“That was the yarn Billy spun, and there he sat when he’d finished
asking us what he was to do.
“‘Well, I says to him, ‘you’re asking that question a bit too late; to
begin with, you should never have trusted yourself alone in ’Frisco
with them nerves of yours. Second, you went the wrong way about
getting rid of the thing.’
“‘Oh, did I?’ said Billy. ‘And how would you have done—put yourself
in my position, and what would you have done to get rid of it?’
“That flummoxed me.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘to begin with, I wouldn’t have been such an ass as
to want to get rid of it.’
“‘S’posing you were,’ said he, ‘and I allow I was an ass to fancy all
them things, but supposing you were, will you tell me where I went
wrong? Wouldn’t you have done everything I did just as I did it? Of
course you would. I tell you I was fixed to that thing by bad luck and
I only got rid of it after it had done me in with the drink.’
“‘But you haven’t got rid of it,’ says Buck.
“‘Whach you mean?’ asks Billy, his hair standing on end.
“‘You brought it on board,’ says Buck, and he goes to the locker and
takes the parcel out. Billy looked at it, took it in his hands and
turned it over.
“‘Then he says: ‘That does me.’ He says no more than that. The life
seemed to go out of him for a bit as if the hunch had come on him that
it wasn’t no use to fight any more.
“‘I says to Buck: ‘Come on up on deck and leave him with the durned
thing,’ and up we went and there we saw a big freighter pounding along
and coming up from south’ard, ’Frisco bound and making to pass us
close.
“‘There’s his chance,’ says Buck; ‘run down and fetch him up and we’ll
flag her to stop, it’s better than taking him off to hell or
Timbuctoo, seeing he’s a married man.’
“Down I went and up I brought him. There was a fair sea still running,
but nothing to make a bother about, and we could easy have got him off
in a boat. But do you think that chap would go, not he; he said he’d
sure be drowned if he put off in a boat in that sea, said the thing
was out to drown him if it could. Then he went below and got into his
bunk with his inamorata, and we let the freighter pass, and that was
his last chance of getting to Los Angeles for many a long day.
“I was pretty sick with him, so was Buck. It wasn’t so much because he
was afraid of drowning as because he was afraid of being drowned by
that rotten parcel, but we weren’t so free of superstitions ourselves
as to be too hard on the poor chap, so we didn’t do more than make his
life a hell till he was ashamed of himself to the soles of his boots
and taking a hand in the working of the ship. We wanted to shy parcel
and petticoat overboard, but he wouldn’t let us. We’d shown him the
initials on the belt of the thing and he said they were his wife’s and
it was plain now that some mistake had been made in packing it among
his things by the servant maid he gave us the specification of. He
said he reckoned he’d keep it to bring back to her, so she might know
his story was true.
“But it was many a day before he was likely to see Los Angeles again
and so we told him.
V
“From the day we passed that freighter till the day we lifted Howland
Island, which lies nor’-west of Nanuti, we only sighted three ships
hull down and beyond signalling.
“After passing Howland we passed a brig bound for Java and a freighter
from Rangoon bound for South American ports—Nothing for anywhere near
’Frisco.
“Billy like a good many landsmen seemed to fancy that ships were all
over the sea close as plums in a pudding. He got to know different by
the time we reached Nanuti and, more than that, he got to know that
every ship wasn’t bound for ’Frisco.
“‘Why,’ he says one day, ‘if I’ve got to wait for a ship back,’ he
says, ‘I’m thinking it’s an old man I’ll be before we sight one.’
“‘And you’re thinking right,’ says Buck. ‘You had your chance and you
missed it because the sea was a bit rough and your head was stuffed
with that blessed petticoat and the idea it was going to drown you.
You’ll just have to stick to the old _Greyhound_ till she fetches up
again at Long Wharf and that’s God knows when, for we don’t run by
time-table.’
“And that was the fact; we touched at Nanuti and discharged cargo and
took on copra. Then we came along down by the New Hebrides and shaving
New Caledonia put into Sydney and discharged and took a cargo along to
Auckland, and then from North Island we took a cargo down for Dunedin.
The only way to make money with ships is to know where to go for your
cargoes. Buck had some sort of instinct that way and he was backed
with friends in the shipping trade, but it wasn’t for eight months
from starting that he got the chance of a cargo to ’Frisco, and it
wasn’t till two months later that we passed the whistling buoy and saw
the tumble of the bar.
“I looked at Billy that morning and I thought to myself that it was
worth it to him. He looked twice the man he was when he fetched on
board and, more than that, he could handle sails and steer and take an
observation as good as me or Buck, besides which Buck had treated him
well about payment and he’d have a good few dollars waiting for him
when we tied up at the wharf.
“Which was that day. I’d business which kept me running about all the
day after and it wasn’t till the day after that Billy took heart and
come to me and asked me to go with him to Los Angeles so’s to break
him to his wife, so to speak.
“I’d got to like the chap and I agreed. I won’t say that I wasn’t
anxious to see how he’d make out when he got back and what Mrs. Billy
would say to him, but however that may be, I packed a bag and Billy
shouldered his dunnage and off we started by the night train, getting
into Los Angeles next morning.
