The brig labored heavily during the lulls as the seas rose, and when

the squalls came, flattening them to a level, she would lie down like a

tired animal, while the aeolian song aloft prevented orders being heard

unless shouted near by. Captain Swarth went below and smashed the glass

of an aneroid barometer (newly invented and lately acquired from an

outward-bound Englishman), in which he had not much confidence, but

which might tell him roughly of the air-density. Feeling of the

indicator, and judging by the angle it made with the center,--marked by

a ring at the top,--he found a measurement which startled him. Setting

the adjustable hand over the indicator for future reference, he

returned to the deck, ill at ease, and ordered the topsails

goose-winged. By the time the drenched and despairing blind men had

accomplished this, a further lowering of the barometer induced him to

furl topsails and foretopmast-staysail, and allow the brig to ride

under a storm-spanker. Then the increasing wind required that this also

should be taken in, and its place filled by a tarpaulin lashed to the

weather main-rigging.

"Angel," said the captain, shouting into the mate's ear, "there's only

one thing to account for this. We're on the right tack for the Southern

Ocean; but the storm-center is overtaking us faster than we can drift

away from it. We must scud out of its way."

So they took in the tarpaulin and set the foretopmast-staysail again,

and, with the best two helmsmen at the wheel, they sped before the

tempest for four hours, during which there was no increase of the wind

and no change in the barometer; it still remained at its lowest

reading.

"Keep the wind as much on the port quarter as you dare," ordered

Swarth. "We're simply sailing around the center, and perhaps in with

the vortex."

They obeyed him as they could, and in a few hours more there was less

fury in the blast and a slight rise in the barometer.

"I was right," said the captain. "The center will pass us now. We're

out of its way."

They brought the brig around amid a crashing of seas over the port

rail, and stowing the staysail, pinned her again on the port tack with

the tarpaulin. But a few hours of it brought an increase of wind and a

fall of the barometer.

"What in d--nation does it mean, Angel?" cried the captain,

desperately. "By all laws of storms we ought to drift away from the

center."

The mate could not tell; but a voice out of the night, barely

distinguishable above the shrieking wind, answered him.

"You--all-fired--fool--don't--you--know--any--more--than--to--heave--to

--in--the--Gulf--Stream?"

Then there was the faintest disturbance in the sounds of the sea,

indicating the rushing by of a large craft.

"What!" roared Swarth. "The Gulf Stream? I've lost my reckoning. Where

am I? Ship ahoy! Where am I?"

There was no answer, and he stumbled down to the main-deck among his

men, followed by the mate.

"Draw a bucket of water, one of you," he ordered.

This was done, and he immersed his hand. The water was warm.

"Gulf-Stream," he yelled frantically, "Gulf Stream--how in h----l did we

get up here? We ought to be down near St. Helena. Angel, come here.

Let's think. We sailed by the wind on the southeast trade for--no, we

didn't. It was the northeast trade. We caught the northeast trade, and

we've circled all over the Western Ocean."

"You're a bully full-rigged navigator, you are," came the sneering,

rasping voice of Tom Plate from the crowd. "Why didn't you drop your

hook at Barbados, and give us a chance for our eyes?"

The captain lunged toward him on the reeling deck; but Tom moved on.

"Your time is coming, Tom Plate," he shouted insanely; then he climbed

to the poop, and when he had studied the situation awhile, called his

bewildered mate up to him.

"We were blown out of the north entrance o' the bay, Angel, instead of

the south, as we thought. I was fooled by the soundings. At this time

o' the year Barbados is about on the thermal equator--half-way between

the trades. This is a West India cyclone, and we're somewhere around

Hatteras. No wonder the port tack drifted us into the center. Storms

revolve against the sun north o' the line, and with the sun south of

it. Oh, I'm the two ends and the bight of a d--d fool! Wear ship!" he

added in a thundering roar.

They put the brig on the starboard tack, and took hourly soundings with

the deep-sea lead. As they hauled it in for the fourth time, the men

called that the water was cold; and on the next sounding the lead

reached bottom at ninety fathoms.

