ABOARD THE BUG-EYE
Jack Harvey stood at the foot of the short ladder leading down into the
forecastle, looking anxiously about him. A boat-lantern, wired for
protection in handling, hung by the bulkhead, affording a gloomy view of
the place. Harvey had, in the course of much roughing it, lived at times
in tents, in log cabins, and in odd sorts of shacks, and slept in the
cabins of the fishing boats of Samoset Bay in Maine. But never in all his
experience had he found himself in such dismal, cramped and forbidding
quarters as these.
On either side of the forecastle nearest the ladder was a narrow, shallow
bunk, raised a little above the floor, sufficient to tuck a few odds and
ends of clothing under; directly above each was a similar bunk, of equal
dimensions. All four of these had scarcely any head-room at all—an
arrangement whereby one, springing quickly up into a sitting posture,
would give his head such a bump as would remind him unpleasantly of the
economy of space.
In the lower of these bunks there now lay two men, at least asleep if not
resting. They breathed heavily, moaning as though in some unnatural
condition of slumber. It was evident to Harvey that they were under the
influence of something like a drug; and the recollection flashed through
his mind of the offer of young Mr. Jenkins in the cabin of the
schooner—which he had fortunately refused. If he were, indeed, a captive,
he was at least in no such senseless condition as these men.
The upper bunks held two more occupants. These two slept quietly, even
through the disturbance that had been made so recently. Perhaps they were
not unused to such occurrences. It was apparent they were sailors, and
their sleep was natural. In all likelihood, the two lower bunks had been
left vacant for new recruits, the old seamen taking the upper ones.
All this Jack Harvey took in with a few quick glances. What he saw next
gave him something of a start.
Forward of the four bunks described were yet two others, the space in the
forecastle being arranged “to sleep” six men. These bunks were, if such a
thing could be possible, even less comfortable than the others. Curving
with the lines of the bows of the vessel, they had scarce length enough
for a good sized man to stretch out in. In part compensation for which,
however, there being no upper bunks, there was head-room enough so that
one could sit upright with some degree of comfort.
In the starboard bunk there sat a man, huddled up, with one arm bracing
him from behind, and a hand, clutching one knee. He was staring at the
new-comer Harvey, with a look of abject despair.
Harvey, surprised and startled to find himself thus confronting someone
who was clearly in his proper senses, returned the man’s gaze, and the
two stared wonderingly at each other for a moment, in silence.
With a groan, the man swung himself down to the floor and advanced a
step.
“Hullo,” he said, “how in the Dickens did they get you?”
“Same to you,” said Harvey, by way of reply. He had, at the sight of this
companion in misery, regained his composure a little. Unconsciously, the
fact that here was someone with whom he could share misfortune had raised
his courage. For Harvey had taken in the appearance of the man at once.
He was well dressed. His clothes were of fine material and of a stylish
cut—albeit they were wrinkled and dusty from his recent experiences. A
torn place in the sleeve of his coat told, too, of the rough handling he
had received. His collar was crumpled and wilted, his tie disarranged. A
derby hat that he had worn lay now on the floor, in one corner, with the
crown broken. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a ring.
Instinctively, Jack Harvey and the stranger extended arms and grasped
hands, with the warmth of sudden friendship born of mutual sympathy.
“Well, I’ll be hanged, if they’re not a lot of scoundrels!” exclaimed the
man, surveying Harvey with astonishment. “Why, you’re only a boy. How on
earth did they get you? Didn’t drug your drink, did they?”
“No, I don’t drink,” said Harvey. “I signed for a cruise, all right, but
not on this craft. I signed to go a month on that schooner that brought
me down. Cracky, but it looks as though I’d made a mess of it. A chap
named Jenkins got me into this—”
“Jenkins!” cried the man, bursting out in a fury. “Jenkins, was it? Slim,
oily chap, flashy waistcoat and sailor tie?”
Harvey nodded.
The man clenched his fist and raised it above his head.
“Told you he was going to Johns Hopkins when he earned the money—nice
family but poor—and all that sort of rot?”
“That’s the chap,” said Harvey.
