Part I

Minor Conflicts

THE OPEN BOAT

A Tale intended to be after the Fact.

Being the Experience of Four Men from

the Sunk Steamer 'Commodore'

I

None of them knew the colour of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and

were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were

of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white,

and all of the men knew the colours of the sea. The horizon narrowed

and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged

with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.

Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here

rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously

abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat

navigation.

The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six

inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were

rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest

dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was

a narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the

broken sea.

The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes

raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the

stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.

The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and

wondered why he was there.

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that

profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least,

to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm

fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a

vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a

day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of

a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump

of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the

waves, went low and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something

strange in his voice. Although steady, it was deep with mourning, and

of a quality beyond oration or tears.

"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.

"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.

A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and,

by the same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced

and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she

rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously

high. The manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic

thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems

in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave,

requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully

bumping a crest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long

incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after

successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another

behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do

something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey

one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves

that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in

a dingey. As each slaty wall of water approached, it shut all else from

the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine

that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last

effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of the

waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.

In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes

must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed

from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtlessly have been weirdly

picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they

had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun

swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the

colour of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, streaked with

amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the

breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect

upon the colour of the waves that rolled toward them.

In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the

difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The

cook had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito

Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat

and pick us up."

"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.

"The crew," said the cook.

"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I

understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored

for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."

"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.

"No, they don't," said the correspondent.

"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.

"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that

I'm thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a

life-saving station."

"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.

II

As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through

the hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down

again the spray slashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was

a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad

tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid.

It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights

of emerald and white and amber.

"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook. "If not, where

would we be? Wouldn't have a show."

"That's right," said the correspondent.

The busy oiler nodded his assent.

Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humour,

contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think we've got much of a show

now, boys?" said he.

Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and

hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be

childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the

situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On

the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any

open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.

"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "we'll get ashore

all right."

But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler

quoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"

The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."

Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the

sea, near patches of brown sea-weed that rolled over the waves with a

movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in

groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of

the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens

a thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the

men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and

sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at

them, telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to

alight on the top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to

the boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the

air in chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the

captain's head. "Ugly brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as

if you were made with a jack-knife." The cook and the correspondent

swore darkly at the creature. The captain naturally wished to knock

it away with the end of the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it,

because anything resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized

this freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently and

carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the

pursuit the captain breathed easier on account of his hair, and others

breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this time as

being somehow grewsome and ominous.

In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. And also they

rowed.

They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the

oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the

oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very

ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining

one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star

of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to

change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand

along the thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the

man in the rowing seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was

all done with the most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each

other, the whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the

captain cried: "Look out now! Steady there!"

The brown mats of sea-weed that appeared from time to time were like

islands, bits of earth. They were travelling, apparently, neither one

way nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed

the men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.

The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on

a great swell, said that he had seen the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet.

Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent was

at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the

lighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were

important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn

his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others,

and when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.

"See it?" said the captain.

"No," said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything."

"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that

direction."

At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and

this time his eyes chanced on a small still thing on the edge of the

swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an

anxious eye to find a lighthouse so tiny.

"Think we'll make it, captain?"

"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else,"

said the captain.

The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously

by the crests, made progress that in the absence of sea-weed was not

apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing wallowing,

miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great

spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.

"Bail her, cook," said the captain serenely.

"All right, captain," said the cheerful cook.

III

It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that

was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one

mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him.

They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they

were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may

be common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow,

spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command

a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the

dingey. It was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the

common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal

and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat

there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who

had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the

best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one

mentioned it.

"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoat

on the end of an oar and give you two boys a chance to rest." So the

cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the overcoat.

The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig.

Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breaking

into the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success.

Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now

almost assumed colour, and appeared like a little grey shadow on the

sky. The man at the oars could not be prevented from turning his head

rather often to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow.

At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could

see land. Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky,

this land seemed but a long black shadow on the sea. It certainly was

thinner than paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the

cook, who had coasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the

way, I believe they abandoned that life-saving station there about a

year ago."

"Did they?" said the captain.

The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now

obliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued

their old impetuous swooping at the dingey, and the little craft,

no longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or the

correspondent took the oars again.

Shipwrecks are _à propos_ of nothing. If men could only train for them

and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there

would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey none had slept

any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to

embarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the

deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.

For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the

correspondent was fond of rowing at this time. The correspondent

wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could

there be people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an

amusement; it was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental

aberrations could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to

the muscles and a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in

general how the amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced

oiler smiled in full sympathy. Previously to the foundering, by the

way, the oiler had worked double-watch in the engine-room of the ship.

"Take her easy, now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves.

If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll

sure have to swim for it. Take your time."

Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line

of black and a line of white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain

said that he could make out a house on the shore. "That's the house of

refuge, sure," said the cook. "They'll see us before long, and come out

after us."

The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to

make us out now, if he's looking through a glass," said the captain.

"He'll notify the life-saving people."

"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the

wreck," said the oiler, in a low voice. "Else the life-boat would be

out hunting us."

Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came

again. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally,

a new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low

thunder of the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the

lighthouse now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north,

Billie," said he.

"'A little more north,' sir," said the oiler.

Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and

all but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this

expansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of the

men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could

not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be

ashore.

Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat,

and they now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The

correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but

happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight

cigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly

scatheless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and

thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and with

an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at

the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a

drink of water.

IV

"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life

about your house of refuge."

"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"

A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was

of dunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain,

and sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the

beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the

slim lighthouse lifted its little grey length.

Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny they

don't see us," said the men.

The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless,

thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the men

sat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure," said everybody.

It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within

twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact,

and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning

the eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the

dingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.

"Funny they don't see us."

The light-heartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their

sharpened minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of

incompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice. There was the shore

of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it

came no sign.

"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a

try for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us have

strength left to swim after the boat swamps."

And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for

the shore. There was a sudden tightening of muscles. There was some

thinking.

