÔTE $1.50
+
+
+Peter had a notion she was trying to save his money, and he liked her
+for it, but he wasn't looking to save money.  He pointed out various
+things on the other side of the bill, picking out always the
+high-priced ones, but Sarah shook her head.  She always preferred the
+"tarble dote" to ordering à la carte.
+
+The waiter approached.
+
+"What to drink?" he asked briskly.
+
+"Nothing to drink," answered Peter, and, pointing out the caption,
+Table D'Hôte $1.50, said "Two."
+
+"Two what?" asked the waiter.
+
+"Why, two of what it says--two tarble dotes."
+
+"And what drinks did you say?"  The waiter bent a confidential ear and
+scratched his head with his pencil while he waited.  Peter looked up at
+the ear; then he stretched up and whispered into it:
+
+"Ever hear of the _Boundin' Biller_, Captain Hanks?"
+
+"The _Boundin' Biller_?"  Well, all kinds of queer ones blow into
+restaurants--the waiter slewed his head round, looked at Peter, put his
+ear down, and whispered back: "What about it?"
+
+And Peter whispered up into the waiting ear:
+
+  "The _Boundin' Biller_, Captain Hanks,
+  She was hove flat down on th' Western Banks."
+
+
+"Huh!"  The waiter slewed his head round again to have another look,
+which pulled his ear out of position and forced Peter to raise his
+voice.
+
+"He had the greatest ear, that Captain Hanks," explained Peter.  "He
+could hear a sound when no other mortal ever sailed a vessel could.  He
+heard a steamer's whistle in a gale o' wind and fog one time,
+and--runnin' fair before the wind at the time he was--he jibed her
+over, and o' course you know what happens to a vessel that's runnin'
+with her main sheet to the knot an' somebody jibes her over all
+standin'?"
+
+The waiter stared with increasing doubt at Peter.
+
+"Captain Hanks had nothing on you for hearing," explained Peter.  "I
+said no drinks."
+
+"Oh, oh, excuse me!  I begin to get yuh now.  No drinks," and the
+waiter retreated and returned in silence, but with the food.
+
+Two women on a platform, one very stout and one very thin, danced and
+sang; and then they half-wiggled and half-danced in and out among the
+tables.  Here and there they chucked a chin or kissed a bald head, and
+one, on invitation, sat on a man's knee and had a sip of wine with him.
+
+Sarah herself was knots prettier than either of the singing
+girls--Peter could see that--and she was dressed pretty, too.  He
+didn't know what kind of stuff it was she was wearing, except that it
+was a kind of slaty sea-gray color and fitted snug.  And she had a hat
+that was shaped like a little capsized dory and listed to starboard,
+just about the same list a vessel takes when she puts her scuppers
+under to a light breeze.
+
+Peter, by and by, began to have a notion that Sarah wasn't enjoying
+herself.  There was a party in one of the booths--Peter could not see
+them without turning, but he had a feeling in the back of his head that
+they were paying more attention to Sarah than she liked.  But perhaps
+he was wrong about it.  What with the lights and the music and the
+dancing, he was beginning to feel like rolling out a little song
+himself--a little more maybe about the _Boundin' Biller_--but Sarah
+suddenly started to draw on her gloves.  And she looked tired; and
+Peter hurried to pay the bill and tip the waiter--fifty cents.  The
+waiter thanked him with more respect than Peter would have thought was
+in him.
+
+Peter was jumping up to put Sarah's coat on her before his waiter could
+do it, when a strange waiter came over with a glass of champagne and
+set it on the table before Sarah.
+
+"The gentleman wishes to know if the young lady will have a glass of
+wine with him."
+
+Some joker, of course.  Peter smiled till he saw that Sarah was looking
+frightened.
+
+"Who sent it?" asked Peter.
+
+The waiter looked over to the booth which Peter had had in mind
+earlier.  Peter looked over that way.  A head darted out and back into
+the corner of the booth.  Peter's eyebrows lowered and his eyes
+narrowed.  It looked like a familiar sail.
+
+"Did he say anything about a drink for me?" asked Peter.
+
+The waiter started to smile and then said "No, sir," very quickly.
+
+Peter picked up the glass delicately.
+
+"Do you want to drink this wine, Sarah?"
+
+"Oh, Peter!"
+
+"It's all right--I knew you didn't," assured Peter.
+
+He stepped over to the booth.  He was right about the man in the
+corner--it was Henston.
+
+More than the shipping of goods was discussed in the shipping-room, and
+there was more than that glass of wine in Peter's mind when he looked
+in on Henston in the booth.  There was a sales-girl who had lost her
+job in Pentle's.  It was Henston who had taken advantage of his
+position to start her on the wrong road.
+
+"The young lady," said Peter to Henston, "don't want to drink your
+health."
+
+"Too bad--she drank it before," said Henston.
+
+Peter had hard work to keep the wine from spilling.
+
+"If you don't believe me, ask her," said Henston.
+
+"What's that?" Peter said that to gain time to get his balance.
+
+"I said, Ask her."
+
+"You--you squid, you!"
+
+Peter whipped the glass of wine into Henston's face and with that
+reached across for him.  The two men nearest to Peter in the booth
+stood up to stop him.  Peter reached a hand to the collar of each,
+stepped back, and brought their faces crashing together.
+
+"It's my fight and his--keep out, you!" said Peter, and swept them back
+and down into their seats.
+
+A waiter attacked Peter from behind.  It took Peter a few seconds to
+wiggle round, get the heel of his hand under the waiter's chin, and
+jolt him down to where, falling backward on his heels all the while, he
+hit solidly with the back of his head between the plump shoulders of
+the fat one of the singing ladies who was fervidly warbling:
+
+  "Mem-moh-reez--mem-moh-reez!"
+
+to an elderly male with a proud smile on his face.
+
+A little cloud of powder flew into the air above the singer; an
+ejaculation of shocked surprise from her lips.  Peter felt sorry, but
+didn't see how he could help her just then.
+
+It was Henston Peter wanted, and all the waiters tugging from behind
+warn't going to stop him.  He reached across the table and took a good
+hold and hauled.  It was like hauling a two-hundred-pound halibut over
+the gunnel of a dory, only he had nothing against any halibut that ever
+he hauled into a dory.  He braced and heaved, and Henston came out of
+his corner and over the table, and kept on coming till he was clear
+over the table behind Peter and flat into the aisle beyond.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me," said Peter to the diners at that table--all
+men; but they spoke right up, three of them, to say hurriedly:
+
+"It's all right; it's all right."  And the other, as if to himself:
+"And they're scourin' the country for White Hopes!"
+
+"Stop him, some of you, before he smashes the place up!" roared a
+frantic man who came running up then; and two, four, six waiters piled
+onto Peter, who, having no quarrel with them, gently shoved them off
+and went over to get Sarah.
+
+A pugnacious-looking, prematurely gray-haired man stood at the café
+door as they were passing out.  Peter was wondering if he would have to
+fight him, too.
+
+The man's face--it was the cafe bouncer--broke into a sudden grin.
+
+"You're all right," he said.  "I been watchin' that fuhler an' his
+crowd.  An' you leave it to the manager to stick the damages onto him.
+You're all right, and that young lady--you take it from me, young
+fuhler--she's all right, too."
+
+Sarah felt grateful to the bouncer for that tribute.  She hoped that it
+would bring a smile to Peter's face.  But all the way home in the
+trolley there was no smile from Peter; he clung grimly to his strap and
+stared straight at the advertising cards.  At her door he only spoke to
+say "Good night."
+
+"Good night, Peter."  And then, with a little clutch at his sleeve:
+"You're not mad with me, Peter?"
+
+"I'm mad with myself for makin' the show o' you that I did to-night;
+but when he said you'd drunk wine with him there--said it with a bunch
+o' people like himself listenin'--when he said that----"
+
+Sarah's curling little hand had been reaching out for his.  It came
+back flat to her side again.
+
+"I got a bad temper, Sarah.  It don't come out often, but it's there.
+And to-night, Sarah, when he lied about you like that, and his crowd,
+and maybe others round, believin' him maybe----"
+
+Sarah shivered.  She knew now that in Peter's good opinion of her lay
+much of what she cared for in this world.  In the good opinion of some
+man or other lay most of what the other girls in the store cared for.
+Always with them was the undying note--to hold and keep men's good
+opinion, to keep it at no matter what sacrifice of everything else.
+
+"What they don't know will never hurt them.  A man is no better off
+because he knows things!"  She had heard that so often; and no girl is
+spending eight hours a day for two years with other girls without
+soaking in something of what they believe--not and be human, that is.
+
+But she had never met a man like Peter.  He held her in such respect,
+he held all girls in such respect, that it was solemn.  Only the night
+before she had thought one time he was going to kiss her, and she had
+surged toward him, with her lips soft for him, but he had only said
+"Good night" suddenly and had run off--almost--up the street.
+
+But Peter was speaking.
+
+"Men have to go out to fight for a living in places where the fighting,
+Sarah, is sometimes pretty fierce.  And sometimes that kind o' fighting
+makes 'em rough, and maybe cruel in spots.  But that don't mean they're
+bad men.  Men c'n be rough sometimes, but I never knew a man--that was
+any good, Sarah--that wanted women to have any o' men's badness.
+Aboard a vessel we just nacherally expect every man in her will 'tend
+to his part o' the work, even if he loses his life sometimes 'tendin'
+to it.  That's a man's part, an' it's what he owes to the other men
+aboard.  An' every man has that, an' it's as much a part of him as the
+beard on his face.  And so when there's a woman somewhere a man's
+countin' on, he expects just nacherally she'll hold out against all the
+world for him.  That's her part.  And when to-night, Sarah, that
+fat-faced, lyin' brute said you'd drunk wine with him, 'twas just as
+much as if you'd said you liked him once--liked his kind."
+
+Sarah sat down on the step.  Pretty soon--she couldn't help it--Peter
+heard her sobbing.
+
+He lifted her up.
+
+"Sarah, Sarah; what is it?"
+
+She drew away from him; for, of course, when she told him, he, that was
+so good himself, would never care for her again.
+
+"It was true what he said, Peter!  I did drink wine with him, and in
+that same place!"
+
+Peter stood very still.  And then he moved out to the curbstone, and
+with little tugs at his collar kept looking up at the sky.  By and by
+he came back to the doorway.
+
+"I wish you hadn't, Sarah; I wish you hadn't," he said, but came no
+nearer.
+
+"Wish I hadn't told you?"
+
+"No, no; I'm glad you told me.  And I know what it meant for you to
+tell me.  I'd rather take a chance going over the side--redjacks,
+oilskins, and all--in a high sea after a shipmate than have to tell a
+girl something about myself that I know she don't want to hear.
+Specially when I care for her--not that I'm thinkin' you care for me so
+much, Sarah."
+
+The blood came back to Sarah's heart.  She hurried to tell him the rest.
+
+"I've been wanting to tell you, Peter; you mustn't think me worse than
+I am.  He used to come down to my counter and talk to me; and after a
+few days of that he asked me to go out with him.  I was a little proud
+at first--to be noticed by the manager above the other girls.  Girls
+like to be made much of, Peter; if it's only by a lost dog that licks
+their hand, they like it.  I went to that place with him, after he'd
+asked me a dozen times, and the third time there with him I drank a
+glass of champagne.  I wanted to know for myself what it tasted like.
+But I never took it with him again--nor went out with him again,
+because coming home in the taxi that night he tried to get fresh.  A
+lot of men, Peter, think that if a girl isn't cold and stiff in her
+ways she must be bad.  And I kicked the door of the taxi open and left
+him and came home alone."
+
+"I'm glad you told me that.  And Sarah?"
+
+"Yes, Peter?"
+
+"Good night, Sarah."
+
+"You're not mad with me any more, Peter?"
+
+"I could never stay mad with you."
+
+"Then you must tell me you're not, Peter.  A girl wants to be told
+these things."
+
+Her eyes were smiling up like stars through the dark of the doorway at
+him.  He drew back her head to him and kissed her.  She lay very still
+against him.  He patted her head.
+
+"You'll marry me, won't you, Sarah, some day?"
+
+"I'll ask mother.  And whenever she says--will that do, Peter?"
+
+
+Late every winter Mrs. Pentle took a month's trip South.  She had
+returned from that trip South and was making the rounds of the store.
+She came to the shipping-room, looked round, asked Flaxley a few
+questions about things; and then, as she was about to go:
+
+"I don't see Captain Crudden.  He is not sick?"
+
+"Peter's gone, ma'am," said Flaxley.  "Mr. Henston and Peter had words,
+ma'am, and Peter put on his coat and walked out."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Yes'm.  But before he put on his coat he threw Mr. Henston into the
+passageway.  Then he went and got married," he added.
+
+"Peter married!"
+
+"Yes, ma'am.  He surprised us, too--that is, gettin' married so quick."
+
+"Whom did he marry?"
+
+"Miss Hern, from the notions counter."
+
+"Hern?  Notions?  Oh--I remember her now."
+
+Flaxley saw her cross the passageway to the rest-room and sit down on a
+couch.  After a time she went up-stairs.
+
+It was after two o'clock--Flaxley remembered the time very well--when
+Mrs. Pentle left the rest-room; so she must have ordered her car and
+gone to Gloucester right away, for she was in Duncan's store, according
+to the minutes of Fred Lichens, the old bookkeeper, before four o'clock.
+
+"Is Captain Crudden here?" was her first question.
+
+"He is.  He's down the wharf--ready to sail in your vessel," said Mr.
+Duncan.  "Shall I call him up?"
+
+"Please do."
+
+Mr. Duncan hailed from the steps of the store, and Peter came; but no
+smiling shipper's helper who looked like a boy was this Peter.
+
+He was smiling enough, but there was already the hint in the set jaws,
+the wary, far-looking eyes of the master mariner, the ocean battler.
+Her confidence ebbed; she was in an atmosphere of men's work that she
+could never get away from in Duncan's store, and almost timidly she
+heard herself asking:
+
+"Will you tell me, Captain Crudden, what was wrong with the work in the
+store?  I thought you liked it."
+
+"Nothing wrong, Mrs. Pentle."
+
+"Then what, please?"
+
+"M-m-m."  Peter revolved his cloth cap on one finger but said nothing.
+
+"One day in the shipping-room, Captain Crudden, you told me what a
+comfort it was for a man to be home--of the joy of the easy slippers
+and the warm fire, of children climbing all over you--of the warm bed
+every night."
+
+"That's right; I did."
+
+"No more danger, no more hardship, your sure pay every week!"
+
+"I know; I know."
+
+"Then why?  Was it the work?"
+
+"The work?"  Peter clearly smiled now.
+
+"Haddockin' in South Channel, Mrs. Pentle, workin' fourteen tubs--eight
+thousand hooks to a dory a day, an' dressin' our deckload o' fish on
+top o' that--three, four, yes an' five days an' nights runnin'
+sometimes, with no lookin' at our bunks till we filled her up--!  Work?
+I cal'late I've done more work in South Channel fishin' many a day than
+in any ten days I ever saw in your store, Mrs. Pentle."
+
+"Then why, please, Captain Crudden, why?"
+
+"Why?  When you went South, Mrs. Pentle, you left a man in your place
+to give orders."
+
+"Mr. Henston?  What of him?"
+
+"Him!"  Peter looked down at his cap, twirled it on a finger, looked at
+Mrs. Pentle, and then: "Him!  Honest, Mrs. Pentle, if we had him out on
+the fishin'-grounds we wouldn't cut him up for bait!"
+
+Peter went back to his vessel and Mrs. Pentle to her car.
+
+"I ordered my house opened to-day.  I'll run over there," she told Mr.
+Duncan.
+
+It was a clear day with a fresh breeze from the west.  She must have
+seen, when she looked, the whitecaps in the harbor as her car rolled
+over the road.
+
+John Ferguson, up in his lookout, saw her car roll up to her gate.
+John could also see the reflection of the fresh fire in the grate in
+her den, the fresh pot of tea beside the window-seat.  And no doubt she
+could see, as she sipped her tea, John Ferguson through an air-port of
+his aerie.
+
+However, the _Celia Pentle_ was sailing out to sea and John was
+entering her--_Celia Pentle_, Peter Crudden, Master, with the date, in
+his book--and was reading the entry over to himself when Mrs. Pentle
+came in.
+
+The harbor had grown whiter under the little crests of the tossing
+seas, and outside the point they were rolling yet higher and higher.
+
+"Isn't it rough weather to be sailing, John?" she asked.
+
+"Rough?  For an able fisherman and an able master and crew?  No, Mrs.
+Pentle.  The wind's fair, ma'am, as a man'd want for a run offshore--a
+great chance for Peter to try the new vessel out.  This time to-morrow,
+ma'am, and if you could listen to Peter I'll bet you'd be proud to have
+such a wonderful vessel named after you.  A new, able vessel and a new,
+lovely young wife--he oughter be the happy man sailin' to sea this
+night."
+
+"But his wife--won't she be lonesome, John?"
+
+"For her own good and Peter's, I cert'nly hope so, ma'am.  But she
+won't be lonesome for too long, ma'am.  Their age--an' healthy an'
+lovin'--they're the kind, ma'am, to have a houseful o' children.  An'
+that'll be a good thing.  Many's the day an' night, out on the wide
+ocean there, Peter'll be drivin' his vessel, thinkin' o' them children
+an' the mother to home, an' plannin' how he's ever goin' to kill fish
+enough to pay for the shoes an' their clothes an' their schoolin' an'
+the house rent, an' all the rest of it.  Many a hard night out to sea
+he'll be thinkin' o' that, an' it'll be that'll hold him to his work
+an' make a full man o' him.  And the mother she'll be keepin' the home,
+lovin' the children an' lovin' Peter that's workin' night an' day to
+keep 'em.  I tell you, ma'am, they're the wise ones that lay their
+courses so that by 'n' by, whether they will or no, they got to go on
+with the steady drivin'."
+
+"Look at her now, ma'am, down to the rail already an' whalin' away
+through it!  An' there's Peter--look at him--in the oilskins up by the
+wind'ard bitt!  An'--  But there's some one callin' you, ma'am."
+
+It was her maid, who came running over to say that there was an urgent
+telephone message.
+
+"It is from Mr. Henston, madam."
+
+Mrs. Pentle nodded that she heard, but continued to look through the
+glasses at the _Celia_ sailing out to sea.
+
+The maid coughed.  She was at the foot of the tower, looking up.
+
+"He says, madam, that the silk-buyer wishes him to go to New York for
+that stock of pongees, and that he is waiting for an answer to his
+letter before he goes."
+
+Mrs. Pentle stood at the hatch of the tower, looking down.
+
+"Fishermen are pretty careful of what they use for bait, aren't they,
+John?"
+
+John, after consideration, said:
+
+"Bank fishermen are maybe more careful than most, ma'am; though, when
+we was hard put to it, I've seen some pretty poor quality o' stuff cut
+up for bait."
