IV

The first thing to note about the manuscript left by the late Captain

Buel Vanton, a resident of Blue Port, Long Island, who inexplicably

shot himself dead after affixing the date, was unquestionably the

name, written at the end of the document a few seconds before the

author took leave of it--and a good many other things--forever. Captain

Vanton signed his narrative, for a narrative it turned out to be upon

examination, with what had, at first, the appearance of a pen name. It

was entirely legible, and read: “Jacob King.”

Not a name of any distinction. It suggested absolutely nothing to the

coroner. In fact, it would have been regarded as a piece of annoying

irrelevance on the part of the late Captain Vanton had not his son,

a young fellow with a hang-dog look, said sullenly that it was the

real name of the writer. The coroner had been mightily puzzled and not

a little suspicious. Whereupon Guy Vanton had suggested, still more

sullenly, that the manuscript itself might supply an explanation fuller

and more convincing than his own assertion. The coroner thereupon

turned his attention again to the document before him, and read it--a

serious occupation that took him as long as an ordinary inquest. Yet,

in a way, the occupation saved trouble if not time, for after his

perusal the coroner decided that it was “a plain case of suicide--man

plumb crazy--must have been crazy for years”; and that an inquest

was wholly unnecessary. As the manuscript on which the late Captain

Vanton (or Jacob King) had lavished so much literary skill (or insane

invention) thus became, through the coroner’s intervention, an official

record, any one caring to hunt through the dusty and sneeze-provoking

accumulation of papers in the coroner’s office could read it in full,

from beginning to end, written, as it had been, at various times and

in various places, in several colours of ink, but always in the same

small, slanting, distinctive hand. So perused, it ran as follows:

V

I, Jacob King, was born in New York City. I ran away to sea at the

age of 14, and at 19 I was a ship’s officer.

At 19 I was a man, not a young man but a grown man, and any one who

has followed the sea will know what that means. The sea ripens a man

early, ripens him and fixes his mind for good or for evil, according

to his capacity to understand the life about him. Nowadays on shore

I see young fellows of 19 that are not much better than children,

except that they have stretched enough to wear long trousers. That

is the life of the land, where such a thing as responsibility seems

to be unknown until men have begun to decay. I was not that way; and

if I had had a better mind I might have made a success of life. I

think I would have been successful ashore, anyway, for I was quick

and clever and never shirked work; but mostly I think so because

I was hard and young and brazen. I knew how to fight and I knew

how to bluff. Ashore, it would have been enough to know how to

bluff, I should not have had to fight. At sea a man cannot succeed,

permanently, without actual worth and fighting and winning. On the

land, so far as my observation goes, actual worth is by no means

necessary to success. Any number of things may make a landsman

successful; he may acquire money or fame and his success is measured

by what of these things he has acquired; it is not measured by the

stuff in him, as it is at sea, but by what he gets hold of; and if he

cannot keep hold of it he becomes a failure again, though he is no

worse a man than before. Landsmen do not value the man but what he

has. By that measure I have become, I suppose, a pretty successful

person ashore; I, who was a disgrace to salt water, can hold up my

head here with some of the best of them. I am not famous, it is true,

but I have a fortune of $200,000 more or less, a pretty considerable

figure in these days.

At 19 I was a ship’s officer and at 21 I was a first mate. It was

then, on my first passage as chief officer, that the first of a

series of events which I have to relate occurred. The ship on which I

was then was the fast clipper _China Castle_, John Hawkins, master,

and the passage was from Boston to Shanghai. Captain Hawkins was a

young man in years, like myself--about 26, I think. He had sailed the

_China Castle_ between New York and San Francisco at the time of the

California gold rush and was now taking her out on her first passage

to the East. At last she was to be put into the tea trade, for which

she had been built, but from which she had been taken from her very

launching for the immensely profitable California route. Besides

myself and Captain Hawkins there was in the cabin Mrs. Hawkins, his

young wife; she is the only other person aft who matters in my story.

