Eight bells had gone, the morning watch was done, it was almost time to
eat, and so Kieran, the pump-man, laid aside the tools of his berth and
came strolling aft; and swinging down the long gangway he sang:
"There was a girl,--I knew her well,--a girl in Zanzibar--
A bulgeous man of science said you bet her avatar
Was Egypt's Cleopatra--and from off a man-o'-war
I met her first--and O, her eyes! A blazing polar star!
From which you couldn't head away no more than you could fly--
Gypsy one of Zanzy! For you who wouldn't die!"
It was one of those fine days in the Gulf of Mexico. Abreast of the ship
the Florida reefs, low-crested, ragged, and white, loomed above the
smooth sea.
Kieran contemplated the line of reefs; presently he leaned over the
taffrail and stared down at the whirling propeller; from the screws his
gaze shifted to the whirling water above and about them, and thence to
the tow in their wake. He put his head to one side, studied the
spectacle of the straining hawser and the wallowing barge on the end of
it, as if it were a mysterious problem.
"Oh-h, shucks!" He sighed and came suddenly out of his reverie, looked
up at the sky, turned wearily inboard, and sat himself on one of the
towing bitts.
The passenger, from the other towing bitt, asked what it was.
"I was just thinking that some of us are tied to the end of a string,
just like that barge, and we don't know it any more than she does, and
no more able to help ourselves than she can--sometimes."
"I never looked at a towing barge in that light before," said the
passenger, and lit a cigar. He made no offer of one to Kieran, because
he had before this learned that Kieran never smoked.
The ship rolled, the barge yawed, the reefs kept sliding by. The
passenger stole a look at the pump-man, and ventured: "Kieran, there
used to be, a few years ago, a sprinter, pole-vaulter, and jumper,
competing under the name of Campbell in the Hibernian and Caledonian
games up north, and you're a ringer for him."
Kieran glanced sidewise at the passenger. "You must have been in
athletics yourself--seems to me I've seen you somewhere too."
"Maybe. My name's Benson."
"I remember--a sprinter. And a good one, too."
"Good enough--with no Wefers or Duffey, or somebody like yourself
around," protested the passenger, but immensely pleased nevertheless to
be identified after so many years. And they were both pleased and
exchanged rapid comment on a dozen incidents of athletic days; and when
two ex-athletes get together they run on interminably.
By and by, but not prematurely, the passenger asked, "But _was_ there a
girl at Zanzibar?"
Kieran made no reply. He seemed to be considering the matter of the
barge. After a time he went to the quarter-rail and gazed forward. He
came back to his bitt. "I thought so. There's one of those wreckers up
ahead. They're always along here--standing by or cruising for any loose
wreckage." He waved his hand toward the reefs. "Look. Where their crests
don't pierce the surface you know they're there by the surf playing over
'em. Where they lie a little deeper the paler green of the sea shows 'em
up. In the deep pockets in between--see?--the sea's of a beautiful deep
blue. That's all easy enough, isn't it, but where the drifting clouds
shut out the sunlight, where the shadows fall it's all of a color, isn't
it? No saying then where it's deep water and where it is shoal. It's the
clouds. If the light was always good, there'd be few wrecks along here.
And"--he waved toward the barge astern--"there she is tied to us. If
this ship piles up on the reefs, she piles up behind us."
"Couldn't they cut her adrift?"
"H-m-m--a drifting barge and the Florida Keys tide-water, where would
she fetch up?" And, after a pause, "no fault of hers either, and that
seems hard, too. But there's that wrecker--listen."
A hailing voice came floating aft to them. "Ain't seen nothing 'long de
way--nothin' to th' east'ard, has you, capt'n?"
"No, I didn't see nothin'. And if I did, d'y' s'pose I'd tell you, you
green-sided, patch-sailed whelp's loafer of a black pirate, do you?"
Without turning their heads Kieran and the passenger could hear their
captain's voice from the bridge, and also without turning their heads
they shortly saw the wrecking schooner slide past their quarter. She
_was_ green-painted and her sails _were_ a scandal, and it _was_ a very
black and big negro who was standing in her waist to catch the reply,
and it was very like their captain to answer as he did.
The big negro only flashed his teeth and waved his arm. His little
vessel went drifting astern.
"Pirates and wreckers--look pretty much like honest people, don't they?"
commented Kieran. "And they are mostly. At least I've bunked with
'em--white ones, though--and I found 'em pretty much like you and
me--except for their ideas in that and maybe one or two other lines. And
most people, when you come to know them, aren't so different, except in
one way--or maybe two or three ways in some cases. Don't you think so?"
The passenger countered with another question. "You've met a good many
different kinds of people in your time, haven't you?"
The pump-man nodded. After a pause he added, "A few," in an absent
manner.
The low-lying reefs sank out of sight, and far astern the green-painted
schooner merged into the mists. It was a warm, pleasant day.
Kieran roused himself. "No, there wasn't any girl in Zanzibar. If there
had been, a fellow couldn't be advertising her to the crew of an
oil-tanker at high-noon, could he? No! But there _was_ a girl, and there
was a friend of mine--call him Cogan. Oh, not a bad fellow--no worse,
maybe no better, than you or I, or most any of the old crowd we used to
know, and he happened to drift down the Isthmus way--into Colon--during
the Revolution. Ever there?"