+
+Mrs. Pentle looked down the ladder to the maid.
+
+"Tell Mr. Henston there is no answer.  Tell him to go to New York and
+that, hereafter, he had better stay there and look after the silks
+exclusively."
+
+
+For as long as the falling darkness would allow, John saw Mrs. Pentle
+picking out the plunging course of Peter's vessel through the
+green-white waters.  And then, turning to him, she said:
+
+"I've been thinking that I ought to take more interest in my young
+girls when they marry.  On the day the Cruddens have a baby born to
+them I shall make over the _Celia Pentle_ to the baby."
+
+For all she smiled when she said that--and in John's opinion she should
+'a' been a happy woman to be able to say things like that--for all that
+there was what John called a melancholy in her voice and a sort of
+vapor in her eyes when she said it; and, looking after her making her
+lonesome way over to the big house with all the lighted windows, he
+couldn't help thinking that for all they said she was such a boss of a
+woman--for all that--there ought to be somebody more than a lot of
+butlers and maids and cooks to meet her at the door.
+
+
+There is the story of Peter's stop ashore, as old man Flaxley, John
+Ferguson, and Fred Lichens know it.  Fred had to add that he couldn't
+see where Peter's stop ashore ever hurt him any.
+
+"Certainly," said Fred, "since the baby came, he has been making
+fishing history in the _Celia_!"  He looked over to Mr. Duncan when he
+said that.
+
+Mr. Duncan wasn't deaf.
+
+"A little stop ashore never harmed anybody," retorted Mr. Duncan--"it's
+the stopping ashore too long!"
+
+
+
+
+The Sea-Birds
+
+It was fine summer weather, and John asked me how about a swordfishing
+trip for a change.  I said all right, and we got a chance in the
+_Henriette_, and went down that same morning to Duncan's Wharf to go
+aboard.
+
+The _Henriette_ lay ready to go to sea, and John and I stood on the
+string-piece and looked down on her deck and up at her mastheads.  A
+lumper hanging around Duncan's was standing near us.
+
+I never knew a dock lumper that couldn't tell you all about everything.
+"She is weak-built and pretty deep--I don't like to see them so deep,"
+said this lumper.  "And down by the head, too."
+
+"Maybe you'd be deep if you were on'y thirteen tons net register an'
+thirty tons of ice in you," said John.
+
+And a proper answer.  A man should always have a good word--even if he
+don't more than half believe it himself--for the craft he's going to
+sea in.  At the same time I was thinking that I was having an eye to a
+new, able fresh-halibuter--a big ninety-ton vessel--across the slip.
+
+I like the big fellows to go to sea in.  I said so to John.
+
+"A big, able brute--yes, boy.  But that big brute--Lard Gard, she'd
+look sweet, wouldn't she, chasin' swordfish in the shoal water south o'
+Georges.  She's a good little boat, the _Henriette_--and a pretty
+name," said John.
+
+It was a fresh southwesterly, and a day to make a man over, as we
+passed on by Eastern Point.  Just to look at the young blue seas was
+life, and the soft salt air was a cure for whatever blue feeling a man
+might have had hooked into himself ashore.
+
+A great morning.  We passed two big salt fishermen bound in.  From the
+Western Banks they were, or from Flemish Cap, half across the ocean,
+maybe; and the brown rocks of Cape Ann must have looked to them like
+mother's johnny-cake on the kitchen table that sunny morning.  Swinging
+by like a pair of twins they went, flying both topsails the pair of
+them, but neither of them much more than flushing their scuppers to the
+fine fresh breeze.  Whoo-o-sh! fifteen hundred miles we've come from
+the east'ard!  In the name o' heaven--we could almost hear them saying
+it--don't stop us!
+
+The sea was more than swishing through the little _Henriette's_
+scuppers.  Our rail was good and wet as we belted across the bay, and
+rounding Cape Cod we rolled down till the solid water began to fill her
+lee gangway; rolled lower and lower, 'till it was solid between her lee
+rail and house; and those of us on her wind'ard quarter had our feet
+braced so we wouldn't take a slide down her high-slanting deck and
+overboard.
+
+Our skipper was a driver.  By and by we were rolling low enough for a
+buoy keg to go floating off our house and overboard astern.  A fine
+half-barrel of a buoy keg it was--black and white painted, smooth and
+tight as a drum; a beauty of a buoy which by and by, at the end of a
+fifty-fathom warp, ought by rights to be towing after a fat swordfish;
+and so the skipper said.  But now she was dancing atop of the swirling
+seas astern, and the skipper, looking astern after it and then at us,
+also said: "To hell with it now!  Buy a new one out your share--and
+next time some o' you'll learn to lash 'em, maybe!"
+
+It was a day to see pictures.  From astern of us came bowling up one of
+the biggest and stiffest knockabouts sailing out o' Gloucester.  She
+had a bow like a bulldog's jaw; and she sent that bow smashing through
+the white-collared seas as if she had come out for no more than to give
+her ugly face a wash.  Stiff?  She was a church on a rock.
+
+"There's the able lady!" said Shorty.  "No water sloshin' solid through
+her lee gangway an' washin' buoy kegs off her house--hah, John?"
+
+John was a Newfoundlander.  He told me that the earliest thing he
+remembered was helping bait his father's trawls on a Grand Banks
+fisherman.
+
+With his arms folded over the corner of the house, his chin resting on
+his arms, and his eyes like two razor-edges peering out between his
+eyelids, there wasn't much happening up to wind'ard--or leeward
+either--that John wasn't seeing.  And it was a great day to see things;
+for it was a gale o' wind blowing, the sky was still clear blue, and
+the air was the kind to make a man over.
+
+A quick-acting, quick-talking, wiry little fellow was John.  Big Bill
+couldn't keep up with him at all.  Bill's right name was not Bill.
+Nobody knew what it was; nor cared.  Bill was probably a better name,
+anyway.  One peek at him as the big fellow hove himself aboard was
+enough for John.  "Will ye look at Big Bill!" cried John; after that no
+other name would fit him.  "Lard, Lard," said John, "but I be wantin'
+to see the look o' that bulk of a man when he jams hisself into a
+bosun's chair to the masthead!"
+
+Bill never could see anything funny in John's line of talk, and said so
+across the supper-table that same afternoon.  Breakfast was at four
+o'clock, dinner at half-past nine, and supper at three o'clock on the
+_Henriette_.  "Somebody'll come along and set on you right hard some
+day," said Bill.  To which John said: "So long's 'tisn't some one o'
+your tonnage does the settin', I callate I c'n stand it," and then,
+reaching over and scooping to himself another wedge of blueberry pie:
+"You cert'nly do make great blueberry pie, cook."
+
+"Not so ferry bad," said the cook.
+
+He was a good cook, who had followed the sea since he was fifteen.  The
+big ports of the world--he knew them all, and when he wasn't too busy
+he would talk about them; though what he most liked to talk about was
+his blueberry patch in Stoneport, where he owned a nice little white
+house with a simment cellar--up on the hill next the isinglass factory.
+He had a dog at home, a part of him Skitch and the other part of him
+Sin Bernard.  Gardner, the milkman, owned the Bernard.  Who owned the
+collie he didn't know.  Nobody knowed.  And when those smart Alecks of
+Stoneport kids came along and tried to bemboozle those blueberry-bushes
+where they was hangin' in bunches as on a grapewine, why that dog--
+Well, he was the cleffer dog, that was all.
+
+He had brought a few of the blueberries aboard, he said; which we very
+well knew--two bushels of them charged to the ship's stores at current
+market rates.  His blueberry pies were all right; but the blueberry
+stews!  With dumplings!  There was a cook sailed out of Homburg on a
+barque when our cook was a cabin-boy on her, and that dumpling receipt
+was got out of him one night in Yokohama when the old fellow had a
+couple of bowls of saki into him.  Saki and rice, yes.  Which was how
+it came about that thirty-four years later we were getting dumplings
+noon and night with our blueberry stew aboard the _Henriette_.  John,
+after maybe five hours to the masthead, would come sliding cheerily
+down to deck at dinner call.  At the head of the forec's'le
+companionway he would haul up and have half a peek below.  And then a
+sniff.  A long sniff, and then a full peek.  "Lard Gard, dumplin's!"
+John would say, and look sadly around and up at sea and sky.
+
+But so as not to hurt the cook's feelings, John, when he sat down,
+would take the big fork and go sounding in the blueberry stew, and
+soon, bright blue and beautiful, he would gaff a half-dozen of them
+onto his plate.  And the cook, noticing it, would smile and say: "You
+like tem tumplings, Chon?"  And John would say: "This side o' Fortune
+Bay I never saw nothin' to ekal 'em."  And when the cook would turn his
+back, John would slip them into his pocket.
+
+After dinner John would take the dumplings aloft, and, when Big Bill
+would take the skipper's place out at the end of the bowsprit, John
+would heave the dumplings at him from the masthead.  Sometimes he would
+heave a few astern at whoever happened to have the wheel.  Generally it
+was Oliver at the wheel, because his eyesight was not so sharp as the
+others of us for seeing fish from aloft.
+
+Oliver was the first spectacled fisherman that John had ever seen; and
+one day when Oliver laid his glasses down, John took them up, and set
+them on his own nose and picked up a newspaper.  And quickly removed
+them.  "Lard, Lard, a swordfish she'd look like a whale in them and his
+sword as long's a vessel's bowsprit!"
+
+When Oliver was not to the wheel, Steve would be there.  Steve was a
+tall fellow.  To give an idea of how tall he was, John would run down
+the deck, leap into the air and give a grab at the sky.  "Where me hand
+touched would maybe reach to his waist," John would say.  Steve, when
+he turned in, had to let his feet hang over his bunkboard and onto the
+locker; and when he did that John came and sat on them.  Steve slept in
+the cabin under the overhang.  Big Bill slept under the overhang, too,
+in the opposite bunk.  One of our pleasures was to watch Bill kick his
+way into his bunk under the low overhang, then to tell him the skipper
+wanted to see him on deck, and watch him wiggle his way out.  Feet
+first he had to come.  Steve could do it all right, but Bill--he
+weighed three hundred.
+
+On foggy nights Bill turned in on the locker, with one arm and leg
+stretched out to keep him from rolling onto the floor.  He had once
+been in a steamer collision, and he warn't of any notion to be sent to
+the bottom by no steamer collision--leastways not if he saw her comin'.
+And he callated to see her comin'.  His last word to the next on watch
+on a foggy night was always: "Call me soon's you see any steamer
+lights.  An' don't wait to diskiver if it be a pote or stabbid light."
+On watch in a fog Bill never got farther away from the fog-horn than he
+could make in two leaps; and he was no Olympic leaper.
+
+With Bill and Steve in the cabin slept Oliver and the skipper.  Most
+sword-fishermen carry an auxiliary engine to hustle after the fish in
+calm summer weather.  The rest of us bunked in the forec's'le.  She was
+a little creature, the _Henriette_, and it was pretty close sleeping
+for'ard on a hot night.  To abate the heat nights, we rigged up a
+wind-sail which came down the air-port forward of the foremast; which
+was all right till the vessel tacked.  When she did, her jumbo-boom
+would sweep across the deck and swipe our wind-sail over the rail.
+When we fellows bunking forward talked of how hot it was for'ard, the
+cabin gang would only say: "Hot?  You want to come aft and soak in the
+gas off the engine for a few nights!"
+
+We cruised four days off Block Island without seeing a sword-fin.
+Plenty of big sharks were loafing under the surface there, but sharks
+don't bring anything on the market.  We stood easterly.  Off Nantucket
+light-ship we picked up Bob Johnson of Nantucket and Bill Jackson of
+Maine, Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien of Gloucester, the _Master_ and the
+_Norma_ also of Gloucester, a Boston schooner, the _Alarm_, and a big,
+black brute of a sloop which nobody could name.  Tom Haile was there,
+too--in the _Esther Ray_.
+
+No fish in sight that afternoon; but even so the skipper took his
+station in the pulpit.  John, Shorty, and I went aloft.  John was
+topmost, and swung in his chair just under the truck.  Shorty and I
+were just under John.  When we got tired of swinging in our chairs we
+could stand up, one cross-line in the small of our backs, another
+against our chests, and balance ourselves.  When the vessel dove we
+could wrap our arms around the topmast and hang on.  There was a swell
+on this morning--no crested seas, but a long, smooth, black swell,
+enough to send the vessel's bowsprit under every little while; and
+sometimes to send the pulpit atop of the bowsprit under, too.
+
+"But this skipper--he don't mind gettin' wet," explained Shorty.  "I've
+seen him go divin' till it was over his head in the pulpit an' he still
+hangin' on waitin' for fish."
+
+Bill did not stand watch at the masthead.  His eyesight was good
+enough, but Bill's three hundred pounds climbing up the rigging four or
+five times a day to the masthead--the skipper said he guessed he'd take
+pity on the rigging.  So Bill stayed on deck to go in the dory, when a
+fish would be ironed.  Also he took the pulpit when the skipper came
+inboard to eat.  The first time John saw Bill go into the pulpit, he
+let a yell of mock terror out of him from aloft.  "Skipper, skipper,
+he's puttin' her down by the head, and Lard knows she was down by the
+head enough before.  Let she go into a good head sea, she'll never come
+up an' we'll be lost, all hands!"  Which made Bill turn and glare up at
+John; and when he did that, John hove one of the cook's bright-blue
+dumplings down at Bill.
+
+That afternoon we sighted our first fish.  The skipper was in the
+pulpit, with the pole half hitched across the pulpit rail.  Bill was
+resting his chest across the gunnel of the top dory and with
+half-closed eyes studying the sea to wind'ard.  Oliver was sitting on
+the wheel-box, motionless except when he moved an arm or a hand to roll
+a spoke or two up and down.  Aloft, we had not seen a sign of fish,
+near or far, for an hour or more.
+
+John let out a sharp little cry: "Fish-O!"  The skipper stood up and
+balanced his long pole.  Oliver straightened up at the wheel-box.  Bill
+came out of his trance, looked to us aloft and shifted his gaze to
+leeward.  The bright, bald head of the cook shone up the forec's'le
+ladder.  He cast a peek aloft, said "Fish-h?" inquiringly, and stepped
+onto the deck, smoking his pipe.
+
+"Fair abeam to looard!" John called, and Oliver put the wheel up.  Soon
+they could see the curved three-cornered fin from the deck.  A shark's
+fin is three-cornered, too, but straight-edged, not curved.  And a
+swordfish's tail moves almost without motion through the water.
+
+The skipper balanced his pole, but without looking down at it.  His
+eyes were for the fish only.  "Hard up!" called John, and Oliver sent
+our bow swinging into line.
+
+"Stea-a-dy!" called John.
+
+The skipper was swaying from the waist.  A big-boned, rangy man the
+skipper, more than six feet high and wide-shouldered, with a great
+reach and a strong-looking back.  He hefted his pole--more than a week
+since he had ironed a swordfish--and he looked to see that the line
+running from his pole to a tub in the waist of the vessel was all
+clear.  To look after that was the cook's business, and now, meeting
+the skipper's look: "All clear!" he sang out, and stowed his pipe in
+his stern pocket.
+
+We were within half the vessel's length of our fish when, he dived.
+"Port!" called John.  "Stea-a-dy! stea-a-dy!  Lard, man, stea-a-dy-y!"
+They could not see the fish from the deck, but we at the masthead could
+follow his course under water.
+
+The fin and tail showed again.  We swung around to head him off in his
+course.  The skipper, to loosen up his waist and back muscles, was
+swaying from his hips.
+
+We were almost on the big fish.  He was cruising lazily.  The skipper
+drew back his right arm and shoulder, but fin and tail took a sudden
+shoot.  John was in command at the masthead.  "Luff--luff!" called
+John.  The vessel shot up, the skipper leaned far over the pulpit rail.
+Fin and tail were gone from his sight, but from aloft we could follow
+the blue-black shadow of the body under water.  Suddenly the shadow
+turned and shot diagonally back under our bowsprit.  John called a
+warning.  The skipper rose on his toes--with that long right arm raised
+above and behind his head, he looked seven feet tall--and waited.  We
+feared he was waiting too long, when whing!--a backward swoop of the
+arm, a downward thrust of the pole, and "Gottim!" said the cook, and
+tossed the bight of the warp over the rail and calmly bent on a new
+warp for the skipper's pole.  The skipper took a backward look at the
+flying fish; then quickly, but with never a hurry, rigged a fresh iron
+and line to his pole.  After a man has ironed a few thousand swordfish
+it is probably hard to get excited over one more.
+
+The big fish was gone, deep down, and after him the warp was whirling
+out of the tub in the ship's waist.  In no time the whole fifty-fathom
+line was gone, and atop of the sea the black-and-white-painted barrel
+was going a good clip.  And then under it went, but not for long.  Up
+it came, and around in a quarter-circle and then straight away again
+with a grand little wake after it.  By this time Bill had been dropped
+into a dory and was rowing after the buoy.
+
+The buoy ran round another big circle before Bill caught up with it.
+When he did he took the buoy into the dory and began to warp in the
+fish, and had him alongside and was about to lance him in the head,
+when whir-h-h! tail and sword beat the sea white, and Bill cast him
+loose.
+
+Now, if John, or Oliver, or Shorty had ever got that fish snubbed up
+under the dory gunnel like that, they would have finished him.  If he
+was as long and big around as a dory, be sure they would, or try to;
+but getting on to middle age was Bill, and he probably had in mind a
+clear picture of every doryman that was ever killed swordfishing.
+
+Bill was going after them in his own way.  He'd get 'em just the same.
+Just let that fish play hisself out.  Which he did after an hour or so,
+and then Bill hauled him under the dory's quarter, and reached over and
+a dozen times or so drove the long lance into his head.  The fish
+flurried around and churned white water, but the deep lance thrusts did
+for him at last.  And then Bill hitched him around the tail and waited
+for the vessel; and Oliver, who had been having a windward eye to the
+dory all the time, put over to him, and the dory tackle was hooked
+under the tail-knot and the fish hauled in.
+
+A swordfish is a handsome creature when fresh caught.  Plump and
+tapering in body, with pointed head and big eyes, and his skin a lovely
+dripping blue-black, which had not faded hours later when he was
+lowered into the hold after being dressed.  The cook had a fine large
+round of beef on top of the ice in the hold, but it had to come out on
+deck to make room for that first fish--which is how deep the
+_Henriette_ was loaded.
+
+He weighed perhaps three hundred pounds.  A good-sized fellow.  "Jist
+the size to be lively," said Bill.  "And to fight--I don't take no
+chances with them kind."
+
+The iron had gone diagonally through his body amidships.  It was now
+hanging out with six inches of the line on the under side of him.  A
+great stroke, passing through almost two feet of solid meat and just
+grazing the back-bone on the way.  The cook explained that he had seen
+the skipper drive his iron clean through the backbone and then clear
+through the body of bigger ones than that.
