You know that junk store on the Sandoval waterfront? A Chink keeps
it--Charley Something or other, don’t remember the rest of his name. If
you don’t know the place I mean, you know plenty more just like it. The
sort of place where you can buy pretty well anything under the sun,
everything second-hand, that is; any mortal thing in the seagoing line
that you can think of, and then some. That’s Charley’s!
Well, once Larry Keogh (every one used to call him Mike, because his
name wasn’t Michael), and Sandy MacGillivray from Glasgow, and a
Dutchman called Hank were in want of one or two things for a Cape Horn
passage. Their ship was the old “Isle of Skye.” Did you ever meet with
any of them “Isle” barques? They were very fine ships. There was the
“Isle of Skye,” “Isle of Arran,” “Isle of Man,” and a whole lot more I
just forget--all “Isles.” You wouldn’t find any of them now. Some were
lost, some broken up, some went under the Russian or Chilian flag, and
the firm that owned them (MacInnis, the name was) went out of business
at the finish. And as for the old “Isle of Skye” herself, she piled up
on Astoria a little more than a year ago--foreign-owned then, of course.
Round these three chaps I was speaking about went to Charley’s joint.
Larry and Hank got what they wanted soon enough. At least, they got
what they had money for, which wasn’t very much, Charley not being in
the humour to treat Larry as handsome over some lumps of coral Larry
wanted to trade for clothes.
This Sandy MacGillivray I mentioned, however, was a bit of a capitalist,
and he was also of an economical disposition; and what with wanting to
lay out his money the best way and not being able to bear the feel of
parting with the cash when he’d found what he wanted to buy, he had his
pals with the one thing and the other teetering about first on one foot
and then on the other, and sick to death of him and his
shilly-shallying.
At long last he got through; and then nothing would fit but Charley must
give him something in for his bargain.
“No good, no good!” says the Chink, looking ugly the way only a Chink
can. “You pay me, you go ’long!... P’laps I give you somet’ing you no
like.”
He grinned and showed his dirty yellow teeth.
“Ut’s not possible,” said Larry. “Sandy’s the one that’ll take it, if
it’s neither too hot nor too heavy.”
“All light,” says the Chink, sulky-like. “I give you velly good pair o’
boots.”
Hank’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and so did Larry’s, when they
saw what Sandy had got through just having the gall to ask.
A beautiful pair of sea-boots they were, and brand-new, or very near it,
by the look of them. Sandy thought the old fellow was joshing him; but
it was all right. He was nearly beside himself with delight. He stopped
outside a saloon once on the way to the ship, and stood turning over his
money in his pocket so long that the boys began to think he was going to
celebrate his good fortune in a fitting manner.
But all he said at the finish was, “It’s a peety to change a five spot.
Once change your money an’ it fair melts awa’”
Larry sighed. If he’d known about those boots he might have had a bid
for them. And now Sandy had got them for nothing. Larry made him a
sporting offer of his coral in exchange for them, but it was no go.
“To hell wid ye for a skin-louse!” says Larry, who was getting a bit
nasty by this time. He had a great thirst on him, and no money to
gratify it, and that was the way it took him. “Ye’d take the pennies off
your own father’s eyes, so you would, and he lying dead.”
Sandy showed the boots to the rest of the crowd, and of course every one
had something to say. But there could be no doubt he had got a wonderful
fine bargain.
“I wouldn’t wonder but they have a hole in them,” said Larry. The notion
seemed to brighten him up a whole lot. “The water will run in and out of
them boots the way you’ll wish you never saw them. I know no more
uncomfortable thing than a pair of boots and they letting in water on
you.”
Sandy was a bit upset by this idea of Larry’s, so he filled the boots
with water to see if there was anything in it. Leak--not they!
“It would be a good thing,” said Larry with a sigh, he was that
disappointed, “if the old drogher herself was as seaworthy as them
boots. As good as new they are, and devil a leak is there in ayther one
of them. But maybe,” he went on, cheering up again a bit, “maybe some
person has been wearing them that died of the plague. It is not a very
pleasant thing, now, to die of the plague. I would not care to be
wearing a pair of boots and I not knowing who had them before me.”
“Hee-hee,” sniggers Sandy in a mean little way he had. “Hee, hee--ye’ll
no hae the chance o’ wearin’ these.”
And then it was that old Balto the Finn--he was an old sailorman, this
Balto, and he could remember the real ancient days, the Baltimore
clippers and the East Indiamen--spoke for the first time.
“From the dead to the dead!” says Balto. “From a dead corpse were they
taken, and to a dead corpse will they go.”