“It wasn’t as big a place in those days as it is now. We left our
traps at the station and set off on foot to find Mrs. B., Billy back
in his old nervous state and almost afraid to ask questions as to how
his wife and the shop had been doing in his absence. The shop was on
Pine Tree Avenue, and half way along to it Billy’s nerves got so bad
we stopped at a restaurant for some breakfast, fixing it that I should
go off after the meal and hunt up Mrs. B. and find out what had become
of her. Billy could scarcely eat his food for talking of what might
have happened to her, fearing maybe she might have committed suicide
or gone bankrupt or starved to death or gone out of her mind at the
loss of him. The woman that ran the restaurant served us at table and
it came to me sudden to ask her did she know anything of a Mrs. Broke
of Pine Tree Avenue who had a dry goods store.
“‘Burstall, you mean?’ said she. ‘She’s married again since Broke ran
off and left her. He was a little no good chap and skipped with all
the money they had, which wasn’t much, and she got a divorce against
him for illegally deserting her or incompatibility of temper or
something and ran the store herself and made it pay. Y’ see, he’d been
boss of the thing up to that, and near made it bankrupt, but once she
took charge, she made it pay. I’ve never seen Broke, I only came to
the town six months ago, but I’ve seen Burstall often. He’s a fine man
and between them they’re making that store hum.’
“I got Billy on his feet and out of that place and wanted to get him
to the station to see about the next train for ’Frisco, but he said he
wanted to see things for himself and make sure; so the funeral
procession started for Pine Tree Avenue.
“‘That’s the place,’ said Billy, pointing to a big shop with J.
Burstall and Co. painted along the front in gold letters. ‘There’s my
old home—Well, I wish her happiness.
“That seemed to me a pretty weak thing to do, and I says to him:
‘Ain’t you going to kick Burstall?’
“He didn’t hear me, he was so occupied looking at his old home, till a
big fellow in his shirt-sleeves comes out and begins looking at the
contents of the shop window to see how they showed.
“Billy goes up to him.
“‘You belong to this store?’ says Billy.
“‘Yep,’ says the chap.
“‘Then will you give Mrs. Broke, I mean Burstall, this parcel,’ says
Billy, ‘and ask her to see me about it, there’s been a big mistake.’
“‘No use troubling her,’ says the big chap. ‘I’m Burstall and running
this store. What’s this you’ve brought back—we don’t change no goods
once bought.’
“‘It’s a petticoat,’ says Billy.
“‘Well, what’s wrong with it?’ asks the other, taking the goods.
“‘What’s wrong with it!’ cries Billy, then he begins to laugh like a
crazy man, till I thought Burstall would have gone for the both of us.
“‘Come on, Billy,’ I says, catching him by the arm, then I turns to
Burstall: ‘You big stiff,’ I says, for all my bristles were up at the
beefy look of the chap and the carried on. ‘You big stiff,’ I says,
‘for two pins,’ I says, ‘I’d kick you from here to Santa Barbara.’
“Burstall drops the parcel to go for me, when along comes a policeman,
and explanations begins; Burstall saying how we’d been trying to land
him some old goods we’d never bought in his shop and the policeman
asking us for our address.
“‘We don’t belong here,’ I says. ‘We’ve come from ’Frisco.’
“‘Well,’ says the bull, ‘if I find you about town trying any more of
your dodges by noon to-day. I’ll run you in, sure as my name’s Bill
Adams. Pick up your parcel and off with you.’
“I picked the damned thing up and stuffed it in the side pocket of
Billy’s coat and led him off, the bull following us two or three
blocks to make sure we were moving.
“We found a train was starting at the station, and I got Billy in, all
broke down. Getting towards ’Frisco he pulled himself together, he’d
been thinking a lot on the journey, and I got the surprise of my life
to find him cheerful all of a sudden.
“‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’ says he. ‘I’m thinking this thing is
my mascot, and I’ve been trying to get rid of my luck all this time.
It got me free of that woman, for we never pulled together proper, it
got me in with you and Slane, and you’ve made a man of me. Every time
I tried to lose it, bad luck came to me, and look at the luck she’s
had since she lost it, married to that brute of a Burstall. It’s my
luck I’ve been trying to get rid of, and now I know, I’m going to do
big things.’
“I left him at the station, and met him a year later all broke down
and half in rags.
“‘Why, Billy.’ I said, ‘what ails you?’
“‘I lost my mascot,’ says he. ‘I was getting on fine and making money
hand over fist when a damn landlady pinched it out of my wardrobe,
though I never could bring it home to her. It took all the heart out
of me and things went wrong all round.’
“I gave him a dollar and never saw him again,” finished Brent, “and
I’ve just told you about him to show you what nerves and fancies and
such like may bring a man to.—Now as to that dead Chink.”
But I wasn’t bothering any more about the Chink, maybe because of the
fresh air of the harbour, maybe because of the awful warning contained
in the story of Billy Broke.