+
+By dark we had four good fish in, and all hands were pleased.  The
+cook, before he turned in for the night, told us more about his
+blueberry patch.  The skipper came below and broke in on the cook to
+talk about the weather.  "A sea the same's if there was gasolene poured
+over it," said the skipper.  "A clear sky, but a swell and near the
+horizon at sunset clouds piled up with gashes of green and purple and a
+hundred other shades.  Wind there--plenty of it--we'll see to-morrow."
+
+To-morrow came, but no breeze.  The skipper felt put out.  "I'd 'a' bet
+it," he said.
+
+That night came an ugly sunset.  No oily sea this time, but a gray
+tossing and murmuring, and showing behind among the clouds, long
+deep-red streaks paralleling the horizon, and the horizon lifting up
+and down like it had something the matter with it, too.
+
+Next morning nothing, or no more than what Shorty said when he came
+down from his watch at eight o'clock.  "Just a good liver shaker
+aloft," said Shorty.
+
+Just before ten o'clock came a stirring out of the sea; but nothing
+much.  Another stirring and the skipper took a good look around, and
+then came in from the pulpit.  He called out to us to come from the
+masthead.  We came, and took sail off her--all but her foresail.  No
+word was given to hurry, but there was no loafing over it.  Oliver, a
+great fellow to keep looking clean, said he guessed he'd take a chance
+to shave himself; and then he took another look around at sea and sky,
+and then he said he guessed he'd wait awhile.
+
+While a man would be drawing on a pair of rubber-boots it came--oh,
+whistling!  And four hours of it followed.  Wind to blow a man's ears
+off.  And rain!  Oh, rain!  Not rain in sheets--nothing so soft and
+easy as that; but rain which came driving in like a billion bullets at
+once.  We could pick out where every one hit us.  The wind blew maybe
+eighty miles an hour for four hours.  And then the real thing came.
+For an hour or so more wind really blew.  How many miles?  Lord knows.
+John said a good hundred miles.  Bill snorted: "A hunderd?  Take on'y
+what's above a hunderd an' you'd git a gale by itself!"
+
+With all the wind there was a high-running sea; and wind and sea
+together were driving us into shoal water.  And the shoal water of
+Georges is bad--no worse anywhere.  We sounded and got ten fathoms.
+Bad.  There was nothing but to make a little more sail and get out.
+Put jumbo and trysail to her, was the word; as we started to do that a
+forepeak block came away, and the halyards and block got fouled with
+the jib-stay aloft.  The skipper sent John and me aloft to clear it.
+
+We went; and were lying out to get it, when we saw this sea come at us.
+It was a white yeast all around the vessel, but this one was a solid
+white, solid as marble almost.  It came roaring like a mad bull at us.
+I took one peek at it and "Hang on, John!" I yelled.  I did my best to
+leave the print of my fingers on the steel stay with the way I hung on
+myself--we were both of us to the masthead and that sea was just high
+enough to roll over our heads.  I could just see a light-green color
+over my head as it passed.
+
+As we stuck our heads through and looked at each other, John was saying
+something.  There was a ringing in my ears.  I asked him: "What?  What
+did you say, John?"
+
+"You told me to hang on," said John.  "To hang on!  Lard Gard, boy, did
+y' think I was goin' to dive into it?"
+
+On deck when they saw it coming they had all jumped below and pulled
+the hatches after them.  They began to come out now, and the skipper
+called for us to come down.  Nothing was washed from her deck.  Of
+course, everything before that had been double-lashed--dories and
+barrels of gasolene--before that.  The skipper now ordered the bung
+pulled from a full barrel of gasolene.  We stove one in and let the oil
+run out; and the seas calmed to leeward and we threw a dory to the lee
+rail, after lashing an empty gasolene barrel to each side of her.
+
+"Whoever's handiest jump in!" yelled the skipper.
+
+Big Bill was handy to the dory, but he never would have made it if John
+hadn't stopped to push him over the gunnel from behind.  Shorty and
+Oliver leaped over the other gunnel.  I waited for John; but the
+skipper had called "More oil and another dory!" and John had turned
+back.
+
+We four--Bill, Shorty, Oliver, and myself--were hardly in when a sea
+came over the vessel's deck and swept our dory away--wh-f-f! like that.
+She all but filled to the gunnels before we were fair away from the
+vessel's side, but the two empty barrels kept her from sinking.  And
+before another sea could get a fair chance at her Oliver and Bill were
+busy bailing her, and Shorty and I keeping her head to the sea with an
+oar astern.  We looked back to the vessel, and could see them rigging
+up another dory and breaking out another barrel of oil.
+
+We kept going in our dory--none of us could say how long, whether it
+was one hour or four, we were all so busy--Big Bill and Oliver with
+their heads down bailing her out with their sou'-westers, and Shorty
+and I with an oar keeping her head to windward.  Bill and Oliver had to
+bail pretty fast.  Bill kept getting out of wind and Oliver's
+eye-glasses kept getting wet with salt water so he couldn't see out of
+them.
+
+"What d'y' want to see out of 'em for?" asks Shorty.  "We're here in
+the stern to do the seein' an' the steerin'.  Might's well heave your
+specks overboard."
+
+Oliver hove them overboard.
+
+So far as our seeing went we never saw the vessel which picked us up
+until after she saw us.  She was the _Esther Ray_ and she was under a
+jumbo and storm trysail, working off from the shoal water and having
+trouble enough; but they saw us, and stood down and hailed.  We made
+out what they said, more by their signs than by what words we heard.
+
+"I'll tack and come by close to looard of you!" called Tom Haile, her
+skipper; "and when I do, take your chance and come board.  You'll maybe
+have to jump!"
+
+He had to watch his chance to tack.  He waited maybe five minutes, both
+hands on the spokes, waiting and watching.  And then he gave her the
+wheel; and when he did, it was something to look at.  Between seas and
+sky she hung for I don't know how long--maybe five seconds, maybe ten,
+maybe thirty seconds--between heaven and hell she hung, before she came
+over.  And, man, when she did, she wouldn't have started a pack thread.
+Judgment there, boy!  Then falling and rising, and falling again, she
+came down onto us.  A sea lifted our dory straight for her; up we went
+and down--straight for her windward rail.  We watched.  We jumped--all
+but Bill.  He was hove aboard.  The dory under us was smashed on her
+rail as we jumped, but we could spare the dory--we were safe aboard the
+_Esther_.
+
+Once we were aboard they gave the _Esther_ a little more sheet, and off
+she went on her ear till we made twenty-five fathoms of water; and
+there we brought her to.  And while we lay there hove to the wind
+moderated to fifty miles or so, and as the wind came down the seas went
+up.  Higher and higher they kept mounting.  Just to look at the height
+of them would make your back ache.  And then the wind backed into the
+northwest, and the seas came two ways together.  No dodging them at all
+now, and the little _Esther Ray_--stripped to her last little white
+shift, a corner of a storm trysail--lay to a drogue and took it.
+
+I'd been fishing mostly in big vessels before this trip, and for the
+first time in my life I saw a little boat stand up and take a beating.
+She was a few tons bigger than the _Henriette_, but still little
+enough--the _Esther_.  Little and deep-laden, she lay there and took it.
+
+Little and deep-laden, yes; but, man, a stout one, too.  When she was
+building it was Tom Haile himself who drove every bolt--every
+trenail--into her.  He had seen to it that her timbers were heavy
+enough for a vessel four times her tonnage.  Believe him, a vessel the
+_Esther_!  A solid block of oak, yes!  And like a solid block of oak
+she lay there, and "Come on, damn you, come on and get me!" we could
+almost hear her saying to the big seas.
+
+Of course, she could not do it all herself.  After all, she was no
+five-hundred-foot steamer, that no matter how it came all you had to do
+was to let her lay and no harm come to her.  There were the moments
+when it was up to the skipper and her crew.  But a capable skipper on
+her quarter and a quick-moving, handy crew in her waist--when your
+vessel is well-found leave the rest of it to them!  They were all
+there, and there on the jump when wanted.  No talk, no
+questioning--when the word was passed the word was carried out.  By
+seven o'clock that night the little _Esther_ had ridden out the gale in
+glory.  To be sure, it was a thunderer of a night that followed, with
+seas pounding her solid little head, and perhaps the man in the peak
+bunk did not have a word to say about that in the morning!  But with
+the morning--Glory be!--'twas a silver sunrise and a little schooner
+smiling and bowing like to the baffled ocean.
+
+But not all the swordfishing fleet were there in the morning.  Bill
+Jackson was there, and the big, ugly sloop, and we thought we could
+make out Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien on the horizon.  But where was the
+_Norma_?  And the _Master_?  And Bob Johnson?  And the _Alarm_ of
+Boston?  And our own little _Henriette_?
+
+We made sail, and after a time the big sloop with the ugly bow also
+made sail.  And we jogged back to where we had left the good fishing,
+and, the sea having moderated sufficiently, lookouts went aloft and the
+_Esther's_ skipper to the pulpit.  Vessels and men may be lost, but men
+and vessels have to keep on with the fishing just the same.
+
+But there were no fish to be seen.  The storm had scattered them.  The
+skipper wanted to know what somebody else thought of the storm.  He ran
+down to speak to Bill Jackson.
+
+Bill was sitting on the wheel-box whittling a piece of red cedar when
+we drew alongside.  Bill's half-bared chest seemed to be trying to
+burst through his undershirt, and above the shirt his seamed neck rose
+ruggedly.  Neck, arms, and chest were burned red.  His beard, red in
+the shadows and gold in the sun, was ten days old at least.  Fifteen
+centuries ago it must have been men of Bill Jackson's style that left
+the marshes of the Elbe and, sailing westward across the North Sea,
+looted the shores of wherever they happened to beach their keels.
+
+"How'd you make out yesterday, Bill?" asked Tom.
+
+"Rolled our sheer-poles under," said Bill, "not once in a while, but
+reg'lar.  An' not a stitch o' canvas on her to the time, nuther.  An'
+washed over everything that warn't bolted.  When I see it warn't
+lettin' up, I ran her under bare poles.  Logged eight and a half knots
+under bare poles.  Goin' some?  I call it so.  Glad not to be lost, we
+were."
+
+"Same here.  I'm worried about some o' the fleet, Bill."
+
+"Some of 'em's gone, all right.  I don't want to see another day like
+yesterday in a hurry, Tom."
+
+"Nor me, Bill.  A good breeze o' wind I call it, Bill."
+
+"A _damn_ good breeze o' wind I call it," said Bill.
+
+"I guess by this time there's no argument 'bout it bein' a pretty good
+little blow," said Shorty.
+
+We left Bill Jackson.  The middle of the morning it was, a fine day,
+and, still hoping for fish, the Esther's lookouts were aloft.  One
+called out something--not Fish-O!--and pointed.  We looked.  It was
+part of a drifting mast, the lower part, broken off raggedly from a
+foot or two above the saddle.  It drifted on by.
+
+"A white-painted saddle," said Tom Haile, looking at Shorty and me.
+
+"The _Henriette's_ saddles was painted white," said Shorty.  "But she
+ain't the only vessel with white-painted saddles."
+
+"That's right," said the _Esther's_ crew, "she ain't."
+
+A few minutes later a floating gasolene barrel drifted by, and soon
+another.  Tom Haile reached out with a boat-hook and gaffed in that
+second barrel.  There was a hole in the head of it--made by an axe.
+That didn't mean anything--it could have washed off the _Henriette's_
+deck, off anybody's deck.  The surprise would be in a barrel staying on
+her deck in the shoal water she was in when we left her.  Yes, that
+could be, agreed the _Esther's_ crew.
+
+From the masthead then they saw a dory--bottom up.
+
+"A yellow dory?" Shorty and I asked.
+
+The lookout scanned the water.  "A yellow dory, yes."
+
+The skipper put off for the yellow dory, and when he towed it back,
+there was the name:
+
+  HENRIETTE
+
+on her bow planks.
+
+"That's her other dory, all right," said Shorty.  "But they still have
+the vessel under them."  Nobody said anything to that.
+
+Next we picked up a hatch-cover.  And the hatch-cover, when we got it
+aboard, had a star carved on it.
+
+"Yes, the main hatch-cover o' the _Henriette_ had a star carved on it,"
+said Shorty.  "But there's plenty o' chances for her yet."
+
+What looked like a watermelon came drifting up.
+
+Shorty looked to see better.  "If it's a watermelon, I give up--she's
+gone," said Shorty.  "They's nobody heaves a watermelon overboard to
+lighten a vessel."
+
+It was a watermelon; and we all gave up.  Everybody knew that the
+_Henriette's_ cook was a great fellow to ship a watermelon and keep it
+down among the ice for the passage home.  As Shorty said, there was no
+reason ever for a watermelon being hove overboard.  And it couldn't
+have floated out of her hold unless the vessel had broken up.  The
+mast, the gasolene-barrel, the dory, the hatch-cover, and now the melon.
+
+Shorty made a flying leap into the yellow dory towing astern, and,
+leaning far enough out to lay the dory over on her side, he spread wide
+his arms and the melon floated right in over the gunnel and into his
+arms, and he took it to his bosom.
+
+Big Bill hurried to take the melon when Shorty passed it up over the
+rail.  "Poor little _Henriette_ an' the good fellers in yer--where are
+yer now, I wonder?" said Bill, looking down on the melon.  And then he
+tested it for soundness.  "Only one soft spot where she bumped into
+somethin'," announced Bill.  He called for a knife and cut it up, and
+tasted a piece.
+
+"Not a touch o' salt," he said, and passed slices of it around.
+
+A good-tasting melon, everybody said; and eating it on the _Esther's_
+quarter we said all the good things we knew of the Henriette and her
+skipper and crew.
+
+Two days later the _Esther_ put into Newport.  We came past Point
+Judith in a night of black vapor--a bad night for Big Bill.  He saw
+steamer lights all sides of him, and never went to sleep at all.
+
+We stood up Narragansett Bay in the dawn, and the cook of the _Esther_,
+smoking his pipe on the deck, was the boy could tell all about the big
+summer houses on the bluffs.  There is that about cooks--they always
+seem to hold more gossip than anybody else aboard a vessel.  Names of
+who owned the cottages, how many millions--and how they made the
+millions--was what the cook could tell us, with a few bits of flaming
+gossip added on.
+
+Some big schooner-yachts from New York were anchored in Newport Harbor.
+One of them, as large again as any fresh halibutter that ever was
+launched--a great black-enamelled cruising schooner with a high
+free-board, perhaps fifteen times the tonnage of the _Henriette_--held
+the eyes of all.  "If we'd only had her out there the other day!" was
+what most of us were thinking.
+
+"She'd be the girl to walk us out o' shoal water in that breeze!" put
+in Shorty.  "We'd had her 'nd we'd 'a' washed her face for her!"
+
+"And mebbe a few o' them fancy skylights and brass rails off her deck,
+too," said Big Bill.
+
+"Maybe.  But I'd like to had her tried out, just the same."
+
+Tied up to the other side of Long Wharf when we got in was Tom
+O'Brien's vessel.  Big Bill, like a good gossip, waddled over to get
+the news, and soon came galloping back.
+
+"She's gone!" he called out, and showed us a Boston paper with the
+report of how four men's bodies with a life-preserver marked
+_Henriette_ had been picked up off Nantucket the day before.  There was
+also the story in a New York paper of how a big ocean liner had been in
+the storm.  She was six hundred foot long and bound for New York.
+There was a bishop aboard, and when it got too rough for the
+passengers, some of them wrote notes to the bishop asking him to hold a
+prayer-meeting in the saloon.  He started to hold the prayer-meeting
+but it grew too rough.  They had to quit.
+
+"And they in good deep water where they were!  I wonder what they'd 'a'
+thought if they'd been in this little one and where she was?" said Tom
+Haile.
+
+"Maybe they'd held the prayer-meetin' anyway, then," said Shorty.
+
+We had come away from the _Henriette_ in only our oilskins and trousers
+and undershirts.  Tom Haile and Tom O'Brien and a couple of fish-buyers
+on Long Wharf started a collection to get us some clothes.  We took the
+money up Thames Street to some clothing dealer who was a brother
+Moccasin to Tom Haile and O'Brien.  But belonging to the same order
+didn't make any difference.  The clothing dealer wouldn't take a cent
+off.
+
+"Not even for shipwrecked seamen?" asked O'Brien.
+
+"Being shipwrecked seamen don't make the clothes cost any less to me,"
+said the dealer.
+
+"A hell of a fine brother Moccasin you are!" said O'Brien.
+
+"A fine brother Moccasin yourself!" said the clothing dealer, "wantin'
+me to lose money on a sale."
+
+So we went to another place, and he happened to be a Jew and not a
+Moccasin.  Not that he wouldn't like to be a member of that noble
+order; which made O'Brien and Haile warm up to him, so that they forgot
+to argue about the price at all.
+
+They had to saw a foot off Shorty's new pants to make them fit, and the
+coat came pretty low down on him; but no harm in that Bill and Oliver
+and I said.  We got pretty good fits.
+
+They bought tickets for us and we took the train to Gloucester, and
+then I went down to Tony Webber's to get a shave, and there was a young
+fellow in the chair next to me said to Tony: "Yer sh'd have been out in
+the breeze!"
+
+"What vessel?" I asked.
+
+"The _Thunderbolt_," he says.
+
+"And what shape is she in?"
+
+"Go down to the halibut company's wharf and see," he says.
+
+I did go down later.  She'd lost both masts to near her deck, and her
+bowsprit was broken off short at the knightheads--not a thing left on
+her except her last coat of paint and a few twisted yarns of her lower
+shrouds.  But, thank the Lord, no men lost.  They had all stayed aboard.
+
+"They were luckier than the _Hiawatha_.  Heard about the _Hiawatha_?"
+asked a man in the chair.
+
+"No; what about her?"
+
+"I had a brother on her," said this man.  "She was hove down and her
+whole crew washed over--hove flat down and the whole crew of eight men
+in the water at once.  Six of 'em got back--first one and then another,
+the first of those back aboard heavin' lines to the others still
+overboard.  Two men never came back, though--pretty rough it was."
+
+On his own vessel, the _Thunderbolt_, it was pretty rough sailing, and
+in the middle of it there was one of the crew--he'd never been
+off-shore fishing in his life before this--he came on deck with a
+life-preserver around him.  "Seas to our masthead," said the man off
+the _Thunderbolt_, "and he comes on deck with a life-preserver.  He
+must 'a' thought he was bein' wrecked in some swimmin'-pool in some
+Turkish bath 'stead of old South Shoal in a gale.  If ever he'd got two
+feet from the deck of that vessel, he'd lasted 'bout two seconds--him
+and his life-preserver!"
+
+Tony, the barber, was so interested in the man with the life-preserver
+that he gave me a fine cut on my right cheek.
+
+John and the skipper and Steve and the cook were buried that same day
+in Gloucester, and we all went to the funeral; and coming away from the
+funeral: "You goin' back fishin'?" said Shorty to me.