"If we don't all get ashore--" said the captain. "If we don't all get

ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"

They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As

for the reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in

them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be

drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why,

in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to

come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely

to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese

of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do

better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's

fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has

decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save

me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd.... But no, she cannot

mean to drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not

after all this work." Afterward the man might have had an impulse to

shake his fist at the clouds: "Just you drown me, now, and then hear

what I call you!"

The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed

always just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil

of foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the speech of them.

No mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could

ascend these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler

was a wily surfman. "Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live three

minutes more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea

again, captain?"

"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain.

This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady

oarsmanship, turned the boat in the middle of the surf and took her

safely to sea again.

There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed

sea to deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, they

must have seen us from the shore by now."

The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolate

east. A squall, marked by dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like

smoke from a burning building, appeared from the south-east.

"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?"

"Funny they haven't seen us."

"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're

fishin'. Maybe they think we're damned fools."

It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward,

but wind and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea, and

sky formed their mighty angle, there were little dots which seemed to

indicate a city on the shore.

"St. Augustine?"

The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."

And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler

rowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of

more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite

anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the

theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots,

and other comforts.

"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.

"No," said the oiler. "Hang it."

When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the

boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless

of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold

sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His

head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave

crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board

and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It

is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled

comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great

soft mattress.

"Look! There's a man on the shore!"

"Where?"

"There! See 'im? See 'im?"

"Yes, sure! He's walking along."

"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"

"He's waving at us!"

"So he is! By thunder!"

"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out

here for us in half-an-hour."

"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."

The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching

glance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating

stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in

the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The

oarsman did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.

"What's he doing now?"

"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think.... There he goes

again. Towards the house.... Now he's stopped again."

"Is he waving at us?"

"No, not now! he was, though."

"Look! There comes another man!"

"He's running."

"Look at him go, would you."

"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both

waving at us. Look!"

"There comes something up the beach."

"What the devil is that thing?"

"Why, it looks like a boat."

"Why, certainly it's a boat."

"No, it's on wheels."

"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along

shore on a wagon."

"That's the life-boat, sure."

"No, by ----, it's--it's an omnibus."

"I tell you it's a life-boat."

"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big

hotel omnibuses."

"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you

suppose they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going around

collecting the life-crew, hey?"

"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag.

He's standing on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other two

fellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the fellow with the

flag. Maybe he ain't waving it."

"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why certainly, that's his

coat."

"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his

head. But would you look at him swing it."

"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a

winter resort hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boarders

to see us drown."

"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"

"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a

life-saving station up there."

"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah,

there, Willie."

"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you

suppose he means?"

"He don't mean anything. He's just playing."

"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea

and wait, or go north, or go south, or go to hell--there would be some

reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his coat

revolving like a wheel. The ass!"

"There come more people."

"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"

"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."

"That fellow is still waving his coat."

"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It

don't mean anything."

"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be

that there's a life-saving station there somewhere."

"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave."

"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever

since he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men

to bring a boat out? A fishing boat--one of those big yawls--could come

out here all right. Why don't he do something?"

"Oh, it's all right, now."

"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that

they've seen us."

A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on

the sea slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men

began to shiver.

"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood,

"if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here

all night!"

"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've

seen us now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out after

us."

The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this

gloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of

people. The spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made the

voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded.

"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking

him one, just for luck."

"Why? What did he do?"

"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."

In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and

then the oiler rowed. Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically,

turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse had

vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared,

just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed

before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. The

land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder

of the surf.

"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am

going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule

the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and

trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was

about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?"

The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged

to speak to the oarsman.

"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"

"'Keep her head up,' sir." The voices were weary and low.

This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and

listlessly in the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable

of noting the tall black waves that swept forward in a most sinister

silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.

The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the

water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke.

"Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"

V

"Pie," said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk

about those things, blast you!"

"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches,

and----"

A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled

finally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south,

changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, a

small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the

furniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.

Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in

the dingey that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed

by thrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed extended

far under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain

forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave

came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chilling

water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and

groan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat

gurgled about them as the craft rocked.

The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he

lost the ability, and then arouse the other from his sea-water couch in

the bottom of the boat.

The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and the

overpowering sleep blinded him. And he rowed yet afterward. Then he

touched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his name. "Will you

spell me for a little while?" he said, meekly.

"Sure, Billie," said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himself

to a sitting position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler,

cuddling down in the sea-water at the cook's side, seemed to go to

sleep instantly.

The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without

snarling. The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boat

headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her, and to

preserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waves

were silent and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almost

upon the boat before the oarsman was aware.

In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure

that the captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be always

awake. "Captain, shall I keep her making for that light north, sir?"

The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points off

the port bow."

The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the

warmth which this clumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed

almost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth invariably chattered wildly

as soon as he ceased his labour, dropped down to sleep.

The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleeping

under-foot. The cook's arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with

their fragmentary clothing and haggard faces, they were the babes of

the sea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood.

Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a

growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the

boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his

life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking

his eyes and shaking with the new cold.

"Oh, I'm awful sorry, Billie," said the correspondent contritely.

"That's all right, old boy," said the oiler, and lay down again and was

asleep.

Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent

thought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had

a voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end.

There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming

trail of phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black

waters. It might have been made by a monstrous knife.

Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with the

open mouth and looked at the sea.

Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish

light, and this time it was alongside the boat, and might almost have

been reached with an oar. The correspondent saw an enormous fin speed

like a shadow through the water, hurling the crystalline spray and

leaving the long glowing trail.

The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face was

hidden, and he seemed to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea.

They certainly were asleep. So, being bereft of sympathy, he leaned a

little way to one side and swore softly into the sea.

But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead or

astern, on one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled the

long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whiroo of the dark

fin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cut

the water like a gigantic and keen projectile.

The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the same

horror that it would if he had been a picnicker. He simply looked at

the sea dully and swore in an undertone.

Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone. He wished

one of his companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it.

But the captain hung motionless over the water-jar, and the oiler and

the cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.

