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diff --git a/57910-0.txt b/57910-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2929806 --- /dev/null +++ b/57910-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6958 @@ +*** 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 *** |