The man dropped his fist, put out a hand to Harvey, and they shook once
more. The man’s face relaxed into a grim smile.
“Well, I’m another Jenkins recruit,” he said. “I’m an idiot, an ass,
anything you’re a-mind to call me. There’s some excuse for you—but me, a
man that’s travelled from one end of this United States to the other, and
met every kind of a sharper between New York and San Francisco—to get
caught in a scrape like this!”
“Why, then your name is not Tom Saunders,” exclaimed Harvey, who now
recognized in his new acquaintance the man he had seen struggling with
the men of the schooner. “They said you were a sailor.” The man made a
gesture of disgust. “I hate the very smell of the salt water!” he cried.
There was a small sea chest next to the bulk-head at the forward end of
the forecastle, and Harvey and the stranger seated themselves on it. The
man relapsed for a moment into silence, his elbows on his knees, his face
buried in his hands. Then, all of a sudden, he sat erect, and beat his
fist down upon one knee.
“This ends it!” he cried, earnestly. “Never again as long as I live and
breathe.”
Harvey stared at him in surprise.
“I mean the drink,” cried the man, excitedly. “Mind what I say, and I
mean it. Never another drink as long as I live. I’ve said, before, that
I’d stop it, but this ends it. Say, what’s your name, anyway?”
“Jack Harvey.”
“Well, my name’s Edwards—Tom Edwards. Now look here, Harvey, I mean what
I say; if you ever see Tom Edwards try to take another drink, you just
walk up and hit him the hardest knock you can give him. See?”
Harvey laughed, in spite of the other’s earnestness.
“I won’t have any chance for some time, by the looks of things,” he said.
“You won’t need to sign any pledge this month. I reckon there’s no saloon
aboard this vessel.”
“I’m glad of it,” exclaimed Edwards. “I wouldn’t walk into one now, if
they were giving the stuff away. Look what it’s got me into. Say, how did
our Johns Hopkins friend catch you?”
Harvey quickly narrated the events that had followed the departure of his
parents for Europe, and the meeting with young Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Edwards,
listening with astonishment, eyed him with keenest interest.
“That’s it,” he exclaimed, as Harvey recounted the engaging manner in
which Jenkins had assured him he would return in one short month, with a
nautical experience that should make him the envy of his boy companions;
“put it in fancy style, didn’t he? Regular Tom Bowline romance, and all
that sort of thing, eh?”
Mr. Edwards’s eyes twinkled, and he was half smiling, in spite of
himself.
“Well,” he continued, noting Harvey’s athletic figure, “I guess you can
stand a month of it, all right, and no great hurt to you. And, what’s
best, your folks won’t worry. But I tell you, Harvey, it’s going to be
tough on me, if I can’t force this bandit to set me ashore again. I’m in
an awful scrape. My business house will think I’ve been murdered, or have
run away—I don’t know what. And when it comes to work, if we have much of
that to do, I don’t know how I’m going to stand it. You see, my firm pays
my expenses, and I’m used to putting up at the best hotels and living
high. So, I’m fat and lazy. Billiards is about my hardest exercise, and
my hands are as soft as a woman’s. See here.”
Mr. Edwards stretched out two somewhat unsteady hands, palms upward; then
slapped them down upon his knees. As he did so, he uttered a cry of
dismay and sprang to his feet, sticking out his little finger and staring
at it ruefully.
“The thieves!” he cried, angrily. “The cowardly thieves! See that ring?
They’ve got the diamond out of it. Worth two hundred dollars, if ’twas
worth a cent. They couldn’t get the ring off, without cutting it, and I
suppose they couldn’t do that easily; so they’ve just pried out the
stone.”
Harvey looked at the hand which Edwards extended. The setting of the
costly ring had, indeed, been roughly forced, and the stone it had
contained, extracted.
“I wouldn’t care so much,” said Edwards, “if it hadn’t been a gift from
the men in the store.” Impulsively, he turned to Harvey and put a hand on
his shoulder.
“Say, Harvey,” he exclaimed, “when you and I get ashore again—if we ever
do—we’ll go and hunt up this young Mr. Jenkins.”
“All right,” replied Harvey; “but it may not be quite so bad as you
think. We’ll get through some way, I guess.”