VI

"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am

going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule

the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"

During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude

that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him,

despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an

abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard.

The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had

drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still----

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important,

and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of

him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates

deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible

expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.

Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the

desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one

knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself."

A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says

to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.

The men in the dingey had not discussed these matters, but each had, no

doubt, reflected upon them in silence and according to his mind. There

was seldom any expression upon their faces save the general one of

complete weariness. Speech was devoted to the business of the boat.

To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the

correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this

verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.

"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,

There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;

But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand,

And he said: 'I shall never see my own, my native land.'"

In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the

fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had

never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had

informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally

ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it

his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had

it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than the

breaking of a pencil's point.

Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was

no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet,

meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an

actuality--stern, mournful, and fine.

The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his

feet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his

chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came

between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square

forms was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues.

The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower

movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and

perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the

Legion who lay dying in Algiers.

The thing which had followed the boat and waited, had evidently grown

bored at the delay. There was no longer to be heard the slash of the

cut-water, and there was no longer the flame of the long trail. The

light in the north still glimmered, but it was apparently no nearer to

the boat. Sometimes the boom of the surf rang in the correspondent's

ears, and he turned the craft seaward then and rowed harder. Southward,

some one had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It was too low

and too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflection

upon the bluff back of it, and this could be discerned from the boat.

The wind came stronger, and sometimes a wave suddenly raged out like

a mountain-cat, and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a

broken crest.

The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. "Pretty

long night," he observed to the correspondent. He looked at the shore.

"Those life-saving people take their time."

"Did you see that shark playing around?"

"Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right."

"Wish I had known you were awake."

Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat.

"Billie!" There was a slow and gradual disentanglement. "Billie, will

you spell me?"

"Sure," said the oiler.

As soon as the correspondent touched the cold comfortable sea-water in

the bottom of the boat, and had huddled close to the cook's life-belt

he was deep in sleep, despite the fact that his teeth played all the

popular airs. This sleep was so good to him that it was but a moment

before he heard a voice call his name in a tone that demonstrated the

last stages of exhaustion. "Will you spell me?"

"Sure, Billie."

The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the

correspondent took his course from the wide-awake captain.

Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and the

captain directed the cook to take one oar at the stern and keep the

boat facing the seas. He was to call out if he should hear the thunder

of the surf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get

respite together. "We'll give those boys a chance to get into shape

again," said the captain. They curled down and, after a few preliminary

chatterings and trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither

knew they had bequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or

perhaps the same shark.

As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the

side and gave them a fresh soaking, but this had no power to break

their repose. The ominous slash of the wind and the water affected them

as it would have affected mummies.

"Boys," said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice,

"she's drifted in pretty close. I guess one of you had better take

her to sea again." The correspondent, aroused, heard the crash of the

toppled crests.

As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whisky-and-water, and this

steadied the chills out of him. "If I ever get ashore and anybody shows

me even a photograph of an oar----"

At last there was a short conversation.

"Billie.... Billie, will you spell me?"

"Sure," said the oiler.

VII

When the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and the sky

were each of the grey hue of the dawning. Later, carmine and gold

was painted upon the waters. The morning appeared finally, in its

splendour, with a sky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips

of the waves.

On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tall

white windmill reared above them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appeared

on the beach. The cottages might have formed a deserted village.

The voyagers scanned the shore. A conference was held in the boat.

"Well," said the captain, "if no help is coming we might better try

a run through the surf right away. If we stay out here much longer

we will be too weak to do anything for ourselves at all." The others

silently acquiesced in this reasoning. The boat was headed for the

beach. The correspondent wondered if none ever ascended the tall

wind-tower, and if then they never looked seaward. This tower was a

giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented

in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the

struggles of the individual--nature in the wind, and nature in the

vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor

treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It

is, perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with

the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his

life, and have them taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another

chance. A distinction between right and wrong seems absurdly clear to

him, then, in this new ignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands

that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and

his words, and be better and brighter during an introduction or at a

tea.

"Now, boys," said the captain, "she is going to swamp, sure. All we can

do is to work her in as far as possible, and then when she swamps, pile

out and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now, and don't jump until she

swamps sure."

The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf.

"Captain," he said, "I think I'd better bring her about, and keep her

head-on to the seas and back her in."

"All right, Billie," said the captain. "Back her in." The oiler swung

the boat then and, seated in the stern, the cook and the correspondent

were obliged to look over their shoulders to contemplate the lonely and

indifferent shore.

The monstrous in-shore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were

again enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slanted

beach. "We won't get in very close," said the captain. Each time a man

could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward

the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation

there was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing the others,

knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glances

was shrouded.

As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the

fact. He tried to coerce his mind into thinking of it, but the mind

was dominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles said they

did not care. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it

would be a shame.

There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men

simply looked at the shore. "Now, remember to get well clear of the

boat when you jump," said the captain.

Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash,

and the long white comber came roaring down upon the boat.

"Steady now," said the captain. The men were silent. They turned their

eyes from the shore to the comber and waited. The boat slid up the

incline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and swung down the

long back of the wave. Some water had been shipped and the cook bailed

it out.

But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling boiling flood of white

water caught the boat and whirled it almost perpendicular. Water

swarmed in from all sides. The correspondent had his hands on the

gunwale at this time, and when the water entered at that place he

swiftly withdrew his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.

The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled

deeper into the sea.

"Bail her out, cook! Bail her out," said the captain.

"All right, captain," said the cook.

"Now, boys, the next one will do for us, sure," said the oiler. "Mind

to jump clear of the boat."

The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly

swallowed the dingey, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into

the sea. A piece of life-belt had lain in the bottom of the boat, and

as the correspondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his

left hand.

The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was

colder than he had expected to find it off the coast of Florida. This

appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be noted at

the time. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact

was somehow so mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation

that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was cold.

When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy

water. Afterward he saw his companions in the sea. The oiler was

ahead in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly. Off to the

correspondent's left, the cook's great white and corked back bulged out

of the water, and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good

hand to the keel of the overturned dingey.