She had not been married to Captain Hawkins long, only a year or

so, and this was her first passage with him and a sort of deferred

honeymoon.

Mrs. Hawkins was a beautiful woman, a young woman, of course. She

was, I think, two or three years younger than her husband and about

as much older than I. She was very pleasant, as agreeable as she was

beautiful; and she did not stand on ceremony as a captain’s wife is

likely to do. I suppose this was partly because it was her first

voyage and it may have been partly because we were all about the

same age; but it was mainly her own gracious nature. I, for my part,

had not seen or met many women and I had never seen or met any woman

like her. From a boy I had been to sea, and while I had been on ships

where the captains had their wives along they had never been women of

my own age. They had never been good-looking women, let alone being

half so lovely as Keturah Hawkins, and I had never been aft as first

officer and privileged to associate with them on terms of something

resembling social equality. Of course, social equality is impossible

on board a ship; but in so far as it could be brought about Mrs.

Hawkins brought it about in the cabin of the _China Castle_. That and

her beauty turned my head. She used to wear splendid jewels that her

husband had got for her, though they were nothing to what he procured

afterward, I judge, in the Orient. She had very fine blue eyes, a

bright and flashing blue such as you see in midocean, particularly

in the tropics in fine weather, the blue of deepest water. Her hair

was a dark red, in great coils as thick as the heaviest rope cable

aboard the ship, and her skin was a white that did not seem to tan

or lose its whiteness from wind or weather, though sometimes a faint

freckle or two would appear upon it. Her grandniece, though but a

young girl, is wonderfully like her in every appearance. The sight of

this girl tears me to pieces. It brings it all back. It brings back

the hour in which I went clean out of my senses, sitting there alone

in the cabin with Keturah Hawkins. She did not scream or struggle,

but in a moment she ran away and bolted herself in her room. Of

course when the Captain came down from the poop deck, where his

regular pacing had been audible over our heads all this time, she

told him.

I don’t know why he didn’t shoot me dead; well, yes, I think I do. I

think his wife interceded for me and I think he believed the proper

punishment could only be something everlastingly shameful and as

painful as possible. He had me triced up by the thumbs and flogged

in the sight of the crew. I was flogged till I lost consciousness.

It was two days before I could stand a watch. My only idea then was

to kill him. I told him so, which was an unnecessary thing to do.

He took precautions, however, such as seeing that I had no weapons,

and never giving me an opportunity to attack him. Mrs. Hawkins kept

to her room; I had my work to do, and that went on as though nothing

had happened. No private affair, no matter how serious, relaxes the

discipline of the sea. When I told Captain Hawkins that I would kill

him some day he only looked at me and said: “You’re a good ship’s

officer but you’re a disgrace to salt water. If you want to kill a

man, the first man for you to kill is Jacob King.”

I thought he meant suicide--“go drown yourself” as the contemptuous

phrase of the fo’c’s’le puts it. It was years before I saw what he

meant by that “If you want to kill a man, the first man for you to

kill is Jacob King.” I know now just what he was driving at. I have

killed Jacob King. I have killed my man. I won’t need to kill another.

But that has come a long time after. A long time. Too long, maybe.

When we reached Shanghai I got my discharge, of course, and a good

discharge it was, for I had done my work well and Captain Hawkins,

as fine a seaman as ever lived, was strictly just. I stayed ashore

awhile and lived an evil life, drinking and smoking opium and

consorting with thieves and ticket-of-leave men and all the riffraff

of an Eastern seaport. All the while I was haunted by the remembrance

of Keturah Hawkins. Drunk or sober, sane or in opium dreams, I

saw her--saw her great cables of dark red hair, her white skin,

her dazzling blue eyes, her delightful smile that she had smiled

expressly for the benefit of the young and capable first mate of

her husband’s fine ship. If I had been able to do it I would have

possessed myself of her even then. I would have killed her husband, I

would have killed every one aboard the _China Castle_, to have her.

