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diff --git a/76815-0.txt b/76815-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d99e09 --- /dev/null +++ b/76815-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1718 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76815 *** + + + + + + LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. =906= + Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius + + + + + A Devil of a Fellow + and + The Yellow Cat + + + Wilbur Daniel Steele + + + + + HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS + GIRARD, KANSAS + + + + + Copyright, 1918, + By Harper and Brothers + + + Reprinted by Arrangement + + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + A DEVIL OF A FELLOW + AND + THE YELLOW CAT + + + + + A DEVIL OF A FELLOW + + +He had always been spoiled, by men, and especially by women. Even in +the name they called him in Portuguese Old Harbor, down cape, there was +a ring of irrepressible triumph--“Va Di! Va Di!”--as it were, “a devil +of a fellow,” or “a gay bird.” + +They had been dead for more than half a year, he and Stiff Peter--dead, +that is, in the knowledge of the home world. And as befitting one out +of the unknown, he returned more magnificent than ever, stepping down +the fruit steamer’s plank at the Boston dock dressed in a suit of +cream-colored flannels gotten in the tropics, between which and the +pale block of the Panama hat above, his face showed more than ever +swarthy, rich-toned, and clean-drawn, with its crisp black spurs of +mustache breaking the line of either cheek, like a brigand on a poster. +In his right hand he poised a slender cane, something he had learned +in Port au Prince. Stiff Peter came behind, carrying the new straw +suitcase, clothed himself in much the same sort of shoddy in which he +and his captain had been picked up from the fisherman’s wreckage, +seven months before, by a southward-going tramp. Stiff Peter was a +small fellow; he had to look up to Va Di; had he had to look down to Va +Di the world would have been quite inexplicable. + +The pair stood outside the dock gates, staring about them at the heavy +summer city, the venders of colored fruits, the hot blue Elevated +trains thundering overhead, the ice-carts sweating long, cold threads +across the cobbles. + +“Here’s the country fer you, eh, Peter?” + +Peter nodded, showing his bad teeth. “Betcha!” + +The master pointed the tips of his mustache and smiled easily at a +passing shop-girl. “Say, Peter, I a’most wisht now I didn’t send that +letter home. Be some sport, now, coming ashore into Old Harbor, like +a--miracle.” + +“Betcha!” The little fellow grinned, thinking that would have been +fine. “I wisht you didn’t, either,” he echoed. The fact that Peter +himself had sent the letter, Va Di never having learned to read or +write, did not obtrude itself upon either of them. Peter waited +patiently, eyes on the cobbles. + +“Well, Peter, we’ll see a night afore we go down home, anyhow. Wonder +who’ll be to Schlinsky’s? Them boys off the fleet’ll be tickled to see +me.” + +“Betcha!” + +Outside Schlinsky’s place they were confronted by a slovenly jointed +man whose little, red-rimmed eyes seemed to be looking at ghosts. + +“Thousand devils!” the fellow gasped in his long throat. + +Va Di straightened the left lapel of his coat and flicked a damp curl +from his forehead. No one enjoyed this sort of thing more than he. + +“Hello, Costa! How’s fishin’--good? Any the boys done good this year?” + +“But for Gawd’s s-a-k-e!” Costa stretched out an absurdly long finger +to touch the flannel stuff. “And is that Stiff Peter?” His eyes wabbled +about in a grotesque fashion. “Say, you fellahs is _drowned_!” + +He closed his eyes tight and mopped the sweat from his brow with the +back of a wrist. “I was onto the _Arbitrator_ myself las’ fall +when she picked up your wreckage. Me and Tony Silva catched a dory-load +o’ corpses ourselves. The hull o’ you’s got good granite stones up to +the graveyard. And here you come tackin’ up to me in broad daylight.” +He popped his eyes very suddenly at the conclusion, as if to give +nature a chance. + +“And you never _knowed_?” Va Di demanded, losing his dramatic +composure. + +“Knowed _what_?” + +“Knowed we was picked up, me and Peter, and took to Brazil.” + +Costa shook his head uneasily, still a little suspicious of them. + +“But looky here, didn’t--Who was it I sent that letter to, Peter? Mamie +Cabral? Say, man, didn’t Mamie get no letter offa me? Eh?” + +“N-n-naw.” Costa’s face changed abruptly from pale brown to brick color +and his unmanageable fingers fussed with his beard. “Mamie’s went--” + +“_Went?_ Went _where_?” + +“Nowheres. Only she went an’ got married.” + +“Got _married_?” + +“Got married.” + +“Onto _who_?” + +“Onto that old storekeep, Henny Lake--you know.” + +“Old Henny Lake with the crooked leg? Looky here, Costa--” + +Costa backed away a step, licked his lips, fumbled uneasily in and out +of his pockets, and after a moment spoke in a voice unnecessarily loud: + +“Come on up an’ have a drink, Va Di, old fellah.” He slapped the other +on the back crying: “There’s other fish into the water, man!” + +“You go straight to hell!” + +Va Di stood for a long time after Costa had retreated up the stairway, +scowling into the yellow sun of evening, his teeth playing with his +nether lips, his hands tormenting the frail Malacca. + +“They--they’s other fish into the water,” Peter stammered, desperate to +shift the great man’s humor. Va Di wheeled with out-flung hands. + +“Other fish! Well, I _guesso_. Mary Virgin! but I got a dozen +girls in town, right here, better ’n that run-around slut that jumps +after an old man’s money the minute I get out o’ sight. Fish? I +_guesso_! Come on up, Stiff Peter. I’ll show ’em.” + +He mounted the dusty stairs, with Peter sweating after him, and in the +wide, many-tabled hall of the Jew, heavy with the arid lushness of a +summer night in the city, he drank himself into a heroic insensibility, +so that he had to be carried away to dark T Wharf, in the willing +hands of the fish fleet, and dumped aboard a schooner bound down on the +morning tide for the end of the Cape. + +They opened the town around Long Point, a straggling arc of +infinitesimal houses and wharves and spires, all colored alike in the +sulphur fires of sunset, with here and there a gleam of clear flame +refracted from a windowpane, a whole broadside from the cold-storage in +the western sands. + +“Seven month,” Peter mused, an eye cornerwise on the silent man beside +him in the bows. “Seven month; and it’s like yiste’day--er mebby ten, +twenty year, lookin’ at it another way, eh, Cap’n?” + +“They’ll be took aback,” Va Di muttered, rousing himself from his sour +preoccupation. “I’m goin’ to see the Silvado girls tonight, Peter. You +watch their faces, now. Fish into the water--I guesso.” He fell into +another silence, broken only by the faint rustle of the cutwater and +the tiny crescendo of men’s voices as the bow gang straggled forward +to make the anchor ready. The fleet at mooring drifted nearer, spiring +purple on a mat of pellucid gold. + +“I see Maya’s shifted his offshore trap,” Peter struggled patiently. + +The tide was low when the dories came ashore, leaving a wide stretch +of flats, soggy, half-reflecting. Two of the crew, to tell of it +afterward, carried Va Di on their shoulders and saved his white shoes +from the wet, their own boots leaving tiny lakes behind, full of yellow +sky. A bare-legged girl with a clam-rake in her hand turned curiously +as she crossed in front of them, opened her eyes wider, ran away +blushing richly, the damp skirts flinging about her knees. + +Va Di called after her: “Ai there, you Angie! You watch out for me.” + +People began to come out on the stranded wharves; some padded across +the flats, hallooing to one another. At the “rising,” Va Di kicked to +be let down, and stood with the great hat held dramatically across +his breast, watching the townspeople converging upon him. A party of +summer visitors from the East End passed in a motor; one of them, a +handsome woman of forty or so, smiled amusedly at the figure, flushed +and tightened her lips as she found her smile returned with a shocking +candor, made to pluck her companion’s sleeve, thought better of it, +lowered her eyes to her lap, and so whirled on into nothingness. + +“Le’ me alone,” Va Di cried with a sudden ferocity. “Peter, gi’ me that +dress-suit case.” Grasping the shiny thing he wheeled and strode away +into the mouth of a lane, leaving lips and eyes wondering behind him. + +The day died very suddenly now. Passing beneath the willows that hung +out of Ma Deutra’s chicken-pen, it was almost night already, cool and +struck through with the acrid fetor of the roots; and when he came +out beyond, the world’s color had changed perceptibly, its passion +chilled by the faint white influence of the moon. Turning into the back +street, he paused before a small weathered building with “Henry Lake, +Merchandise & Provisions” lettered across the false front. + +“Shut up a’ready,” he mused, with a hard-won sneer. “Stays home of +evenin’s _now_--the old bastard. I’ll wring his dried-up neck--you +watch.” + +He moved on again, smoothing out his coat-folds and tipping the Panama +further back and to the side, for he had to pass the house now. The +perfectly inexplicable thing was that he should find himself so upset +over Mamie Cabral--_Mamie Cabral_--a good-enough girl, but.... +He walked along the white pickets of the fence, shoulders