There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent

wondered at it amid the confusion of the sea.

It seemed also very attractive, but the correspondent knew that it was

a long journey, and he paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver

lay under him, and sometimes he whirled down the incline of a wave as

if he were on a hand-sled.

But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset

with difficulty. He did not pause swimming to inquire what manner of

current had caught him, but there his progress ceased. The shore was

set before him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it

and understood with his eyes each detail of it.

As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling

to him, "Turn over on your back, cook! Turn over on your back and use

the oar."

"All right, sir." The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an

oar, went ahead as if he were a canoe.

Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with

the captain clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have appeared

like a man raising himself to look over a board fence, if it were

not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent

marvelled that the captain could still hold to it.

They passed on, nearer to shore--the oiler, the cook, the captain--and

following them went the water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas.

The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy--a

current. The shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff,

topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture before

him. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in a

gallery looks at a scene from Brittany or Holland.

He thought: "I am going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be

possible? Can it be possible?" Perhaps an individual must consider his

own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.

But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small deadly current,

for he found suddenly that he could again make progress toward the

shore. Later still, he was aware that the captain, clinging with one

hand to the keel of the dingey, had his face turned away from the shore

and toward him, and was calling his name. "Come to the boat! Come to

the boat!"

In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that

when one gets properly wearied, drowning must really be a comfortable

arrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a large degree

of relief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for

some moments had been horror of the temporary agony. He did not wish to

be hurt.

Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with

most remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically

off him.

"Come to the boat," called the captain.

"All right, captain." As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain

let himself down to bottom and leave the boat. Then the correspondent

performed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large wave caught him

and flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat and

far beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics, and

a true miracle of the sea. An overturned boat in the surf is not a

plaything to a swimming man.

The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but

his condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each

wave knocked him into a heap, and the under-tow pulled at him.

Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing

and running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook,

and then waded towards the captain, but the captain waved him away, and

sent him to the correspondent. He was naked, naked as a tree in winter,

but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a

strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent's

hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulæ, said: "Thanks,

old man." But suddenly the man cried: "What's that?" He pointed a swift

finger. The correspondent said: "Go."

In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched

sand that was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea.

The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he

achieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particular

part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thud

was grateful to him.

It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets,

clothes, and flasks, and women with coffee-pots and all the remedies

sacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to the men from the sea

was warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried

slowly up the beach, and the land's welcome for it could only be the

different and sinister hospitality of the grave.

When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight,

and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on

shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.

A MAN AND SOME OTHERS

I

Dark mesquit spread from horizon to horizon. There was no house or

horseman from which a mind could evolve a city or a crowd. The world

was declared to be a desert and unpeopled. Sometimes, however, on

days when no heat-mist arose, a blue shape, dim, of the substance

of a spectre's veil, appeared in the south-west, and a pondering

sheep-herder might remember that there were mountains.

In the silence of these plains the sudden and childish banging of a

tin pan could have made an iron-nerved man leap into the air. The sky

was ever flawless; the manoeuvring of clouds was an unknown pageant;

but at times a sheep-herder could see, miles away, the long, white

streamers of dust rising from the feet of another's flock, and the

interest became intense.

Bill was arduously cooking his dinner, bending over the fire, and

toiling like a blacksmith. A movement, a flash of strange colour,

perhaps, off in the bushes, caused him suddenly to turn his head.

Presently he arose, and, shading his eyes with his hand, stood

motionless and gazing. He perceived at last a Mexican sheep-herder

winding through the brush toward his camp.

"Hello!" shouted Bill.

The Mexican made no answer, but came steadily forward until he was

within some twenty yards. There he paused, and, folding his arms,

drew himself up in the manner affected by the villain in the play.

His serape muffled the lower part of his face, and his great sombrero

shaded his brow. Being unexpected and also silent, he had something of

the quality of an apparition; moreover, it was clearly his intention to

be mysterious and devilish.

The American's pipe, sticking carelessly in the corner of his mouth,

was twisted until the wrong side was uppermost, and he held his

frying-pan poised in the air. He surveyed with evident surprise this

apparition in the mesquit. "Hello, José!" he said; "what's the matter?"

The Mexican spoke with the solemnity of funeral tollings: "Beel,

you mus' geet off range. We want you geet off range. We no like.

Un'erstan'? We no like."

"What you talking about?" said Bill. "No like what?"

"We no like you here. Un'erstan'? Too mooch. You mus' geet out. We no

like. Un'erstan'?"

"Understand? No; I don't know what the blazes you're gittin' at."

Bill's eyes wavered in bewilderment, and his jaw fell. "I must git out?

I must git off the range? What you givin' us?"

The Mexican unfolded his serape with his small yellow hand. Upon his

face was then to be seen a smile that was gently, almost caressingly

murderous. "Beel," he said, "geet out!"

Bill's arm dropped until the frying-pan was at his knee. Finally he

turned again toward the fire. "Go on, you dog-gone little yaller rat!"

he said over his shoulder. "You fellers can't chase me off this range.

I got as much right here as anybody."

"Beel," answered the other in a vibrant tone, thrusting his head

forward and moving one foot, "you geet out or we keel you."

"Who will?" said Bill.

"I--and the others." The Mexican tapped his breast gracefully.

Bill reflected for a time, and then he said: "You ain't got no manner

of license to warn me off'n this range, and I won't move a rod.

Understand? I've got rights, and I suppose if I don't see 'em through,

no one is likely to give me a good hand and help me lick you fellers,

since I'm the only white man in half a day's ride. Now, look; if you

fellers try to rush this camp, I'm goin' to plug about fifty per cent.

of the gentlemen present, sure. I'm goin' in for trouble, an' I'll

git a lot of you. 'Nuther thing: if I was a fine valuable caballero

like you, I'd stay in the rear till the shootin' was done, because I'm

goin' to make a particular p'int of shootin' you through the chest." He

grinned affably, and made a gesture of dismissal.

As for the Mexican, he waved his hands in a consummate expression

of indifference. "Oh, all right," he said. Then, in a tone of deep

menace and glee, he added: "We will keel you eef you no geet. They have

decide'."