In opium dreams I did kill them all; I slew all Shanghai and burned

the city and launched as many ships to pursue her as were launched to

bring back Helen from ancient Troy. All dreams, all mad delusions! I

was a fevered, burning, babbling, stupefied wretch of a sailor with

no money in my pockets and nothing to fall back upon but a splendid

ruggedness of body and a good discharge as first mate.

The good discharge was sufficient to get me a berth on a ship sailing

for San Francisco. Once at sea again I was all right except in my

mind. That had been all twisted and distorted by the punishment

inflicted upon me by Captain Hawkins. I couldn’t get over the

disgrace of it; which was deserved, of course, though I didn’t

think so. I kept thinking of myself as a man who had been shamed

beyond all deserving. I was convinced that I had merely been too

rashly assuming, and that if I had gone about it differently or

had taken more time, had not acted so impulsively----All this was

self-deception, of course, and it degraded Keturah Hawkins, in my

thoughts, at least. Perhaps I thought that if I could not lift myself

up to her I could pull her down to my level. What I didn’t see was

that a good woman--or a good man either, likely--cannot be lowered by

whatever baseness any one may choose to think or say. The only person

that is lowered is the thinker or the sayer. You’ll find this and a

whole lot more coiled away in that poem of Emerson’s about Brahma:

“I am the thinker and the thought,” or something like that, it runs.

I don’t know whether a man makes the thought that passes through his

mind, but I do know that the thought makes the man. At least, it

made me. I was still Jacob King, but I wasn’t the same Jacob King.

Something in me had been poisoned. The slow poisoning of----? The

swiftest poison is not the most sure.

I was very bad, I mean mentally, when I got to San Francisco, and

the life I led there did not mend me. Gradually as I kept seeing the

image of Keturah Hawkins in all states of sleep and waking, at all

hours and under the influence of all sorts of drugs and in the midst

of all kinds of surroundings the image itself faded; or changed and

coarsened. I did not notice that the dazzling blue, as of sunshine

trying vainly to shaft through unfathomable depths, had disappeared

from her eyes, but soon I could no longer see those heavy cables of

dark red hair, made up of so many twisted strands, nor the wonderful

milky whiteness of the skin. The features became indistinct, and soon

I saw clearly nothing but the magnificent jewels she had worn--the

ropes of pearls that took lustre from her skin; the emeralds that

shone in green drops in the rich, dark, smouldering red of her

hair; the sapphires that seemed to condense and make permanent the

more brilliant blue of her eyes. About these gems that she had worn

there was the glitter, the undying glitter of hard stones. All

that was lovely, all that was spiritual, all that was human in the

vision of her perished; and still the splendour of those jewels

remained. I used to see her as an imperceptible outline--no face, no

rounded arm, no wealth of hair, just an imagined outline with here

and there certain gorgeous jewels in an ornamental and decorative

arrangement--fastened on the air. At such times I went clean crazy,

but I could do nothing. I was getting too besotted to straighten up

for any length of time. And there wasn’t any cure. How could there

be? I couldn’t cure myself. I was being poisoned by the irremediable

past. How abolish the past? It’s all very well to talk about living

a thing down, but the only thing that can be lived down is the thing

that wasn’t entirely so. My past was.

It was in San Francisco that I got acquainted with a man named Hosea

Hand and came into a strange relationship with his brother, one

Richard Hand. Hosea Hand was a sailor, one of the crew of the ship

on which I had come from Shanghai. He was younger than I, and after

we got to San Francisco and the ship’s discipline relaxed I saw a

good deal of him, first and last. One day in a lonely mood he told

me his story. His brother had cheated him out of an inheritance, or

so he figured, and he had run away to sea, like myself, as a boy.

Two things about the story struck me: his brother, if what he said

was true, might pay money to have him stay away from home--not that

Hosea Hand had any thought of returning home but I could represent

him as being bent on doing so, and myself as able to keep him away,

for a price; the other thing--and this impressed and excited me much

the more strongly--was that the Hand farm was on Long Island not far

from the little town of Blue Port where Keturah Hawkins had her home.