squared +back, heartrending chin thrust forward in a heroic preoccupation, eyes +fastened on the moon where Fergus’s willows chopped it into ragged +white fragments. But, somehow, he could not get past the gate; he +faltered there, set down the suitcase, and leaned his elbows on the +posts. + +Through all the years of his boyhood he had played around that house +of Lake’s; later he had stalked past it going to or from his various +vessels. And yet he could not have told any one definitely what it +looked like. He retained a dim impression of a grape-vine, that was +all. Now he looked at it for the first time with eyes of interest, +intense glowering interest. The vine, shooting thick and rough from the +ground near the front door and sprawling haphazard over the dimming +whiteness of the walls till it came to the semi-restraint of a pergola, +touched the man’s ponderous imagination and made him think of a snake, +or a kind of guardian dragon. + +“And them two are in there,” he mumbled to himself. “Into the dark.” +He leaned still more heavily on the gate-post, his garments melting +into the luminous streak of the fence, his dark, working face invisible +against a further hedge, only that monstrous exotic bloom of a hat +hanging in the dusk, air-sustained. + +“Tony! Oh--Oh, Tony Va Di!” + +The low cry came from the side of the house where a bay window +sheltered beneath the vine-strangled pergola. Va Di stood up rigid, +leaning slightly backward as if before a blow, his tongue running over +his lips. He muttered, “Name of God!” + +The cry repeated itself, half in appeal, half ecstatic. + +“Ton’! Ton’!” + +Opening the gate, careless now of who might see or hear him, he strode +along the nasturtium-bordered walk and stood beneath the pergola, +staring at the window slightly above the level of his head. + +She was kneeling inside, so that no more than her head was visible +against the interior darkness, and her forearms crossed on the sill, +bare and brown and sweetly modeled. The last dim effulgence of the +sunset warmed her right cheek, the other was chilled by the waxing +power of the moon--like the two phases of a man’s passion. Neither +seemed to have any words, save those scared, triumphant articulations +of their eyes. So they gazed at each other for a long time, while the +knotted shadows of the vine established themselves upon the ground and +the house-side, austere and grotesque. + +A slow bewilderment took hold of Va Di; something began to flutter in +the back of his brain, an intolerable, weightless thudding, and the +pupils of his eyes dilated curiously. He could not understand. He had +an instinctive desire to huddle down or to turn and run away, as a +coral-islander might feel, put down miraculously in the midst of the +Himalayas. + +“Where--where is he?” he whispered, by and by. + +“He’s dead, Tony.” + +“Dead!” + +“Three days, Ton’.” + +The man took off his hat and stared into it; vaguely astonished at a +jewel shining on the brim, he raised his hand to find tears rolling out +of his eyes. He had an almost uncontrollable impulse to pray. + +“Old Lake’s dead,” he echoed in a shallow, vacant voice. Sluggish +visions tumbled through his mind as he stared at Mamie’s dark, unmoving +eyes. + +“Wha’--what was ailin’ of him?” + +“I killed him.” + +The air about the open window grew dank and old, shot with a faint reek +of never-opened rooms, unaired wall-paper, crumbs of funeral cakes and +spilled wine, and a memory hanging about it of withered old dead limbs. +Va Di shrank back till his shoulders touched an upright of the pergola. +His face was yellow in the half-light and one yellow finger scratched +a cross on his breast. + +“You--y-y-you--” + +“I killed him, Ton’--after I got your letter.” + +If she would take her eyes away for an instant, then he could run. + +“You--got it--then?” + +She nodded slowly. + +“I didn’t tell nobody. Why? I don’t know, Ton’. But then I prayed to +all the saints that he would die, and to the Blessed Virgin, and even +to Christ Hisself--and three days ago he fell off Maya’s wharf and +drowned.” + +“O-o-oh!” It was not tears now that wet his cheeks, but sweat, released +suddenly from its pores. “They can’t git--you--for--_that_.” + +“They can’t. _They_ can’t. No. But--” + +For all the frightful, occult implication of her words, her eyes were +still level and unfrightened, full of a deep, transfigured calm. Va +Di could not live up to that; without ceasing he crossed himself and +looked out of the corners of his eyes, as though fearful of beholding +in that moon-checkered nook the form of a black, relentless priest. + +“Oh, Ton’!” she called, softly. He had to look at her, and even the +cold exhalations of the night light could not kill the color sweeping +her cheeks. He became aware of her hand reaching out to him, wavering +close before him; heedless of all things else, earthly and unearthly, +he took it in his own and turned it over and kissed the palm--kissed it +over and over again till it smothered him. + +“Mamie!” he cried, searching her face with his reckless eyes. “You’re +mine, ain’t you, Mame? Ain’t you?” He came nearer and stood on tiptoe +to draw down her lips, but she went white at that and pulled back, +fluttering her free hand over her bosom. + +“Ton’--Ton’! Don’t! I--I ain’t--smart--Tony.” + +He stood perfectly quiet for a moment, as it stuck there in stone by a +flash of some Medusa-head. After a time, becoming aware that he still +held the girl’s hand in his, he let it drop abruptly. He began working +his lips, as if they were stiff from long disuse. His face was yellow +and hard. + +“The hell you say!” + +Turning away, he walked around the corner of the house, a singular +woodenness in his knees. But he returned immediately to lean against +the upright and confront her with his blighted rancor. + +“You didn’t waste no time, did you?” + +She did not appear to have grasped it yet. Once again he flung off +around the corner, and this time he did not return. + +When he came into his own lane, gated with clumpy willows and at the +further end fading out into the blue-white slope of a dune dotted +with rubbish, he saw that the news had run ahead of him and all the +neighborhood was out of doors in the dusty thoroughfare, shouting, +sobbing, squealing. His mother lunged forward at sight of him, an old, +ragged-haired woman, full of fecund years, tripping over the torn hem +of her skirt. + +Va Di glowered at her, holding her off with his strong hands. She had +been handsome once too; even now there were fine foundation-lines which +the folds of her cheeks, red and rutted like a rooster’s wattles, could +not altogether hide. + +“Ma!” he cried, of a sudden. “Ma, I’m back.” Folding her in his arms, +he patted her back with a rough tenderness, and wept. Then all the +others, who had come pattering, fell to weeping and screeching and +pounding _him_ on the back. They got, finally, into the house, +a bleak, tall, narrow structure with peeling clapboards without and +a pervasion of linoleum within; into the kitchen, full of all the +essentials of life, a stove, a pump, a lithograph of the Virgin, a +mahogany wardrobe leaking cornmeal and onions, a phonograph, cot-bed, +chairs, and a table. + +Eight brothers and sisters had to be heard; a ninth came running from +her husband’s house up-street, her stolid velocity not in the least +hampered by the protuberance under her shawl, understood to be a +nursing infant, miraculously adhesive. + +“You’ll git the house painted,” she murmured, with a hint of severity, +to Angelina, seventeen, and in high school. + +“Yeh.” Angelina had thought of that herself, having callers. + +His mother busied herself in an oily nimbus above the stove, frying a +_linguisa_ and other things, watching her first-born all the while +with convulsive tremors about her mouth which made her appear to grin, +at intervals, idiotically. Va Di pounded the red table-cloth with the +butt of his knife. + +“Ma, git a move onto that. Ain’t I told you I’m hungry?” + +“Well, ain’t I hurryin’?” The old woman made the _linguisa_ +crackle by poking it with a knife. + +Va Di rubbed the back of his hand across his lips and justified +himself. “Well, I’m hungry.” + +He ate in silence, only once raising his voice, and his hands, to +bid the company be quiet. “You make me nervous,” he cried. After he +had finished he got up and dusted the crumbs off his fine clothes, +scratching an old spot with a thumbnail and rubbing it with his +coat-cuff, ran a hand through his straight, black hair, and lounged to +the front door. His mother called after him, with a curious cluck in +her voice. + +“Where you goin’, son?” + +“Aw, see the town.” + +But he got no farther than the step to the gate, where he leaned on his +elbows and gloomed at the roofs across the lane. Curious ones passed, +turned back, cleared their throats, and, seeing his face, did not speak. + +“A kid,” he mumbled in his throat. “A kid off o’ that crooked-legged +old sow.” And after another sour silence: “I never remembered what a +good-looker she was. Say! And crazy about me. But.... Hell!” + +The moon swam high over the end of the lane, filling the dusty passage +with its effulgent silver. The clear notes of town hall telling eleven +floated across the huddled dwellings, and Va Di, wondering at the +hour, looked about to find all the windows dark in the lane, save one +toward the street end where a mandolin twinkled an Island melody. A +solitary figure moved in the vista, coming nearer, a girl, dark-faced +and with her dark hair piled