+
+"No more fishin' for me," I said.  And Shorty and Oliver, they both
+said never again for them, either.
+
+That was day before yesterday.  This morning the master of the
+_Antoinette_ came along with Shorty and Oliver and asked me didn't I
+want to make just one more swordfishing trip while the season was on.
+
+I looked at Shorty.  He was wearing a smile and had a rose on his coat
+some girl had given him.  "I thought you said you were through fishing,
+Shorty?"
+
+"So I did," said Shorty, "but a man says a lot o' things in his
+careless hours.  I've had a couple o' good nights' sleep since."
+
+"And you, Oliver?" I said.
+
+"Me?  Well, there's a wife and an old mother up to my house, and I
+never read anywhere the gover'ment was paying out money to the families
+of fishermen who didn't want to fish any more, did you?" said Oliver.
+
+So I said all right I'd go along, too.  "What's the use--we're
+sea-birds," I said.  "It's our home and our living--where else should
+we go but to sea, at the last?  But have you seen Big Bill?"
+
+Yes, Shorty had seen Big Bill.  He had hopes to get a job at the
+car-barn.  "He's had two warnings, he says," said Shorty, "and not to
+wait for a third would be foolish.  He's up on Main Street right now
+with people buying drinks for him, while he tells 'em how he managed to
+save himself off the _Henriette_."
+
+Well, Big Bill's all right; but he's alive to-day because a better
+man--the same being John--shoved him into a dory when he might have
+gone himself instead.  And Big Bill thinks of John only as an
+irresponsible young fellow who liked to play jokes with blueberry
+dumplings.
+
+The best men don't always come back from sea.  Four good men stayed
+aboard the _Henriette_, and two of them--the skipper and John--were
+certainly quicker and braver than any of the others of us.  The skipper
+could have come away first, but he didn't.
+
+Nor John.  Six years I was shipmates with John and he was one good
+shipmate.  Good shipmates--they make a long cruise short, a rough sea
+smooth.  Good shipmates!  You don't mind going with good shipmates
+alongside.
+
+And the _Antoinette_, she's a sister ship to the _Henriette_--thirteen
+tons net and thirty tons of ice in the hold.  And that same dock lumper
+who never left a vessel leave Duncan's without he sees her off--he says
+she's down by the head, too.
+
+A fine joy-killer, that lad.
+
+We're putting out in an hour.  So fair wind, boy--I'm off.
+
+
+
+
+The Medicine Ship
+
+Old Bill Green was comin' out of Spiegel's Caffy, meanin' a place where
+a man can have somethin' to eat while he's havin' a drink, an' he had
+folded over his arm what looked like a pretty swell coat for old Bill
+to be wearin'.
+
+Noticin' me, "Hulloh, Hiker!" says Bill, an' we stroll along till we
+come opposite to Wallie Whelan's father's store on South Street, where
+Bill stops.  "I do like that little Whelan kid," says Bill.  "I wonder
+is he in?"
+
+Wallie was in, an' "Hulloh, Hiker!" an' "How do you do, Mr. Green!" he
+says, an' comes runnin' out when he sees us.
+
+An' old Bill says, "Oh-h, driftin' by--driftin' by," an' spreads out to
+the air the coat he's carryin' on his arm.  All wrinkled up it was,
+like somebody's slept in it, but a pretty swell coat just the same,
+like the kind hackmen wear to a funeral or a weddin' with a stovepipe
+hat.  There's a pocket in one o' the coat-tails, an' old Bill slides
+his hand into it and out comes a case, an' when he springs open the
+case there's a shiny black pipe.
+
+"Well, well," says Bill, lookin' at the pipe like he was wonderin' how
+it come there.
+
+"Where did y' ever get that fine pipe, Mr. Green?" asks Wallie.
+
+"Oh, a souveneer, a little souveneer of other days--of days I'd 'most
+forgot," says Bill.
+
+"A handsome pipe!" says Wallie.
+
+"Yes," says Bill, "if on'y I had the fillin' of it once in a while!"
+
+"Wait!" says Wallie, an' rushes inside the store.
+
+"Comanche Chief, if you have any in stock!" calls out Bill after him.
+
+Mr. Whelan, who's sittin' by the open winder in his office, looks out
+to Bill an' then to the clerk an' smiles that it's all right to Wallie
+over the top of his mornin' paper, an' Wallie comes out with a plug o'
+Comanche Chief smokin' for Bill an' a plug o' the same of chewin' for
+me.
+
+I bites into mine right away, but old Bill looks at his pipe, an' then,
+sayin' he didn't know's he'd baptize it yet awhile, he reaches over an'
+gnaws a corner off my plug o' chewin'.
+
+An' Wallie's dyin' to know how it come to be a souveneer pipe, but is
+too polite to ask, on'y he can't help havin' another look at the pipe
+an' noticin' the picksher of a bird on the bowl an' readin' the letters
+on the gold band.  "HRC" he reads out, an' looks at old Bill.
+
+"I know, I know," says old Bill.  "They bring me back, them initials,
+lad, like nothin' else could, to days that is past 'n' gone."  He looks
+across East River over to Brooklyn mournful-like, but not forgettin' to
+chew an' chew, 'nd bineby, when he has his jaws well oiled up, he says:
+"'Tis many 'n' many a year ago, lad, an' me the cabin-boy an' the
+fav'rite o' the capt'n o' the good ship _Tropic Zone_."
+
+"The _Tropic Zone_!  What a corkin' name for a ship!" says Wallie.
+
+"Ay, lad," says Bill, "a noble name an' a noble ship, a full-rigged
+four-master, an' one fine day we up jibs an' yanchor an' sailed out
+this same Yeast River an' past the Battery an' down New York Bay an'
+the Jersey coast, an' on an' on, bearin' s'utherly, till we came to the
+land o' Yunzano, which was--an' mebby is yet--down South Ameriky way,
+an' we went ashore, me 'n; the capt'n, to call on the noble don which
+them same initials stands for.
+
+"HRC," says Bill, readin' 'em off the pipe.  "How well do I remember
+the noble don, Hidalgo Rodreego Cazamma, who lived in r'yal splender in
+a most lovely an' fertyle valley.  Lookin' back now through the vister
+of my matoored manhood, I can't say's I c'n recall in all my years o'
+world travellin' a more entrancin' picksher than the valley o' Yunzano
+when my capt'n 'n' me hove into it of that gorgeous April mornin'.
+There was a river gleamin' like silver--an' sometimes like gold 'n'
+copper--flowin' through that marvellous valley, an' above it rose the
+volkanous mountains with sides of the color of the purple neglijay
+shirts an' tops like the ruby scarf-pins that sometimes you see of a
+mornin' on the hot sports in Times Square.  An' in that valley was
+forests with all the tropic trees that ever you read of, bearin' the
+most jul-luscious fruits--pomgrannits, cocoanuts, pineapples, limes,
+lemons, grapefruits, alligator-pears--any fruit ever you see to the
+stalls in the market was there in abundance.  An' fr'm the branches o'
+them same trees came the most melojus birds' voices, an' the birds
+themselves 'd a-dazzle your eyes with the color o' their feathers.
+Parrakeets, marrakeets, bobalinks, nightingales, an' a little red,
+white, 'n' blue-spotted bird the natives called an eggleeno."
+
+"Ah-h!" says Wallie, "and is that the picture on the bowl o' the pipe?"
+
+"The same," says Bill; "done by a master hand, with the same round
+pop-eyes--see--an' the same wide, square-cut tail like the stern of a
+ferry-boat.
+
+"'Dijjer ever in yer life, William, see anything more saliferous?' says
+the capt'n to me whilst we're ridin' up to the don hidalgo's house--a
+hashyender, they called it--longer 'n' wider than any two blocks on
+Broadway, but not so high, with a red roof, an' walls o' solid marble,
+an' marble columns 'n' promenades around it, with thousands o' lofty
+trees liftin' their heads to the sky, an' balconies outside the
+winders, an' spoutin' fountains in the r'yal pam garden, which was the
+size mebby o' Central Park.  It took all of a thousand servants, I
+should say, in pink-'n'-old-rose knee-pants, to look arter the place;
+an' the old don kep' a band o' musicians in a green-an'-old-gold
+uniform on tap all the time.  The house rules there--the same engraved
+in silver on ivory tablets an' hung on the wall over the head o' your
+bed--was that if a guest woke up in the middle o' the night an' didn't
+feel well enough to go back to sleep, he had on'y to poke the little
+Injun boy who slep' on a mat afore every door with his big toe an' say
+to him: 'Boyo, some musico!'  An' we did one night, an' in no time the
+still air was rent by the entrancin' strains of 'In the Sweet By 'n'
+By,' which was the pop'l'ar toon o' them days, an' the one we ordered.
+Guitars, manderlins, violins, oboes, trombones, an' cornets they had in
+squads, though to my mind a native instrerment called the hooloobooloo
+was the most truly musical of all.  Shaped like the bow of a ship it
+was, with a hundred strings to it, an' made a noise like a breeze o'
+wind tryin' to steal through a forest o' trees on a summer's night.
+'Twas ravishin'.
+
+"Arter the fatigues of our long an' tejus voy'ge, the hashyender o' the
+don was a most refreshin' place to pass a few days in, but we had our
+business to attend to.  Not that the noble don would sully our ears by
+mentionin' the same to us.  In those tropic countries the greatest
+insult to the stranger who happens to step in an' camp awhile with you
+is to ask him what's on his mind--not till he's been restin' up for at
+least a week.  However, after six days o' restin' up, with salubrious
+fruits an' wines an' the most melojus concerts, my capt'n broaches the
+cause of why we're callin' on the Don Hidalgo Rodreego Cazamma."
+
+"Ah-h," says Wallie, "now we'll get it, Hiker!"
+
+"Yes," says Bill, "now we'll have it.  But, lemme see now--I must tell
+it so it'll be clear to your young interlecks," an' he looks hard at
+the pipe an' then mournful-like acrost East River toward Brooklyn.
+
+"In them days," Bill goes on at last, "no place you could go to in the
+whole Yunnited States--the piny woods, the rocky hills an' grassy
+plains, no busy city fr'm the rock-bound coast o' Maine to the golden
+shores where rolls the Oregon, no sleepy hamlet between the wooded
+hills o' Canada an' the surf-washed sands o' Florida, but you'd see in
+big letters on the tops o' flat rocks an' the sides o' mountains, the
+backs o' fences an' the roofs o' barns, in the winders o' drug-stores
+an' the flags o' back alleys, nowhere but you'd see: YUNZANO SWAMP
+ROOT, FOR COUGHS, COLDS, LUMBAGO, RUMMATIZ, GOUT, CHILBLAINS, COLD
+SORES, COLIC, BRIGHT'S DISEASE, AN' LIVER TROUBLE--all in high yoller
+letters agin black paint.
+
+"Pints an' 'quarts in bottles, for sale at all reputable drug-stores,
+an' those bottles had to come all the way by sea an' fr'm the estate o'
+Don Hidalgo Rodreego Cazamma, who owned all the swamp-root region in
+Yunzano.  An' when it'd come on to blow an' the ship'd take to rollin',
+where there was no way o' tellin' till arter you'd get to port an'
+counted 'em how many bottles was left that wasn't busted.  Sometimes
+more'n half or three-quarters of 'em 'd be busted.
+
+"An' now we come to that noble benefactor o' the human race who at that
+time owned the string o' drug-stores painted blue 'n' green 'n' red,
+with cut-rate prices up 'n' down the side of every one of 'em.  'Twas
+him owned the Yunnited States rights to Yunzano Swamp Root, an' he used
+to sell millions 'n' millions o' bottles of Yunzano every year, an' he
+says: 'Why do we have to have so many o' these bottles o' Yunzano
+busted in comin'?'  An' he says: 'I have it--by Plutie, I have it.
+I'll build a special ship for carryin' my wondrous tropic medicines!'
+An' he does.  He builds a ship 'special, an' in her he sets a great
+tank--oh, mebby four hundred foot long an' fifty foot wide an'
+deep--oh, deep as the ship was deep, and of all the ships ever I sailed
+in she was the deepest.  'There,' he says to my capt'n, 'spill the
+Yunzano in there 'stead of in bottles an' we'll make
+millions--millions, sir!'  He meant he'd make millions.  An' the
+_Tropic Zone_ was that ship, an' so it was we come, me 'n' the capt'n,
+to be doin' business this lovely day with the owner o' the great
+Yunzano estate.
+
+'What we want, don,' says the capt'n fr'm his chair that was made of
+inlaid precious woods an' the horns o' th' anzello, a beeyootiful
+creachure like a nantelope, of which on'y one was killed every hundred
+years--'what we want, don,' says my capt'n--an' four liveried servants
+keepin' the flies 'n' other insecks off him with wavin' pam-leaves
+while he's talkin'--'is to take our swamp-root home in bulk.'  An' the
+don, a man o' most majestic figger, smokin' a fourteen-inch cheroot in
+another chair that was inlaid all in di'monds 'n' gold, he considers
+the case and finally agrees to sell us enough to fill our tank, which
+is two million two hundred 'n' sixty thousand gallons o' Yunzano at
+forty-two cents a gallon.  An' we despatch a fleet messenger back to
+the ship, an' up comes the gold with forty men-at-arms o' the don
+guardin' it--a million dollars or so it was, an' all in the coin o' the
+realm--shiny ten an' twenty dollar gold pieces.
+
+"Well, that's settled, so we goes back to the ship, ridin' our
+sumpter-mules in the dewy morn, an' down the gleamin' silver 'n' gold
+'n' copper river comes the Yunzano in the skins o' wild animals on
+bamboo rafts, an' while they're dumpin' it inter the tank the capt'n
+'n' me, by special invitation, have a look at where the don
+manufactured the Yunzano.
+
+"It was dark like the sassaparilla they served out to church picnics
+when it oozed first from nature's bosom, an' not till it was mixed with
+a native liquid called poolkey did it become th' inspirin' article o'
+commerce which the rocks an' fences an' druggists' winders an' the
+advertisin' an' sometimes the readin' columns of our American journals
+shouted to the public.  This poolkey grew on trees, in little cups
+like, which all you had to do was to turn upside down an' into your
+mouth.  It was the grandest proof to me o' the wise provisions of
+nature.  It was a white-colored stuff, an' tasted like an equal mixture
+o' wood alcohol an' red flame.  One part swamp root to one part poolkey
+made up the Yunzano o' commerce that many folks preferred to tea.  The
+poolkey kep' it fr'm spilin'.  Some o' the most inveterate battlers
+agin the demon rum we ever had, some o' the most cel'brated
+politicians, platform speakers, an' drug-dealers in the land, certified
+over their own signatures to the component parts o' Yunzano an'
+indorsed the same highly.
+
+"Well, our tank was fin'lly filled to the hatches with the two million
+two hundred 'n' sixty thousand gallons o' prime Yunzano, an' when we
+considered the sellin'-price--pints fifty cents, quarts a
+dollar--quarts o' the five-to-the-gallon size--up home we felt happy to
+think what profits was goin' to be in this v'yage, for--but lemme
+see--did I say his name, the owner o' the _Tropic Zone_ an' the fleet
+o' drug-stores?"
+
+"No," says Wallie.  "An' I was wonderin'."
+
+"No?  Well, Nathaniel Spiggs was his name.  However, to continue our
+tale.  There we was, our cargo all aboard an' waitin' on'y for the
+mornin' light to leave to sea.  It was a windin', tortuss channel outer
+that harbor, not to be navvergated at night by no ship of our size, an'
+the skipper was readin' the Bible in his cabin.  He liked to read a few
+chapters afore turnin' in of a night, an' to my joy he used to invite
+me to sit 'n' listen to him, an' many a time in after life I'd be
+minded of my old skipper o' the _Tropic Zone_, an' the mem'ry of his
+monitions fr'm the Bible was surely a great bullerk to me agin terrible
+temptations.
+
+"An' while he's sittin' there, balancin' his specks an' readin' to me,
+'n' stoppin' to expound now 'n' agin where mebby my young intellergence
+couldn't assimmerlate it, the mate comes down 'n' salutes 'n' says:
+'Sir, there's some people on the beach makin' signs o' distress--on
+horseback.'  An' the skipper, arter a few cusses, which was on'y
+nacheral at bein' disturbed in his pious occupation, he sets the Bible
+back in his bunk an' goes up on deck.  An' me with him.
+
+"An' there they are.  An' behold, as we look, we see--my eyes bein'
+young an' marvellous sharp in them days was the fust--afar up the
+mountainside--to descry a band o' people ridin' wildly down to the
+valley an' makin' what must 'a' been all manner o' loud noises, judgin'
+by the way they waved their arms an' guns, on'y they was too far away
+to be heard.  An' the capt'n gets out his night-glasses."
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Green," says Wallie, "but what is a night-glass?"
+
+"A glass you look through at night is a night-glass.  Don't all the
+grand sea-stories speak o' night glasses?"
+
+"That's why I ast.  But, excuse me--please go on," says Wallie.
+
+"An' who should they turn out to be on the beach, wavin' dolorous-like
+signals o' distress, but the don hidalgo an'--I forget mebby to mention
+her afore--the don's lovely daughter!  An' with them is four
+sumpter-mules, an' the sumpter-mules, when we goes 'n' gets 'em off in
+a boat, turns out to be loaded down with gold 'n' jewels.  The million
+dollars in gold we'd brought for the Yunzano water 'n' all the jewels
+the noble don's fam'ly has been savin' up for hundreds o' years is on
+the mules.
+
+"When we get 'em all aboard--mules 'n' all--the don explains how
+there's been a revverlootion in th' interior, an' how the General
+Feeleepo Balbeezo, the leader o' the revverlootionists, 'd planned to
+capture the hashyender o' the don, includin' his beeyoocheous daughter
+'n' the gold 'n' jewels.  An', on'y for a cook in the employ o' the
+wicked general give it away, he would.  The don had cured this cook's
+grandmother of a vi'lent attack o' tropic fever years afore this by
+frequent an' liberal applications o' Yunzano, an' this grandson, though
+he was a wild an' reckless an' dark-complected youth, who preferred to
+associate with evil companions, nevertheless was grateful for the don's
+curin' his grandmother 'n' never forgot it.  An' when he overhears in
+the kitchen, where he's fryin' a few yoller podreedos for the general's
+breakfast, the general hisself tellin' of his dastardly plan to his
+vellay, he ups on the fav'rite war-charger o' the general's, a noble
+steed eighteen hands high, an' don't stop ridin', without stirrup or
+bridle or saddle, till he comes gallopin' in a lather o' sweat--a
+hundred 'n' ten miles in one night over the mountain trails--to the don
+an' tells him all.  O' course, when later the wicked general discovers
+the cook's noble devotion to the don's fam'ly, he has him hung on the
+spot, but that's to be expected, an', the hero an' herrin' bein' saved,
+it don't matter.