"Once, just after the Revolution."
"And what did you think of it--the Revolution?"
"M-m--it surely did happen most opportunely for our interests."
"Didn't it, though? And did you ever notice that quite a few of the
revolutions in those Central American latitudes happen most opportunely
for some northern interest or other? Well, Cogan was there during the
Revolution. He told me of a saloon there, about a minute's walk up from
the big steamship dock on the street next the water-side--remember that
street?"
"Where the railroad starts to cross the Isthmus to Panama?"
"That's it. And this saloon was on that street--it may be there yet--the
Fourth of July saloon with its big American ensign painted on the wall
opposite the bar. Remember it?"
"M-m-h-h."
"Well, it was run by a Brooklyn Irishman named Martin Jackson, and Cogan
said he remembered the shock he got when he first heard him talk. His
Irish brogue had a Spanish accent--do you get that? Well, he has nothing
to do with the story, only this--Cogan used to have great ideas about
revolutions, and Martin, he knocked most of them out of him. He'd seen
twenty of them in his time, Martin had, and when he saw one of them
coming now, he just ran up his iron shutters and let it roll by.
Business was generally pretty good after a revolution. An easy-going
sort of a man, Martin. He didn't even get mad with Cogan when he'd used
up hours of his time and then only order ginger ale.
"Cogan saw the Panamanian army at dress parade one day--after the
Revolution that was. About two hundred darkies, mostly boys of thirteen
or fourteen, barefooted with high-water pants on. Cogan's notion of it
was that a dozen good huskies with baseball bats could've landed on
their peninsula any fine, sunny afternoon and in ten minutes rushed the
whole Panamanian army into the Pacific Ocean--that is, if our warships
would let them. If we'd only let the Colombians alone they'd soon've
wound up the Revolution--so Cogan thought, and told Martin so. 'But I
s'pose they've had hundreds of revolutions in South America?' he says to
Martin.
"'Hundreds,' says Martin, and blows more smoke toward the sky. Out in
front of the saloon they were sitting, both of 'em balancing between the
sidewalk and the wall on the hind legs of their chairs.
"'Anybody ever killed?'
"'Oh, not more than maybe a few hundred to a time--sometimes a few
thousand--'
"'Hundreds? Thousands?' says Cogan. 'We hadn't any more than three
hundred killed--that is, killed fighting--in the whole Santiago
campaign.' Cogan had been there.
"'And you have written a library of books about it,' says Martin. 'But
of course when a few hundred are killed down this way--'tis a great
joke. And those little black and tan lads of thirteen or fourteen having
to go off shouldering a rifle and kill or get killed--they're jokes,
too. But if a grown man up in your country does it--the band plays when
he goes and comes, and he makes speeches about it at banquets--and
sometimes he will draw a pension for the next sixty years after it--'
says Martin and said it in his easy way, as if he didn't care much about
it one way or the other; and maybe he didn't.
"Cogan didn't find much doing on the streets of Colon after the
Revolution was over, so he got in the way of dropping into a place just
around the corner from Martin's, a joint where they sold you drinks to
tables in the front room and ran faro layouts in two rooms in back--one
for whites and one for blacks.
"Cogan drifted in there with a man who looked like the pictures of grand
dukes he'd seen--tall, fine broad shoulders, and dressed in white ducks,
and wore a long, well-trimmed dark beard, and swung a gold-headed cane,
and had a big ring on one finger. Cogan heard him on the wharf that
day--he talked pretty good English--helping out a Chinese merchant who
was kicking about the freight charges on some cases he wanted to ship
across the peninsula. The American gang running the railroad down there
used to charge what they pleased in those days, and Cogan had a sympathy
for anybody that bucked them--he'd had to pay eight dollars gold for a
run to Panama and back himself--and he and the grand duke got chummy and
looked the town over together; but not much to look at, and this evening
they drifted into this place--the Russian taking a high-ball and Cogan
another ginger ale--to have an excuse to hang around and see what was
doing.
"There wasn't much doing. Half a dozen discouraged looking girls were
sitting to tables in the place. From California, Mexico, Jamaica they
were, and had come on just as soon as they could when they heard about
the Revolution, thinking that with the crowd of Americans who were sure
to rush down to the peninsula, there ought to be a living for a few
clever ladies like themselves. But up to this time the rush hadn't got
beyond war correspondents and navy people, and now the poor things were
sitting to tables and looking as if they wished somebody would loosen up
and buy a drink--even if it was no more than a glass of moxie.
"Cogan's grand duke turned out to be a Peruvian, a dealer in Panama hats
from Lima, and he told Cogan a lot about Panama hats, which weren't
Panama hats at all, and other interesting things--South America politics
and bull fighting especially. He had a brother Juan, who was a famous
mounted capeador, he said--that's the man who sits with a red cloak on a
horse in the first part of the bull fight and Cogan could see that he
was very proud of him.