on either side of her ears, wearing a +white linen skirt and a crimson sweater. Opposite Va Di’s gate she +paused to kick a twig lying in the dust and discovered the man with a +slight start. + +“I heard you’re back,” she said, drifting easily nearer. “Glad t’ see +you.” + +The man smoothed his mustache. “Hullo, Mary! Didn’t ’spect to see me +again, eh, girlie? How’s things?” + +“Lookin’ up, _now_.” She leaned against the other side of the +fence, smiling and fussing idly with her hair, her eyes lowered +demurely. By and by she raised them, nonplussed by his failure to go +on, and found him staring at the sky as if he had forgotten she was +there. She drifted away, after a time, flinging her shoulders a little, +and once looking back with a wounded, malignant expression. + +Va Di shook himself and stared after her, moved by a faint sensation of +regret. “I must be turnin’ foolish,” he muttered to himself. + +For a moment he thought she was coming back, and straightened up with +a not unaccountable thrill. But then he sank down again, recognizing +old Baldy Minn by a faint flapping of soles, many sizes too large for +her, on the dust. Baldy Minn had a wide, gelatinous person, forever +billowing and breaking against the precarious dams of her clothing when +she moved about; a silky gray beard blurred the contour of her chin; +her small eyes floated in a brownish liquor, prying, inquisitorial, +continually suspicious of women’s figures, seeming to say: “Mmmm--so +you’re at it again. Don’t lie about it, because you can’t fool +_me_.” A most horrible old woman. She came flapping through the +moonlight and stopped in front of the gate. + +“Ai, ai!” she greeted, in a strong, bubbly voice. “They telled me +you’re back, Va Di. Too much f’ the devil, was y’u? Well, blessed +saints take pity onto the maids, if they’s any lef’.... Is y’r ma up?” + +“I dunno.” Va Di was a little afraid of this woman, and disliked +her accordingly. “I’ll take a look,” he mumbled, after enduring her +eyes for a moment. He turned to the door and called: “Ma! Hey there, +_ma_!” + +A sudden faint crash sounded from the other end of the house, as if +some one had started out of a doze and knocked something over. + +“Huh, Tony! That you, Tony?” + +“A’right,” Va Di grumbled. “You c’n go in, Baldy Minn.... Say--” He +peered at the bundle swinging in her hand, an old shawl full and +exuding ragged ends of things. “Say, what you want, this time o’ night?” + +The old crone turned within the entry and winked a leering eye. “That +big kittle o’ y’r ma’s,” she bubbled. + +“Oh! O-o-oh, I git y’u! Who is it this time, Baldy Minn?” + +The woman grinned and flapped a hand at him with a horrible coyness. + +“None o’ your beezness, _any_how.” + +After a time, driven by an unaccountable restlessness, he moved into +the house, felt his way softly along a wall, and stood in what had +been meant for the dining-room. The air was heavy and sour with the +sleeping of the three younger boys, but the door was open a crack into +the kitchen, and in the lean, bright aperture he could see Baldy Minn’s +face with all its dewlaps shivering. + +“I knowed it all along,” she was saying. “I knowed she’d never carry +it--ugh-ugh--not outa that old crook-leg.” + +The boards groaned ever so slightly beneath Va Di’s heels. + +His mother’s voice came through the crack, heavy with the burden of +ages. + +“I’ve hear of seven-monthers livin’.” + +“I kep’ one myself.” The midwife’s lips sucked in and exploded with +a suggestion of defiance. “Mis’ Deutra claims she kep’ one oncet, +but she never. Sam Raphael’s boy’s a seven-monther an’ _I_ kep’ +_him_, an’ don’ you let nobody tell y’u diff’nt, Annie.... But a +six-monther--ugh-ugh. No.” + +Va Di’s mother had borne sixteen and brought up ten. He heard her now, +moaning gently through her apron: “Well, well, I don’t know--I don’t +know.... I go ’long with you, Baldy Minn. Poor thing! Poor thing! I put +my shawl, go ’long with you, Baldy Minn.” + +“Naw; ain’t no need, Annie. I got Angie Bragg up there now, an’ Rosie +Courier’s there, anyhow. Gimme the kittle. She ought to be comin’ ’long +now. Rosie come down two hour ago.” She stood for a moment ringing the +huge kettle with a thumb-nail. “Won’er what started her up. She ain’t +fell or nothin’ I hear of. Well....” + +She flapped away along the dark hall, not a yard from the silent man, +humming and bubbling between her gums. There was a long hush, broken +only by the snores of the sleepers and the continuous, subdued moaning +from the kitchen, like the chant of a vigil. Va Di went out as softly +as he had come in, and stood by the gate, fanning his face with the big +hat. + +“Damn!” he mumbled. And after a moment, “’Tain’t none o’ _my_ +fun’ral, though.” + +Putting the hat on his head, he opened the gate, turned aimlessly +toward the back country, and mounted the clear, blue slope of the +dune, picking his way mechanically among the scattered tomato-cans and +disemboweled bedticks and skeletons of barrels. Sitting down on the +crest, he became part of it, moon-colored and still. The night was so +intolerably quiet that the ground-swell eating the beaches far off on +the outside crept in to him, and he ruffled the sand with his feet +because it made him think of his mother’s moaning and her words: “Poor +thing! Poor thing!” + +“God! how that girl looked at me!” he remembered out loud. “She l-l--” + +He jumped up and shuffled around; rolled a cigarette, wetting it +too much with his tongue so that it fell apart; threw it away. “She +_l-l-loves_ me,” he came out, more racked by the word than ever a +child by his virgin oath. + +He found himself at the foot of the dune on the other side, his canvas +shoes sucking up moisture from a bog. He climbed another hill, drawn +back toward the town, and waded across it knee-deep in scrub and wild +roses that tore triangular rents in his flannel trousers. Descending +into the shadow of familiar trees, he hunched himself up to sit on the +shingles of a pigsty, and heard the sluggish animals, whose distant +forebears he had beaten with furtive barrel-staves, grunt and roll over +in the interior muck. + +He took out his knife and whittled the shingles, trying not to look +at the house. There was something incredibly fearful about its being +awake in the midst of all the sleepers, staring him down with its +lighted windows, profligate of kerosene and tallow. The kitchen door +was open; by and by a woman came and leaned in the bright rectangle, +a silhouette of fatigue. This was Rosie Courier. She had been old +Henny Lake’s housekeeper as long as Va Di could remember. Sometimes +she had served in the store. Va Di could think of her, immensely tall +and tight-garmented, behind the counter, her lean, brown face with +its cheek-cords pressing in the corners of her mouth, hovering over +his head, righteous and suspicious. Quite invisible as he was in the +shadow, he could not keep from cringing a little against the roof as +she stood there in the doorway, breathing and resting. + +Town hall clanged a single note, full and round, and as if in answer +another note came and hung among the leaves, a high, unmodulated +animal-cry, torn carelessly from the tissues of a throat. The austere +silhouette in the doorway straightened and disappeared. + +“O, my God!” Va Di breathed. As a boy he had always been sent to play +with neighbor children on those days when brothers or sisters accrued +to his family, and so he did not know. He had supposed he knew; he +had had a leg broken once by a jibing boom, and he had seen plenty of +men crushed or torn in the bad seconds of ocean fishing. But they had +always screamed like human beings. + +The distracted ululation was in the trees again. + +“Don’t,” the man whispered. “For Christ’s sake, M-a-m-i-e--don’t!” + +He got down and tried to walk away, but found himself back again, +leaning his crossed arms on the sty roof. He had to be doing something, +to dull the blade of that outcry, and so he made up an unearthly anger +at those shadows moving against the window-squares. + +“Damn you to hell!” he mumbled, shaking his white fist. “Why don’t y’u +_do_ somethin’? Why don’t y’u _do_ somethin’?” + +He was aware of Baldy Minn’s figure flapping out of the door, a yawling +cat held at arm’s length. He watched her slay the little beast, make +some horrible business with a kitchen knife, and flap into the house +again with the warm liver. He knew well enough that this would soothe +the sufferer a little, tied with a cord around her neck, but he became +more than ever furious at the shadowy transaction. He did not want +Mamie’s agony allayed a little; he wanted it stopped, definitely and +forever. He stood up and bawled after the retreating midwife: “Ow! Ow! +Ow!” Baldy Minn turned and peered into the night, wondering, shook the +fleshy pendants of her head, crossed her billowy bosom with the hand +that contained the liver, and slammed the door shut. + +Without any clear transition, his hate shifted from “them” to “it.” It +was “it” that was tearing and killing Mamie. + +“Damn it--I’d like to--” The finger-nails ate into his palms. He hoped +that “it” would die--that “it” would be a “six-monther,” so there could +be no possibility of its not dying. “Her and I would be--” His ravening +speculations tumbled on into giddy chaos. + +The night was laced with threads of agony, exquisite, racking, +prolonged, still prolonged. Va Di reached out and gripped either edge +of the roof, as if to keep himself from sliding. He pleaded with it +to stop. The interstices among the leaves of the overhanging willows +were filled with the gore of imminent day; Ma Deutra’s rooster crowed +in his hollow house away down a flushing lane. But still that haggard +utterance hung over the world. + +It ceased. A faint breeze came to life and wandered across the back +yards, tumbling papers; a lark, as though bribed and timed, mounted +into the sky and whistled his morning triumph; Va Di’s head sank down +on his arms, his knees caved in to rest against the side of the sty, +and his fingers fell out flat on the shingles. + +He opened his eyes by and by to find Rosie Courier standing in the +horizontal radiance of the sun, regarding him from the other side of +the pen. Her face was the color of a dusty boot, lifeless and flabby. + +“She wants to see you,” she said. + +“Who? _Her?