+
+"'Cheer up, my brave don!' says our skipper, when the don tells him the
+story, an' refreshes him with a drink o' vold bourbon fr'm his private
+stock that he kep' under lock 'n' key in his cabin.  An' he has one
+hisself.  An' then he considers, an', while he's considerin', the
+General Balbeezo 'n' his army, who it was I'd seen ridin' down the high
+mountainside, they're arrived at the beach.  An' they hollers acrost
+the harbor to us that if we didn't give up the don hidalgo an' the
+seenyohreeter, his daughter, an' the gold 'n' jewels, why, he, General
+Balbeezo, regardless of possible international complercations, will
+bring his artillery to the beach 'n' blow us all outer water.
+
+"The don 'n' his daughter is tremblin' with fear, but 'Fear not, fear
+not!' says our skipper, an' sends for the owner's son."
+
+"The owner's son--aboard all the time!" says Wallie.
+
+"Sure.  I'd 'a' told y'about him afore," says Bill, "but it wasn't time
+yet.  He'd made the passage with us so's he could study the volkanous
+mountains o' Yunzano, the like o' which mountains wasn't in all the
+world anywhere else.  He was a wonderful stoodent, so abstracted in his
+studies that he hadn't heard a word of what we was sayin' in the cabin
+this night till the capt'n sent me to call him outer his room.  He was
+sure a noble specimen o' fair young manhood to gaze upon--'twas on'y
+the other day I was readin' up to the Yastor Library of a hero in one
+o' the best-sellers just like him: seven foot tall 'n' three foot
+acrost the shoulders, an' nothin' but pale pink curls to below his
+shoulders, an' he no sooner steps inter the cabin now, his wonderful
+keen, blue-gray eyes still with the absent-minded look o' the stoodent
+o' science, than I could see the don's daughter, the seenyohreeter, was
+goin' to fall wild in love with him.
+
+"The capt'n explains the situation to young Hennery.  An' Hennery
+thinks awhile, an' by'n'by he speaks.  'Har, I have it!' he says.  'The
+volkaners!' an' orders h'isted up from the hold his balloon."
+
+"A balloon, Hiker--whooh!" says Wallie, an' sits closer to Bill.
+
+"A balloon, yes.  Y' see, besides bein' brought up by his father to be
+a great chemist an' stoodent o' mountains, he was likewise professor of
+airology in one of our leadin' colleges.  An' he fills up his
+balloon--the whole crew standin' by to help him pump the hot air inter
+it--an' then away he goes.  'In an hour, I promise you, you shall hear
+from me!' he says, an' we watch him soarin' 'n' soarin' 'n' soarin'
+till his balloon ain't no bigger than a sparrer an' higher than the
+large an' silvery moon.
+
+"An' all this time the wicked General Balbeezo an' his bandit army is
+bringin' their guns down the mountainside 'n' preparin' to blow our
+ship outer water.  An' by'n'by they're all ready to begin, when
+'Car-ra-be-ee-sss-toe!' exclaims the don--'what is that sound I hear?'
+I forgot to say that the last thing young Hennery did afore leavin' the
+ship was to put in the balloon a handful o' bombs of a powerful
+explosive he'd invented hisself.  An' the sound the don hears is the
+'ruption produced when young Hennery drops the first of them bombs into
+the craters o' the nearest volkaner.  An', while we look, the air gets
+dark an' the moon hides, an' fr'm outer the top of one volkaner after
+another comes the most monstrous explosions, an' down the mountainside
+comes a nocean o' fiery, flamin' lavver, with billers 'n' billers o'
+black smoke floatin' up off it.  An' soon we hears groans o' terror an'
+'Save us!  Oh, save us!' from the wicked general an' his army on the
+beach, an' inter the harbor they plunges with their war-horses 'n' the
+cannon 'n' their armer still on 'em.
+
+"An' onter the deck of our ship begins to fall just then a great shower
+o' yashes.  An' we're in danger o' burnin' up 'n' suffercatin' an'
+wonderin' what to do next, when outer the black heavens comes Hennery
+'n' his balloon.  An' we grabs his lines that's trailin' below him when
+he sails over our ship an' makes 'em fast to belayin'-pins, an' he
+climbs down to the deck 'n' takes charge.  He's on'y eighteen year old,
+but wonderful beyond his years.  He see what to do right away, an' runs
+down an' peels the yasbestos off the boilers 'n' steam-pipes in her
+injin-room."
+
+"What!" says Wallie.  "Was she a steamer?"
+
+"Sail 'n' steam both.  Sail for the hot days to make a draft 'n' keep
+us cool 'n' comfortable, an' steam when there was air 'n' it was cold
+'n' rainy.  An' young Hennery makes fireproof coats 'n' boots an' hats
+outer the yasbestos linin' for the capt'n an' me an' the mate an'
+hisself, 'cause we're goin' to guard the deck agin the wicked general
+'n' his army.  All the others we puts below, so no danger'll come to
+them.  An' when the bandits comes swimmin' alongside an' up over the
+rail from the backs o' their war-horses, we captures 'em an' take their
+weapons from 'em, an' then the capt'n says: 'Now we got 'em, what'll we
+do with 'em?'
+
+"'O' course,' says Hennery, 'it would be perfeckly proper for the crool
+men o' the south to kill their prisoners, but as men of the north we
+must show a loftier example.'  So spoke up our hero nobly.
+
+"An', while we're ponderin' what to do, 'Har,' says Hennery agin, 'I
+have it!  We will put them in the medicine-tank.'
+
+"'But,' says our capt'n, 'they'll spile it--your father's two million
+two hundred 'n' odd thousand gallons o' Yunzano that we paid forty-two
+cents a gallon for.'
+
+"'An',' says young Hennery Spinks to that----"
+
+"Spiggs," says Wallie.
+
+"Spiggs, I mean.  'Is this the time or the place,' says heroic young
+Hennery Spiggs then, 'to be considerin' of mere money--with the lives
+o' human bein's at stake?  What though they be viler than dogs, they
+are still our fellow creatures.  Cost what it may an' ruthless though
+the varlets be, save their lives I shall!'  An' y' oughter seen him
+then, the fair scion of a noble sire, his pink hair flyin' in the
+southern wind, his pale eyes an' form in general expanded to twice
+their reg'lar dimensions by his righteous indignation, an' the
+beeyoocheous an' volupchous daughter o' the noble, wealthy don stickin'
+her head outer a hatchway to cast a nadorin' gaze upon him.
+
+"An' into the tank o' Yunzano we flopped 'em, one by one as they come
+over the rail o' the _Tropic Zone_.  I wouldn't want to state at this
+late date how many of 'em we saved from the burnin' lavver by throwin'
+'em inter the tanks, but mebby three or four or five hundred souls all
+told.  An', to keep the burnin' yashes off 'em, we makes a few
+yasbestos tarpaulins an' claps 'em down over the hatches o' the tank.
+
+"All night long we patrolled the decks shovellin' the yashes off where
+they fell.  An' when mornin' comes an' the 'ruptions is over we take
+the tarpaulins off the tank, an' there was every blessed one of 'em,
+fr'm the General Feeleepo Balbeezo down to the lowest private, 'spite
+of all we'd done for 'em, floatin' around drowned.  Overcome with grief
+'n' surprise we was o' course, but when we come to think it over--their
+endin' up that way, wi' the noble don 'n' his beeyoocheous daughter
+saved an' the revverlootion busted up--it sure did look like the hand
+o' Providence was hoverin' over us.
+
+"And then," says old Bill, borrowin' another chew from me, "arter we'd
+cleared out the tank of the dead revverlootionists an' the old Yunzano,
+the don filled her up again free of charge.  An' o' course Hennery
+married the don's daughter, an' for seven days an' seven nights there
+was no place yuh could cast yer eyes but you'd see pillers o' smoke by
+day an' columns o' flame by night, an' wherever you see one o' them it
+meant a barbecuin' of a carload o' goats 'n' oxen 'n' pigs.  'Twas
+nothin' but feastin' an' the givin' o' presents, an' then the bridal
+party embarked on the _Tropic Zone_, an' gentle tropic breezes wafted
+us no'therly an' westerly an' sometimes yeasterly past the shores o'
+Panama an' Peru an' Brazil an' Mexico an' Yucatan an' the Farrago
+Islands, an' the don's own band used to sit on their camp-stools under
+the shadder o' the great bellyin' mains'l an' plunk their guitars an'
+mandolins 'n' picolettes, not forgettin' the band leader who played the
+most amazin' solos on the hooloobooloo.  An' strange ships used to sail
+a hundred miles out o' their course to find out who was it was sendin'
+them dulcet strains acrost the cam waters.  An' the bridal couple 'd be
+holdin' hands an' gazin' over the spanker-boom at the full moon.  'Twas
+gorgeous an' elevatin', an' a fasset an' pipe led direct from the tank
+to the little kegs with brass hoops placed at frequent intervals around
+deck, so that whoever o' the crew wanted to could help theirselves any
+hour o' the day or night to a free drink o' Yunzano.
+
+"An' thole don sits up on the poop-deck, with his hands folded acrost
+his stomach, an' says: 'Quiscanto vascamo mirajjar,' which is Yunzano
+for 'I am satisfied, I can now die happy.'  But he didn't die--he lived
+to be ninety year old, an' before we arrives at New York he makes me a
+gift o' this pipe.  O' course he made me other gifts, the don did, but
+this I value most of all, bein' made from wood of a rare tree from the
+heart o' the swamps o' Yunzano.  An' I'll never forget him.  An' so
+there's the story o' my youth an' Yunzano.
+
+  "'The days of our youth
+  Are the days of our glory--
+  The days of old age
+  Is the time for the story--'
+
+So I read in a book o' poetry one time."
+
+[Illustration: "'Quiscanto vascamo mirajjar,' which is Yunzano for 'I
+am satisfied, I can now die happy.'"]
+
+"But young Henry and his bride," said Wallie--"what happened them
+later?"
+
+"Them?" says old Bill.  "Well, it was on'y the other day I met a nold
+friend o' mine who used to report prize-fights an' jail matters, but is
+now writin' about society matters for one of our great metropolitan
+journals, an' he shows me in the Sunday supplement a full-page
+picksher, in brown ink, of a solid granite buildin' that looked like a
+jail but wasn't.  It was the Hennery Spiggs Home for Inebriates, an'
+built strong like that so no one could escape from it 'n' the good that
+was to be done 'em.  An' there was another two-page picksher, in brown
+ink, of Hennery Spiggs, our same young hero of other days, but now a
+noldish gentleman with whiskers under his ears an' his child an'
+grandchild gamblin' on the green lawn of his million-dollar Newport
+cottage.  A great philanthropist he is now, an' a leader of society,
+with wealth beyond the dreams of a movin'-picksher actor--all made
+outer Yunzano.  Before he dies he's hopin' to see erected a fittin'
+monument for that world-famous chemist, that great benefactor to the
+cause o' humanity an' medicine, the Honorable Nathaniel Spiggs, his
+father.  Already his best-paid foremen an' employees was bein' invited
+to contribute.  Sometimes I think o' goin' to see him."
+
+"You should go, of course," says Wallie.  "He will be glad to see you."
+
+"Mebby so, mebby so, lad, but why should I thrust my wuthless carcass
+onter him?  Besides, the round-trip fare to Newport is four dollars an'
+more."  An' Bill gazes mournful-like across East River to Brooklyn, an'
+Wallie's too polite to bust in on him, but I c'n see in his eyes where
+he's goin' to get four dollars some way for old Bill some day to pay a
+visit to Newport.
+
+An' then it comes time for Wallie to hike off to school, an' he kisses
+his father good-by, an' says "So long, Hiker!" to me, an' thanks old
+Bill for his story.
+
+"It always gives me pleasure to instruct an' edify growin' youth," says
+old Bill, lookin' after Wallie goin' up South Street, an' whilst he's
+lookin' a policeman an' a common nordinary citizen heaves into sight.
+An' the man looks to be excited, with a coat over one arm.
+
+"You take some o' these young fuhlers," says Bill, "that's been drivin'
+a dray all his life an' invest him with a yunniform an' authority an' a
+club in his hand, an' two or three times more pay than ever he got
+before--you do that, an' I tell you there's nobody safe from 'em."  An'
+old Bill slips the pipe back into the coat-tail pocket of the coat an'
+leaves it on the steps, an' scoots lightly to behind barrels o' flour
+three high in the back o' the store.
+
+Mr. Whelan has a peek over his paper at Bill passin'; but he don't say
+anything on'y to step to the door when the policeman an' the man come
+along.
+
+"Look!" the man hollers, an' dives for the coat Bill 'd left behind
+him.  "An' look at--the pipe!"  He'd hauled it out of the coat-tail
+pocket.  "My pipe!"
+
+An' then the policeman says: "This gentleman this morning, Mr. Whelan,
+dropped into Spiegel's after a little bat for a little nip and a----"
+
+"If you please," interrupts the man, "I will tell it.  A short while
+ago"--he faces Mr. Whelan--"I was yunnanimously elected outer sentinel
+o' my lodge o' Fantail Pigeons.  And last night a few friends, wishin'
+to commemorate the honor, presented me with this pipe--a fine pipe, as
+you can see--of ebony.  And my initials, see--HRC--Henry R. Cotton--on
+the gold band.  And a picture of a fantail--see--engraved on the bowl.
+You don't happen to be"--the man steps up to Mr. Whelan an' grabs an'
+squeezes his hand, all the while lookin' him hard in the eye--"a
+Fantail?"  When Mr. Whelan don't say anything, the man gives him
+another grip, 'most jumpin' off his feet this time to make sure it was
+a good one.
+
+"No," says Mr. Whelan, wrigglin' his fingers apart after the man let go
+of 'em--"I'm no Fantail."
+
+"Oh, well, it's all right--there are some good men who are not.
+However, I leave the chaps this morning and step into a place down the
+street for a cup of coffee before I go to the office, and possibly I
+laid my head down on the table for a minute's nap.  However, when I get
+up to take my coat off the hook where I'd left it, the coat is gone.
+And in place of it is this disreputable garment--see?" an' he throws
+down the old coat an' wipes his feet on it.
+
+"Spiegel's bartender, Herman," puts in the policeman, "says there was a
+nold bum came in an' hung his coat next to this gentleman's, an' when
+he went the coat went; and he must 'a' went pretty quiet, Herman says,
+for he didn't notice him goin'.  An' his description fits an old loafer
+who hits the free-lunch trail pretty reg'lar 'round here, an' I think I
+seen him loafin' around here once or twice."
+
+"He meant to steal that coat an' pipe," says the man.
+
+"If he meant to steal it," says Mr. Whelan, "why d' y' s'pose he left
+it here?"
+
+"Why, I dunno," says the man.
+
+"O' course he didn't," says Mr. Whelan.  "An', look here"--he sticks
+the mornin' paper under the man's nose an' says: "What do you think o'
+Marquard holdin' the Phillies down to two hits yesterday?"
+
+"No!" says the man; "two hits?  Well, say, he's _some_ boy, hah?"
+
+"Is he?  Listen to me," says the policeman, shovin' his club between
+them.  "Listen.  All I gotter say is, with Mattie an' Jeff an' the Rube
+goin' right, where'll them Red Sox fit with the Giants in the world's
+series next month?  God help 'em--that's all I gotter say."
+
+"The Giants look like a good bet to me, too," says the man, an' soon up
+the street toward Spiegel's the pair of 'em go, fannin' about the
+Giants with Mr. Whelan.
+
+An' when Mr. Whelan is soon back alone, Bill comes out from behind his
+flour-barrels an' with his plug o' Comanche Chief in his hand.  "I
+don't s'pose yuh could swap this for chewin' o' the same brand, could
+yuh, Mr. Whelan?" he says.
+
+"Why--you given up smokin'?" says Mr. Whelan.
+
+"How'm I goin' to smoke without a pipe?" says Bill.
+
+"That's so," says Mr. Whelan, an' goes behind the counter an' pulls
+down a couple o' boxes of brier pipes.
+
+"With a middlin' good hook to the stem, if you don't mind," says Bill.
+
+Mr. Whelan passes over the best make of French brier.  Bill held it up.
+"She looks all right."  He put it between his teeth.  "An' she feels
+all right."  He sticks it into his shirt.  "An' I guess she'll smoke
+all right."  He steps to the door an' picks up the old coat.  "What
+good it done him to wipe his feet on my coat, I dunno," he says.  Then
+he turns back.
+
+"About Wallie, Mr. Whelan?"
+
+"Why, Bill," says Mr. Whelan, "when he gets back from school of course
+he'll get down the chart to look up all those countries you passed on
+the way back from Yunzano, and o' course we'll have to make a
+correction or two in your jography."
+
+"O' course," says Bill.  "I useder have a good mem'ry once, but"--he
+taps his head--"gettin' old, gettin' old, Mr. Whelan.  That coat
+now--it sure did look like the cut o' the coat I used to wear on the
+_Tropic Zone_.  And the pipe!" an' old Bill gazes mournful-like across
+East River to Brooklyn, an' turns again an' says: "A good boy, your
+boy, Mr. Whelan--no evil suspicions o' people in his heart.  An', as my
+old capt'n o' the _Tropic Zone_ useder quote fr'm the Bible to me:
+'It's they shall inherit all there is that's wuth inheritin'.'"
+
+An' then Bill heaved another sigh, and put on his old coat, an' went
+shufflin' up South Street, on the side away from Spiegel's.
+
+
+
+
+One Wireless Night
+
+Cahalan, of the many voyages, had been reading of the latest marine
+near-disaster and the part played therein by the ship's wireless man;
+but refused to be impressed.
+
+"The slush the papers print sometimes!" he snorted.  "Here's this now
+about this SOS fellow--all these papers trying to make out what a
+wonder he was, as if it took a wizard to keep pumping out three letters
+till somebody heard you.  And a hero, too!"
+
+"Why not--he stood by his key, didn't he?"
+
+"Sure he did.  And if you and me were wash-women we'd probably stand by
+our wash-tubs, wouldn't we?  If there was no more danger keeping on
+washing than standing around doing nothing, we surely would, wouldn't
+we?  But nobody'd think of calling us heroes for it, would they?  That
+SOS man now--if he didn't want to stand by his key he could 've jumped
+overboard--it was only a thousand miles to shore.  So he stood by his
+key and eased his mind by having something to do, which, of course,
+makes him a hero."
+
+"It's a great thing just the same, the wireless."
+
+"Sure it is and needs no fake booming, but I like to see a little
+brains mixed with it.  There was a fellow named Furlong--I ran across
+him first in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where our battle-fleet was
+rondayvouing for winter drill.  I had a month's pay on a fight coming
+off in London and was wishing I knew how it came out without waiting a
+week or ten days for the New York papers, when Faulkner, the captain's
+yeoman, says: 'Why don't you ask Furlong, the wireless operator?  He'll
+find out for you.'
+
+"But how can he?" says I.