"They have, have they?" said Bill. "Well, you tell them to go to the

devil!"

II

Bill had been a mine-owner in Wyoming, a great man, an aristocrat,

one who possessed unlimited credit in the saloons down the gulch. He

had the social weight that could interrupt a lynching or advise a bad

man of the particular merits of a remote geographical point. However,

the fates exploded the toy balloon with which they had amused Bill,

and on the evening of the same day he was a professional gambler with

ill-fortune dealing him unspeakable irritation in the shape of three

big cards whenever another fellow stood pat. It is well here to inform

the world that Bill considered his calamities of life all dwarfs in

comparison with the excitement of one particular evening, when three

kings came to him with criminal regularity against a man who always

filled a straight. Later he became a cow-boy, more weirdly abandoned

than if he had never been an aristocrat. By this time all that remained

of his former splendour was his pride, or his vanity, which was one

thing which need not have remained. He killed the foreman of the ranch

over an inconsequent matter as to which of them was a liar, and the

midnight train carried him eastward. He became a brakeman on the Union

Pacific, and really gained high honours in the hobo war that for many

years has devastated the beautiful railroads of our country. A creature

of ill-fortune himself, he practised all the ordinary cruelties upon

these other creatures of ill-fortune. He was of so fierce a mien that

tramps usually surrendered at once whatever coin or tobacco they had

in their possession; and if afterward he kicked them from the train,

it was only because this was a recognized treachery of the war upon

the hoboes. In a famous battle fought in Nebraska in 1879, he would

have achieved a lasting distinction if it had not been for a deserter

from the United States army. He was at the head of a heroic and

sweeping charge, which really broke the power of the hoboes in that

country for three months; he had already worsted four tramps with

his own coupling-stick, when a stone thrown by the ex-third baseman

of F Troop's nine laid him flat on the prairie, and later enforced

a stay in the hospital in Omaha. After his recovery he engaged with

other railroads, and shuffled cars in countless yards. An order to

strike came upon him in Michigan, and afterward the vengeance of the

railroad pursued him until he assumed a name. This mask is like the

darkness in which the burglar chooses to move. It destroys many of the

healthy fears. It is a small thing, but it eats that which we call our

conscience. The conductor of No. 419 stood in the caboose within two

feet of Bill's nose, and called him a liar. Bill requested him to use

a milder term. He had not bored the foreman of Tin Can Ranch with any

such request, but had killed him with expedition. The conductor seemed

to insist, and so Bill let the matter drop.

He became the bouncer of a saloon on the Bowery in New York. Here most

of his fights were as successful as had been his brushes with the

hoboes in the West. He gained the complete admiration of the four clean

bar-tenders who stood behind the great and glittering bar. He was an

honoured man. He nearly killed Bad Hennessy, who, as a matter of fact,

had more reputation than ability, and his fame moved up the Bowery and

down the Bowery.

But let a man adopt fighting as his business, and the thought grows

constantly within him that it is his business to fight. These phrases

became mixed in Bill's mind precisely as they are here mixed; and let

a man get this idea in his mind, and defeat begins to move toward him

over the unknown ways of circumstances. One summer night three sailors

from the U.S.S. _Seattle_ sat in the saloon drinking and attending to

other people's affairs in an amiable fashion. Bill was a proud man

since he had thrashed so many citizens, and it suddenly occurred to him

that the loud talk of the sailors was very offensive. So he swaggered

upon their attention, and warned them that the saloon was the flowery

abode of peace and gentle silence. They glanced at him in surprise, and

without a moment's pause consigned him to a worse place than any stoker

of them knew. Whereupon he flung one of them through the side door

before the others could prevent it. On the sidewalk there was a short

struggle, with many hoarse epithets in the air, and then Bill slid

into the saloon again. A frown of false rage was upon his brow, and

he strutted like a savage king. He took a long yellow night-stick from

behind the lunch-counter, and started importantly toward the main doors

to see that the incensed seamen did not again enter.

The ways of sailormen are without speech, and, together in the street,

the three sailors exchanged no word, but they moved at once. Landsmen

would have required two years of discussion to gain such unanimity. In

silence, and immediately, they seized a long piece of scantling that

lay handily. With one forward to guide the battering-ram, and with two

behind him to furnish the power, they made a beautiful curve, and came

down like the Assyrians on the front door of that saloon.

Mystic and still mystic are the laws of fate. Bill, with his kingly

frown and his long night-stick, appeared at precisely that moment

in the doorway. He stood like a statue of victory; his pride was at

its zenith; and in the same second this atrocious piece of scantling

punched him in the bulwarks of his stomach, and he vanished like a

mist. Opinions differed as to where the end of the scantling landed

him, but it was ultimately clear that it landed him in south-western

Texas, where he became a sheep-herder.

The sailors charged three times upon the plate-glass front of the

saloon, and when they had finished, it looked as if it had been the

victim of a rural fire company's success in saving it from the flames.

As the proprietor of the place surveyed the ruins, he remarked that

Bill was a very zealous guardian of property. As the ambulance surgeon

surveyed Bill, he remarked that the wound was really an excavation.

III

As his Mexican friend tripped blithely away, Bill turned with a

thoughtful face to his frying-pan and his fire. After dinner he drew

his revolver from its scarred old holster, and examined every part of

it. It was the revolver that had dealt death to the foreman, and it

had also been in free fights in which it had dealt death to several or

none. Bill loved it because its allegiance was more than that of man,

horse, or dog. It questioned neither social nor moral position; it

obeyed alike the saint and the assassin. It was the claw of the eagle,

the tooth of the lion, the poison of the snake; and when he swept

it from its holster, this minion smote where he listed, even to the

battering of a far penny. Wherefore it was his dearest possession, and

was not to be exchanged in south-western Texas for a handful of rubies,

nor even the shame and homage of the conductor of No. 419.