_” + +She nodded stiffly, allowed the thick, mottled lids to droop over her +eyes, and turned back toward the kitchen door. Va Di followed. In the +kitchen Baldy Minn sat beside the sink, her hands working in a huge +blossom of suds. The tight little nubbin of hair had shaken down off +the bald spot, lending her a curious expression of wildness. + +“Was it--did--” Va Di groped for words. “Did it live, Baldy Minn?” + +“Did it _live_?” Her eyes rolled in their liquor, her whole +person quivered and dashed against its margins, and she grinned at +him, closing the rent in her teeth with a meaning tongue-tip “Did it +_live_? Ho-ho-ho!” + +He turned away and followed Rosie Courier through a dark passage, +smelling of life and death, and entered a room full of sunshine. Within +the door a profound embarrassment laid hold of him; he shifted from +foot to foot and looked down at the great hat revolving in his hands. +Mamie was so white and still and all eyes, and the eyes dwelt upon him +with such a spent and inscrutable adoration. He was afraid to look +at her; he felt curiously like a figure done in clay, destructible +and worthless. Her hand, all the opacity burned out of it, lay on the +flowered “comfortable,” and remembering suddenly how it came out to him +from last night’s window, he fell down on his knees and laid his cheek +against it and wept the tears of weakness. + +“Mamie,” he sobbed in the wadding. “You’re a good girl, M-m-mamie.” + +After a little a sound of snickering behind him brought him to his +feet, his face flaming. It was Baldy Minn, almost filling the doorway +with her oceanic being, against which the bundle in her arms seemed +incredibly tiny and helpless. She advanced, undulating and bubbling, to +lay it across Va Di’s hastily crooked arms, laughing at his panic. + +He held his chin stiff and his eyes desperately horizontal. “Naw, naw!” +he mumbled. “Somebody come.” He turned to Mamie, appealing, and Mamie, +moved by that irresponsible humor which is deeper than solemnity, +smiled. + +“Ton’,” she whispered, unsteadily. “It’s killin’, Ton’--how he favors +you. It makes me laugh, Ton’--you without the mustache, _exactly_. +I wish’d you’d look, Ton’.” + +His knees were no good; he sat down in a rocker and looked around the +room for mental help. Rosie Courier, standing, a black, unimpeachable +spire, beside the bureau, gave him none. Her lids were lowered and her +thoughts had turned inward for refuge. By an irony, he had to come to +Baldy Minn. Dirty, evil-fleshed, full of matter prurient, there still +endured in her a flicker of that essential fire that lives, somehow, +through all the changing winds of orthodoxies. She had to express it, +of course, in her own way. + +“You old devil!” she bubbled, benevolently. “I might o’ knowed....” + +The bundle in Va Di’s arms became articulate, demanding its primal +planetary food. The man’s muscles suffered a poignant sensation +of combat, a gentle struggle with an infinitesimal kicking. His +face became pink; his mouth muscles contracted in that species of +self-conscious smirk so hard for others to bear; he opened and closed +his lips tentatively, as though they were quite new and uncertain of +their powers. + +“He’s--he’s--he’s a _s-s-stout_ little bastard,” he stammered, in +all innocence. + + + + + THE YELLOW CAT + + +At least once in my life I have had the good fortune to board a +deserted vessel at sea. I say “good fortune” because it has left me the +memory of a singular impression. I have felt a ghost of the same thing +two or three times since then, when peeping through the doorway of an +abandoned house. + +Now that vessel was not dead. She was a good vessel, a sound vessel, +even a handsome vessel, in her blunt-bowed, coastwise way. She sailed +under four lowers across as blue and glittering a sea as I have ever +known, and there was not a point in her sailing that one could lay a +finger upon as wrong. And yet, passing that schooner at two miles, one +knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine +a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, +carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion +of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no +landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their +foreheads with just the shadow of a smile. + +I wonder if they all scream--these ships that have lost their +souls? Mine screamed. We heard her voice, like nothing I have ever +heard before, when we rowed under her counter to read her name--the +_Marionnette_ it was, of Halifax. I remember how it made me +shiver, there in the full blaze of the sun, to her going on so, +railing and screaming in that stark fashion. And I remember, too, how +our footsteps, pattering through the vacant internals in search of that +haggard utterance, made me think of the footsteps of hurrying warders +roused in the night. + +And we found a parrot in a cage; that was all. It wanted water. We +gave it water and went away to look things over, keeping pretty close +together, all of us. In the quarters the table was set for four. Two +men had begun to eat, by the evidences of the plates. Nowhere in the +vessel was there any sign of disorder, except one sea chest broken out, +evidently in haste. Her papers were gone and the stern davits were +empty. That is how the case stood that day, and that is how it has +stood to this. I saw this same _Marionnette_ a week later, tied +up to a Hoboken dock, where she awaited news from her owners; but even +there, in the midst of all the water-front bustle, I could not get rid +of the feeling that she was still very far away--in a sort of shippish +other-world. + +The thing happens now and then. Sometimes half a dozen years will go by +without a solitary wanderer of this sort crossing the ocean paths, and +then in a single season perhaps several of them will turn up: vacant +waifs, impassive and mysterious--a quarter-column of tidings tucked +away on the second page of the evening paper. + +That is where I read the story about the _Abbie Rose_. I recollect +how painfully awkward and out-of-place it looked there, cramped +between ruled black edges and smelling of landsman’s ink--this thing +that had to do essentially with air and vast colored spaces. I forget +the exact words of the heading--something like “Abandoned Craft Picked +Up at Sea”--but I still have the clipping itself, couched in the formal +patter of the marine-news writer: + + The first hint of another mystery of the sea came in today when + the schooner _Abbie Rose_ dropped anchor in the upper river, + manned only by a crew of one. It appears that the out-bound freighter + _Mercury_ sighted the _Abbie Rose_ off Rock Island on + Thursday last, acting in a suspicious manner. A boat-party sent aboard + found the schooner in perfect order and condition, sailing under four + lower sails, the topsails being pursed up to the mastheads but not + stowed. With the exception of a yellow cat, the vessel was found to + be utterly deserted, though her small boat still hung in the davits. + No evidences of disorder were visible in any part of the craft. The + dishes were washed up, the stove in the galley was still slightly warm + to the touch, everything in its proper place with the exception of the + vessel’s papers, which were not to be found. + + All indications being for fair weather, Captain Rohmer of the + _Mercury_ detailed two of his company to bring the find back to + this port, a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles. The only man + available with a knowledge of the fore-and-aft rig was Stewart McCord, + the second engineer. A seaman by the name of Björnsen was sent with + him. McCord arrived this noon, after a very heavy voyage five days, + reporting that Björnsen had fallen overboard while shaking out the + foretopsail. McCord himself showed evidences of the hardships he has + passed through, being almost a nervous wreck. + +Stewart McCord! Yes, Stewart McCord would have a knowledge of the +fore-and-aft rig, or of almost anything else connected with the +affairs of the sea. It happened that I used to know this fellow. I had +even been quite chummy with him in the old days--that is, to the extent +of drinking too many beers with him in certain hot-country ports. I +remembered him as a stolid and deliberate sort of a person, with an +amazing hodgepodge of learning, a stamp collection, and a theory about +the effects of tropical sunshine on the Caucasian race, to which I +have listened half of more than one night, stretched out naked on a +freighter’s deck. He had not impressed me as a fellow who would be +bothered by his nerves. + +And there was another thing about the story which struck me as rather +queer. Perhaps it is a relic of my