+
+"You people in the deck division," says Faulkner, "you're living in the
+past.  You fellows want to come out of your sailin'-ship dreams and
+steam around and see what's doin' in the world.  Furlong'll pick it off
+from the Cape Cod station when they're gettin' it from across for the
+newspapers."
+
+"From here--from off the ship?" I asks.  "Why, I thought the record for
+picking up or sending from a ship was six or seven hundred miles."
+
+"Maybe it is," says Faulkner, "but Furlong's specialty is breaking
+records."
+
+So I step up to the wireless shack to see Furlong.  Regan, the chief
+signal quartermaster, was there before me.  Regan had a girl in
+Brooklyn, and Furlong was getting off Regan's regular evening message
+to her about how he was still in good health and still hoped to be back
+in the spring and so on by wireless to a station up near New York in
+charge of a friend of Furlong's, whose job was to pass it on to a
+telegraph-office in Brooklyn just across the street from where the girl
+lived.  She would have it for breakfast in the morning, and Regan would
+have her answer to it some time during the day.  A consolation to two
+loving hearts it was, and they doing it all winter without it costing
+either of them a copper.
+
+I tell Furlong what I'm after.  "Sure," he says, and begins to make the
+colored lights hop.  "And have a cigarette while you're waiting," he
+says, "for it will take a few minutes."
+
+I looked around for a match.  "Here," says Furlong, and spills a little
+alcohol from a bottle onto a copper-looking switch thing and brings
+down on that another copper-looking switch thing with a handle--both of
+'em sticking out from the bulkhead--and out flows a blue flame six
+inches long and I light my cigarette, watching out not to burn the end
+of my nose while I'm lighting it.  He had the place full of little
+gadgets like that.
+
+While we sat there he gives out all the latest news as fast as he grabs
+it off, not only about my fight in London, but how the ponies were
+running in New Orleans, what Congress was killing time about, which
+particular European country was going to war now--all the important
+news.
+
+I'm not setting up Furlong for any hero, mind you, but sitting up there
+in his little shack on the superstructure, grabbing news like that from
+everywhere flying--he made a hit with me.  After that if I didn't want
+to know any more than was there good skating in Central Park I'd ask
+Furlong, and he'd dig up some station or other around New York, make
+the blue lights hop, clap the wireless gear to his head, and soon be
+telling me all about it.
+
+That spring I was transferred, and didn't see Furlong again for two
+years.  Then it was in the East--in Hong Kong during the Russo-Japanese
+war, both of us paid off and both of us wondering what we'd do, but
+Furlong not worrying much about the money end of it.  He had plenty of
+that, enough anyway to keep him in good clothes and stop at all the
+good hotels he cared to for a while.  And enough to stake me after I'd
+gone broke, too.
+
+In Hong Kong we struck in with another young fellow who was flourishing
+around as an American tourist, though Furlong knew him for a wireless
+man before he'd been with him an hour, and in less than another hour
+knew him for the wireless operator one time on the _Nippon_, a steamer
+running from our country to Japan.  But he never let on he knew him.
+
+"Suppose he is playing a little game of bluff, where is it my business
+to show him up?"
+
+Furlong had come to know the daughter of a purser running on a steamer,
+the _Plantagenet_, between Hong Kong and the Japanese ports, and she
+was pretty as you please and he taking a great shine to her; after
+telling the old man, mind you, that he had been an enlisted man in the
+United States navy and was thinking of going back home to Chicago, but
+not telling him that his folks back home had bales of money, which
+would have put him in right, for the old man did like the chink of hard
+coin and was picking up his share on his own little graft--renting his
+room to rich passengers when the ship was crowded, picking up a little
+more change by doing a little smuggling, and probably in the pay of the
+Jap Secret Service on the side.
+
+One evening Furlong, always a sociable chap, brings his wireless friend
+around, and another evening, and another.  Pretty soon things don't
+seem to be running as smooth as they used to for Furlong, but fine for
+his wireless friend.  "Well, that's all right, too," says Furlong, "if
+they like him better than me."
+
+"But no need to give you a frost, is there?" I said.
+
+Things kept growing cooler around the girl's house, so we made up our
+minds 'twas about time to get away somewhere, and war being a great
+place to forget your troubles, we had a look in at that.  We took the
+Russian side.  We were for the Japs in the beginning, but by this time
+nearly all our navy people in the East had swung over to the Russians.
+Why?  M-m--probably because deep down inside of us we believed the
+Russians were nearer our own kind.
+
+Before we left Hong Kong I found out how Furlong's wireless friend had
+done for him.  With a few drinks in him--me buying the drinks--he
+gushes some confidential chatter.
+
+Furlong was in the pay of the Russian Government, was what he told the
+foxy old purser.  How else could a man so clever--talking and having so
+much money to spend as Furlong was spending--how could he have been an
+enlisted man in any navy?  And he showed a cable--being so easy to fix
+up, I wondered why he hadn't made it a wireless--that no man of
+Furlong's father's name was living in Chicago.  I didn't tell that to
+Furlong--not then.  Why?  Because to my notion he was well clear of a
+cheap bunch.
+
+Later we heard she was married to the wireless chap and the pair of
+them living off her father.  His people had lost all their money in
+speculation, so the young fellow told the old man; which left nothing
+for the old man to do but get him a job somewhere; which he did, on the
+_Plantagenet_, where the wife was aboard, too--to save expenses.
+
+"Kind of tough on her," says Furlong, and maybe it was, though I
+couldn't see it.  She only got what was coming to her.  The woman that
+would look at Furlong and not see that he rated a whole division like
+the other chap--  But trying to account for young women's judgment of
+young men and vice versa, as the old Romans would say, what's the use?
+And if we all knew as much as we ought to there would half the time be
+no story, would there?
+
+We were both in Port Arthur when things were looking blue for the
+Russians.  The Japs were hammering away at the forts and the place
+filling up with dead and wounded, and all kinds of sickness and fever
+flourishing, and medical and food supplies getting pretty low.  They
+were wondering how they were going to make out, when some topsider said
+that if some of the sick and wounded could be got up to Vladivostok it
+might save a good many lives and be a great relief to the rest of the
+garrison.
+
+There happened to be three transports in the harbor at this time.  They
+had slipped by the blockade, which wasn't ever any too well kept, the
+mines outside being about as dangerous to the Japs as to anybody else.
+These three ships would accommodate three thousand sick people.  So
+they were put aboard, sick and wounded, officers and men--and women,
+too, some officers' wives among them.
+
+For a convoy to the transports the best they could detail was a
+battleship that had been in an engagement not long before.  Pretty well
+shot up she was and much doubt would she stand the trip to Vladivostok;
+but she was the only one available and out we went, with Furlong as her
+wireless operator.  There being not too many good wireless men lying
+around just then, they counted a lot on him.
+
+Before we left port there was a rumor flying that the Japs had wind of
+what we were trying to do; and perhaps that was the reason why when the
+battleship had trouble with her machinery on our first day out she
+didn't put back to Port Arthur, but put into a little Chinese harbor on
+the westerly side of the Yellow Sea.  You may think the Chinese
+officials wanted to run us out, but they didn't.  Maybe they saw the
+shadows of the future.
+
+We lay in there all that night, I bunking in with Furlong in the
+wireless shack and he on watch every minute.  During the night he
+picked up the call of a Russian supply-ship--the _Sevastopol_ she
+was--and passed the word on to the admiral, who sent back word to tell
+her to wait outside till next morning and then follow on, giving her
+the next day's course.
+
+Next morning we went belting across the Yellow Sea at eleven
+knots--pretty good for us--and we began to think everything was working
+fine, when astern, about noon, came up a smoke.  Furlong and I could
+see her without leaving the wireless shack, which on this Russian
+battleship was on the after-bridge.  She drew nearer, and something
+about her caught my eye.  I knew I had seen her somewhere, and, getting
+a chance at the chief quartermaster's long glass, I took a peep, and
+sure enough--the _Plantagenet_!  I didn't say anything, not even when
+the flag-lieutenant and the executive were having a great spiel
+together as to her being the supply-ship which we expected was coming
+astern of us.
+
+Soon a vapor comes up and the stranger fades away, and after thinking
+it over, I tell the flag-lieutenant what I felt sure of, and he tells
+the admiral, and the old man he has Furlong tell the transports to come
+closer, and then he signals them to steam off by the right, and once
+more to the right, and again to the right, which brought us after half
+an hour or more a couple of miles astern of where we'd been when the
+_Plantagenet_ last showed.  It was a day of shifting fog and vapor, and
+when we raised her again there she was still on the old course, but now
+directly ahead of us.
+
+She came and went between puffs of fog vapor.  The admiral was
+satisfied now that she was the _Plantagenet_, and as she'd long been
+suspected of doing secret scout work for the Japs, he began to do some
+thinking about her.  She was a fast steamer, and all the more use to
+the Japs because she wasn't a Jap.
+
+"If she could bring about the capture of this little fleet of ours,
+she'd make a lot of money for her owners and officers, wouldn't she?" I
+says to Furlong.  "And that wireless friend of yours, he'll get an
+extra good whack, too, for they'll mostly depend on him, won't they?"
+
+"Yes," says Furlong, "but not if I can stop him."
+
+By and by the admiral comes into the wireless shack himself and tells
+Furlong to see if he couldn't raise the strange ship by wireless.  But
+he couldn't.  She wouldn't answer; which made the admiral pretty mad,
+and with the fog lifting and we seeing her again, he trained a big gun
+on her but didn't fire, though for a second I thought he would--across
+her bow anyway.
+
+All that afternoon we held to our course.  Another night and day we
+hoped to make Vladivostok all right, but coming on to dark our old
+wreck of a battleship broke down again.  So the old man picked out
+another place to put into--on the northern part of the Korean coast we
+were now, where the Russian officers were pretty well posted
+and--something telling us the Koreans wouldn't bother--we felt safe for
+the night.  We all figured we had slipped the _Plantagenet_, and so we
+had, maybe, only for that blessed supply-ship behind us.  She had been
+sent a wireless not to anchor till a couple of hours after the rest of
+us--after dark.
+
+But she had one of those yap skippers who are always bound to be in the
+commander-in-chief's eye, and instead of sneaking in without calling
+attention to himself, he comes bowling along, every light aboard her
+blazing, and steams like a torch-light procession around the harbor.
+She might just as well have lit up and kept her search-lights going,
+for as she passed each one of us her lights were blocked off, which
+told to any other ship which might be watching outside just how many
+ships of us there were to anchor inside.  That parading skipper
+certainly did get in the old man's eye.  If the admiral's message read
+anything like it sounded, then that parading skipper must have felt as
+good as blown from a turret-gun before he turned in that night.
+
+Later in the night the officer that in our navy we'd call the
+flag-lieutenant--a decent kind who talked good English, too--ordered
+Furlong to turn in.  He had been on continuous duty since we left Port
+Arthur.  "You can do no more, and you are much fatigued, you require
+repose," says the flag-lieutenant.  And Furlong thought a little repose
+wouldn't hurt either; but before going he thought he would give one
+last listen for anything that might be floating around in the wireless
+zone.
+
+Right away I saw that something was doing.
+
+"Look up K K K," he says--"quick!"
+
+I got out the printed call-book, but no K K K there.
+
+"Perhaps she is some new ship," says Furlong, "or an old one with a
+plant installed since the last list was put out.  Quiet now--maybe I
+can recognize the sending."  He listened; and "No"--he shook his head
+thoughtfully.  "And yet--wait--Sh-h--" he jams the head-gear harder to
+his ears.  "Well, what d'y' think o' that!  It's that lobster off the
+old _Nippon_--nearly two years since I've taken him."
+
+"That married----"
+
+"Yes," he says.
+
+"And still on the _Plantagenet_, d'y' s'pose?"
+
+"Must be.  I know him now like I'd know his voice, or his signature.
+And she's not far off either--coming strong!"
+
+"Then they must 'a' seen that supply-ship and her fool skipper parading
+in to-night."
+
+"That's what.  Sh-h--he's using a cipher code, and merchantmen don't
+use cipher codes to each other.  I'll ask him what his call is."
+
+He makes the blue lights sputter again and listens.  And in a few
+seconds almost jumps out of his chair.  "We got him!  He says he's the
+_Grand Knight_ of the China and Indian Line, but last night while I was
+sitting here doing nothing I raised the _Grand Knight_--she was in
+Formosa Strait then and bound south.  But I'll give him OK, and see
+what he does then."  Which he did, and waited another while.
+
+The _Plantagenet_ kept pumping away, calling the cipher letter over and
+over, Furlong said--he listening in and trying to dope things out.  By
+and by he made up his mind she must be trying to raise some plant
+ashore, probably a station on the Japanese coast in touch with Togo's
+fleet.  "If we could only get on to her cipher," says Furlong; and,
+after another thinking spell: "It's sure to be something made up in a
+hurry.  And I don't believe that _Nippon_ chap's got overmuch
+invention.  Here, look here, Cahalan.  Three-quarters of all quick-made
+codes are one way, when it's an amateur makes 'em up in a hurry--it's
+mostly to push letters forward or back three or four or five or ten
+places.  Here, get to work with this pad and pencil."
+
+I take the _Plantagenet's_ right call--P G--and slips them forward and
+back, and sure enough seven letters forward gives him W N, the same
+she'd been sending with the K K K.  When I'd got that far Furlong,
+listening hard, said she'd got an answer and was giving her
+position--ten miles southeast of Hai-po Bay, which was the little place
+we were laying into.
+
+Furlong kept spelling out the letters as he caught them, and I kept
+putting them down and pushing them forward seven till it read:
+_Russian-battle-ship-and-three-trans-ports-are_--just that far when
+Bing!  Furlong breaks in and begins to send--nothing particular, but
+everything he could think of.  Every minute or so he'd let up, only to
+hear another operator--the K K K one--calling excitedly.
+
+"He wants to get off the rest of that message about us," said Furlong,
+and lets the _Plantagenet_ start another letter or two and then breaks
+in again.  And he kept at it with never a let-up for maybe an hour,
+when he notices signs of weakness in our current and sends word to the
+flag-lieutenant, who goes below and pretty soon comes up with the
+admiral to the shack.
+
+"For how long can you restrain the _Plantagenet_ from sending that
+message?" asks the admiral.
+
+"No telling, sir," says Furlong, "but not for a great while.  I've had
+to pump it in so fast trying to break their waves that I'm afraid I'll
+soon burn out our plant."
+
+That worried the old man, who sent word to the chief engineer to rush
+the repairs and get up steam as soon as he could.  "And if there's
+anything you require you have only to demand it," he says to Furlong,
+who never stops keeping the wireless on the hop.  It was hot in the
+wireless shack, with everything closed up tight, and there was the
+steady buzzing and about fourteen colored lights flashing at one time
+from that bird-cage thing.  All I could see were lights, and we had to
+yell to hear each other talk.  And Furlong, who'd been up then for
+sixteen hours on one stretch, the wireless gear strapped to his head
+most of the time, was beginning to feel the strain.  Nobody to relieve
+him either.
+
+To break up their waves Furlong had to keep giving them all he had, and
+of course something had to give way.  What I know of a wireless outfit
+wouldn't rate me heavy in a wireless fleet, but the rotary converter or
+something like it became so hot that Furlong said he'd have to have an
+electric fan to cool it.  "And get it quick!" he calls out after me.
+
+The first fan I spotted was in an officer's room that none of us
+admired much.  He was a man who would rate a man higher for tying his
+neckerchief right than for laying a turret-gun on the target at twelve
+thousand yards.  He was getting ready to turn in.  It was a hot night
+and I knew he'd have trouble trying to sleep without a fan, his room
+being where it was--near the engine-room ladder--and orders being that
+all air-ports be kept closed that night.
+
+Of course, he didn't want to give up his fan.  I didn't waste any time
+on him--only to say to the flag-lieutenant that it was just the class
+of fan that Furlong ordered, and the flag-lieutenant tells the
+officer--still kicking he was--that he'd get an order from the admiral
+if he desired.  On reflection, the officer didn't think a special order
+from the admiral was necessary, and in a minute or two I was pumping
+nice cold air on the converter with the fan.
+
+Then the brush-holders and the brushes kept getting out of adjustment
+or something.  They were too light to carry the extra current.  Before
+this Furlong had passed the word to the chief electrician, and he had
+switched on juice enough to run a central office plant ashore.  We
+fixed up the brushes, and everything was doing fine, I thought, when
+all at once Furlong looks across the table and says: "O, Lord!  The
+condenser-plates!"
+
+I never knew before I was shipmates with any such gadgets, but I look
+around and there are four glass plates about an inch thick and a foot
+and a half across that the current was boring through.
+
+"Sure enough!" I says--"the condenser-plates going to hell.  What'll I
+do with them?"
+
+"Find out if there are any thick sheets of glass in the storeroom,"
+says Furlong.
+
+There was.  Not a lot, for glass lying around loose doesn't stand
+overmuch of a chance on any battleship.  We got what sheets of glass
+were below, but in the hurry of rushing them up topside I fell back
+down an iron ladder to the splinter-deck port side aft, and when I hit
+it--a two-and-three-quarter-inch chilled steel-plate deck--I near
+cracked my skull.  And all because I was only trying to save the glass,
+holding it out from my body while I was falling.  And while I'm trying
+to find my feet the officer I'd borrowed the electric fan from rushes
+out from his room and was going to put me in the brig for the noise I'd
+made.  There happened to be enough glass left for another set of
+condenser-plates, and while they were cutting it to shape Furlong calls
+for another electric fan.
+
+I thinks of a young officer, the freshest one ever, who had an ancestor
+related to Peter the Great, and an uncle or granduncle or grandmother
+or somebody or other in the family who was even then a general.  Now,
+of course, there's no great harm in talking a little about your family,
+but when you begin to think it gives you a rating to ride over other
+people!  And the living ancestor was such an old granny of a general,
+according to all accounts, and the dead one such an old robber!  "Mr.
+Kaminoff, sir, has a specially powerful fan," says I to the
+flag-lieutenant.
+
+"Yes--O yes--true!" says the flag-lieutenant and bounces down to Mr.
+Kaminoff's quarters himself, and Kaminoff didn't know what happened
+till he found himself gulping down big gobs of darkness by way of
+getting his breath.  It was a hell of a hot night, and nobody less than
+a four-striper would have dared to leave his port open that night,
+because Kaminoffskis or Romanoffskis, the old man made them all toe the
+mark when he gave out an order.
+
+The illustrious Kaminoff howled around some in the dark, but nobody
+minded him now the powers were sitting on him.  When he came out on the
+gun-deck in his silk pajamas to get the air, he probably wished he was
+an ordinary seaman without any ancestry and owned a hammock to swing to
+a couple of hooks somewhere.
+
+By letting that second fan play onto the glass plates they stayed cool
+for a time.  But only for a time.  By and by they showed signs of
+melting again.  And the flag-lieutenant, deliberating on the
+possibility of the _Plantagenet_ getting her message away and the
+probability of the Jap fleet bearing down on them if he did get it
+away, he sends a man down to the chief engineer to ask again how long
+before we could get up steam.
