"Maybe you're thinkin' now," he went on, "that she should be able to see
for herself what my cousin is? But what training has she had to judge o'
men? What other kind does she see aught of in her uncle's place? Indeed,
with her bringing up and what brains the poor girl has, she's done very
well, I'm thinkin', to ha' kept off the rocks as long as she has. A
hundred to one you'll find my fine cousin at the Tidewater to-night. But
I must be going. Good night to you."
* * * * *
Only the bartender was in the front room of the Tidewater, and he was so
busy peeking through a slide in the wall, the same through which he
passed the drink orders from the restaurant, that he did not hear me
come in. The door to the inner room was closed, but the low-powered
roars of people trying hard not to be noisy were oozing through.
"What's doing?" I called to the bartender. I had to call it twice to
make him turn around.
"It's the big captain of the _Orion_ and that little deck-hand
Drislane."
Anybody taking Drislane for a joke always did get my goat. "He's not a
deck-hand!" I bit out, "he's a seaman, and a good one. But what about
him and Captain Sickles?"
"It's about him an' the boss's Rose. The captain begins to abuse
Drislane somethin' fierce, an' he comes back at him. Then the captain
brings her into it. 'What would a girl be wantin' with a little runt
like you?' he says; and after that, 'I dunno but I'll take her to Boston
with me this trip,' and said it like he meant it. An' the little
Drislane he jumps into him two-handed, an' they're hard at it now."
I squeezed inside the door of the inner room. "Man-to-man fashion!" I
could hear, in the powerful voice of Captain Oliver, while I was
crowding through the ring of people to the open space in the middle of
the floor. "That's it--man fashion wi' the naked fists!" some scattering
voices echoed.
Man-to-man fashion! As if man could invent an unfairer scheme to settle
private quarrels! Give a man heavy muscles and huge knuckles, tough
hide and thick skull, add half the courage of a yellow dog, and how can
he lose at that game? The old-time duellists with their swords were a
hundred times fairer. A long sword to his wrist and the smallest man had
a chance; which is as it should be, or else we might as well pick some
seven-foot, solid-skulled savage from out of the jungle and set him up
for king.
Man to man! Drislane was five foot six and weighed, possibly, a hundred
and thirty-five pounds, and was no boxer. Sickles was six foot three and
weighed two-fifty. He had enormous muscles and knuckles of brass. His
hide was thick and hard as double-ought canvas. Drislane could have
stood off and pounded on his ribs for a week and hardly black-and-blued
them. He could have swung on him for a month and not knocked him over.
It was the old-fashioned style of stand-up fighting. No regular rounds
with a rest between. The men rushed and slugged and clinched and tugged,
and when they fell, got up and went at it again. Always, when they went
to the floor, Sickles let his two hundred and fifty pounds drop limp and
heavy on Drislane. Drislane would almost flatten out under it. Standing
up, when Sickles's fist landed on him he would wince all over. He felt
pain like a girl.
It was slaughter. Blood, blood, blood; and the blood all on one side.
For perhaps twenty times Drislane was knocked flat. If Sickles had only
the explosive spark to go with those tremendous blows he wouldn't have
had to hit Drislane more than once. But he could only continue to knock
the little man flat; and knocking him flat often enough, the pounding
finally told.
The time came when Drislane could not rise to his feet. He worked
himself up to one knee, with the big man waiting for him to look up so
he might deliver the blow more sweetly. Drislane, knowing to the full
what was coming, looked up and took all there was of it.
This time he lay flat and quiet. The triumphant Sickles bent over him.
"Y'are satisfied, are yuh?"
Sickles wasn't going to stop with beating him up. Drislane must proclaim
his conqueror's victory and his own defeat. Possibly he wanted the girl
Rose to hear it. She had been standing back on a box in the kitchen
doorway and must have seen most of the fight. I was wondering how far
the joy of battle would mount in her primitive nature; but when I looked
up to note that, and how she took Drislane's beating, she had gone.
"Are yuh? Speak up!--are yuh?" bellowed Sickles.
Drislane by now could open his eyes. He looked up at his conqueror but
would not say the word. Sickles dug the toe of his shoe into his side.
I had been waiting, half sick to my stomach, for a good excuse to butt
in. I had marked, when I first came in, a piano-stool setting upside
down atop of the piano to one side of the room. In these possibly
rough-house wind-ups it never does any harm to note where a few little
articles of warfare may be picked up in a hurry. This piano-stool had a
two-inch oak seat.
"You wunt, heh?" Sickles lifted his foot.
"No, he won't!" I butted in, and as he straightened up to see who it
was, I went on: "And don't think I'll be foolish enough to go staving in
my good knuckles on you. See this little wherewithal I'm holding, and
not too loosely, by the wind'ard leg? You've a fine thick skull, but
this is thicker. One cute little wallop o' this amidships of your ears,
and it's little you'll care whether you take the _Orion_ out on the
first or the last of the flood-tide to-morrow. Let him be!"
Now, don't let anybody think I was making a play for any Carnegie medal
thereby. I knew Oliver Sickles, and even better did I know his kind, who
only go to battle when certain victory lies before them. The only chance
I was taking was with my firm's interests. It might be that he'd have
such a grouch against me that he'd carry no more coal for my firm than
he could help in future.
He let him be. He put on his collar and coat, and received as his due
the applause of that crawling breed which are never by any chance seen
shaking hands with anybody but a winner. While he was still at the
hand-shaking I threw him his ship's papers.
I had the bartender order a carriage, and while waiting I tried to cheer
up Drislane. I told him that he must not think of going to sea next day,
that I would see Captain Norman Sickles and get him off, and later go
with him to Boston by rail.
He shook his head. He could hardly part his swollen lips to talk; and
then could only half whisper. "I'll sail to-morrow on the _Sirius_," he
said; and rolled his head over to see what Sickles was doing.
Sickles was just then stepping through that kitchen doorway where but
two minutes earlier Rose had been standing. Drislane closed his eyes;
and then, as if he thought he had to show me he wasn't beaten, he opened
them and smiled. After I'd fully taken in that smile, I wished he had
cried.
The bartender called through the slide that the carriage was waiting. I
carried out Drislane, drove him to my hotel, and called in a doctor.
Between us we gave him a hot bath, salved and plastered him, and put him
to bed.
I turned in on a cot which I had had brought in. Hours after I heard him
groan. I switched on the light and went to him. He was lying on his side
with his head on one arm. His hands were clinched.
After a moment he said: "She is in trouble somewhere." That was another
one of the things he believed in--telepathy.
He may or may not have had it right; but it certainly wasn't going to do
him any good to let him lie there and be torturing himself. "Sh-h--go to
sleep, son. Don't imagine things. You'll find everything will be all
right to-morrow," I said.
"No," he said, "everything will never be all right while he's alive and
I'm alive."
That didn't sound good to me, so I sat down by the bed and began to talk
to him. We talked, I doing the most of it, until past daylight. We
talked of her. "She's all right," he said at last, "I tell you she is.
Even if she didn't like me and did him, it would be only natural. But
she likes me--the best of her likes me better than him, and when she
gets to know him all of her will like me. You'll see."
There were people who used to say Drislane was so innocent as to be a
joke; but after that talk into that wintry dawn I had to salute him. He
had just a little something on all of us who were so much more
worldly-wise. It surely was a great gift he had--to see in every woman
only the shining soul.