I turned the whole thing over in my mind during the sodden days and

nights of a week. I do not believe that in the condition I was in

all that time I was capable of reaching a bold decision--not even

boldly evil. At last I wrote to Richard Hand. I told him that I, a

stranger to him, not only knew his brother’s whereabouts but knew

his story; and I had found Hosea Hand resolved to return home and

settle accounts. I could keep the boy away, but must have something

for doing it. It would be a sensible thing for him to do business

with me. I wanted money, and I wanted information. His reply and its

enclosure would be evidence of good faith.

He replied; and it was plain that he was frightened. Hosea Hand was

no longer in San Francisco, having shipped on a vessel for New York.

Richard Hand did not send much money, but any sum looked large to me

at the moment. I spent the money in one night, and began to consider

how I could get more, or how I should proceed next, having in mind

the fact that the young brother had expressed an intention of going

home. If he did so, I knew he would not bother Richard Hand further

than to tell him to his face that he was a cheat and might go to

the devil as fast as he liked. Then I should be unable to get more

money. I wrote to Richard Hand--the letter would reach him before

his brother appeared--asking about Captain Hawkins. Where was he,

where was his wife, what were their means, what connections had they?

Richard Hand sent back a pretty full account of the Hawkinses. Both

were at sea at the time. There was property. They had no child as

yet. Mrs. Hawkins had an older sister, married, with two children, a

boy and a girl. Their name was Smiley and the girl was named after

Mrs. Hawkins. In the event of the Hawkinses remaining childless,

these two would most likely inherit their property. All this did not

interest me much and I wrote no more to Richard Hand at that time. Of

a sudden the passion for that woman of the dark red hair and milky

skin reawakened in me. I was young; I shook off my dissipation, and

set out to find her.

In all sorts of ships and in any sort of berth I went about the

world, from seaport to seaport; and as I was a good ship’s officer

I had no trouble to get about. I sailed from San Francisco to New

York, and there I heard that Captain Hawkins had left the _China

Castle_ and was somewhere on the Western Ocean, as seamen term the

North Atlantic, with cotton for Liverpool. I followed, as nearly as

possible, but got to Liverpool after he had sailed on his return

trip. A long chase followed. There is no point in setting it down

here. It lasted for years. We three ranged from Singapore to Boston

and from Rotterdam to the Cape Settlement. Twice in that time I

caught glimpses of Keturah Hawkins. Once I saw her standing on the

afterdeck of her husband’s ship, clearing from Havre as we entered

the harbour; again I saw her driven past, on a boulevard in Rio de

Janeiro. The third time I did not have merely a glimpse of her but

met her face to face.

It was totally unexpected. I did not even know that the other vessel

in the harbour of Almeria was her husband’s. Almeria is a Spanish

town with nothing to recommend it to any one except the trader. I was

in ballast and called on the chance of a cargo--grapes or anything.

Above the town, on the bare brown hills, lies the ruin of the Moorish

fort, just a long enclosure, a masonry wall about shoulder high, with

embrasures. It is the only thing to see. She had come ashore to see

it, leaving her husband supervising the work of loading cargo, a job

he never left entirely to his mate. I was wandering around with a

young Spaniard; not that either of us could understand the other very

well but some kind of company seemed essential. We came upon her,

all alone, a foolhardy thing, but she had superb self-confidence.

She lifted her eyes, saw me, half turned and started away, walking

steadily but with no appearance of flight. I overtook her. I don’t

know, as I live, what I said, but whatever it was she never answered,

nor did she look at me. As we passed through the gateway out of the

fort she paused for an instant and gave a beggar a small coin. At

that moment I saw Captain Hawkins approaching.

He looked straight at me, never moving a muscle of his face,

approached her, and said something in an undertone, a request to

wait, I imagine. Then he came toward me and I turned and led the way

into the fort, within those shell-like walls four centuries old.