seafaring days, but I have always +been a conscientious reader of the weather reports; and I could +remember no weather in the past week sufficient to shake a man out +of a top, especially a man by the name of Björnsen--a thoroughgoing +seafaring name. + +I was destined to hear more of this in the evening, from the ancient +boatman who rowed me out on the upper river. He had been to sea in his +day. He knew enough to wonder about this thing, even to indulge in a +little superstitious awe about it. + +“No sir-ee. Something _happened_ to them four chaps. And another +thing--” + +I fancied I heard a sea-bird whining in the darkness overhead. A shape +moved out of the gloom ahead, passed to the left, lofty and silent, and +merged once more with the gloom behind--a barge at anchor, with the +sea-grass clinging around her water-line. + +“Funny about that other chap,” the old fellow speculated. “Björnsen--I +b’lieve he called ’im. Now that story sounds to me kind of--” He +feathered his oars with a suspicious jerk and peered at me. “This +McCord a friend of yourn?” he inquired. + +“In a way,” I said. + +“Hm-m--well--” He turned on his thwart to squint ahead. “There she is,” +he announced, with something of relief, I thought. + +It was hard at that time of night to make anything but a black +blotch out of the _Abbie Rose_. Of course I could see that she +was potbellied, like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that +McCord had not stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at +the mastheads and hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, +over-ripe pears. Then I recollected that he had found them so--probably +had not touched them since; a queer way to leave tops, it seemed to me. +I could see also the glowing tip of a cigar floating restlessly along +the farther rail. I called: “McCord! Oh, McCord!” + +The spark came swimming across the deck. “Hello! Hello, there--ah--” +There was a note of querulous uneasiness there that somehow jarred with +my remembrance of this man. + +“Ridgeway,” I explained. + +He echoed the name uncertainly, still with that suggestion of +peevishness, hanging over the rail and peering down at us. “Oh! By +gracious!” he exclaimed, abruptly. “I’m glad to see you, Ridgeway. I +had a boatman coming out before this, but I guess--well, I guess he’ll +be along. By gracious! I’m glad--” + +“I’ll not keep you,” I told the gnome, putting the money in his palm +and reaching for the rail. McCord lent me a hand on my wrist. Then +when I stood squarely on the deck beside him he appeared to forget my +presence, leaned forward heavily on the rail, and squinted after my +waning boatman. + +“Ahoy--boat!” he called out, sharply, shielding his lips with his +hands. His violence seemed to bring him out of the blank, for he fell +immediately to puffing strongly at his cigar and explaining in rather +a shame-voiced way that he was beginning to think his own boatman had +“passed him up.” + +“Come in and have a nip,” he urged with an abrupt heartiness, clapping +me on the shoulder. + +“So you’ve--” I did not say what I had intended. I was thinking that +in the old days McCord had made rather a fetish of touching nothing +stronger than beer. Neither had he been of the shoulder-clapping sort. +“So you’ve got something aboard?” I shifted. + +“Dead men’s liquor,” he chuckled. It gave me a queer feeling in the +pit of my stomach to hear him. I began to wish I had not come, but +there was nothing for it now but to follow him into the after-house. +The cabin itself might have been nine feet square, with three bunks +occupying the port side. To the right opened the master’s state-room, +and a door in the forward bulkhead led to the galley. + +I took in these features at a casual glance. Then, hardly knowing why I +did it, I began to examine them with greater care. + +“Have you a match?” I asked. My voice sounded very small, as though +something unheard of had happened to all the air. + +“Smoke?” he asked. “I’ll get you a cigar.” + +“No.” I took the proffered match, scratched it on the side of the +galley door, and passed out. There seemed to be a thousand pans +there, throwing my match back at me from every wall of the box-like +compartment. Even McCord’s eyes, in the doorway, were large and round +and shining. He probably thought me crazy. Perhaps I was, a little. I +ran the match along close to the ceiling and came upon a rusty hook a +little aport of the center. + +“There,” I said. “Was there anything hanging from this--er--say a +parrot--or something, McCord?” The match burned my fingers and went out. + +“What do you mean?” McCord demanded from the doorway. I got myself back +into the comfortable yellow glow of the cabin before I answered, and +then it was a question. + +“Do you happen to know anything about this craft’s personal history?” + +“No. What are you talking about! Why?” + +“Well, I do,” I offered. “For one thing, she’s changed her name. And it +happens this isn’t the first time she’s--Well, damn it all, fourteen +years ago I helped pick up this whatever-she-is off the Virginia +Capes--in the same sort of condition. There you are!” I was yapping +like a nerve-strung puppy. + +McCord leaned forward with his hands on the table, bringing his face +beneath the fan of the hanging-lamp. For the first time I could mark +how shockingly it had changed. It was almost colorless. The jaw had +somehow lost its old-time security and the eyes seemed to be loose in +their sockets. I had expected him to start at my announcement; he only +blinked at the light. + +“I am not surprised,” he remarked at length. “After what I’ve seen and +heard--” He lifted his fist and brought it down with a sudden crash on +the table. “Man--let’s have a nip!” + +He was off before I could say a word, fumbling out of sight in the +narrow state-room. Presently he reappeared, holding a glass in either +hand and a dark bottle hugged between his elbows. Putting the glasses +down, he held up the bottle between his eyes and the lamp, and its +shadow, falling across his face, green and luminous at the core, gave +him a ghastly look--like a mutilation or an unspeakable birth-mark. He +shook the bottle gently and chuckled his “Dead men’s liquor” again. +Then he poured two half-glasses of the clear gin, swallowed his +portion, and sat down. + +“A parrot,” he mused, a little of the liquor’s color creeping into his +cheeks. “No, this time it was a cat, Ridgeway. A yellow cat. She was--” + +“_Was?_” I caught him up. “What’s happened--what’s become of her?” + +“Vanished. Evaporated. I haven’t seen her since night before last, when +I caught her trying to lower the boat--” + +“_Stop it!_” It was I who banged the table now, without any of the +reserve of decency. “McCord, you’re drunk--_drunk_, I tell you. A +_cat_! Let a _cat_ throw you off your head like this! She’s +probably hiding out below this minute, on affairs of her own.” + +“Hiding?” He regarded me for a moment with the queer superiority of the +damned. “I guess you don’t realize how many times I’ve been over this +hulk, from decks to keelson, with a mallet and a foot-rule.” + +“Or fallen overboard,” I shifted, with less assurance. “Like this +fellow Björnsen. By the way, McCord--” I stopped there on account of +the look in his eyes. + +He reached out, poured himself a shot, swallowed it, and got up +to shuffle about the confined quarters. I watched their restless +circuit--my friend and his jumping shadow. He stopped and bent forward +to examine a Sunday-supplement chromo tacked on the wall, and the two +heads drew together, as though there were something to whisper. Of a +sudden I seemed to hear the old gnome croaking. “Now that story sounds +to me kind of--” + +McCord straightened up and turned to face me. + +“What do you know about Björnsen?” he demanded. + +“Well--only what they had you saying in the papers.” I told him. + +“Pshaw!” He snapped his fingers, tossing the affair aside. “I found her +log,” he announced in quite another voice. + +“You did, eh? I judged, from what I read in the paper, that there +wasn’t a sign.” + +“No, no; I happened on this the other night, under the mattress in +there.” He jerked his head toward the state-room. “Wait!” I heard him +knocking things over in the dark and mumbling at them. After a moment +he came out and threw on the table a long, cloth-covered ledger, of the +common commercial sort. It lay open at about the middle, showing close +script running indiscriminately across the column ruling. + +“When I said ‘log,’” he went on, “I guess I was going it a little +strong. At least, I wouldn’t want that sort of log found around +_my_ vessel. Let’s call it a personal record. Here’s his picture, +somewhere--” He shook the book by its back and a common kodak +blue-print fluttered to the table. It was the likeness of a solid man +with a paunch, a huge square beard, small squinting eyes, and a bald +head. “What do you make of him--a writing chap?” + +“From the nose down, yes,” I estimated. “From the nose up, he will +’tend to his own business if you will ’tend to yours, strictly.” + +McCord slapped his thigh. “By gracious! that’s the fellow! He hates +the Chinaman. He knows as well as anything he ought not to put down +in black and white how intolerably he hates the Chinaman, and yet he +must sneak off to his cubby-hole and suck his pencil, and--how is it +Stevenson has it?