When Bonner, half an hour later, returned to the smoking-room (he, too,
had caught the splash of the sea, the spray drenching the rail), the Bum
Actor crossed over and took the seat beside him. The Texan was the only
passenger who had spoken to him since he came aboard, and he had already
begun to feel lonely. This time he started the conversation by brushing
the salt spray from the Agent's coat.
“Got wet, didn't you? Too bad! Wait till I wipe it off,” and he dragged
a week-old handkerchief from his pocket. Then seeing that the Texan took
no notice of the attention, he added, “What did the Captain want?”
The Texan did not reply. He was evidently absorbed in something outside
his immediate surroundings, for he continued to sit with bent back, his
elbows on his knees, his eyes on the floor.
Again the question was repeated:
“What did the Captain want? Nothing the matter, is there?” Fear had
always been his master--fear of poverty mostly--and it was poverty in
the worst form to others if he failed to get home. This thought had
haunted him night and day.
“Yes and no. Don't worry--it'll all come out right. You seem nervous.”
“I am. I've been through a lot and have almost reached the end of my
rope. Have you got a wife at home?” The Texan shook his head. “Well,
if you had you'd understand better than I can tell you. I have, and a
three-year-old boy besides. I'd never have left them if I'd known.
I came over under contract for a six months' engagement and we were
stranded in Pittsburg and had hard work getting back to New York. Some
of them are there yet. All I want now is to get home--nothing else will
save them. Here's a letter from her I don't mind showing you--you can
see for yourself what I'm up against. The boy never was strong.”
The big Texan read it through carefully, handed it back without a
comment or word of sympathy, and then, with a glance around him, as if
in fear of being overheard, asked:
“Can you keep your nerve in a mix-up?”
“Do you mean a fight?” queried the Actor.
“Maybe.”
“I don't like fights--never did.” Anything that would imperil his safe
return was to be avoided.
“I neither--but sometimes you've got to. Are you handy with a gun?”
“Why?”
“Nothing--I'm only asking.”
Carhart, the Man-Who-Knew-It-All, here lounged over from his seat by the
table and dropped into a chair beside them, cutting short his reply. The
Texan gave a significant look at the Actor, enforcing his silence, and
then buried his face in a newspaper a month old.
Carhart spread his legs, tilted his head back on the chair, slanted his
stiff-brim hat until it made a thatch for his nose, and began one of his
customary growls: to the room--to the drenched port-holes--to the brim
of his hat; as a half-asleep dog sometimes does when things have gone
wrong with him--or he dreams they have.
“This ship reminds me of another old tramp, the _Persia_,” he drawled.
“Same scrub crew and same cut of a Captain. Hadn't been for two of the
passengers and me, we'd never got anywhere. Had a fire in the lower hold
in a lot of turpentine, and when they put that out we found her cargo
had shifted and she was down by the head about six feet. Then the crew
made a rush for the boats and left us with only four leaky ones to go
a thousand miles. They'd taken 'em all, hadn't been for me and another
fellow who stood over them with a gun.”
The Bum Actor raised his eyes.
“What happened then?” he asked in a nervous voice.
“Oh, we pitched in and righted things and got into port at last. But the
Captain was no good; he'd a-left with the crew if we'd let him.”
“Is the shifting of a cargo a serious matter?” continued the Actor.
“This is my second crossing and I'm not much up on such things.”
“Depends on the weather,” interpolated a passenger.
“And on how she's stowed,” continued Car-hart. “I've been mistrusting
this ship ain't plumb on her keel. You can tell that from the way she
falls off after each wave strikes her. I have been out on deck looking
things over and she seems to me to be down by the stern more than she
ought.”
“Maybe she'll be lighter when more coal gets out of her,” suggested
another passenger.
“Yes, but she's listed some to starboard. I watched her awhile this
morning. She ain't loaded right, or she's loaded _wrong,-purpose_. That
occurs sometimes with a gang of striking stevedores.”
The noon whistle blew and the talk ended with the setting of everybody's
watch, except the Bum Actor's, whose timepiece decorated a shop-window
in the Bowery.
*****
That night one of those uncomfortable rumors, started doubtless by
Carhart's talk, shivered through the ship, its vibrations even reaching
the widow lying awake in her cabin. This said that some hundreds of
barrels of turpentine had broken loose and were smashing everything
below. If any one of them rolled into the furnaces an explosion would
follow which would send them all to eternity. That this absurdity was
immediately denied by the purser, who asserted with some vehemence that
there was not a gallon of turpentine aboard, did not wholly allay the
excitement, nor did it stifle the nervous anxiety which had now taken
possession of the passengers.
As the day wore on several additional rumors joined those already
extant. One was dropped in the ear of the Texan by the Bum Actor as the
two stood on the upper deck watching the sea, which was rapidly falling.