+
+Maybe two hours, said the chief engineer, and Furlong said he'd try to
+hold out for two hours more.
+
+But we were getting in a new mess every ten minutes.  The keys weren't
+heavy enough to stand the continuous pounding under the current Furlong
+was giving 'em.  One set of points was already burned off--he had to
+ship new keys.  Then it was back to the new condenser-plates, which
+didn't seem to be of the best quality of glass and were beginning to
+fuse worse than the old ones.  They were going fast and Furlong was
+puzzled--for a while.  Then--"Tallow!" he hollers, and away hustles the
+flag-lieutenant for the paymaster, who was already turned in and sound
+asleep 'spite of the heat, for he had a good fan in his room--being the
+paymaster.  He was shook up, broke out the stores, and four
+condenser-plates of tallow were moulded; but as soon as Furlong sees
+what kind of tallow it was, he says they couldn't be made to work
+without they were coated with tin-foil or something like it.
+
+"Tin-foil?  But where shall we obtain tin-foil?" says the
+flag-lieutenant.  "Have you no tin-foil?" says he to the paymaster, who
+said no, he had no such item in his lists.
+
+"There's a lot of tobacco in the canteen and a couple of hundred cases
+of tea below," says Furlong to the flag-lieutenant.
+
+"O yes, the tobacco and the tea!" says the flag-lieutenant, and they
+send down three or four husky lads to break out the commissary yeoman,
+or whatever his rating was, out of his hammock.  You could hear him
+yelling clear up on the superstructure when they landed him onto the
+deck, for by this time half of the ship's crew began to guess that
+something was going on, and whoever could get near enough to lay hands
+on that commissary yeoman was helping to hustle him along to his shack.
+
+"Ganavitch! ganavitch!" he kept saying, or something like that; and the
+flag-lieutenant sent up to Furlong to ask, now they had him, what was
+he to do?
+
+"Break out your tobacco and your tea!" yells Furlong, who, with the
+receiver strapped to his head and the fingers of one hand pounding the
+key and the other motioning me to hurry on the thrilling messages which
+I was reading from the back pages of an American magazine:
+
+The - forty - horse - power - Camarac - is - the - machine - how -
+about - C. B. & Q. - corsets - to - pinch - in - your - shape - send -
+for - our - latest - catalogue - with - illustrations - add - an - inch
+- to - your - height - why - be - poor - the - best - abana - cigars -
+two - dollars - the - hundred - observe - that - curve - use - the -
+instantaneous - safety - razor - no - honing - no - strapping----
+
+
+For some time before this I'd seen how foolish it was to be straining
+your brain inventing messages to send when there they lay ready printed
+to your hand, and so 'twas:
+
+--pneumatic - soap - she - floats - why - pay - rent - don't - you -
+think - uneeda - wash - write - us - for - free - sample----
+
+I kept calling it out and Furlong kept banging it away on the key.
+
+The flag-lieutenant sticks his head in.  "What shall the commissary
+yeoman do with the tobacco and the tea?"
+
+Furlong hollers to tear out the tin-foil and bring it up to him.  They
+brought it up, and a couple of Slavs, who had been working the tallow
+into the shape of condensing-plates--helped out by two electric fans
+and a stream of ice-water playing on them--they wrap the tin-foil
+around the tallow plates.
+
+"Mould some more!" yells Furlong--"and keep mouldin' 'em!"
+
+As fast as one set would melt, out they'd ship another.  There was
+plenty of tallow--those Russian ships they're greasy with tallow--and
+dozens of cases of tobacco and Lord knows how many boxes of tea.  It
+was a stirring sight below, with a dozen or so wild Slavs in their
+underclothes smashing things open with axes and tobacco and tea flying
+around regardless.  Every blessed Russian that had a samovar and could
+get hold of hot water begins to make tea.  There must have been a
+division of them sitting around between decks--at two in the
+morning--drinking hot tea and sweating like horses, for it was hotter
+than--oh, but it was hot that night!
+
+"More tallow plates!" yells Furlong.
+
+They had a carpenter's mate drafted below, a Finlander with a good eye,
+and he was cutting out swell plates with a chisel, and as fast as he
+did they would wrap them in the tin-foil and the two Slavs would
+squeeze them into place.
+
+Sure-enough sea-going condensing-plates those tallow inventions of
+Furlong's were, and they did the business till the chief engineer
+reported he had steam up, and we started to put out.  "And now," says
+the flag-lieutenant to Furlong, "your noble exertions are to be
+rewarded.  You shall see how we shall catch that _Plantagenet_ ship!"
+
+"And a good job," I says to Furlong.  "I hope they blow her out of
+water when they do get her."  Which sets him to studying.
+
+"Say, Cahalan," he asks, "you don't suppose they'd do that?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"They'd have to prove she sent the wireless messages.  Even I couldn't
+prove that any man aboard her ever sent a wireless message," says
+Furlong, "let alone that they sent any to the Japs about us."
+
+"No matter," I says.  "Everybody aboard here believes she did.  And you
+know she did.  And if you'd seen those wild Slavs prancing around
+between decks awhile ago, I bet you some of 'em wouldn't wait too long
+to slip out a torpedo surreptishus-like from the torpedo chamber."
+
+Furlong lays down his head-gear and ponders awhile.  "If I thought
+there was any danger--say, Cahalan--suppose his wife--the wireless
+chap's--is aboard, as she probably is?"  He reaches for the key.
+
+"What're you goin' to do now?" I asks.
+
+"I'm going," he says, "if those home-made, unpatented tallow
+condenser-plates will hold for just one more charge--I'm going to tell
+the _Plantagenet_ that a Russian battle fleet is headin' her way and
+for her to steam to the south'ard about as fast as she can go and to
+keep on steaming."
+
+He fills the bird-cage gadjet with green and blue flashes again and
+kept filling it till the tallow plates melted into a pool of grease.
+
+The pool of grease hardened into a flat cone of tallow on the deck.
+"Did you get it away?" I asks him.
+
+"We'll soon see," he says.
+
+When we made steam and got well outside, all we saw, far down on the
+horizon, was a streak of black smoke going wide open to the south'ard.
+The admiral let her go--with that start and she good for twenty-one
+knots he had to.  And while we were watching, up comes the commissary
+yeoman to complain to the flag-lieutenant.  When he came to put the
+tobacco back in the boxes there was sixty-four plugs shy and thirteen
+more had bites out of them.
+
+The flag-lieutenant said he did not see how he could help the
+commissary yeoman; and then, being pretty tired, we turned in.
+
+When we woke up we were at anchor in Vladivostok.
+
+They thought Furlong was all right after that, and wanted him to start
+right in and overhaul a wireless plant in their yard ashore.  He could
+be an officer if he desired, they said.
+
+"What d'y'think of it, Cahalan?" he says.
+
+"They're good people, the Russians," I said, "and I like 'em.  But I
+like my own people better, and I will not.  I'm going back home."
+
+"And me," he says.
+
+And we did, or back to the nearest thing to it--a cruiser of our own
+which happened to be to anchor in Chee Foo.
+
+
+
+
+Dan Magee: White Hope
+
+That night in the forec's'le Tom was telling them how he got the word
+of the Jeffries-Johnson fight.
+
+"I sights her smoke to the west'ard, the sun just risin'.  But it came
+to me that mebbe a great steamer like her wouldn't like it to be held
+up by a couple o' Grand Bank trawlers in a dory, an' I mentions that to
+Jack there, but Jack says: 'You know how they all want to know aboard
+the vessel, 'specially the cook.'"
+
+The cook looked up to say dejectedly: "I'd ha' forgiven you."
+
+"Jack handed me his oil jacket for a signal o' distress, an' I lashes
+it to the blade of an oar an' lashes th' oar to a for'ard thwart an'
+sits down an' waits.
+
+"Along she comes, an' she cert'nly was the grand sight comin'.  The
+len'th an' height of her, and a wave to her bow an' stern would swamp a
+dory!  An' her bridge!  Miles away 'twas high as some flyin' thing.  On
+she comes a-roarin'--twenty-six knots, no less.  An' almost atop of us
+she stops.  An' I looks up at her, an' a gold-braided lad in blue he
+leans over the side rail o' th' bridge an' he says: 'What's wrong with
+you chaps?'
+
+"An' I looks up an' says: 'Who won?'
+
+"An' he says: 'What d'y'mean--who won?'
+
+"An' I says: 'God, man! where you been the last few days ashore?  Who
+won th' fight?'
+
+"A couple other gold-braided lads 'd joined the first, an' behind them
+four or five rail-polishers was bobbin' up an' down.  An' then came a
+fat-whiskered lad an' bustles all the others out o' his way, an' one o'
+the others hands him a little megaphone, an' he leans over the rail an'
+he says: 'You Yankee beggars, do I understand that you're holdin' up a
+ship of our class, and we, bearin' the roy'l mails, to ask who won a
+bloody prize-fight?'
+
+"An' I says: 'Ferget y'ur class an' y'ur roy'l mails--who won th'
+fight?'
+
+"There was a couple o' hundred o' passengers mebbe by this time along
+the top rail--men an' women, in night-dresses an' bath-robes the women,
+the men in Chinese trousers they looked like to me.  An' a lad in a
+blue one of 'em he sings out: 'There's sporting blood for you!' an' he
+grabs another lad in a pink one an' says: 'Look--those two down there
+want to know who won the fight'; an' then sings out to us: 'Say, you're
+all right, you two?'  An' just then the whiskered one on the bridge, he
+sings out--what was it he said, Jack?"
+
+Jack quoted: "'Will the first-cabin passengers understand that I am
+thoroughly capable of carrying on all the necessary conversation with
+these people in regard to this matter?'"
+
+"An' I was gettin' mad, an' I says: 'To blazes with y'ur nessary
+conversation, you pot-bellied loafer--who won th' fight?'  An' at that
+the passenger that'd first butted in he makes a megaphone of his hands
+an' he sings out: 'Johnson!'
+
+"'Johnson?' I says--'Johnson?' an' reaches back to find somethin' t'
+heave at him.  I was goin' to heave a cod at him, but Jack says: 'Don't
+waste that on him,' an' digs me out an old gray hake, an' I holds it by
+the tail an' I says: 'Say, you, you in the blue Chinese trousers, who'd
+you say won?' an' he says: 'Why, Johnson.'
+
+"'You glue-eyed squid!' I says, an' scales th' old hake up at him, an'
+he dodges, but his chum in pink he didn't have time an' it ketches him
+fair, an' 'What in thunder's that thing!' he yells, an' takes to
+hoppin' up an' down an' wipin' the hake scales off his chin.
+
+"An' the lad in blue sings out: 'Say, you, you oughter be in a big
+league with that arm o' yours,' an' he rushes inside the house an'
+comes out with a bunch of papers twisted together an' throws 'em over
+the side, an' Jack an' me we picks 'em up an' smooths 'em out on a
+thwart, an' there 'twas in letters six inches high--black letters,
+too--'JOHNSON WINS!' an' that's them the cook's readin' to himself now."
+
+Tom stopped, and he who was called Professor said: "No doubt you would
+have wagered all you possessed if you had been home instead of out
+here."
+
+"I wouldn't 'a' minded that.  But Jeffries licked by a nigger!  What's
+the white race comin' to?  Say--say, but I wisht good old John L. in
+his prime'd been there to Reno--or Dan Magee."
+
+There were two, both of course new to the vessel, who before this night
+had never heard of Dan Magee.  One being from Fortune Bay, Tom was
+expecting no better of him; but the other (and he called Professor
+because of his book learning), and living in Boston, in Boston where
+they used to nourish champion fighters!
+
+"But there is no record of a Dan Magee who was a heavyweight champion,"
+argued Professor.
+
+"A good thing for a lot of 'em there ain't," snapped Tom.
+"JOHNSON!!--_Johnson!_--Johnson----"
+
+"I bet twenty to fifteen on Jeffries before we left Gloucester."  This
+was from the cook, who, having read all about the fight, was now mixing
+a pan of bread, with his sad eyes directed to a deck beam.  "Yes,
+twenty to--  Cæsar Zippicus!" he brought his fist down _bff!_ in the
+lump of dough.  "And I left ten more--I just remember--with Billy Mills
+to bet for me at the same odds."
+
+Professor, lying in a lower bunk, took the trouble to roll over and
+say: "And why did you do that?"
+
+"Why?  Why?"  The cook glared at the lower bunk.  "You people--  Caesar
+Zippicus!" and, raising the bread pan high above his head, he brought
+it down smash atop of the galley-locker.  Whang!
+
+The cook looked ashamed.  "I just remember I left another twenty with
+Jerry McCarty to place on Jeffries, too," he explained.
+
+"Never mind, cook," said Tom, "you wouldn't 'a' lost nothing if it'd
+been Dan Magee."
+
+"To blazes with you and Dan Magee!" whooped the cook.
+
+"And that's what I says, too, cook."  This was from Fortune Bay.  "I
+been hearin' more o' Dan Magee this night!  It's Dan Magee this an' Dan
+Magee that.  And what did ever the man do?"
+
+"Do?"  Tom held a reverential hand high.  "A book wouldn't tell th'
+half Dan did.  Where's Jack?"
+
+"Gone for'ard."
+
+"Too bad--if Jack Ferris wasn't aft playin' cribbage with the skipper
+in the cabin, you'd hear a few things more of Dan Magee.  But he'll be
+for'ard by'n'by for his turnin'-in mug-up, an' then----"
+
+And by and by Jack came.  "They're castin' doubt on Dan Magee,"
+declared Tom to his dorymate.  "Tell him about the time he licked th'
+seven p'licemen in Saint Johns or about that time in Soorey."
+
+Jack glanced at the clock.
+
+"There might be time for the Soorey fight.  We were chasing mackerel,"
+said Ferris, "on the Cape shore this time, and a lively southeaster
+coming on one day, the skipper said he guessed he'd run into Soorey to
+let it blow by.  And as we'd been up three nights owling, after we
+dropped anchor all hands turned in for a good sleep.
+
+"Late in the afternoon somebody sings out, 'Supper!' and I woke up.
+Looking across the cabin, I saw Dan awake, too, sitting on the locker,
+with his slipshods to one side and his rubber boots to the other.  He
+was casting an eye now to one and now to the other, when he looks up
+and sees me.  'What d'y'say, Jackie boy?' says Dan.  'Will we slide
+into our slipshods and go for'ard for supper, or will we haul on our
+rubber boots and go ashore and eat like a pair of tourists and look the
+place over?  What d'y'say?'
+
+"We hadn't much of a cook that summer.  He'd come off a yacht and was
+everlastingly making potted mackerel, which he could make good; but a
+pity nobody'd ever told him fishermen don't go ketching fish to be
+always eating 'em.  And so I said: 'Me for ashore.'
+
+"So we got into our rubber boots, hoist a dory over the side, and we're
+shoving off when the skipper, who we thought we'd left asleep, sticks
+his head up the cabin companionway and sings out: 'Where you two bound?'
+
+"'We thought,' says Dan, 'we'd be rowing a few miles out to sea and
+back by way of limbering up our slack muscles.'
+
+"'There's some people I expect'd bust wide open if they wasn't allowed
+to be smart,' says Captain John.  'I don' know but what I'll go ashore
+with you,' and he threw a mug of coffee into himself and jumps in and
+we start off.
+
+"Suddenly Dan stops rowing.  'Isn't this September?' says Dan, and the
+skipper says yes.  'And a Monday?' asks Dan, and the skipper stops and
+thinks for a moment and says yes it was.  'And the first Monday?' asks
+Dan.  'Yes,' says the skipper, 'but what in tarnation of it?'
+'Nothing,' says Dan, 'only that if we were home it would be Labor Day.'
+And the skipper says: 'Well, what o' that?'  'Nothing,' says Dan, 'only
+it'd be a holiday and all hands celebrating if we were to anchor in
+some port ashore.'
+
+"'But Labor Day ain't no holiday in this country,' says the skipper.
+
+"'No,' says Dan, 'but we c'n make a holiday of it.'
+
+"'I don' know about that,' says the skipper.  'If it moderates at all,
+I cal'late to be pullin' out by daybreak.'
+
+"'Sure, and we c'n have a celebration that'll reverber-r-ate in history
+by then,' says Dan.
+
+"Now, Dan was a great reader.  He'd lie in his bunk of a night when he
+had no watch to stand and he'd read the morning up sometimes, and now
+when he starts rowing again he starts talking about things he'd read.
+
+"'I used to read about the holidays that some countries have,' says
+Dan, 'but I never believed it till I was in a vessel running salt fish
+to Cadiz one time.  And the ship-loads o' salt fish they consume in
+that country, 'twould amaze you.  But one night layin' in Cadiz harbor
+a big whale of a steamer cut into us, and all the topside planking she
+left of us to starb'd not even this new cook of ours--and God knows
+he's savin' enough of the raw material!--he couldn't have started a
+galley fire with it.  We had to run her up on the railway and calk her,
+and after that 'twas the carpenters--nine weeks in all--and 'twas great
+opportunities we had to study the customs of the country.  And there
+was a country for you!  Every once in a quick while a holiday.  And the
+days they did work no one breaking his neck to get the work done.
+'Twas proof to me they must be people o' genius to get ahead at all.
+But then they do say the people that does the least work has the most
+genius, the most imagination; and imagination, they say, is the first
+qualification of genius, and too much work it kills the imagination.
+What d'y'think o' that doctrine, skipper?' says Dan.
+
+"'I don't know nothing about imagination,' says the skipper, 'but I
+alwuz notices that them that does the least work c'n get off the most
+hot air.'
+
+"Just then we bump into the dock, where the skipper, without even
+waiting to see the painter made fast, hurries up toward the street.
+
+"'There he goes,' says Dan, 'lookin' for--what they call 'em,
+now?--affinities.  And if he only had a little taste in the matter!
+There's people, they say, that all vessels look alike to--sharp-built
+and round-bowed, light-sparred and heavy.  And he's that way with
+women.  One looks just like any other to him.  The gray-headed old rat,
+he has sons as old as me or you at home, Jack, and there's the widow
+Simmons in Gloucester with two lodging-houses at the head o' the
+harbor.  He's courting her, too.'
+
+"'From what I hear, Dan,' says I, 'the widow is able for him.'
+
+"At the head of the dock was a lobster factory with a pile of cooked
+lobsters under a shed half as high as our masthead.  'Here's our
+supper, boy,' says Dan, and we go up to a man and ask how much for
+lobsters, and he says: 'Help yourselves for fifty cents a dozen.'  And
+we help ourselves.  I had one dozen and Dan two.  'And couldn't we get
+a little drop o' something to follow after these red gentry?' asks Dan,
+and the man calls a boy, and Dan gives the boy a five-dollar bill, and
+when the boy comes back with a dozen pint bottles of English ale, he
+tells him to keep the change, the ale looked so good to him.