--the ‘agony of composition,’ you remember. Can you +imagine the fellow, Ridgeway, bundling down here with the fever on +him--” + +“About the Chinaman,” I broke in. “I think you said something about a +Chinaman?” + +“Yes. The cook, he must have been. I gather he wasn’t the master’s +pick, by the reading-matter here. Probably clapped on to him by the +owners--shifted from one of their others at the last moment; a queer +trick. Listen.” He picked up the book and, running over the pages with +a selective thumb, read: + + _August second._--First part, moderate southwesterly breeze-- + +and so forth--er--but here he comes to it: + + Anything can happen to a man at sea, even a funeral. In special to a + Chinyman, who is of no account to social welfare, being a barbarian as + I look at it. + +“Something of a philosopher, you see. And did you get the reserve in +that ‘even a funeral’? An artist, I tell you. But wait: let me catch +him a bit wilder. Here: + + I’ll get that mustard-colered ---- [This is back a couple of days.] + Never can hear the ---- coming, in them carpet slippers. Turned round + and found him standing right to my back this morning. Could have stuck + a knife into me easy. “Look here!” says I, and fetched him a tap on + the ear that will make him walk louder next time, I warrant. He could + have stuck a knife into me easy. + +“A clear case of moral funk, I should say. Can you imagine the fellow, +Ridgeway--” + +“Yes; oh, yes.” I was ready with a phrase of my own. “A man +handicapped with an imagination. You see he can’t quite understand +this ‘barbarian,’ who has him beaten by about thirty centuries of +civilization--and his imagination has to have something to chew on, +something to hit--a ‘tap on the ear,’ you know.” + +“By gracious! that’s the ticket!” McCord pounded his knee. “And now +we’ve got another chap going to pieces--Peters, he calls him. Refuses +to eat dinner on August the third, claiming he caught the Chink making +passes over the chowder-pot with his thumb. Can you believe it, +Ridgeway--in this very cabin here?” Then he went on with a suggestion +of haste, as though he had somehow made a slip. “Well, at any rate, the +disease seems to be catching. Next day it’s Bach, the second seaman, +who begins to feel the gaff. Listen: + + Bach he comes to me tonight, complaining he’s being watched. He claims + the ---- has got the evil eye. Says he can see you through a two-inch + bulkhead, and the like. The Chink’s laying in his bunk, turned the + other way. Why don’t you go aboard of him? says I. The Dutcher says + nothing, but goes over to his own bunk and feels under the straw. + When he comes back he’s looking queer. “By God!” says he, “the devil + has swiped my gun!”... Now if that’s true there is going to be hell + to pay in this vessel very quick. I figure I’m still master of this + vessel. + +“The evil eye,” I grunted. “Consciences gone wrong there somewhere.” + +“Not altogether, Ridgeway. I can see that yellow man peeking. Now just +figure yourself, say, eight thousand miles from home, out on the water +alone with a crowd of heathen fanatics crazy from fright, looking +around for guns and so on. Don’t you believe you’d keep an eye around +the corners, kind of--eh? I’ll bet a hat he was taking it all in, +lying there in his bunk, ‘turned the other way.’ Eh? I pity the poor +cuss--Well, there’s only one more entry after that. He’s good and mad. +Here: + + Now, by God! this is the end. My gun’s gone, too; right out from under + lock and key, by God! I been talking with Bach this morning. Not to + let on, I had him into clean my lamp. There’s more ways than one, he + says, and so do I. + +McCord closed the book and dropped it on the table. “Finis,” he said. +“The rest is blank paper.” + +“Well!” I will confess I felt much better than I had for some time +past. “There’s _one_ ‘mystery of the sea’ gone to pot, at any +rate. And now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll have another of your +nips, McCord.” + +He pushed my glass across the table and got up, and behind his back his +shadow rose to scour the corners of the room, like an incorruptible +sentinel. I forgot to take up my gin, watching him. After an uneasy +minute or so he came back to the table and pressed the tip of a +forefinger on the book. + +“Ridgeway,” he said, “you don’t seem to understand. This particular +‘mystery of the sea’ hasn’t been scratched yet--not even +_scratched_, Ridgeway.” He sat down and leaned forward, fixing me +with a didactic finger. “What happened?” + +“Well, I have an idea the ‘barbarian’ got them, when it came to the +pinch.” + +“And let the--remains over the side?” + +“I should say.” + +“And they came back and got the ‘barbarian’ and let _him_ over the +side, eh? There were none left, you remember.” + +“Oh, good Lord, I don’t know!” I flared with a childish resentment at +this catechizing of his. But his finger remained there, challenging. + +“I do,” he announced. “The Chinaman put them over the side, as we have +said. And then, after that, he died--of wounds about the head.” + +“So?” I had still sarcasm. + +“You will remember,” he went on, “that the skipper did not happen to +mention a cat, a _yellow_ cat, in his confessions.” + +“McCord,” I begged him, “please drop it. Why in thunder _should_ +he mention a cat?” + +“True. Why _should_ he mention a cat? I think one of the reasons +why he should _not_ mention a cat is because there did not happen +to be a cat aboard at that time.” + +“Oh, all right!” I reached out and pulled the bottle to my side of the +table. Then I took out my watch. “If you don’t mind,” I suggested, “I +think we’d better be going ashore. I’ve got to get to my office rather +early in the morning. What do you say?” + +He said nothing for the moment, but his finger had dropped. He leaned +back and stared straight into the core of the light above, his eyes +squinting. + +“He would have been from the south of China, probably.” He seemed to be +talking to himself. “There’s a considerable sprinkling of the belief +down there, I’ve heard. It’s an uncanny business--this transmigration +of souls--” + +Personally, I had had enough of it. McCord’s fingers came groping +across the table for the bottle. I picked it up hastily and let it go +through the open companionway, where it died with a faint gurgle, out +somewhere on the river. + +“Now,” I said to him, shaking the vagrant wrist, “either you come +ashore with me or you go in there and get under the blankets. You’re +drunk, McCord--_drunk_. Do you hear me?” + +“Ridgeway,” he pronounced, bringing his eyes down to me and speaking +very slowly. “You’re a fool, if you can’t see better than that. I’m not +drunk. I’m sick. I haven’t slept for three nights--and now I can’t. And +you say--you--” He went to pieces very suddenly, jumped up, pounded +the legs of his chair on the decking, and shouted at me: “And you say +that, you--you landlubber, you office coddler! You’re so comfortable +sure that everything in the world is cut and dried. Come back to the +water again and learn how to wonder--and stop talking like a damn fool. +Do you know where--Is there anything in your municipal budget to tell +me where Björnsen went? Listen!” He sat down, waving me to do the same, +and went on with a sort of desperate repression. + +“It happened on the first night after we took this hellion. I’d stood +the wheel most of the afternoon--off and on, that is, because she sails +herself uncommonly well. Just put her on a reach, you know, and she +carries it off pretty well--” + +“I know,” I nodded. + +“Well, we mugged up about seven o’clock. There was a good deal of +canned stuff in the galley, and Björnsen wasn’t a bad hand with +a kettle--a thoroughgoing Square-head he was--tall and lean and +yellow-haired, with little fat, round cheeks and white mustache. Not +a bad chap at all. He took the wheel to stand till mid-night, and +I turned in, but I didn’t drop off for quite a spell. I could hear +his boots wandering around over my head, padding off forward, coming +back again. I heard him whistling now and then--an out-landish air. +Occasionally I could see the shadow of his head waving in a block of +moonlight that lay on the decking right down there in front of the +state-room. It came from the companion; the cabin was dark because we +were going easy on the oil. They hadn’t left a great deal, for some +reason or other.” + +McCord leaned back and described with his finger where the illumination +had cut the decking. + +“There! I could see it from my bunk, as I lay, you understand. I must +have almost dropped off once when I heard him fiddling around out here +in the cabin, and then he said something in a whisper, just to find out +if I was still awake, I suppose. I asked him what the matter was. He +came and poked his head in the door. + +“‘The breeze is going out,’ says he. ‘I was wondering if we couldn’t +get a little more sail on her.’ Only I can’t give you his fierce +Square-head tang. ‘How about the tops?’ he suggested. + +“I was so sleepy I didn’t care, and I told him so. ‘All right,’ he +says, ‘but I thought I might shake out one of them tops.’ Then I heard +him blow at something outside. ‘Scat, you ----!’ Then: ‘This cat’s +going to set me crazy, Mr. McCord,’ he says, ‘following me around +everywhere.’ He gave a kick, and I saw something yellow floating across +the moonlight. It never made a sound--just floated. You wouldn’t have +known it ever lit anywhere, just like--” + +McCord stopped and drummed a few beats on the table with his fist, as +though to bring himself back to the straight narrative. + +“I went to sleep,” he began again. “I dreamed about a lot of things. I +woke up sweating. You know how glad you are to wake up after a dream +like that and find none of it is so? Well, I turned over and settled to +go off again, and then I got a little more awake and thought to myself +it must be pretty near time for me to go on deck. I scratched a match +and looked at my watch. ‘That fellow must be either a good chap or +asleep,’ I said to myself. And I rolled out quick and went above-decks. +He wasn’t at the wheel. I called him: ‘Björnsen! Björnsen!’ No answer.” + +McCord was really telling a story now. He paused for a long moment, one +hand shielding an ear and his eyeballs turned far up. + +“That was the first time I really went over the hulk,” he ran on. “I +got out a lantern and started at the forward end of the hold, and I +worked aft, and there was nothing there. Not a sign, or a stain, or +a scrap of clothing, or anything. You may believe that I began to +feel funny inside. I went over the decks and the rails and the house +itself--inch by inch. Not a trace. I went out aft again. The cat sat +on the wheel-box, washing her face. I hadn’t noticed the scar on her +head before, running down between her ears--rather a new scar--three +or four days old, I should say. It looked ghastly and blue-white in +the flat moonlight. I ran over and grabbed her up to heave her over +the side--you understand how upset I was. Now you know a cat will +squirm around and grab something when you hold it like that, generally +speaking. This one didn’t. She just drooped and began to purr and +looked up at me out of her moonlit eyes under that scar. I dropped her +on the deck and backed off. You remember Björnsen had _kicked_ +her--and I didn’t want anything like that happening to--” + +The narrator turned upon me with a sudden heat, leaned over and shook +his finger before my face. + +“There you go!” he cried. “You, with your stout stone buildings and +your policemen and your neighborhood church--you’re so damn sure. But +I’d just like to see you out there, alone, with the moon setting, and +all the lights gone tall and queer, and a shipmate--” He lifted his +hand overhead, the finger-tips pressed together and then suddenly +separated as though he had released an impalpable something into the +air. + +“Go on,” I told him. + +“I felt more like you do, when it got right again, and warm and +sunshiny. I said ‘Bah!’ to the whole business. I even fed the cat, and +I slept awhile on the roof of the house--I was so sure. We lay dead +most of the day, without a streak of air. But that night--! Well, that +night I hadn’t got over being sure yet. It takes quite a jolt, you +know, to shake loose several dozen generations. A fair, steady breeze +had come along, the glass was high, she was staying herself like a +doll, and so I figured I could get a little rest, lying below in the +bunk, even if I didn’t sleep. + +“I tried not to sleep, in case something should come up--a squall or +the like. But I think I must have dropped off once or twice. I remember +I heard something fiddling around in the galley, and I hollered ‘Scat!’ +and everything was quiet again. I rolled over and lay on my left side, +staring at that square of moonlight outside my door for a long time. +You’ll think it was a dream--what I saw there.” + +“Go on,” I said. + +“Call this table-top the spot of light, roughly,” he said. He placed +a finger-tip about the middle of the forward edge and drew it slowly +toward the center. “Here, what would correspond with the upper side +of the companionway, there came down very gradually the shadow of +a tail. I watched it streaking out there across the deck, wiggling +the slightest bit now and then. When it had come down about half-way +across the light, the solid part of the animal--its shadow, you +understand--began to appear, quite big and round. But how could she +hang there, done up in a ball, from the hatch?” + +He shifted his finger back to the edge of the table and puddled it +around to signify the shadowed body. + +“I fished my gun out from behind my back. You see, I was feeling funny +again. Then I started to slide one foot over the edge of the bunk, +always with my eyes on that shadow. Now I swear I didn’t make the sound +of a pin dropping, but I had no more than moved a muscle when that +shadowed thing twisted itself around in a flash--and there on the floor +before me was the profile of a man’s head, upside down, listening--a +man’s head with a tail of hair.” + +McCord got up hastily and stepped over in front of the state-room door, +where he bent down and scratched a match. + +“See,” he said, holding the tiny flame above a splintered scar on the +boards. “You wouldn’t think a man would be fool enough to shoot at a +shadow?” + +He came back and sat down. + +“It seemed to me all hell had shaken loose. You’ve no idea, Ridgeway, +the rumpus a gun raises in a box like this. I found out afterward the +slug ricochetted into the galley, bringing down a couple of pans--and +that helped. Oh, yes, I got out of here quick enough. I stood there, +half out of the companion, with my hands on the hatch and the gun +between them, and my shadow running off across the top of the house +shivering before my eyes like a dry leaf. There wasn’t a whisper of +sound in the world--just the pale water floating past and the sails +towering up like a pair of twittering ghosts. And everything that crazy +color-- + +“Well, in a minute I saw it, just abreast of the mainmast, crouched +down in the shadow of the weather rail sneaking off forward very +slowly. This time I took a good long sight before I let go. Did you +ever happen to see black-powder smoke in the moonlight? It puffed +out perfectly round, like a big pale balloon, this did, and for +a second something was bounding through it--without a sound, you +understand--something a shade solider than the smoke and big as a cow, +it looked to me. It passed from the weather side to the lee and ducked +behind the sweep of the mainsail like _that_--” McCord snapped his +thumb and forefinger under the light. + +“Go on,” I said. “What did you do then?” + +McCord regarded me for an instant from beneath his lids, uncertain. His +fist hung above the table. “You’re--” He hesitated, his lips working +vacantly. A forefinger came out of the fist and gesticulated before my +face. “If you’re laughing, why, damn me, I’ll--” + +“Go on,” I repeated. “What did you do then?” + +“I followed the thing.” He was still watching me sullenly. “I got up +and went forward along the roof of the house, so as to have an eye on +either rail. You understand, this business had to be done with. I kept +straight along. Every shadow I wasn’t absolutely sure of I _made_ +sure of--point-blank. And I rounded the thing up at the very +stem--sitting on the butt of the bowsprit, Ridgeway, washing her yellow +face under the moon. I didn’t make any bones about it this time. I put +the bad end of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the +trigger. It snicked on an empty shell. I tell you a fact; I was almost +deafened by the report that didn’t come. + +“She followed me aft. I couldn’t get away from her. I went and sat on +the wheel-box and she came and sat on the edge of the house, facing me. +And there we stayed for upwards of an hour, without moving. Finally she +went over and stuck her paw in the water-pan I’d set out for her; then +she raised her head and looked at me and yawled. At sundown there’d +been two quarts of water in that pan. You wouldn’t think a cat could +get away with two quarts of water in--” + +He broke off again and considered me with a sort of weary defiance. + +“What’s the use?” He spread out his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. +“I knew you wouldn’t believe it when I started. You _couldn’t_. +It would be a kind of blasphemy against the sacred institution of +pavements. You’re too damn smug, Ridgeway. I can’t shake you. You +haven’t sat two days and two nights, keeping your eyes open by sheer +teeth-gritting, until they got used to it and wouldn’t shut any more. +When I tell you I found that yellow thing snooping around the davits, +and three bights of the boat-fall loosened out, plain on deck--you +grin behind your collar. When I tell you she padded off forward +and evaporated--flickered back to hell and hasn’t been seen since +then--why, you explain to yourself that I’m drunk. I tell you--” He +jerked his head back abruptly and turned to face the companionway, his +lips still apart. He listened so for a moment, then he shook himself +out of it and went on: + +“I tell you, Ridgeway, I’ve been over this hulk with a foot-rule. +There’s not a cubic inch I haven’t accounted for, not a plank I--” + +This time he got up and moved a step toward the companion, where he +stood with his head bent forward and slightly to the side. After what +might have been twenty seconds of this he whispered, “Do you hear?” + +Far and far away down the reach a ferryboat lifted its infinitesimal +wail, and then the silence of the night river came down once more, +profound and inscrutable. A corner of the wick above my head sputtered +a little--that was all. + +“Hear what?” I whispered back. He lifted a cautious finger toward the +opening. + +“Somebody. Listen.” + +The man’s faculties must have been keyed up to the pitch of his nerves, +for to me the night remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I +became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against +this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there was a +sound--the dying rumor of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, +as though an object had been let into the water with extreme care. + +“You heard?” + +I nodded. The ticking of the watch in my vest pocket came to my ears, +shucking off the leisurely seconds, while McCord’s finger-nails gnawed +at the palms of his hands. The man was really sick. He wheeled on me +and cried out, “My God! Ridgeway--why don’t we go?” + +I, for one, refused to be a fool. I passed him and climbed out of the +opening: he followed far enough to lean his elbows on the hatch, his +feet and legs still within the secure glow of the cabin. + +“You see, there’s nothing.” My wave of assurance was possibly a little +overdone. + +“Over there,” he muttered, jerking his head toward the shore lights. +“Something swimming.” + +I moved to the corner of the house and listened. + +“River thieves,” I argued. “The place is full of--” + +“_Ridgeway. Look behind you!