"We're inside the Stream and the hundred-fathom curve, Angel. The

barometer's rising now. The storm-center's leaving us, and we're

drifting ashore," said the captain. "I know pretty well where I am.

These storms follow an invariable track, and I judge the center is to

the east of us, moving north. That's why we didn't run into it when we

thought we were dodging it. We'll square away with the wind on the

starboard quarter now, and if we pick up the Stream and the glass don't

rise, I'll be satisfied to turn in. I'm about fagged out."

"It's too much for me, Bill," answered Mr. Todd, wearily. "I can

navigate; but this ain't navigation. This is blindman's-buff."

But he set the head-sail for his captain, and again the brig fled

before the wind. Only once did they round to for soundings, and this

time found no bottom; so they squared away, and when, a few hours

later, the seas came aboard warm, Swarth was confident enough of his

position to allow his mind to dwell on pettier details of his business.

It was nearly breakfast-time now, and the men would soon be eating.

With his pistols in his coat pockets he stationed himself beside the

scuttle of the fore-hatch,--the entrance to the forecastle,--and waited

long and patiently, listening to occasional comments on his folly and

bad seamanship which ascended from below, until the harsh voice of Tom

Plate on the stairs indicated his coming up. He reached toward Tom with

one hand, holding a cocked pistol with the other; but Tom slid easily

out of his wavering grasp and fled along the deck. He followed his

footsteps until he lost them, and picked up instead the angry plaint of

the negro cook in the galley amidships.

"I do' know who you are, but you want to git right out o' my galley,

now. You heah me? I'se had enough o' dis comin' inter my galley. Gwan,

now! Is you de man dat's all time stealin' my coffee? I'll gib you

coffee, you trash! Take dat!"

Captain Swarth reached the galley door in time to receive on the left

side of his face a generous share of a pot of scalding coffee. It

brought an involuntary shriek of agony from him; then he clung to the

galley-lashings and spoke his mind. Still in torment, he felt his way

through the galley; but the cook and the intruder had escaped by the

other door and made no sound.

All that day and the night following he chose to lie in his darkened

state-room, with his face bandaged in oily cloths, while Yank Tate

stood his watch. In the morning he removed the bandages and took in the

sight of his state-room fittings: the bulkhead, his desk, chronometer,

cutlass, and clothing hanging on the hooks. It was a joyous sight, and

he shouted in gladness. He could not see with his right eye and but

dimly with his left, but a scrutiny of his face in a mirror disclosed

deep lines that had not been there, distorted eyelids, and the left

side where the coffee had scalded puffed to a large, angry blister. He

tied up his face, leaving his left eye free, and went on deck.

The wind had moderated, but on all sides was a wild gray waste of

heaving, white-crested combers, before which the brig was still

scudding under the staysail. Three miles off on the port bow was a

large, square-bowed, square-yarded ship, hove to and heading away from

them, which might be a frigate or a subsidized Englishman with painted

ports; but in either case she could not be investigated now. He looked

at the compass. The brig was heading about southeast, and his judgment

was confirmed. Two haggard-faced men with bandaged eyes were grinding

the wheel to starboard and port, and keeping the brig's yaws within two

points each way--good work for blind men. Angel Todd stood near, his

chin resting in his hand and his elbow on the companionway. Forward the

watch sat about in coils of rope and sheltered nooks or walked the deck

unsteadily, and a glance aloft showed the captain his rigging hanging

in bights and yards pointed every way. She was unkempt as a wreck. The

same glance apprised him of an English ensign, union down, tattered and

frayed to half its size, at the end of the standing spanker-gaff, with

the halyards made fast high on the royal-backstay, above the reach of

bungling blind fingers. Tom Plate was coming aft with none of the

hesitancy of the blind, and squinting aloft at the damaged

distress-signal. He secured another ensign--American--from the

flag-locker in the booby-hatch, mounted the rail, and hoisted it, union

down, in place of the other. Then he dropped to the deck and looked

into the glaring left eye and pepper-box pistol of Captain Swarth, who

had descended on him.