Oddly enough, either by reason of the lack of responsibility that weighed
on the spirits of the man, or because of a lingering eagerness for
adventure, in spite of the dubious prospects, the boy, Harvey, seemed the
more resolute of the two.
“Well,” responded Edwards, “I’m sorry you’re in a scrape; but so long as
you’re here, why, I’m glad you’re the kind of a chap you are. We’ll help
each other. We’ll stand together.”
And they shook hands upon it again.
“Now,” said Edwards, “here’s how I came here. I’m a travelling man, for a
jewelry house—Burton & Brooks, of Boston. I was on the road, got into
Washington the other night, and sold a lot of goods there. But one of my
trunks hadn’t come on time, and I was hung up for a day with nothing to
do. Never had been in Baltimore, and thought I’d run down for a few
hours.
“I got dinner at a restaurant and went out to look around. I went along,
hit or miss, and brought up down by the water-front. This chap, Jenkins,
bumped into me and apologized like a gentleman; we got to talking, and he
invited me into one of those saloons along the front. Beastly place, and
I knew it; but I was off my guard. He certainly was slick, talked about
his family and Johns Hopkins, and pumped me all the time—I can see it
now—till he found I wasn’t stopping at any hotel, but had just run in to
town for the day.
“That was all he wanted. Saw the game was safe, and then he and the
fellow that ran the place must have fixed it up together. I’ll bet he
stands in with most of these places on the water-front. He apologized for
the place, I remember; said it was rough but clean, and the oysters the
best in Baltimore. Well, I don’t remember much after that, until I woke
up in that hole on the schooner that brought us down here. I know we had
something to drink—and that, so help me, is the last that anyone ever
gets Tom Edwards to take. Shake on that, too.”
He had a hearty, bluff way of talking, and a frankness in declaring
himself to be the biggest simpleton that was ever caught with chaff, that
compelled friendship.
Harvey again accepted the proffered hand, smiling a little to himself,
and wondering if it were a habit of the other’s profession to seal all
compacts on the spot in that fashion.
“So here I am,” concluded Mr. Edwards, “in the vilest hole I ever was in;
sick from the nasty pitching of this infernal boat; the worst head-ache I
ever woke up with—thanks to Mr. Jenkins’s drug—robbed of $150 in money,
that I had in a wallet, a diamond that I wouldn’t have sold at any
price—and, worst of all, my house won’t know what’s become of me. You
see, I’m registered up in Washington at a hotel there. I disappear, they
find my trunk and goods all right, and my accounts are straight. Nobody
knows I came to Baltimore. I’m not registered at any hotel there. There’s
a mystery for ’em. Isn’t it a fix?”
Harvey whistled expressively.
“You’re worse off than I am, a million times,” he said. “Besides, I’ve
got a little money, if it will help us out any. It’s twenty-five dollars
I had for fare back to Benton, and pocket-money.”
“Where’s that—where’d you say you were going?” asked Mr. Edwards,
quickly.
“Benton.”
“Benton, eh? Well, that’s funny. I’ve been there; sold goods in Benton
lots of times. You don’t happen to know a man by the name of Warren
there, do you? He’s got three boys about your age, or a little
younger—nice man, too.”
Harvey gave an exclamation of surprise and delight.
“Know him? I guess I do,” he cried. “And the Warren fellows, well rather.
Hooray!”
It was Harvey’s turn to offer the hand of fellowship this time; and he
gave Mr. Edwards a squeeze that made that gentleman wince.
“You’ve got a pretty good grip,” said he, rubbing his right hand with the
other. “I guess you can stand some hard work.” Then they reverted to the
subject of Benton, once more, and it brought them closer together. There
was Bob White’s father, whom Mr. Edwards knew, and several others; and
Jack Harvey knew their sons; and so they might have shaken hands at least
a half dozen times more, if Mr. Edwards had been willing to risk the
experiment again.
“Now, to get back to the money,” said he, finally; “you’ve got to hide
that twenty-five dollars, or you’ll lose it. Here, I can help you out.”
He drew forth from a pocket a rubber tobacco pouch, and emptied the
contents into an envelope in one of his inside coat pockets.
