Vinton's flotilla came steaming into Honolulu harbor just as the smoke
of the Doric was fading away on the westward horizon.
Cheers and acclamations, a banquet tendered to the entire force in the
beautiful grounds about the Palace, and a welcome such as even San
Francisco had not given awaited them. Three days were spent in coaling
for the long voyage to Manila, and during that time officers and men
were enabled to spend hours in sea-bathing and sight-seeing.
Vinton, eager to push ahead, fumed with impatience over the slow and
primitive methods by which his ships were coaled, but the junior
officers found many a cause for rejoicing over their enforced detention.
Dinners, dances, and surf-rides were the order of every evening. Riding
parties to the Pali and picnics at Pearl Harbor and the plantations
along the railway filled up every hour of the long, soft, sensuous days.
The soldiers explored every nook and corner of the town and, for a
wonder, got back to ship without serious diminution in their number, and
with a high opinion of the police, who seemed bent on protecting the
blue-coats from the States and making the best of their exuberance of
spirits.
Only one row of any consequence occurred within the forty-eight hours of
their arrival. Three of the Colorado volunteers playing billiards in a
prominent resort were deliberately annoyed and insulted by some merchant
sailors who had been drinking heavily at the expense of a short,
thick-set, burly fellow in a loud check suit and flaming necktie, a
stranger to the police, who knew of him only that he had landed from the
Doric and was waiting the coming of the Miowera from Vancouver for
Australia, and she was due on the morrow.
He had taken quarters at a second-rate sailors' lodging-house and at
first kept much to himself, but, once started to drinking with his
maritime neighbors, he became noisy and truculent, and sallied forth
with four of his new-found friends, all half drunk and wholly bent on
mischief.
The sight of three quiet-mannered young fellows playing pool in the
saloon was just the thing to excite all the blackguard instinct latent
in their half-sodden skins, and from sneering remark they had rapidly
passed to deliberate insult.
In less than a minute thereafter the three young volunteers, flushed and
panting, were surveying the police and bystanders busily engaged in
dragging out from under the tables and propping up some wrecks of
humanity, while the head devil of the whole business, the burly civilian
in the loud-checked suit, pitched headlong out of the rear window, was
stanching the blood from his broken nose at the hydrant of a neighboring
stable.
The volunteers were escorted to the landing with all honors, and their
antagonists, barring the ringleader, to the police station. The affair
was over so quickly that few had seen anything of it and only one man
had pitched in to the support of the soldiers--a civilian who came over
on the Vanguard by the authority of General Vinton, the ex-brakeman of
the Southern Pacific. While the Colorado men had little to say beyond
the statement that they had been wantonly insulted if not actually
assailed by a gang of strangers, the railway man was ablaze with
excitement and wrath over the escape of the leader of the vanquished
party.
"I've seen that cur-dog face of his somewhere before," said he, "and the
quicker you find him and nab him the better. That man's wanted in more
than one place, or I'm a duffer."
And so the police spent hours that night in search of the stranger, but
to no purpose. He kept in hiding somewhere, and their efforts were vain.
Search of his luggage at the lodging-house revealed the fact that he had
a lot of new shirts, underwear, etc., but not a paper or mark that
revealed his identity. The proprietor said the man had given the name of
Spence, but he heard two of the sailors call him Sackett.
The following evening the general and his staff dined at the beautiful
home of one of the old and wealthy residents, and towards nine o'clock
Mr. Stuyvesant asked his general's permission to withdraw, as he had two
calls to make before returning aboard ship. They were to sail at dawn.
Bidding good-night and good-by to his charming hostess, and declining
the hospitable offer of a post-prandial "peg" from her genial lord, the
young officer stepped blithely away down the moonlit avenue.
It was a beautiful summer night. The skies were cloudless, the air soft
and still. Somewhere, either at the park or in the grounds of the Royal
Hawaiian, the famous band of Honolulu was giving a concert, and strains
of glorious music, rich and full, came floating on the gentle breeze.
Here and there the electric lights were gleaming in the dense tropical
foliage, and sounds of merry chat and musical laughter fell softly on
the ear.
The broad thoroughfare of Beretania Street was well nigh deserted,
though once in a while the lights of a cab on noiseless wheel flashed
by, and at rare intervals Stuyvesant met or overtook some blissful pair
whispering in the deep shadows of the overhanging trees.
It was quite a walk to the consul-general's, his first objective point,
but he enjoyed it and the brief visit that followed. Naturally the
affair of the previous evening came up for discussion, and there was
some conjecture and speculation as to the identity of the leader of the
attack on the Denver boys. Stuyvesant repeated what his friend the
brakeman said, that somewhere he had seen the fellow's face before, but
he had only a second's glimpse of it, for the moment he launched in to
the aid of the volunteers the man in the check suit caught sight of
him--and a simultaneous crack on the nose that sent him reeling towards
the open window, through which he darted the instant he could recover
balance, leaving the field equally divided, four to four in point of
numbers, but otherwise with overwhelming advantage on the side of the
clear heads and trained muscles of the soldiers.
