the perspiration poured down my naked breast and shoulders as I threw
clouds of sand on all sides. I was as drunk as if I had swallowed a pint
of liquor, and I remember nothing except that I felt like shouting with
delight. I finally cleared a box of the sand over it and then tried to
lift it. To my intense surprise it moved easily. But my excitement gave
way to the deepest disappointment, for I well knew that if a box about
six feet long, two wide, and two deep contained coin it would take more
than one man of my size to move it.
“I lost no time thinking these thoughts, but started to pry off the lid.
The wood, which was extremely well preserved, resisted the edge of my
shovel so well that it broke the iron. I was losing patience, so,
whirling the shovel above my head, I brought it down with crushing force
upon the lid. After a few blows it gave way, and I eagerly tore off the
splintered fragments. As I did so I leaned over and peered into the face
of a corpse.
“I leaped back and gazed at it in a stupefied way for some moments, my
head in a whirl, then partially recovering myself, I went forward to
examine it. It looked like the body of a man in the uniform of an
officer; at least so I judged by some buttons on the coat; but
everything had passed through the last stages of decomposition. There
was nothing left on the head at all, and the teeth grinned horribly in
the moonlight.
“As I stood and gazed I thought of Alvarez. So this was his secret! How
came a man to be buried in such a lonely spot? Was it a friend or victim
of his former days, brought ashore from some vessel in the offing that
dare not land at St. Augustine?
“I did not molest the body, but after recovering myself I put the
fragments of the lid back as well as I could and piled the sand over it.
I then dressed, and, taking my gun, started for the boat. After sailing
several hours with hardly any wind, I arrived at the town just as the
rising sun came up out of the ocean. I said nothing of my trip to any
one, and soon after left St. Augustine to return no more for years.
“The town is a queer old place, but it has changed greatly to one who
remembers it as it was years ago. Its quaint old fort and coquina walls
doubtless contain many secrets of their former owners. As for old
Alvarez, he carried his to sea with him that bright afternoon with a
shark for a pilot.”
_THE CURSE OF WOMAN_
“Some skippers are good and some are bad,” said Gantline, joining in the
talk on the main-hatch. He was second mate, so we listened. He
expectorated with great accuracy into a coil of rope and continued:
“Likewise so are owners. The same holds good to most kinds of people.
Some owners don’t want good skippers. They’re apt to be expensive on
long runs, for they won’t cheat a poor devil of a sailor out of his
lime-juice and other luxuries they have nowadays. At best a sailor gets
less pay and works harder than any man alive, leave out the danger and
discomfort on a long voyage on an overloaded ship. It’s only fair to
treat him as well as possible. This idea that feeding a man well and not
cursing him at every order will make him lazy is wrong, and ought to be
kept among the class of skippers who take their ‘lunars’ with a
hand-lead.
“There are some ships always unlucky. But the luck is mostly the fault
of the skipper.
“Take, for instance, the loss of the Golden Arrow or the big clipper
Pharos, that was found adrift in the doldrums without a man aboard her.
Everything was in its place and not a boat was lowered. Even the dishes
lay upon the table with the food rotten in them, but there wasn’t a soul
to tell how she came to be unmanned. She was an unlucky ship, for on
her next voyage out she stayed. No one has seen plank or spar of her for
twelve years. But the skipper and mate who left her adrift outside of
the Guinea current were well known to deep-water men.
“I’m no sky-pilot, and I don’t mean to say a skipper who prefers a
pretty stewardess to an ugly one--or none at all--is always a bad man,
but I do say that a skipper who cuts off a man’s lime-juice, gives him
weevils for bread, and two-year-old junk for beef, has got enough
devilry in him for anything, and is apt to have things comfortable in
the after-cabin.
“It was nothing but scurvy that killed young Jim Douglas, so they said;
but what about Hollender, the skipper, who brought him in along with
nineteen others?
“I went to see Jim in the hospital, and he was an awful sight. His eyes
rolled horribly, but he took my hand and held it a long time; then he
tried to talk. His mind wasn’t steady and he often lost his bearings,
but there was something besides delirium behind his tale.
“‘Her curse is on us, Gantline,’ he kept whispering. I held him, but he
lay mumbling. ‘Dan died, too, an’ we sewed him up in canvas like a ham,
an’ over he went; but it wouldn’t have helped, for the water was as
rotten as it lays in the deadwood bilge. ’Twas the ghost of the
skipper’s wife holding us back--her curse did the business, an’ I knew
it.’ Then he calmed down and talked more natural.
“‘She came aboard with the child, an’ Hollender’s stewardess wouldn’t
wait on her. Black-eyed she-devil that woman. An’ the skipper grinned,
an’ the poor thing cried an’ cried. “Don’t treat me so; have mercy!” But
he just grinned. “You can go forward an’ live with the mate if you don’t
like it,” he said. She just cried an’ cried. One night she came on deck
an’ rushed to the rail. She had her baby with her an’ she hesitated.