Inside I faced him. It was easy to see what was coming.

I was beaten, badly beaten. His fists, hard as iron belaying pins,

broke down my defence and hammered blows upon my head, my shoulders,

my body. I was soon winded and down, and still he did not leave off

beating me. He kicked me about as I grovelled there in the fine dust

of that Moorish citadel, the outpost of Granada. I was a dog and he

used me like a dog. When I was senseless he left. How I got out of it

I don’t know; I think the young Spaniard got others to help him and

put me on board my vessel. When I recovered the next day the other

ship had gone.

All the evil in me was loosed by this adventure. I swore to myself

that I would be revenged upon those people and any and all of their

people, and that I would live if only to accomplish that. But

eighteen months in which I lost all track of the Hawkinses cooled

that purpose. I married, and Keturah Hawkins was half forgotten. Of

my marriage it is not necessary to say anything. It took place in San

Francisco and was forced upon me at the point of a pistol. My wife

died within a year. I left the sea and became a prospector when I was

not an idler. I was nearly 50 when a child was born. This is the boy

known as Guy Vanton. After his mother’s death, very shortly after,

I struck it rich. Concerning my money and the source of it I have

nothing to say; concerning the boy’s mother nothing except that we

were not married. I may not be his father, but I am the only father

he has known. All these things I have told him. I would save him,

if possible, from what has befallen me. You will see what that is

shortly.

After I became rich--so rich that I could not waste my substance in

a night, or a week, or a year; so old that caution was the stronger

impulse always and made me hoard what I had--after the death of Guy

Vanton’s mother I lived just outside San Francisco with the boy and

the memories of a vicious life. There is nothing like old age to

intensify the good or evil in a man. Here was I with my memories,

which all at once, in my loneliness, became vivid, alive, crawling. I

thought of Keturah Hawkins and writhed. I thought of her jewels and

a terrible greed filled me. I thought of that flogging on the _China

Castle_ and my shoulders twitched; of the impact of Captain Hawkins’s

fists and quivered, half raising a protective arm. I wrote again

to Richard Hand and learned that these two people were dead; that

their nephew had married and displeased Keturah Hawkins; that her

fortune had gone to her niece. From Richard Hand I was able to learn

something about these persons and to figure out a way I might strike

at them and hurt or crush them. How was I able to get this out of

him? Partly by threats to show him up as compounding with me to keep

his brother out of a lawful inheritance; partly with money. I have no

time for details and there are things that are better to go forever

unrecorded.

It was I, Jacob King, who hired a man to make love to and fascinate

John Smiley’s wife. It was an easy thing to do, with her husband

mostly absent on the beach. To avoid the townspeople’s eyes was

more difficult, but it was managed with secret meetings of one sort

or another. She was led to leave him, taking her baby girl with her;

eventually she was led to me. How much of this Richard Hand surmised

I don’t know or care. But he had no part in it beyond giving me facts

about the Smileys to go upon.

I subjected Mary Smiley to all the tortures I could devise. She

lived with me though she was John Smiley’s wife. She was a silly,

childish creature and she was absolutely at my mercy. I made her

life a hell for several years. In the meantime, her little girl was

growing--into a tiny image of Keturah Hawkins. It was that which

conquered me, or the settled wickedness within me. I, who had set out

to wreak remotely my revenge on Keturah Hawkins, was myself becoming

the victim of a living punishment. For here was Keturah Hawkins in

the house with me. Every physical characteristic was there in the

child later known as Mermaid Smiley, the daughter of John Smiley

and Mary Rogers Smiley, the grandniece of the woman I remembered.

The child had Keturah Hawkins’s hair, eyes, skin, and features;

even, in embryo, her manner. I could torture her silly and pitiable

mother and the child would enter the room, a living taunt to me. Here

she was, and she would outlive me; she would be flesh and blood,

wonderful glinting hair, flashing blue eyes, matchless white skin,

unconquerably alive and superb, unconquerably young and gay when I

was not merely a cruel and old and despicable man, but dust. She

would dance on my grave.