“I don’t see how they happened to leave me this,” he said, “but they did,
and it’s lucky, too. It’s just what you need. We’ll tuck the bills in
this, fold it over and over, wrap a handkerchief about it, and you can
fasten it inside your shirt with this big safety-pin. Trust a travelling
man on the road to have what’s needed in the dressing line. It may save
you from being robbed. What are you going to do with that other five?
Don’t you want to save that, too?”
Harvey had taken from a wallet in his pocket twenty dollars in bills,
letting one five dollar bill remain.
“I’m going to use that to save the rest with,” replied Harvey. “Supposing
this brute of a captain asks me if I’ve got any money, to buy what I’ll
need aboard here, or suppose I’m robbed; well, perhaps they’ll think this
is all I’ve got, and leave me the twenty.”
“You’re kind of sharp, too,” responded Mr. Edwards, smiling. “You’d make
a good travelling man. We’ll stow this secure, I hope.”
He enfolded the bills handed to him by Harvey in the rubber tobacco
pouch, wrapped the boy’s handkerchief about that, and passed it, with the
pin thrust through, to Harvey. Harvey, loosening his clothing, pinned the
parcel of bills securely, next to his body.
“That’s the thing,” said Mr. Edwards, approvingly. “That’s better than
the captain’s strong-box, I reckon. I’m afraid we’ve struck a pirate.
Whew, but I’d give five hundred—oh, hang it! What’s the use of wishing?
We’re in for it. We’ll get out, I suppose some way. I’ll tackle this
captain in the morning. I’ve sold goods to pretty hard customers before
now. If I can’t sell him a line of talk that will make him set me ashore,
why, then my name isn’t Tom Edwards. Guess we may as well turn in, though
I reckon I’ll not sleep much in that confounded packing-box they call a
berth. Good night, Harvey, my boy. Here’s good luck for to-morrow.”
Mr. Edwards put forth his hand, then drew it back quickly.
“I guess that last hand-shake will do for to-night,” he said. “Pretty
good grip you’ve got.”
Harvey watched him, curiously, as he prepared to turn in for the night.
Surely, an extraordinary looking figure for the forecastle of a dingy
bug-eye was Mr. Tom Edwards. He removed his crumpled collar and his
necktie, gazed at them regretfully, and tucked them beneath the edge of
the bunk. He removed his black cut-away coat, folded it carefully, and
stowed it away in one end of the same. He likewise removed a pair of
patent leather shoes.
It was hardly the toggery for a seaman of an oyster-dredger; and Harvey,
eying the incongruous picture, would have laughed, in spite of his own
feeling of dismay and apprehension, but for the expression of utter
anguish and misery on the face of Tom Edwards, as he rolled in on to his
bunk.
“Cheer up,” said the latter, with an attempt at assurance, which the tone
of his voice did not fully endorse, “I’ll fix that pirate of a captain in
the morning, or I’ll never sell another bill of goods as long as I live.”
“I hope so,” replied Harvey.
But he had his doubts.
They had made their preparations not any too soon.
A voice from the deck called out roughly, “Douse that lantern down there!
Take this ere boat for an all-night dance-hall?”
Harvey sprang from his bunk and extinguished the feeble flicker that had
given them light, then crept back again. He was young; he was weary; he
was hopeful. He was soon asleep, rocked by the uneasy swinging and
dipping of the vessel. Mr. Thomas Edwards, travelling man and gentleman
patron of the best hotels, envied him, as he, himself, lay for hours
awake, a prey to many and varied emotions.
But he, too, was not without a straw to cling to. He had his plans for
the morrow; and, as tardy slumber at length came to his weary brain, he
might have been heard to mutter, “I’ll sell that captain a line—a line—a
line of talk; I’ll make him take it, or—or I’ll—”
His words ceased. Mr. Thomas Edwards had gone upon his travels into
dreamland. And, if he could have seen there the face and figure of
Captain Hamilton Haley of the bug-eye, Z. B. Brandt, and have listened to
that gentleman engaged in the pleasing art of conversation, he might not
have been so hopeful of selling him a “line of talk.”