“’“Shall we go aft?” I said to Dan. “It’s mutiny an’ death,” says he.
“‘Then she cursed us all--an’ went over the side----’ Jim lay quiet
after this for a minute, then he began:
“‘Slower, slower, slower. No wind, two hundred days out, an’ the water
as rotten as it is in the deadwood bilge. The cat--I mean the mate--went
up on the forecastle, an’ he never came back. We ate him, an’ tied his
paws around our necks for luck. No wind, an’ the sails slatted to and
fro on the yards. Midnight, an’ bright moonlight when it struck us, an’
tore our masts out an’ drove us far out of the path of ships, an’ we lay
there with the boats gone, water-logged till we rigged enough gear to
drift home by---- Help! Gantline, help! The curse of the woman was on
the ship, for there wasn’t a man aboard----’
“He struggled and rose up in the cot. His eyes were staring at the blank
wall. I held him hard for an instant and he suddenly relaxed. Then he
fell back dead.
“Then, you see, there was the Albatross that sailed----”
“But hold on a bit. Stop a minute!” said Mr. Enlis. “If you keep on like
that, Gantline, you’ll ruin the passenger trade as far as wimmen are
concerned. As for stewardesses, there won’t be one afloat if you keep
croaking. You seem to think wimmen do nothing but harm afloat, whereas I
know plenty who have done good. I don’t see what wimmen have to do with
wittles, anyhow?”
“Who in the name of Davy Jones said they had?” growled Gantline,
angrily. “I’m no sky-pilot, and I----”
“Right you are, mate, you say true there, for if I was to go to you to
get my last heading I’d fetch up on a lee shore where there’d be few
strange faces.”
Gantline gave a grunt of disgust. “That’s just the way with you every
time any one starts a line of argument to prove a thing’s so; you always
sheer off, or bring in something that’s got nothing to do with the case
and don’t signify. Here I’ve been showing that bad luck to ships is
caused by something wrong with the skippers, and here you are trying to
bring wimmen into the case, just as if your thoughts ran on nothing
else. But, pshaw! everybody knows what kind of a fellow you are when
you’re on the beach.” And he jerked his pipe into his pocket and walked
aft.
“Never mind him,” said Mr. Enlis. “He’s an old croaker, and it’s just
such growling that makes trouble for skippers. But whenever you see a
man talk like that there’s always something behind it. Yes, sir, every
time.”
“How do you mean?” asked Chips.
“Well, when a man’s soured on wimmen there is always a cause for it, and
I happen to know something about Gantline’s past. It’s the old story,
but who wants to know how Jim or Jack’s wife fell in love with him?
Neither does any one care about how she comes to leave him, though
nearly all story books are written about such things, and that’s the
reason I never read them. There ain’t much novelty in that line.
“Lord, love is all alike, just the same in the poor man as in the rich;
but what I was about to say is this: Gantline, here, gives the idea that
wimmen are dangerous afloat and leaves off telling anything good about
them. That ain’t exactly fair. It’s true most wimmen who follow the sea
are not exactly to be considered fighting craft, and are mighty apt to
strike their colors do you but let it be known you’re out for prizes.
Still, I know of cases where they’ve done a power of good. There was
‘Short Moll,’ who was stewardess with old man Fane, and she made him.
“The old man, you see, had been getting lonely, and had taken to
carrying large invoices of grog, which is bound to break a man in the
long run.
“One day at the dock Moll came along and inquired for the skipper. The
old man saw her coming, and bawled out, ‘For Heaven’s sake, Mr. Enlis,
don’t let her come aboard!’ and dived below.
“I ran to the gang-plank as she started over and said, ‘Captain’s gone
up-town, and there ain’t no visitors allowed.’
“‘Oh, there ain’t?’ she said sort of sweetly, and she screwed up her
little slits of eyes. ‘If that’s the case, you may consider me one of
the crew, for I’ve got a notion they want a stewardess aboard.’
“‘There ain’t no passengers, so get back on the dock and obey orders!’
And I planted myself athwart the plank.
“Well, sir, if you ever seen a change come over a woman in three shakes
of a sheet-rope you ought to seen her.
“‘What!’ she yelled. ‘You stop me from coming aboard a ship in this free
an’ easy country of America? Git out o’ the way, you slab-sided,
herring-gutted son of a wind-jammer, or I’ll run ye down an’ cut ye in
two.’ And she bore down on me under full sail.
“She carried a full cargo, and I stepped down on the main-deck, for,
after all, that gang-plank was too narrow a subject for such
broad-minded folk as Moll and me to discuss on the spur of the moment.
“She never gave me a look, but steered straight for the cabin and
disappeared.
“There was a most uncommon noise, and I saw the skipper’s head pop up
the hatchway. But in a moment he was drawn slowly downward, and as he
turned his face he looked like a drowning man sinking for the last
time.