A grewsome sight those sailors had presented when called up for sentence
in the morning, and a remorseful quartette they proved. Moreover, to the
consul-general, who had been called in in the interest of fair play for
Jack, they declared that they were innocent of all evil intent. They
only went in for a little fun with the soldiers. It was that San
Francisco fellow who called himself Spence when he was sober and Sackett
when he got drunk who brought on the row, and then abandoned them to
their fate. He had owned that he "had it in" for soldiers in
general,--hated the whole gang of them and wanted to see them well
licked. He had plenty of money and would pay their fines if the police
"ran them in," and now he had left them in the lurch.
They had no money and were confronted with the probability of a
month's labor with the "chain-gang" on the public roads if the
consul-general couldn't get them off. So that amiable official had
gone out to the flotilla and had a talk with the Colorado officers and
the three brawny heroes of the billiard-room battle, with the result
that everybody agreed to heap all the blame on the vanished culprit in
the check suit, and the sailors got off with a nominal fine and went
home to nurse their bruises and their wrath against Spence, _alias_
Sackett. That fellow shouldn't get away on the Miowera if they could
help it.
All this Stuyvesant was pondering over as, after stopping to leave his
P. P. C. at the Pacific Club, he strolled down Fort Street on his way to
the boat-landing. The big whistle of an incoming steamer had attracted
his attention as he left the consul-general's to make one more call, and
at the club he heard someone say the Miowera had reached her dock and
would sail for Australia in the morning.
The sky, that had been so cloudless early in the evening, became
somewhat overcast by eleven, and the moonlight was dim and vague as he
reached the landing.
In his several trips to and from the transport it happened that he had
fallen frequently into the hands of a bright Kanaka boatboy whose
admirable rowing and handling of the boat had pleased and interested
him.
"Be ready to take me out about 11.30," he had told him, and now where
was he?
Several officers and soldiers were there bargaining with the boatmen,
and three or four of these amphibious Hawaiians precipitated themselves
on Stuyvesant with appeals for a job, but he asked for Joe.
"Him gone," was the answer of an eager rival. "Him other job;" but even
as they would have persuaded Stuyvesant that Joe was not to be had and
his selection must be one of their number, Joe himself came running from
the direction of a warehouse a short pistol-shot away.
"What kept you, Joe?" asked Stuyvesant, as the light boat danced away on
the tide.
"Feller want me take him outside Miowera," was the answer, "him behind
warehouse."
"The deuce you say!" exclaimed Stuyvesant, turning about in the
stern-sheets and gazing back to shore. "Are there landing-stairs at the
warehouse, and is he waiting for you there?"
"Huh," nodded Joe.
"Then here," said Stuyvesant, glancing moon-ward and noting with
satisfaction that the luminary was behind a thick bank of clouds. "Turn
back and row to the warehouse steps. I want to look at that fellow." So
saying, he quickly threw off his uniform coat with its gleaming
shoulder-straps and collar device, stowed his forage-cap under the seat,
and sat bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves.
Obedient to Joe's powerful strokes, the little boat was speedily gliding
in among the shadows of the sailing-ships moored along the quay, and
presently her stern was swung round to a flight of stone steps, and
Stuyvesant bounded ashore. Over at the boat-landing the electric lights
were gleaming and the sound of many voices chaffering over boat-fares
was heard. Here among the sheds and warehouses all was silence and
darkness, but Stuyvesant unhesitatingly strode straight to the corner of
the big building and into the blackness of the westward side, peering
right and left in search of the skulker who dared not come to the open
dock, yet sought means of reaching the Australian steamer.
For a moment he could distinguish no living object, then paused to
listen, and within ten seconds was rewarded. Somewhere close at hand
between him and a low shed to his left there was the sound of sudden
collision and a muttered oath. Some invisible body had bumped against
some invisible box, and, turning sharply, Stuyvesant made a spring, and
the next instant had grappled with some burly, powerful form, and was
dragging it, despite furious resistance, towards the light.
He was conscious of the sickening odor of sour whiskey, of a volley of
mad threats and imprecations, of a stinging blow in the face that only
served to make him cling the tighter to his prisoner. Then, as they
swayed and struggled to and fro, he felt that he was not gaining ground,
and that this unseen ruffian might after all escape him. He lifted up
his voice in a mighty shout:
"Police! Police! This way!"
Then he heard a savage oath, a sputtering, savage "Let go, damn
your soul!" and then felt a sharp, stinging pang in the right
side--another--another! and earth and sky reeled as his grasp relaxed,
and with a moan of anguish he sank fainting on the dock.