+
+"He had nine bottles and I had three, and 'That's what I call a decent
+little lunch,' says Dan, 'and it begins to feel more like a holiday;
+and how is it with you, Jackie boy?'
+
+"I said I felt better, too, and we headed for the main street.  By the
+time we got to the top of the hill--we'd hove-to here and there along
+the way, of course, with a little sociable drink in each to leave a
+good name behind us--and by now Dan said he could feel his side-lights
+burning bright; and as he said it we came abreast of a place with a
+window all of red glass, to port, and another, all green glass, to
+starboard.  And over the door, shining out from a square box of a
+lantern, was the sign 'Snug Harbor!'
+
+"Hard-a-lee!' says Dan, and we tacked across the street and fetched up
+all-standing in front of the door.  'It's a great thing, isn't it, boy,
+to have a vessel that answers her helm?' says Dan, and leads the way in.
+
+"The first room had a bar running the length of it.  Gay times were
+going on in back somewhere, but, of course, we had to stop and buy a
+drink or two here by way of showing our good intentions.  There was one
+man behind the bar; but before we could order, another fellow leaves a
+group near the window and goes behind, too.  'What's your name, mate?'
+says this one to Dan.
+
+"'I'm Dan Magee o' Skibbaree,' says Dan, and leaps a yard into the air
+and knocks his heels together, and when he comes down pulls a bill from
+his roll and throws it on the bar.
+
+"'I thought so.  I'm from Skibbaree myself.  I knew your father.'
+
+"'Then you're from a place I never heard of before this last minute,'
+says Dan.  'But if you did know my father you knew a good man, a better
+man than ever you were--or will be,' says Dan, 'and if you want to
+dispute it 'tis his son will prove it to you.  And if you think you can
+come any of your come-all-ye's over me, you're mistaken.  I'll be
+thanking you for the change of that ten-dollar bill,' says Dan.
+
+"'A ten-dollar bill?' says the bartender, and opens one hand and says:
+'Why, no--see--a dollar bill.'
+
+"'You don't tell me now!' says Dan, and reaches over and with a twist
+of his fingers opens the bartender's other hand, and there was the
+ten-dollar bill.  And he takes it and tucks it away, and doing that he
+lets him have another look at the roll of bills he had with him.
+
+"'My private opinion of you,' says Dan, 'I'd hate publicly to express
+it, 'specially in the presence of these honorable gentlemen here,' and
+he points to the four or five hard-looking tickets, who had left the
+window and were now crowding up close.  'But you don't want to be
+making the mistake of thinking because a man rolls a bit in the wind
+that he's carrying more sail than he ought.  I've seen 'em, lad, with
+their hatches under; but let your wheel fly and up they'd come like a
+spinning top.  It's the ballast, lad, they have--the ballast--and don't
+make any mistake--if I feel like swinging all I got, the ballast's
+there to hold me up to it,' and with that he turns and drives his foot
+through the swinging-doors and into the next room with almost a flying
+leap.  I stops to pay for the drinks and then follows Dan; but before I
+got through I heard one of the loafers say: 'And did you see that wild
+man's pile?'  And I says to myself: 'If we get out of here alive, we're
+lucky.'
+
+"The other room was a big room with sand on the floor, a bar and a
+barmaid to one side, and a counter to the other with a man behind it
+opening oysters.  There were small tables at one end and men and women
+sitting to them drinking.  The men were mostly seafaring hoboes,
+foolish lumpers, and deck-swabs--from off steamers, most likely.  There
+was a man to the bar, and I didn't see who he was at first, he being
+almost hid between a big-bellied stove; but Dan spotted him right away.
+'Will you look at our bold skipper!' whispers Dan--'and his wife not
+buried a year yet.'  I takes another look and sees that so it was, and
+that he was talking a fourteen-knot clip to the barmaid.
+
+"'Good evening, captain,' says Dan.  The skipper turns, screws up his
+face, says 'Howdy' at last, and turns to the barmaid again.
+
+"'We were for passing on to the next room, where the dancing and
+piano-playing were; but there'd been the noise from the room we'd just
+left of a bunch of men coming in off the street and stopping just long
+enough for a round of drinks, and now they were coming through the
+swinging doors; and 'Did you see 'm hit 'm that last one?' one was
+saying, and 'Two rounds,' says another--'not enough to exercise Alf.'
+
+"In front of the crowd was a whale of a fellow in a red sweater and a
+little cap atop of his head, and beside him was our short-change
+bartender friend and behind him a dozen men, among 'em the same half a
+dozen tough lads we'd already seen out front before.
+
+"The big prize-fighter swings himself across the floor as if nobody
+else was living just then except to wait on him.  'A mug of your best,
+Daisy dear,' he says to the barmaid; and, hearing that, the skipper
+whips around with a sour face, but he takes another look at the bruiser
+and whips back again.
+
+"We could see the couples floating by the glass doors opening into the
+next room, and that's where Dan and myself were bound, and where we'd
+have got to, only the bartender's voice stops us.  'Say, you,' he calls
+out, 'how'd you like to put the gloves on and have a go with little Alf
+here?'  Dan didn't stop.  And '_You!_' yells the bartender--'I mean
+you, you big Gloucesterm'n!'
+
+"Dan turned then.  'What's that?'
+
+"'How'd you like to put on the gloves with Alf here?  There's a nice
+little bit of a ring across the way.'  The big fellow himself wasn't
+even looking at Dan.  He was elbowing the skipper to one side to get
+closer to the barmaid.  The skipper was looking riled.
+
+"'Why should I?' asks Dan.  'I've no quarrel with him.'
+
+"'No, you big stiff; but if it was me, you would.  You're Dan Magee of
+Skibbaree, are you?  Why don't you leap into the air now and knock your
+heels together and say that to Alf?  Or does his being the Soorey Giant
+make a difference?'
+
+"'Hang you and your Soorey Giants!' says Dan.
+
+"'Alf!  Alf!  Did y' hear 'im?' hollers the bartender.  And at that a
+man, a fair-sized man, too, jumps into the middle of the floor and
+says: 'Don't you ago botherin' wi' him, Alfie--I'll take care of 'im.'
+He has a red sweater, too, and a little cap at the top of his head, and
+he takes a couple of fancy steps and spars with his hands, and by and
+by steps in and gives Dan a poke.  And Dan he squints down at this lad
+and says, 'What's ailing you, man?' and the boxing chap he dashes in
+and pokes Dan again, and everybody laughs.  But before they were done
+laughing, Dan, who'd never had a boxing-glove on in his life, he slaps
+out with his left paw and ketches the fancy boxer one on the side of
+his chin, and he doesn't stop falling backward till he fetches up
+between our skipper and the Soorey Giant.
+
+"'Alf!' he gasps, and the Soorey Giant looks around to see who did it,
+and he spots Dan.  'Ho, ho!' he says--'ho!' and they all push back
+their chairs and tables to give him room.  And he keeps looking at Dan
+and then steps into the clear space and fiddles around and measures his
+distance and lets go, and it ketches Dan fair on the chest and sends
+him back half a dozen feet.  And as he does that somebody hits me one
+behind the ear and down I go.  And somebody else said, 'He's one of
+'em, too,' and reaches for the skipper, and down he comes, too, and the
+pair of us stay over to the corner where they'd knocked us and look on.
+
+"The big fellow dances away and shapes up for Dan again.  He reaches
+for Dan and ketches him fair again on the chest, and back goes Dan and
+begins to look foolish, and they all laugh and cheer, the women too,
+and of the women the bar-maid loudest of all.  And 'He's Dan Magee o'
+Skibbaree!' says our old friend the bartender, and you couldn't hear a
+word then for laughing.  And at that Dan springs a yard into the air
+and lets a roar out of him.  'Yes,' says he, 'I'm Dan Magee o'
+Skibbaree!' and comes charging across the floor.  The big fellow sets
+himself, and when he gets Dan right he lets go.  It was like hitting
+the big bass drum in a parade when he lands on Dan's chest.  But this
+time Dan was coming full tilt, and he keeps on coming and makes a swipe
+with his left paw, and down goes Mr. Soorey Giant.  But he jumps up and
+comes on, bellowing, and he swings, and Dan lets him swing while he
+reaches out himself and grabs him and whirls him around, and keeps
+whirling and turning with him till the Soorey champion's feet leave the
+floor, and then Dan lets him go and he fetches up against the door
+leading into the dance-hall.  'Yes,' says Dan, 'I'm Dan Magee o'
+Skibbaree,' and leaps a yard into the air and knocks his heels
+together, and grabs the big-bellied stove near the bar.  There was no
+fire in it, but it was busting with ashes.  Five feet high it was,
+maybe, and three feet through the middle.  'Fair Helen,' says Dan, 'I'm
+thinking you'd better be fleeing the plains o' windy Troy,' and the
+barmaid ran screaming away, and in her place behind the bar Dan drops
+the stove.  'Hurroo!' yells Dan, and spying a barrel full of
+oyster-shells, he picks it up and capsizes it on the head of the man
+behind the counter, who'd been yelling, 'Knock his head off, Alf!' at
+the top of his voice a minute before.  And then Dan wades into the
+eight or ten real tough ones who had got after the skipper and me in a
+corner and were pelting us good, and he pulls them off, two or three at
+a time, not trying to hurt anybody, but tossing 'em right and left ten
+or a dozen feet away, just as they happened to come to his hand.  The
+air was full of flying people, when the bartender came hurrying back
+with a mob of what looked like brass-polishers and deck-swabs from the
+dance-hall.  Dan sees him, and 'Oh, there you are?' he says, and upsets
+him and grabs him by his ankles, and starts to swinging him like he was
+a sixteen-pound hammer, and when he has him going good he lets him go
+altogether.  Into the crowd he'd been leading from the dance-hall he
+went, and those that weren't knocked over flew back to where they'd
+come from.
+
+"'Hurroo!' says Dan, and throws a few chairs and tables at the mirrors
+and glasses and bottled goods behind the bar.  'Hurroo!' he yells, and
+turns and grabs the nearest man to him, whirls him back-to, grips him
+under the arms, jumps through the swinging-doors, and makes for the
+street.  But the street door was locked.  He spots the window with the
+all-red glass.  'Hurroo!' yells Dan, 'here will soon be a ship with her
+port light carried away,' and throws his man through the red window and
+jumps through after him.  'Follow me!' yells Dan, and down the hill he
+went with seven-league strides.  And the skipper and me after him, and
+not a slack till we made the dock and jumped into the dory.
+
+"The skipper rolled into the stern of the dory, and there he lay.  Dan
+rowed out to the vessel--I was too tired--and on the way out he half
+whispers: 'What d'y'think of him, Jackie, that would take up with a
+woman of that kind and a buxom creature like the widow Simmons, with
+two houses clear of all debt in Gloucester, witherin' away for love of
+him?'
+
+"The skipper never let on he was alive until we were alongside the
+vessel, and then it was all hands on deck and weigh anchor and make
+sail and drive her.  But never a word of what had happened until Soorey
+Harbor was many a mile behind.  And then--the middle of the afternoon
+it was and the _Tubal_ running off before a good breeze--the skipper
+sidles up to Dan and says: 'Dannie, you sure they ain't no incumbrances
+on the two houses o' the widder?'  And Dan says: 'Isn't it my own
+sister's husband's nephew is her lawyer?'"
+
+At this point Ferris came to a full pause.
+
+"And what became of the marvellous Magee?" asked Professor.
+
+"What becomes of most good men?"
+
+"I bet you _I_ know," interposed the Newfoundlander.  "Wimming!"  He
+held one solemn finger in the air.  "Wimming and the red rum o' Saint
+Peer, I bet you.  They ruins the best o' men."
+
+"When next I saw Dan," resumed Ferris, "he'd got married to a Boston
+girl and had a shore job--piano-moving--'just enough exercise to keep
+him soopled up,' he said.  And there he was, in grand condition,
+sitting on the back porch and looking out on his possessions.  A little
+white house with a porch in front and behind.  And there was a garden
+with a little patch of cabbages, and a little patch of tomatoes, and a
+little patch of corn--a little patch of this and a little patch of
+that, not one blessed patch in the whole place as big as the bottom of
+a dory.  And there was a school of white rabbits running around--for
+the children; and a fleet of pigeons sailing overhead--for the
+children.  And the children like a fleet of little dories in the wake
+of Dan, and his wife washing the dishes and peeking out the kitchen
+window with an eye to 'em all.  This was after supper one Sunday
+evening.  And Dan would hoist up first one kid and then another, and
+with his pipe he'd blow rings for 'em.
+
+"And he sat there and kept advising me to marry and settle down.  I
+stood it for a while, and then I said: 'Dan, you remember that Fourth
+o' July you beat up the seven policemen in Saint Johns?'  I thought
+he'd shake his head off at me and go blind with winking and ducking his
+ear toward the kitchen window.  'And that night in Soorey?' I goes on,
+and he looked scared, and 'Sh-h!' he says, and I stopped.  But later,
+meaning only to make conversation, I says: 'Did ever you think o' going
+to sea again, Dan?'  And at that--I thought she was up-stairs with the
+children, but she wasn't--out she bounces with my hat--a spunky little
+woman, no higher than a buoy keg--and says: 'I don't want to hurry you,
+an old friend of my husband's as you are, but the last car for the city
+passes by the corner in five minutes.  If you hurry, you can get it.'
+And I took that car, only it didn't pass for thirty-five minutes, and
+it rained most of the time I was waiting, and I didn't have any coat."
+
+Jack stood up and set his coffee-mug back in the grub locker and made
+as if to climb the companionway; but before he could escape Professor
+pinned him with:
+
+"Do you or don't you approve of his marriage?"
+
+"Wow!  I set out to tell a story to please Tom here, and the first
+thing in telling a story is to tell it, not to stop to preach a sermon.
+And to finish the story, I tell you, boy"--Jack turned and fixed
+Fortune Bay with a solemn eye--"I tell you they'll get you--sure's wind
+follows an oily sea the women will get you on your weak side, if you
+don't watch out."
+
+"But you hear me, too, boy," put in Tom, "if it'd been Dan Magee with a
+few boxin' lessons out to Reno--Dan Magee afore he was married--you bet
+there'd been no fresh guys in Chinese trousers leanin' over the
+hurricane-deck of any forty-thousand-ton steamer an' yellin' JOHNSON!
+JOHNSON! JOHNSON! to no lone trawler on th' Grand Banks at four o'clock
+in the mornin'."
+
+"G-g-r-r--" growled Professor, and turned his face to the vessel's side.
+
+"Ay, boy.  Good night," said Tom cheerfully.
+
+
+
+
+Books by James B. Connolly
+
+PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+"_Few writers have the ability to picture sea life with the accuracy
+and feeling which Mr. Connolly has always shown."--Boston Herald._
+
+
+HEAD WINDS
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+This book is remarkable for the variety of stories it contains and
+their characters, which include Continental immigrants, Central
+American soldiery, Gloucester fishermen, Mississippi roustabouts and
+steamboat people, American bluejackets, and newspaper correspondents.
+These are among the best stories Mr. Connolly has ever written.
+
+
+SONNIE-BOY'S PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+"Mr. Connolly writes with a classic simplicity, an artistic directness,
+a seafaring virility such as may seldom be found in short stories of
+this day or any other."--_Los Angeles Times_.
+
+
+OPEN WATER
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+A collection of stories of the same type--breezy, fresh, vigorous--as
+those in his earlier books.
+
+Some are of Gloucester fishermen, some of the men of the navy, some of
+the smugglers--in all such is the smack of the salt-laden wind, the
+rattle and creak of ships' tackle, the dull boom of pounding surf or
+the hissing crash of the breakers.  But there are the other stories of
+sport and adventure ashore of which Mr. Connolly has shown his complete
+mastery.
+
+
+THE CRESTED SEAS
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+"Tales of daring and reckless deeds which make the blood run quicker
+and bring an admiration for the hardy Gloucester men who take their
+lives in their hands on nearly every trip they make.  There are Martin
+Carr and Wesley Marrs and Tommy Clancy and others of the brave crew
+that Connolly loves to write about."--_Chicago Post_.
+
+
+WIDE COURSES
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+"He holds our attention with these eight new stories of his, holds it
+in lighter mood as well as in the dramatic key which he touches
+oftenest, the key of man in his indomitable courage doing battle with
+storm and wave, with the hardships of life that have hardened him.
+These 'Wide Courses' are, indeed, interesting sailing with never a dull
+moment."--_New York Tribune_.
+
+
+OUT OF GLOUCESTER
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+"His book gives graphic descriptions of life on board of a fisherman
+and has the genuine salt-water flavor.  Mr. Connolly knows just what he
+is writing about, from actual experience, as his book very plainly
+indicates, and as such it is a valuable addition to sea
+literature."--_Gloucester Times_.
+
+
+THE DEEP SEA'S TOLL
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+"Sea stories of the land you can't help liking.  Stirring, heart-moving
+yarns of the Gloucester fishermen who brave death daily in pursuit of
+their calling."--_Chicago Record-Herald_.
+
+"No teller of sea tales can put the passion of the sea into his stories
+more forcibly than Mr. Connolly."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
+
+"The very breath of the ocean blows in these thrilling stories of
+deep-sea adventure."--_Albany Journal_.
+
+
+THE SEINERS
+
+With frontispiece by M. J. BURNS
+
+_12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+"It carries the sails easily.  In Tommy Clancy he has created a
+veritable Mulvaney of the sea."--_Collier's Weekly_.
+
+"Full of vigor and song and the breath of the sea."--_St. James
+Gazette_.
+
+"A real tale of the sea which makes one feel the whiff of the wind and
+taste the salt of the flying spray--such is Mr. J. B. Connolly's new
+book, 'The Seiners.' ... Certainly there is not a lover of the sea, man
+or woman, who will fail to be delighted with this breezy, stirring
+tale."--_London Daily Telegraph_.
+
+
+AN OLYMPIC VICTOR
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.35 net_
+
+"His story of the straining, gruelling struggle, the heart-breaking
+efforts of the runners over those twenty-four miles of country roads,
+is soul-stirring."--_Philadelphia Press_.
+
+
+THE TRAWLER
+
+12mo.  50 cents net
+
+WINNER OF THE COLLIER $2,500 STORY CONTEST
+
+"It is literature.  In thought, in sentiment, in rugged knowledge of
+rugged men, in strength and finish of writing, it is entitled to a
+place of permanence."--THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
+
+
+JEB HUTTON
+
+The Story of a Georgia Boy
+
+_Illustrated.  12mo.  $1.20 net_
+
+"A bright, dashing story, sure to charm boys who love the strenuous
+life."--_The Outlook_.
+
+"'Jeb Hutton' is a boy's story from beginning to end; clean, wholesome,
+spirited, and calculated to do good."--_Boston Journal_.
+
+
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+  PUBLISHERS . . . . . NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Running Free, by James B. Connolly
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57910 ***