I stood it as long as I could and then something happened within me,

a mental overthrow comparable to the physical defeats I had suffered

because of Keturah Hawkins. Something in the continual presence of

that child rained blows upon me until I was numb in my mind, until

I couldn’t think or plan at all, until the torture I could inflict

on her mother was a meaningless thing; and there had always been a

terrible futility about it for the reason that I could not make my

revenge anywhere near complete and satisfactory. I could not, for

instance, communicate to John and Keturah Smiley the triumph of

vengeance that was mine. John Hawkins was not alive to witness it;

Keturah Hawkins----Was she alive, in the person of that child, to see

it? Perhaps, and perhaps she was alive in the person of that child to

thwart it. She would beat me down; dead or living she would best me.

A superstitious, or perhaps a holy, terror laid hold of me so that

I dared not lay hands on the little girl, or even say to her things

that might bring tears to childish eyes. I dared not, I tell you! And

besides, it would be laying hands on Keturah herself.

You see the situation? Do you see how the poison of evil had worked

in me all these years, how it had dominated me for a time, how

it had lain dormant, how it had cropped out hideously like some

unspeakable and inexterminable disease? Silently through the years

it had corrupted me, corrupting my mind even more than my body, more

insidiously and more surely, and with more deadly a result. And at

last from a small boat on San Francisco Bay--we had gone into the

city to live--John Smiley’s wife was drowned. I was left with the

child on my hands and with no embodiment for my fancied vengeance. I

think I went nearly insane then, if I was not insane already.

I determined to make what atonement I could. I took certain cowardly

precautions and prepared to send the child back to her father. There

is something supernatural in the manner in which that return was

accomplished. I did not learn of it for some years. I took the boy,

Guy, and went to Paris, taking a servant with me in the semblance of

my wife and his mother. She became an invalid abroad, but I have not

cast her off.

In Paris I came to see that my atonement must be as complete as I

could make it. So I came back to New York and made inquiries through

Richard Hand. I was then “Captain Vanton,” or “Buel Vanton” but I

wrote him as Jacob King. He replied; from what he told me--and I

paid him, of course--I was able to piece together the truth that was

hidden from him and from others. The next step was the appearance of

Captain Vanton in Blue Port.

The rest, externally, is known; what can never be known is the

suffering I have endured. It is all deserved and much more, no

doubt, but endurance is nearing an end. I am probably insane in some

peculiar fashion. I see nothing but jewels; jewels arranged as if in

the hair and on the bosom of an invisible woman. Then I see Keturah

Hawkins, a very young Keturah Hawkins, but Keturah Hawkins beyond

question, pass along the street--and she wears no jewels. I think her

aunt has them, and some day in my madness I shall break in and steal

them, just to handle them, these stones that touched her white skin

and were nested in that wine-dark hair. Pray God, I may never lay

hold of them or I shall go raving mad! The girl, this reincarnation

of the woman I once held in my arms, I have no further concern with.

If ever she comes to me to know her story I shall tell her. But she

is Keturah. She knows.

The boy, young Guy, I have kept close by me, and I have told him some

of this shameful story in order that, if he does indeed have any of

my blood in his veins, he may have, in knowledge of the truth, some

antidote to its poison. The girl will have money, and I will provide

for the boy.

The girl and boy are friends; something else may ripen of their

friendship. If he is my son and if, as may be, she loves him, or

comes to love him, will that be a final triumphant twist in my favour

against Keturah? Will that be the last word--my word--in this problem

of revenge? You see, you see how deeply it has poisoned me. Perhaps I

will anticipate the end.

The signature of “Jacob King” completed this narrative, obviously too

incredible in its statements and too monomaniacal in its tone to have

any bearing on the death of Captain Buel Vanton from a pistol wound,

self-inflicted.