During the afternoon he moved through his monotony of work and leisure

with the same air of deep meditation. The smoke of his supper-time fire

was curling across the shadowy sea of mesquit when the instinct of the

plainsman warned him that the stillness, the desolation, was again

invaded. He saw a motionless horseman in black outline against the

pallid sky. The silhouette displayed serape and sombrero, and even the

Mexican spurs as large as pies. When this black figure began to move

toward the camp, Bill's hand dropped to his revolver.

The horseman approached until Bill was enabled to see pronounced

American features, and a skin too red to grow on a Mexican face. Bill

released his grip on his revolver.

"Hello!" called the horseman.

"Hello!" answered Bill.

The horseman cantered forward. "Good evening," he said, as he again

drew rein.

"Good evenin'," answered Bill, without committing himself by too much

courtesy.

For a moment the two men scanned each other in a way that is not

ill-mannered on the plains, where one is in danger of meeting

horse-thieves or tourists.

Bill saw a type which did not belong in the mesquit. The young fellow

had invested in some Mexican trappings of an expensive kind. Bill's

eyes searched the outfit for some sign of craft, but there was none.

Even with his local regalia, it was clear that the young man was of a

far, black Northern city. He had discarded the enormous stirrups of

his Mexican saddle; he used the small English stirrup, and his feet

were thrust forward until the steel tightly gripped his ankles. As

Bill's eyes travelled over the stranger, they lighted suddenly upon the

stirrups and the thrust feet, and immediately he smiled in a friendly

way. No dark purpose could dwell in the innocent heart of a man who

rode thus on the plains.

As for the stranger, he saw a tattered individual with a tangle of hair

and beard, and with a complexion turned brick-colour from the sun and

whisky. He saw a pair of eyes that at first looked at him as the wolf

looks at the wolf, and then became childlike, almost timid, in their

glance. Here was evidently a man who had often stormed the iron walls

of the city of success, and who now sometimes valued himself as the

rabbit values his prowess.

The stranger smiled genially, and sprang from his horse. "Well, sir, I

suppose you will let me camp here with you to-night?"

"Eh?" said Bill.

"I suppose you will let me camp here with you to-night?"

Bill for a time seemed too astonished for words. "Well,"--he answered,

scowling in inhospitable annoyance--"well, I don't believe this here is

a good place to camp to-night, mister."

The stranger turned quickly from his saddle-girth.

"What?" he said in surprise. "You don't want me here? You don't want me

to camp here?"

Bill's feet scuffled awkwardly, and he looked steadily at a cactus

plant. "Well, you see, mister," he said, "I'd like your company well

enough, but--you see, some of these here greasers are goin' to chase

me off the range to-night; and while I might like a man's company all

right, I couldn't let him in for no such game when he ain't got nothin'

to do with the trouble."

"Going to chase you off the range?" cried the stranger.

"Well, they said they were goin' to do it," said Bill.

"And--great heavens! will they kill you, do you think?"

"Don't know. Can't tell till afterwards. You see, they take some feller

that's alone like me, and then they rush his camp when he ain't quite

ready for 'em, and ginerally plug 'im with a sawed-off shot-gun load

before he has a chance to git at 'em. They lay around and wait for

their chance, and it comes soon enough. Of course a feller alone like

me has got to let up watching some time. Maybe they ketch 'im asleep.

Maybe the feller gits tired waiting, and goes out in broad day, and

kills two or three just to make the whole crowd pile on him and settle

the thing. I heard of a case like that once. It's awful hard on a man's

mind--to git a gang after him."

"And so they're going to rush your camp to-night?" cried the stranger.

"How do you know? Who told you?"

"Feller come and told me."

"And what are you going to do? Fight?"

"Don't see nothin' else to do," answered Bill gloomily, still staring

at the cactus plant.

There was a silence. Finally the stranger burst out in an amazed cry.

"Well, I never heard of such a thing in my life! How many of them are

there?"

"Eight," answered Bill. "And now look-a-here; you ain't got no manner

of business foolin' around here just now, and you might better lope

off before dark. I don't ask no help in this here row. I know your

happening along here just now don't give me no call on you, and you

better hit the trail."

"Well, why in the name of wonder don't you go get the sheriff?" cried

the stranger.

"Oh, h----!" said Bill.

IV

Long, smoldering clouds spread in the western sky, and to the east

silver mists lay on the purple gloom of the wilderness.

Finally, when the great moon climbed the heavens and cast its ghastly

radiance upon the bushes, it made a new and more brilliant crimson of

the campfire, where the flames capered merrily through its mesquit

branches, filling the silence with the fire chorus, an ancient melody

which surely bears a message of the inconsequence of individual

tragedy--a message that is in the boom of the sea, the sliver of the

wind through the grass-blades, the silken clash of hemlock boughs.

No figures moved in the rosy space of the camp, and the search of the

moonbeams failed to disclose a living thing in the bushes. There was no

owl-faced clock to chant the weariness of the long silence that brooded

upon the plain.

The dew gave the darkness under the mesquit a velvet quality that

made air seem nearer to water, and no eye could have seen through it

the black things that moved like monster lizards toward the camp. The

branches, the leaves, that are fain to cry out when death approaches in

the wilds, were frustrated by these uncanny bodies gliding with the

finesse of the escaping serpent. They crept forward to the last point

where assuredly no frantic attempt of the fire could discover them, and

there they paused to locate the prey. A romance relates the tale of the

black cell hidden deep in the earth, where, upon entering, one sees

only the little eyes of snakes fixing him in menaces. If a man could

have approached a certain spot in the bushes, he would not have found

it romantically necessary to have his hair rise. There would have been

a sufficient expression of horror in the feeling of the death-hand at

the nape of his neck and in his rubber knee-joints.

Two of these bodies finally moved toward each other until for each

there grew out of the darkness a face placidly smiling with tender

dreams of assassination. "The fool is asleep by the fire, God be

praised!" The lips of the other widened in a grin of affectionate

appreciation of the fool and his plight. There was some signaling in

the gloom, and then began a series of subtle rustlings, interjected

often with pauses, during which no sound arose but the sound of faint

breathing.