"Hands up, Tom Plate, over your head--quick, or I'll blow your brains

out!"

White in the face and open-mouthed, Tom obeyed.

"Mr. Todd," called the captain, "come down here--port main-rigging."

The mate came quickly, as he always did when he heard the prefix to his

name. It was used only in emergencies.

"What soundings did you get at the lead when we were blowing out?"

asked the captain. "What water did you have when you sang out 'a

quarter six' and 'a quarter less six'?"

"N-n-one, capt'n. There warn't any bottom. I jess wanted to get you to

drop the other anchor and hold her off the reef."

"Got him tight, cappen?" asked the mate. "Shall I help you hold 'im?"

"I've got my sight back. I've got Tom Plate under my gun. How long have

you been flying signals of distress, Tom Plate?"

"Ever since I could see, capt'n," answered the trembling sailor.

"How long is that?"

"Second day out, sir."

"What's your idea in keeping still about it? What could you gain by

being taken aboard a man-of-war?"

"I didn't want to have all the work piled on me jess 'cause I could

see, capt'n. I never thought anybody could ever see again. I slept

partly under No. 2 gun that night, and didn't get it so bad."

"You sneaked into my room, got my keys, and raided the treasure-chests.

You know what the rules say about that? Death without trial."

"No, I didn't, capt'n; I didn't."

"Search him, Mr. Todd."

The search brought to light a tobacco-pouch in which were about fifty

unset diamonds and a few well-jeweled solid-gold ornaments, which the

captain pocketed.

"Not much of a haul, considering what you left behind," he said calmly.

"I suppose you only took what you could safely hide and swim with."

"I only took my share, sir; I did no harm; I didn't want to be driftin'

round wi' blind men. How'd I know anybody could ever see any more?"

"Sad mistake, Tom. All we wanted, it seems, was a good scalding with

hot coffee." He mused a few moments, then continued: "There must be

some medical virtue in hot coffee which the doctors haven't learned,

and--well--Tom, you've earned your finish."

"You won't do it, capt'n; you can't do it. The men won't have it;

they're with me," stuttered the man.

"Possibly they are. I heard you all growling down the hatch yesterday

morning. You're a pack of small-minded curs. I'll get another crew. Mr.

Todd," he said to the listening mate, "steward told me he was out of

coffee, so we'll break a bag out o' the lazarette. It's a heavy

lift--two hundred pounds and over--'bout the weight of a man; so we'll

hoist it up. Let Tom, here, rig a whip to the spanker-gaff. He can

see."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered the mate. "Get a single block and a strap and

a gant-line out o' the bo's'n's locker, Tom."

"Is it all right, capt'n?" asked Tom, lowering his hands with a deep

sigh of relief. "I did what seemed right, you know."

"Rig that whip," said Swarth, turning his back and ascending the poop.

Tom secured the gear, and climbing aloft and out the gaff, fastened the

block directly over the lazarette-hatch, just forward of the binnacle.

Then he overhauled the rope until it reached the deck, and descended.

"Come up here on the poop," called the captain; and he came.

"Shall I go down and hook on, sir?" he asked zealously.

"Make a hangman's noose in the end of the rope," said Swarth.

"Eh--what--a runnin' bowline--a timber-hitch? No, no," he yelled, as he

read the captain's face. "You can't do it. The men----"

"Make a hangman's knot in the end of the rope," thundered the captain,

his pistol at Tom's ear.

With a face like that of a death's-head he tied the knot.

"Pass it round your neck and draw it tight."

Hoarse, inarticulate screams burst from the throat of the man, ended by

a blow on the side of his face by the captain's iron-hard fist. He

fell, and lay quiet, while Swarth himself adjusted the noose and bound

the hands with his own handkerchief. The men at the wheel strained

their necks this way and that, with tense waves of conflicting

expressions flitting across their weary faces, and the men forward,

aroused by the screams, stood about in anxious expectancy until they

heard Swarth's roar: "Lay aft here, the watch!"