“Well, the first day off soundings there was another fracas, and Moll
came forward with a can of condensed milk in one hand and a bunch of
keys in the other. She gave me a leer and waved the can of milk, and I
knew we were to live high that voyage. I hadn’t tasted the stuff for
nigh two years.
“One day there was another scuffle below, and a bottle of liquor sailed
up the companion-way and smashed against the binnacle. There were all
kinds of noises after that, but I finally made out Moll’s voice bawling,
‘Not another drap, sir! Not another drap!’
“He was a sober man for two years until she left, and after Fane heard
of her death he wasn’t the same man. She really did more good than many
a better brought-up woman on the beach, and if he called her an angel
it’s nothing to laugh at, though her wings may have looked more like the
little winged animals that fly o’ night among the mosquitoes in the
harbor than like doves.
“So you see there’s no use going against the wimmen, for there’s lots of
good in them, only it takes strange circumstances at times to bring it
out.
“After all, I don’t blame Gantline. And between us I’ll tell you why.”
Here Mr. Enlis looked sharply fore and aft to see if anybody might
interrupt us, and then spoke in a low voice.
“He married a girl years ago, and one day he came home and found her
missing. She had run off with a fellow named Jones, who was once mate
with Crojack.
“He followed that fellow all over the world. That hole in his cheek is
where Jones’s bullet went through when they met once on the streets in
Calcutta. Jones got several bad cuts before they were separated. A year
or two after this they met again, and Gantline has had that list in his
walk ever since. You see, virtue and right don’t always come out winners
on deep-water, unless the virtue lies in the heft of your hand. That
mate Jones was a big man, and they used to say he was a powerful hand
for putting a crew through a course of study to find out who’s who and
what’s what. According to report they generally found Bill Jones was
something of both, and I heard that one voyage there wasn’t enough
belaying-pins left aboard to clew down the topsails on, so they left
them flying and put over the side for it as soon as the hook took the
ground.
“But what I am coming to is this: Gantline was second mate with that
same fellow Hollender the voyage one of his men sent his black soul to
hell. The mate was killed and Gantline was left in command.
“To the eastward of Juan Fernandez he picked up a boat adrift with one
man in it. He was alive and that was all. Gantline stood by while they
lifted the fellow on deck, and as he caught sight of his sun-blackened
face with the dry lips cracking over the black gums he gave a start and
swore horribly. Then he walked fore and aft on the poop, and they say
he chewed up nigh two pounds of tobacco during the rest of the day. When
the fellow’s mouth was wet enough to speak with, he raved and cried,
‘Saved at last! Saved at last!’ until they had to lash him in his bunk.
Sometimes he would call out a girl’s name, and Gantline would rush
forward onto the forecastle-head and storm at the men working on deck.
“It didn’t last long. The fellow was strong and began to recover, and
then Gantline had his say. He walked into the room one morning carrying
two glasses full of grog, and he put them both on the sea-chest.
“Jones looked up and recognized him--for he was clear in his mind
now--and he started for him. But he was too weak, and Gantline bore him
back into the bunk and poked a revolver into his face, telling him to
keep quiet.
“‘You are in my hands now, and I’ll give you a fair chance, but God
knows you don’t deserve it,’ he said. ‘I could tip you over the side as
well as not, but I won’t unless it’s your fate.’
“The fellow saw he was caught and started up again, but Gantline drew
the barrel of his pistol level with his eyes, so he kept quiet.
“‘Now,’ he went on, ‘you are too weak to fight with any chance, but I’ve
followed you too long to let you go unless it’s the will of Providence.
In one of those glasses of grog is a poison that will put one man out of
misery without any mess. I know which glass holds it, but you don’t; so
I’ll give you first chance. If it comes to me I’ll drink it, but if it
comes to you, you’ll drink it or I’ll put a hole in your face. Now let
her go.’
“The fellow Jones lay silent a moment and looked Gantline steadily in
the eyes. Then a smile broke slowly over his face. He picked up a glass
and drank off the liquor, and Gantline did the same. Then Gantline
hurried on deck.
“He walked fore and aft a few moments and then dived below for the
medicine-chest.”
“What!” cried Chips, “did he get the poison?”
“Sure,” said Mr. Enlis; “but you see Gantline isn’t such a fool as he
looks. He had done some thinking during those moments on deck, and it
seemed to clear his mind. It don’t do to lay down the law to Providence.
No, sir, it don’t do. You never can tell just what Providence will do.
Gantline measured a tremendous emetic and gulped it down. Likewise, in a
moment, up it came, and the poison with it.
“After all, he did the right thing by Jones. He put him ashore, and as
luck would have it, the war was on then, and he was shot just outside
Valparaiso by the Chilian soldiers, who took him for a deserter. That’s
the reason Gantline never says anything good about wimmen--and I don’t
blame him much!”
THE END