A bush stood like a rock in the stream of firelight, sending its long

shadow backward. With painful caution the little company travelled

along this shadow, and finally arrived at the rear of the bush. Through

its branches they surveyed for a moment of comfortable satisfaction a

form in a grey blanket extended on the ground near the fire. The smile

of joyful anticipation fled quickly, to give place to a quiet air of

business. Two men lifted shot-guns with much of the barrels gone, and

sighting these weapons through the branches, pulled trigger together.

The noise of the explosions roared over the lonely mesquit as if these

guns wished to inform the entire world; and as the grey smoke fled,

the dodging company back of the bush saw the blanketed form twitching;

whereupon they burst out in chorus in a laugh, and arose as merry as a

lot of banqueters. They gleefully gestured congratulations, and strode

bravely into the light of the fire.

Then suddenly a new laugh rang from some unknown spot in the darkness.

It was a fearsome laugh of ridicule, hatred, ferocity. It might have

been demoniac. It smote them motionless in their gleeful prowl, as the

stern voice from the sky smites the legendary malefactor. They might

have been a weird group in wax, the light of the dying fire on their

yellow faces, and shining athwart their eyes turned toward the darkness

whence might come the unknown and the terrible.

The thing in the grey blanket no longer twitched; but if the knives in

their hands had been thrust toward it, each knife was now drawn back,

and its owner's elbow was thrown upward, as if he expected death from

the clouds.

This laugh had so chained their reason that for a moment they had no

wit to flee. They were prisoners to their terror. Then suddenly the

belated decision arrived, and with bubbling cries they turned to run;

but at that instant there was a long flash of red in the darkness, and

with the report one of the men shouted a bitter shout, spun once, and

tumbled headlong. The thick bushes failed to impede the route of the

others.

The silence returned to the wilderness. The tired flames faintly

illumined the blanketed thing and the flung corpse of the marauder, and

sang the fire chorus, the ancient melody which bears the message of the

inconsequence of human tragedy.

V

"Now you are worse off than ever," said the young man, dry-voiced and

awed.

"No, I ain't," said Bill rebelliously. "I'm one ahead."

After reflection, the stranger remarked, "Well, there's seven more."

They were cautiously and slowly approaching the camp. The sun was

flaring its first warming rays over the grey wilderness. Upreared

twigs, prominent branches, shone with golden light, while the shadows

under the mesquit were heavily blue.

Suddenly the stranger uttered a frightened cry. He had arrived at a

point whence he had, through openings in the thicket, a clear view of a

dead face.

"Gosh!" said Bill, who at the next instant had seen the thing; "I

thought at first it was that there José. That would have been queer,

after what I told 'im yesterday."

They continued their way, the stranger wincing in his walk, and Bill

exhibiting considerable curiosity.

The yellow beams of the new sun were touching the grim hues of the

dead Mexican's face, and creating there an inhuman effect, which made

his countenance more like a mask of dulled brass. One hand, grown

curiously thinner, had been flung out regardlessly to a cactus bush.

Bill walked forward and stood looking respectfully at the body. "I know

that feller; his name is Miguel. He----"

The stranger's nerves might have been in that condition when there

is no backbone to the body, only a long groove. "Good heavens!" he

exclaimed, much agitated; "don't speak that way!"

"What way?" said Bill. "I only said his name was Miguel."

After a pause the stranger said:

"Oh, I know; but----" He waved his hand. "Lower your voice, or

something. I don't know. This part of the business rattles me, don't

you see?"

"Oh, all right," replied Bill, bowing to the other's mysterious

mood. But in a moment he burst out violently and loud in the most

extraordinary profanity, the oaths winging from him as the sparks go

from the funnel.

He had been examining the contents of the bundled grey blanket, and

he had brought forth, among other things, his frying-pan. It was now

only a rim with a handle; the Mexican volley had centered upon it. A

Mexican shot-gun of the abbreviated description is ordinarily loaded

with flat-irons, stove-lids, lead pipe, old horseshoes, sections of

chain, window weights, railroad sleepers and spikes, dumb-bells, and

any other junk which may be at hand. When one of these loads encounters

a man vitally, it is likely to make an impression upon him, and a

cooking-utensil may be supposed to subside before such an assault of

curiosities.

Bill held high his desecrated frying-pan, turning it this way and that

way. He swore until he happened to note the absence of the stranger. A

moment later he saw him leading his horse from the bushes. In silence

and sullenly the young man went about saddling the animal. Bill said,

"Well, goin' to pull out?"

The stranger's hands fumbled uncertainly at the throat-latch. Once

he exclaimed irritably, blaming the buckle for the trembling of his

fingers. Once he turned to look at the dead face with the light of the

morning sun upon it. At last he cried, "Oh, I know the whole thing was

all square enough--couldn't be squarer--but--somehow or other, that

man there takes the heart out of me." He turned his troubled face for

another look. "He seems to be all the time calling me a--he makes me

feel like a murderer."

"But," said Bill, puzzling, "you didn't shoot him, mister; I shot him."

"I know; but I feel that way, somehow. I can't get rid of it."

Bill considered for a time; then he said diffidently, "Mister, you're a

eddycated man, ain't you?"

"What?"

"You're what they call a--a eddycated man, ain't you?"

The young man, perplexed, evidently had a question upon his lips, when

there was a roar of guns, bright flashes, and in the air such hooting

and whistling as would come from a swift flock of steam-boilers. The

stranger's horse gave a mighty, convulsive spring, snorting wildly in

its sudden anguish, fell upon its knees, scrambled afoot again, and was

away in the uncanny death run known to men who have seen the finish of

brave horses.

"This comes from discussin' things," cried Bill angrily.

He had thrown himself flat on the ground facing the thicket whence had

come the firing. He could see the smoke winding over the bush-tops.

He lifted his revolver, and the weapon came slowly up from the ground

and poised like the glittering crest of a snake. Somewhere on his face

there was a kind of smile, cynical, wicked, deadly, of a ferocity which

at the same time had brought a deep flush to his face, and had caused

two upright lines to glow in his eyes.

"Hello, José!" he called, amiable for satire's sake. "Got your old

blunderbusses loaded up again yet?"

