Sedgwick shook his head.
'They'd rather die than let you go like that. How in thunder have
you kept them?'
And Ticehurst explained his wonderful theory.
'I've really tried to make them comfortable, and I've treated them
like men. I give them all they earn while they're in port. But what
am I to do?'
'I'll think of it,' said Sedgwick.
He thought to some purpose. For it was commonly stated in Portland
that many masters of merchant ships paid the boarding-house masters
to induce the men to desert, when the amount of wages due to them
from the ship was more than the 'blood-money' which had to be paid
for a new crew.
'I think that's the line,' said Sedgwick. He got a reporter to go
and interview Mr. Healy, and Healy being more than half-seas over and
in high delight at having held up Ticehurst and the _Oriana_, let
himself go.
'Curse the lot of 'em,' said Healy; 'they talk as if a boarding-house
master was necessary a scoundrel. Ay, they do, and there's them
lying in the _Willammette_ now as have come to me winking the eye,
and saying, "Now, Mr. Healy, how much do you want to take my crew out
of my ship?" Why, I've done it as low as ten dollars a head, and
have had a hundred a head for putting a new crowd in, and then it's
been money in the pockets of the ship-owners and the captain, as it
stands to reason it would be if the ship owed the men more than a
hundred and ten dollars, besides saving the grub for a time when the
men are doing little.'
'But Ticehurst didn't do this?'
Healy smiled and was incautious.
'To be sure he didn't. But he would if it paid him. If he'd come in
here after a long voyage instead of a short passage out from
Liverpool, he'd have been in my back room with dollars.'
And next day this was in the papers. Sedgwick smiled and ran down to
see Ticehurst, whose ship was lying in the stream with a United
States marshal in charge of her to see the men stayed on board and
were not taken off by Healy's pirates, and a Multnomah county
official to see that Ticehurst stayed more or less in sight.
'Now,' said Ticehurst, 'haven't I got him?'
'You can try,' said Sedgwick.
So Ticehurst filed a complaint in the United States Circuit Court in
'a damage suit' against Healy, laying his damages at ten thousand
dollars.
'It will make him sick,' said Sedgwick. And it did.
Healy fairly howled, and by way of immediate revenge sent one of his
ruffians to catch the reporter who had caught him.
'Sock it to him good, Joe,' said Healy; 'don't leave him a feather to
fly with. Stamp on his right hand and kick his ribs in. I'll teach
him to come down here with a pencil and a note-book and lay traps for
inoffending citizens, so I will.'
And Joe went off to 'do up' the reporter. As it happened (and it was
unlucky for Joe) the reporter was a man of his hands, and not at all
an unsuspecting person. It was Joe who went to the hospital, and not
the man with the pencil and the note-book. Nevertheless, as he
understood how things shaped themselves in Oregon and in Pacific
ports generally, this particular reporter thought it healthy to go
elsewhere. What Joe had failed in Jack might do, and Healy had a
very long memory, as many injured men could tell.
'What I like about Oregon is its climate and its general
uncertainty,' said Ticehurst. 'It makes me feel young again. Of
course, I shan't push this libel suit, Sedgwick.'
'If you do, you'll be like Vanderdecken when it's finished,' said
Sedgwick. 'To try to beat to the westward of the Cape Horn of Law
here will make an ancient Flying Dutchman of you. I'd try to get to
sea.'
'I'm going to try,' replied Ticehurst. 'It will be quite enough of a
victory for me to have come into Portland and go out with the same
men I brought in.'
'It's never been done yet,' said Sedgwick, 'and if you get through
you'll make a record.'
And the next day Ticehurst shifted his quarters from the ship to the
Oregon Hotel in the city. He explained that he did so because he
understood it would take some time to finish the cross suits then in
progress.
'The man's a fool,' said Healy, rejoicing. 'We'll keep the _Oriana_
here till she goes to pieces like a rotten scow on a mud-bank.'
But Ticehurst was no fool. He sent the _Oriana_ down to Astoria to
wait until the suits were done with, and was seen to be much occupied
with legal matters all day long. At night he sat in the hall of the
hotel and denounced Healy with much severity.
'I'll stay till I get his scalp,' said Ticehurst. But if he meant
what he said it is odd that he reckoned up what he owed the hotel,
and put the requisite amount of dollars in an otherwise almost empty
portmanteau. It might also have seemed strange to Healy if he knew
that his enemy went for a walk late that night and got as far as St.
John's on the railroad to the north. There he boarded the last train
to Kalama, that deserted township which once had a boom of which the
bottom fell out, and went down the Columbia in the _Telephone_.
But Healy tumbled to the whole thing in the morning when it was found
that Ticehurst had not slept in the hotel. The Portland authorities,
at Healy's request, went down to Astoria next day bright and early,
and boarded the _Oriana_. Mr. Williams, the chief mate, received
them at the gangway.
'Where is the captain?'
'In Portland,' said Williams sourly. Treating the men according to
Ticehurst's prescription was getting on his nerves.
'He skipped from Portland last night, and we believe him to be on
board,' said the marshal.
'You can look,' said Williams shortly. If, as is probable, he knew
that Ticehurst was not in Portland, he also knew he was not on board
the _Oriana_. The most careful search failed to find him.
'Why don't you take us alongside and discharge the wheat,' said Gregg
savagely. 'Perhaps he's under two thousand tons of it.'
The second mate was almost as cross as Williams. As he said
afterwards, the way the marshal acted, a full-sized English skipper
might be concealed in a sextant case.
At last the intruders gave up and went ashore.
'You needn't trouble to come on board again,' said Williams. 'I'm
skipper now and shall take her to sea.'
But if that was true it is odd that Ticehurst was not to be found in
Astoria. He had disappeared. The United States Marshal, who was
still on board the _Oriana_, laughed, for he had no great sympathy
with the state officials of Oregon.
'I guess your skipper has a head,' he opined, as he lounged against
the rail and ejected tobacco juice into the blue-grey waters of the
great Columbia River. 'Tell me where he is. I won't give you away.'
But even Williams did not know. He went to sea next morning, and was
towed across the bar by the tug _Comet_. The Oregon people came on
board again and made another search.
'Oh, come to sea with me,' said Williams with a savage eye. He had a
notion that if they did there would be part of the crew that Captain
Ticehurst would leave at his mercy.
'Don't get rowdy, young fellow,' said the marshal; 'it's a waste of
natural energy better used in learning how to be civil to your
superiors.'
'But you're licked,' said Williams; 'you're fairly licked.'
'Life's a game,' said the state marshal philosophically, as he went
over the side with his United States rival, 'and if we won always we
should get swelled head.'
He looked up from the boat.
'Say!' he called.
'Yes,' said Williams.
'If we're licked, and I own it, where is the captain?'
'I'll send word from Europe,' said Williams.
But, as a matter of fact, he sent word by the skipper of the tug.
For it was Captain Ticehurst who steered the old _Comet_ over the bar
with the _Oriana_ behind.
'Now, what I want to know is,' said the captain to his mate, 'what I
want to know is, whether it isn't better to treat men as men, and
best that crowd in Portland?'
Williams looked melancholy.
'Well, sir, it may be on a pinch,' he owned; 'but it's the principle
I'm thinkin' of.'
And his principle was, of course, that sailor-men were to expect
nothing, while his duty was to see that they got it with any amount
of suitable sauce.