"Cogan and his Peruvian friend were getting on fine, when a tremendous
old Indian woman filled up the doorway, and said something in Spanish to
the Peruvian, and he got up, explaining to Cogan that his daughter
Valera, who had come with him on this trip to see the strange peoples,
had sent to say that he must not forget his good-night before she fell
asleep. 'She never allows me to forget that,' said the Peruvian. 'Also
possibly she knows,' he smiled, 'that if I am at home I shall not be in
mis-cheef,' and he said he hoped they'd meet again next day and bowed
himself out.
"Cogan went off later to his hotel. That's the same hotel which had been
the George Washington Hotel, later the Cleveland House, and at this time
was the Hotel McKinley, but with an intention soon to call it the
Roosevelt House. If it's there now, it must be the Hotel Taft.
"Cogan had the end room of the lower floor of the hotel wing which ran
down toward the beach. The ocean rolled almost up to the window of his
room. It was a calm night with no sea on, and lying there, listening,
Cogan could just catch the low swish of the surf.
[Illustration: He said he hoped they'd meet again next day and bowed
himself out]
"It was a hot, close night, and Cogan's bed no cooler for being wrapped
four times around with mosquito netting, so after he had tossed around
an hour or two, he guessed he might as well get up and have a swim. He
had only to step through a window, take a hop, step, and jump, and he
would be at the edge of the surf; but as he opened up his shutters
softly, so as not to disturb anybody else in that wing of the house, he
saw that it was already near dawn, and then wh-s-s-t, quick as that, the
top edge of the sun popped up.
"Cogan looking out saw a young girl of maybe fourteen years with long
black hair hanging loose behind her. It was a smooth, silver-like sea,
with hardly surf enough to raise a white edge on the beach, and the
girl, ankle deep in the water, was kicking her feet ahead of her, making
a great splashing as she marched along. Her legs below her knees were
bare, and she was gurgling with joy. By the time she was abreast of
Cogan's window, it was full dawn.
"Suddenly she turned, ran in waist deep, and plunged seaward. Cogan,
seeing her over her head and alone, began to worry; but he might have
saved himself the worry--she came tumbling back like a young dolphin,
found her feet on the beach, and flew to where was a cloak and a pair of
Chinese slippers piled on the sand. The long rays of the just rising sun
were now flashing level atop of the sea, and the sea-water clinging to
her in a million twinkling drops as she ran. Cogan remembered a marble
nymph he had once seen under a fountain in a square on a sunny morning
in Rome, only the figure in Rome was a couple of hundred, or perhaps a
couple of thousand, years old and needed washing, and being marble the
water didn't cling so lingeringly.
"Her bare young legs, as they twinkled on the beach, were like a pair of
moving poems to Cogan, and then the long cloak enveloped her. An instant
later the little feet slipped out from beneath the cloak and into the
sandals, and then a big woman came running down the beach. Cogan
recognized her--the same big Indian who had come after his Peruvian
friend the night before. He decided she must be a descendant of the old
Incas that Pizarro conquered, and of course that didn't make it any less
interesting. She began to scold the girl, peering distressfully around
while she was talking as if to see if any early hotel riser had seen
them. But the girl only made a face up at her, and that gave Cogan his
first sight of her teeth. He thought her the most delightful looking
creature he had ever seen. They disappeared between a row of trees
further up the beach--a row of palms which guarded a line of cottages
from the wash of the surf.
"'That,' said Cogan to himself, when his eyes couldn't make out the
fluttering of her cloak any more--'that must be Valera.' And he sat
down to the hotel breakfast with a great appetite, thinking happily that
by and by he would see her father again.
"But Cogan, who was off a cruiser in Colon harbor, had to be back aboard
for quarters that morning; and after quarters it was up the coast to
Chiriqui Lagoon to coal ship, and it was three days more before he was
back in Colon. His Peruvian friend he could not find, but he looked up
the Chinese trader that he'd first seen him with and who had a shop on
the corner between Martin Jackson's and the faro joint.
"The Chinaman could tell him. Señor Roca had taken the choo-choo back to
Callao--si, si--Oh, yes, for Lima.
"Cogan asked for the name and address and got it. 'Señor Luis Roca,' he
repeated. 'I'll remember that--and the street and number. And some day
I'll take a run down to Peru--to Lima.'
"'Si, si--fine cit-ee. And bull fight--granda, señor,' said the
Chinaman, who, like Martin Jackson, had also a Spanish accent."
* * * * *
The pump-man had come to a full stop. The third officer was standing
near. A regurgitating and ruminating little animal was the third
officer, who always after a meal came up on deck to lean over the
after-rail, and spend a few enjoyable minutes in picking his teeth, and
rechewing the lumps of food as they welled regularly into his throat;
but otherwise a polite little man, plainly waiting for a chance to say a
word to Kieran, but too well-bred to break in on any intimate
conversation. However, Kieran remained silent so very long that the
third officer turned and ventured: "'Adn't you better go below and have
your bit o' dinner afore it's gone, mate?" And Kieran came out of his
dream and said perhaps he'd better and stood up to go below; but on the
top step of the ladder he paused and over his shoulder threw back to the
passenger: "It was a long time, though, before Cogan saw Peru."