The stillness had returned to the plain. The sun's brilliant rays swept

over the sea of mesquit, painting the far mists of the west with faint

rosy light, and high in the air some great bird fled toward the south.

"You come out here," called Bill, again addressing the landscape, "and

I'll give you some shootin' lessons. That ain't the way to shoot."

Receiving no reply, he began to invent epithets and yell them at

the thicket. He was something of a master of insult, and, moreover,

he dived into his memory to bring forth imprecations tarnished with

age, unused since fluent Bowery days. The occupation amused him, and

sometimes he laughed so that it was uncomfortable for his chest to be

against the ground.

Finally the stranger, prostrate near him, said wearily, "Oh, they've

gone."

"Don't you believe it," replied Bill, sobering swiftly. "They're there

yet--every man of 'em."

"How do you know?"

"Because I do. They won't shake us so soon. Don't put your head up, or

they'll get you, sure."

Bill's eyes, meanwhile, had not wavered from their scrutiny of the

thicket in front. "They're there all right; don't you forget it. Now

you listen." So he called out: "José! Ojo, José! Speak up, _hombre_! I

want have talk. Speak up, you yaller cuss, you!"

Whereupon a mocking voice from off in the bushes said, "Señor?"

"There," said Bill to his ally; "didn't I tell you? The whole batch."

Again he lifted his voice. "José--look--ain't you gittin' kinder tired?

You better go home, you fellers, and git some rest."

The answer was a sudden furious chatter of Spanish, eloquent with

hatred, calling down upon Bill all the calamities which life holds. It

was as if some one had suddenly enraged a cageful of wild cats. The

spirits of all the revenges which they had imagined were loosened at

this time, and filled the air.

"They're in a holler," said Bill, chuckling, "or there'd be shootin'."

Presently he began to grow angry. His hidden enemies called him nine

kinds of coward, a man who could fight only in the dark, a baby who

would run from the shadows of such noble Mexican gentlemen, a dog that

sneaked. They described the affair of the previous night, and informed

him of the base advantage he had taken of their friend. In fact,

they in all sincerity endowed him with every quality which he no less

earnestly believed them to possess. One could have seen the phrases

bite him as he lay there on the ground fingering his revolver.

VI

It is sometimes taught that men do the furious and desperate thing from

an emotion that is as even and placid as the thoughts of a village

clergyman on Sunday afternoon. Usually, however, it is to be believed

that a panther is at the time born in the heart, and that the subject

does not resemble a man picking mulberries.

"B' G----!" said Bill, speaking as from a throat filled with dust,

"I'll go after 'em in a minute."

"Don't you budge an inch!" cried the stranger, sternly. "Don't you

budge!"

"Well," said Bill, glaring at the bushes--"well--"

"Put your head down!" suddenly screamed the stranger, in white alarm.

As the guns roared, Bill uttered a loud grunt, and for a moment leaned

panting on his elbow, while his arm shook like a twig. Then he upreared

like a great and bloody spirit of vengeance, his face lighted with the

blaze of his last passion. The Mexicans came swiftly and in silence.

The lightning action of the next few moments was of the fabric of

dreams to the stranger. The muscular struggle may not be real to the

drowning man. His mind may be fixed on the far, straight shadows back

of the stars, and the terror of them. And so the fight, and his part in

it, had to the stranger only the quality of a picture half drawn. The

rush of feet, the spatter of shots, the cries, the swollen faces seen

like masks on the smoke, resembled a happening of the night.

And yet afterward certain lines, forms, lived out so strongly from the

incoherence that they were always in his memory.

He killed a man, and the thought went swiftly by him, like the feather

on the gale, that it was easy to kill a man.

Moreover, he suddenly felt for Bill, this grimy sheep-herder, some deep

form of idolatry. Bill was dying, and the dignity of last defeat, the

superiority of him who stands in his grave, was in the pose of the lost

sheep-herder.

* * * * *

The stranger sat on the ground idly mopping the sweat and powder-stain

from his brow. He wore the gentle idiot smile of an aged beggar as he

watched three Mexicans limping and staggering in the distance. He noted

at this time that one who still possessed a serape had from it none

of the grandeur of the cloaked Spaniard, but that against the sky the

silhouette resembled a cornucopia of childhood's Christmas.

They turned to look at him, and he lifted his weary arm to menace them

with his revolver. They stood for a moment banded together, and hooted

curses at him.

Finally he arose, and, walking some paces, stooped to loosen Bill's

grey hands from a throat. Swaying as if slightly drunk, he stood

looking down into the still face.

Struck suddenly with a thought, he went about with dulled eyes on the

ground, until he plucked his gaudy blanket from where it lay dirty from

trampling feet. He dusted it carefully, and then returned and laid it

over Bill's form. There he again stood motionless, his mouth just agape

and the same stupid glance in his eyes, when all at once he made a

gesture of fright and looked wildly about him.

He had almost reached the thicket when he stopped, smitten with alarm.

A body contorted, with one arm stiff in the air, lay in his path.

Slowly and warily he moved around it, and in a moment the bushes,

nodding and whispering, their leaf-faces turned toward the scene

behind him, swung and swung again into stillness and the peace of the

wilderness.

THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY

I

The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion

that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the plains

of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of green grass, dull-hued

spaces of mesquit and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of

light and tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over

the horizon, a precipice.

A newly-married pair had boarded this train at San Antonio. The man's

face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun, and a direct

result of his new black clothes was that his brick-coloured hands were

constantly performing in a most conscious fashion. From time to time

he looked down respectfully at his attire. He sat with a hand on each

knee, like a man waiting in a barber's shop. The glances he devoted to

other passengers were furtive and shy.

The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress

of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there,

and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted her head

to regard her puff-sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They

embarrassed her. It was quite apparent that she had cooked, and that

she expected to cook, dutifully. The blushes caused by the careless

scrutiny of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange

to see upon this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in

placid, almost emotionless lines.

They were evidently very happy. "Ever been in a parlour-car before?" he

asked, smiling with delight.

"No," she answered; "I never was. It's fine, ain't it?"