“I got so worried I thought I'd go down into the engine room myself,”
he whispered. “I'm just back. Something's wrong down there, or I'm
mistaken. I wish you'd go and find out. I knew that turpentine yarn was
a lie, but I wanted to be sure, so I thought I'd ask one of the stokers
who had come up for a little air. He was about to answer me when the
Chief Engineer came down from the bridge, where he had been talking to
the Captain, and ordered the man below before he had time to fill his
lungs. I waited a little while, hoping he or some of the crew would
come up again, and then I went down the ladder myself. When I got to the
first landing I came bump up against the Chief Engineer. He was standing
in the gangway fooling with a revolver he had in his hand as if he'd
been cleaning it. 'I'll have to ask you to get back where you came
from,' he said. 'This ain't no place for passengers'--and up I came.
What do you think it means? I'd get ugly, too, if he kept me in that
heat and never let me get a whiff of air. I tell you, that's an awful
place down there. Suppose you go and take a look. Your knowing the
Captain might make some difference.”
“Were any of the stokers around?” “No--none of them. I didn't see a soul
but the Chief Engineer, and I didn't see him more than a minute.”
The big Texan moved closer to the rail and again scrutinized the
sky-line. He had kept this up all the morning, his eye searching
the horizon as he moved from one side of the ship to the other. The
inspection over, he slipped his arm through the Actor's and started him
down the deck toward the Cattle Agent's cabin. When the two emerged the
Texan's face still wore the look which had rested on it since the
time the Captain had called him from the smoking-room. The Actor's
countenance, however, had undergone a change. All his nervous timidity
was gone; his lips were tightly drawn, the line of the jaw more
determined. He looked like a man who had heard some news which had first
steadied and then solidified him. These changes often overtake men of
sensitive, highly strung natures.
On the way back they encountered the Captain accompanied by the Chief
Engineer. The two were heading for the saloon, the bugle having sounded
for luncheon. As they passed by with their easy, swinging gait, the
passengers watched them closely. If there was danger in the air these
two officers, of all men, would know it. The Captain greeted the Texan
with a significant look, waited until the Actor had been presented,
looked the Texan's friend over from head to foot, and then with a nod to
several of the others halted opposite a steamer chair in which sat the
widow and her two children--one a baby and the other a boy of four--a
plump, hugable little fellow, every inch of whose surface invited a
caress.
“Please stay a minute and let me talk to you, Captain,” the widow
pleaded. “I've been so worried. None of these stories are true, are
they? There can't be any danger or you would have told me--wouldn't
you?”
The Captain laughed heartily, so heartily that even the Chief Engineer
looked at him in astonishment. “What stories do you hear, my dear lady?”
“That the steamer isn't loaded properly?”
Again the Captain laughed, this time under the curls of the chubby boy
whom he had caught in his arms and was kissing eagerly.
“Not loaded right?” he puffed at last when he got his breath. “Well,
well, what a pity! That yarn, I guess, comes from some of the navigators
in the smoking-room. They generally run the ship. Here, you little
rascal, turn out your toes and dance a jig for me. No--no--not that
way--this way-r-out with them! Here, let me show you. One--two--off
we go. Now the pigeon wing and the double twist and the rat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat--that's the way, my lad!”
He had the boy's hands now, the child shouting with laughter, the
overjoyed mother clapping her hands as the big burly Captain with his
face twice as red from the exercise, danced back and forth across the
deck, the passengers forming a ring about them.
“There!” sputtered the Captain, all out of breath from the exercise, as
he dropped the child back into the widow's arms. “Now all of you come
down to luncheon. The weather is getting better every minute. The glass
is rising and we are going to have a fine night.”
Carhart, who had watched the whole performance with an ill-concealed
sneer on his face, muttered to the man next him:
“What did I tell you? He's a pretty kind of a Captain, ain't he? He's
mashed on the widow just as I told you. Smoking-room yarn, is it? I bet
I could pick out half a dozen men right in them chairs who could run
the ship as well as he does. Maybe we'll have to take charge, after
all--don't you think so, Mr. Bonner?”
The Texan smiled grimly: “I'll let you do the picking, Mr. Carhart--”
and with his hand on the Actor's arm, the two went below.
A counter-current now swept through the ship. If anything was really
the matter the Captain would not be dancing jigs, nor would he leave
the bridge for his meals. This, like all other counter-currents--wave or
otherwise--tossed up a bobble of dispute when the two clashed. There
was no doubt about it: Carhart had been “talking through his
hat”--“shooting off his mouth”--the man was “a gas bag,” etc., etc. When
appeal for confirmation was made to the Texan and the Actor, who now
seemed inseparable, neither made reply. They evidently did not care to
be mixed up in what Bonner characterized with a grim smile as “more hot
air.”
All through the meal the Captain kept up his good-natured mood; chatting
with the widow who sat on his right, the baby in her lap; making a pig
of a lemon and some tooth-picks for the boy, who had crawled up into
his arms; exchanging nods and smiles down the length of the table with
several new arrivals, or congratulating those nearest to him on their
recovery after the storm, ending by carrying both boy and baby to the
upper deck--so that he might “not forget how to handle” his own when he
got back, he laughed in explanation.