_” + +Perhaps it is the pavements--but no matter; I am not ordinarily a +jumping sort. And yet there was something in the quality of that voice +beyond my shoulder that brought the sweat stinging though the pores of +my scalp even while I was in the act of turning. + +A cat sat there on the hatch, expressionless and immobile in the gloom. + +I did not say anything. I turned and went below. McCord was there +already, standing on the farther side of the table. After a moment or +so the cat followed and sat on her haunches at the foot of the ladder +and stared at us without winking. + +“I think she wants something to eat,” I said to McCord. + +He lit a lantern and went out into the galley. Returning with a chunk +of salt beef, he threw it into the farther corner. The cat went +over and began to tear at it, her muscles playing with convulsive +shadow-lines under the sagging yellow hide. + +And now it was she who listened, to something beyond the reach of even +McCord’s faculties, her neck stiff and her ears flattened. I looked at +McCord and found him brooding at the animal with a sort of listless +malevolence. “_Quick!_ She has kittens somewhere about.” I shook +his elbow sharply. “When she starts, now--” + +“You don’t seem to understand,” he mumbled. “It wouldn’t be any use.” + +She had turned now and was making for the ladder with the soundless +agility of her race. I grasped McCord’s wrist and dragged him after +me, the lantern hanging against his knees. When we came up the cat was +already amidships, a scarcely discernible shadow at the margin of our +lantern’s ring. She stopped and looked back at us with her luminous +eyes, appeared to hesitate, uneasy at our pursuit of her, shifted +here and there with quick, soft bounds, and stopped to fawn with her +back arched at the foot of the mast. Then she was off with an amazing +suddenness into the shadows forward. + +“Lively now!” I yelled at McCord. He came pounding along behind me, +still protesting that it was of no use. Abreast of the foremast I took +the lantern from him to hold above my head. + +“You see,” he complained, peering here and there over the illuminated +deck. “I tell you, Ridgeway, this thing--” But my eyes were in another +quarter, and I slapped him on the shoulder. + +“An engineer--an engineer to the core,” I cried at him. “Look aloft, +man.” + +Our quarry was almost to the cross-trees, clambering up the shrouds +with a smartness no sailor has ever come to, her yellow body, cut by +the moving shadows of the ratlines, a queer sight against the mat +of the night. McCord closed his mouth and opened it again for two +words: “By gracious!” The following instant he had the lantern and was +after her. I watched him go up above my head--a ponderous, swaying +climber into the sky--come to the cross-trees, and squat there with +his knees clamped around the mast. The clear star of the lantern +shot this way and that for a moment, then it disappeared, and in its +place there sprang out a bag of yellow light, like a fire-balloon at +anchor in the heavens. I could see the shadows of his head and hands +moving monstrously over the inner surface of the sail, and muffled +exclamations without meaning came down to me. After a moment he drew +out his head and called: “All right--they’re here. Heads! there below!” + +I ducked at his warning, and something spanked on the planking a yard +from my feet. I stepped over to the vague blur on the deck and picked +up a slipper--a slipper covered with some woven straw stuff and soled +with a matted felt, perhaps a half-inch thick. Another struck somewhere +abaft the mast, and then McCord reappeared above and began to stagger +down the shrouds. Under his left arm he hugged a curious assortment of +litter, a sheaf of papers, a brace of revolvers, a gray kimono, and a +soiled apron. + +“Well,” he said when he had come to deck, “I feel like a man who has +gone to hell and come back again. You know I’d come to the place +where I really believed that about the cat. When you think of it--By +gracious! we haven’t come so far from the jungle, after all.” + +We went aft and below and sat down at the table as we had been. McCord +broke a prolonged silence. + +“I’m sort of glad he got away--poor cuss! He’s probably climbing up +a wharf this minute, shivering and scared to death. Over toward the +gas-tanks, by the way he was swimming. By gracious! now that the +world’s turned over straight again, I feel I could sleep a solid week. +Poor cuss! can you imagine him, Ridgeway--” + +“Yes,” I broke in. “I think I can. He must have lost his nerve when +he made out your smoke and shinnied up there to stow away, taking the +ship’s papers with him. He would have attached some profound importance +to them--remember, the ‘barbarian,’ eight thousand miles from home. +Probably couldn’t read a word. I supposed the cat followed him--the +traditional source of food. He must have wanted water badly.” + +“I should say! He wouldn’t have taken the chances he did.” + +“Well,” I announced, “at any rate, I can say it now--there’s another +‘mystery of the sea’ gone to pot.” + +McCord lifted his heavy lids. + +“No,” he mumbled. “This mystery is that a man who has been to sea all +his life could sail around for three days with a man bundled up in +his top and not know it. When I think of him peeking down at me--and +playing off that damn cat--probably without realizing it--scared to +death--by gracious! Ridgeway, there was a pair of funks aboard this +craft, eh? Wow--yow--I could sleep--” + +“I should think you could.” + +McCord did not answer. + +“By the way,” I speculated. “I guess you were right about Björnsen, +McCord--that is, his fooling with the foretop. He must have been caught +all of a bunch, eh?” + +Again McCord failed to answer. I looked up, mildly surprised, and found +his mouth opened wide. He was asleep. + + + + + POPULAR LITTLE BLUE BOOKS + + + 220 Senator Vest’s Tribute to a Dog and Other + Dog Lore + + 1170 Funny Ghost Stories. Jerome K. Jerome + + 901 Woman: The Eternal Primitive. + Wm. J. Fielding + + 229 Ridiculous Women: Comedy of French Life. + Molière + + 410 Amorous Misadventures. Restif de la Bretonne + + 810 Some Polite Scandals of Parisian Life + + 404 Romances of Paris. Alfred de Musset + + 1062 Humoresque. Fannie Hurst + + 1115 Ridiculous Stories. Stephen Leacock + + 659 Two Famous Stories. Theodore Dreiser + + 661 Neurotic America and the Sex Impulse. + Dreiser + + 865 Main Street Tales. 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Kipling + + 815 A Book of Familiar Quotations + + 367 How to Improve Your Conversation + + 82 Common Faults in Writing English + + 697 4,000 Words Often Mispronounced + + 821 How to Improve Your Vocabulary + + 1103 A Book of Puzzles and Brainteasers + + 1210 A Book of Mathematical Oddities + + 167 General Rules for Everyday Health + + 74 Physiology of Sex Life. Dr. Greer + + 1 The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam + + 556 Hints on Etiquette. Esther Floyd + + 1219 How to Make Your Home More Homelike + + 364 How to Argue Logically. Schopenhauer + + 185 The Gods. Robert G. Ingersoll + + 4 The Age of Reason. Thomas Paine + + 27 The Last Days of a Condemned Man. + Victor Hugo + + 160 The Wit and Wisdom of Voltaire + + 1231 The Best Jokes of 1926 + + 389 Jokes and Clever Sayings About Kissing + + 29 Dreams: Short Stories of Passion’s Pawns + + 314 Short Stories of French Life. Daudet + + 954 A Bath and Other French Tales. Emile Zola + + 893 Five Hundred Riddles + + 830 A Book of Crossword Puzzles + + 1253 General Information Quizzes + + 868 Some General Hints on Self-Improvement + + 166 English As She Is Spoke. Mark Twain + + 668 Humorous Fables. Mark Twain + + 422 Book of Best Yankee Jokes + + 287 Best Jokes About Doctors + + 112 Secret of Self-Development. J. C. Powys + + 855 How to Write Letters for All Occasions + + 56 Dictionary of American Slang + + 972 Popular Joke Book + + 382 Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln + + 738 Poor Richard’s Almanac. Ben Franklin + + 1089 The Common Sense of Sex. Oppenheim + + +ORDER BY NUMBER: Your choice 5c each, plus 1c per book for packing and +carriage charges. Order by number. Complete catalogue free on request. + + + HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS, + Dept. S-25, Girard, Kansas + + + + + =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES= + +Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced +quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and +otherwise left unbalanced. + +Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a +predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they +were not changed. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76815 *** |