They are great witches, are Finns, as every one knows. And it seemed
likely enough that the first part of the saying, at least, was true, for
old Charley hadn’t the best of names for the way he got hold of his
stuff.
Sandy was one of those chaps who go about in fear and trembling of being
robbed; so, after he saw how all the crowd admired the boots, he took to
wearing them all the time ashore and afloat. He went ashore in them the
night before the “Isle of Skye” was to sail.
He came aboard in them, too, that same night....
The tide drifted him against the hawser, and the anchor watch saw him
and hauled him in. Dead as nails, was poor Sandy, and no one knew just
how it came about. It was thought he’d slipped on the wet wharf--it was
a very bad wharf, with a lot of holes and rough places in it. And of
course a man can’t swim in heavy boots....
There was a man in the “Isle of Skye” at that time, a Dago. His name was
Tony, short for Antonio. He bought Sandy’s boots very cheap, no one else
seeming to care for them.
That was a cruel cold passage, and the “Isle of Skye” being loaded right
down to her marks, she was a very wet ship indeed. So that the time came
when more than one in the starboard watch wished they were in that
Dago’s boots after all, and the fanciful feeling about poor Sandy began
to wear off.
The Old Man was a holy terror for cracking on: he had served his time in
one of the fast clippers in the Australian wool trade, and he never
could get it out of his head that he had to race everything else in the
nitrate fleet. He would sooner see a sail carry away any day than reef
it, and this passage he was worse than ever.
However, it came on to blow so bad, just off the pitch of the Horn, that
the mate went down and dug the hoary old scoundrel out of his sweet
slumbers, he having dared anybody to take a stitch off her before
turning in. He cursed and he swore; but the end of it was that the watch
laid aloft to reef the fore upper-topsail, and it was then that this
Dago Tony, who was swanking it in the boots as usual, put his foot on a
rotten ratline, and down he came, boots and all.
There was a lot of talk, and no wonder, about the things which had
happened since Sandy MacGillivray got those boots from the Chink; and
the Old Man getting wind of it, he told Sails to stitch up Tony boots
and all, so as to stop the talk for good.
“Mind ye,” said the Old Man, “Ah dinna hold wi’ Papish suppersteetions,
but there’s no denyin’ the sea’s a queer place.”
* * * * *
Nobody ever expected to see or hear any more of Sandy Mac’s boots. But
there was a man in the starboard watch that nobody liked--a sort of
soft-spoken, soft-handed chap we called Ikey Mo; because he was so fond
of stowing away stuff in his chest every one thought he had a bit of the
Jew in him.
The day we sighted the Fastnet this fellow showed up in a pair of
sea-boots.
“Where had ye them boots, Ikey, and we rowling off the pitch of the
Horn?” asked Larry when he saw them. “It’s a queer thing ye never wore
them sooner.”
“If I’d wore ’em sooner,” says Ikey, “like as not you’d have borrowed
the lend of ’em, an’ maybe got drowned in ’em,” he says, “and then where
should I have been?”
“I would not,” says Larry. “I would not borrow the lend of the fill of a
tooth from a dirty Sheeny like yourself. ’Tis my belief you took them
boots off the poor dead corpse they belonged to; and by the same token,
if they walk off with you to the same place he’s gone to, it’s no more
than you deserve.”
The tale soon got round that Ikey had stolen the boots off the dead
Dago, and it made a lot of feeling against him. But he only laughed and
sneered when folks looked askance at him, and at last he left off making
any secret of the thing he’d done.
“Call yourselves men!” says he. “And scared of a little dead rat of an
Eyetalian that was no great shakes of a man when he was livin’!”
“Let the fool have his way!” says old Balto the Finn. “From a dead
corpse were they taken, to a dead corpse will they go.”
* * * * *
Very, very foggy it was in the Mersey when we run the mudhook out. I
don’t think I ever saw it worse.
Ikey didn’t care. He was singing at the top of his voice as the shore
boat pushed off:
“We’ll furl up the bunt with a fling, oh ...
To pay Paddy Doyle for his boo-oots....”
“Who said ‘boots’?” he shouted, standing up in the boat with his hands
to his mouth. “Where’s the dead corpse now?”
The fog swallowed up the boat whole, but we could hear his voice coming
through it a long while, all thick and muffled:
“We’ll all drink brandy and gin, oh ...
And pay Paddy Doyle for his boots....”
The tug that cut the boat in two picked up five men of the six that were
in her. And the one that was missing was a good swimmer, too.
But then ... a man can’t swim ... in heavy boots....