They came, feeling their way along by rail and hatch.

"Clap on to that gant-line at the main fife-rail, and lift this bag of

coffee out o' the lazarette," sang out the captain.

They found the loose rope, tautened it, hooked the bight into an open

sheave in the stanchion, and listlessly walked forward with it. When

they had hoisted the unconscious Tom to the gaff, Swarth ordered:

"Belay, coil up the fall, and go forrard."

They obeyed, listlessly as ever, with no wondering voice raised to

inquire why they had not lowered the coffee they had hoisted.

Captain Swarth looked at the square-rigged ship, now on the port

quarter--an ill-defined blur to his imperfect vision. "Fine chance we'd

have had," he muttered, "if that happened to be a bulldog. Angel," he

said, as the mate drew near, "hot coffee is good for moon-blindness,

taken externally, as a blistering agent--a counter-irritant. We have no

fly-blisters in the medicine-chest, but smoking-hot grease must be just

as good, if not better than either. Have the cook heat up a potful, and

you get me out a nice small paint-brush."

Forty-eight hours later, when the last wakening vision among the twenty

men had taken cognizance of the grisly object aloft, the gaff was guyed

outboard, the rope cut at the fife-rail, and the body of Tom Plate

dropped, feet first, to the sea.

Then when Captain Swarth's eyes permitted he took an observation or

two, and, after a short lecture to his crew on the danger of sleeping

in tropic moonlight, shaped his course for Barbados Island, to take up

the burden of his battle with fate where the blindness had forced him

to lay it down; to scheme and to plan, to dare and to do, to war and to

destroy, against the inevitable coming of the time when fate should

prove the stronger--when he would lose in a game where one must always

win or die.

SALVAGE

She had a large crew, abnormally large hawse-pipes, and a bad

reputation--the last attribute born of the first. Registered as the

_Rosebud_, this innocent name was painted on her stern and on her

sixteen dories; but she was known among the fishing-fleet as the

_Ishmaelite_, and the name fitted her. Secretive and unfriendly, she

fished alone, avoided company, answered few hails, and, seldom filling

her hold, disposed of her catch as her needs required, in out-of-the-way

ports, often as far south as Charleston. And she usually left behind

her such bitter memories of her visit as placed the last port at the

bottom of her list of markets.

No ship-chandler or provision-dealer ever showed her receipted bills,

and not a few of them openly averred that certain burglaries of their

goods had plausible connection with her presence in port. Be this as it

may, the fact stood that farmers on the coast who saw her high bow and

unmistakable hawse-pipes when she ran in for bait invariably

double-locked their barns and chicken-coops, and turned loose all tied

dogs when night descended, often to find both dogs and chickens gone in

the morning.

Once, too, three small schooners had come home with empty holds, and

complained of the appearance, while anchored in the fog, of a flotilla

of dories manned by masked men, who overpowered and locked all hands in

cabin or forecastle, and then removed the cargoes of fish to their own

craft, hidden in the fog. Shortly after this, the _Ishmaelite_ disposed

of a large catch in Baltimore, and the piracy was believed of her, but

never proved.

Her luck at finding things was remarkable. Drifting dories, spars,

oars, and trawl-tubs sought her unsavory company, as though impelled by

the inanimate perversity which had sent them drifting. They were sold

in port, or returned to their owners, when paid for. In the early part

of her career she had towed a whistling buoy into Boston and claimed

salvage of the government, showing her logbook to prove that she had

picked it up far at sea. The salvage was paid; but, as her reputation

spread, there were those who declared that she herself had sent the

buoy adrift.

As poets and sailors believe that ships have souls, it may be that she

gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large,

slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental

sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to

respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash

through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard

tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large

craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as

an ordinary mainmast. An outward-bound coasting-schooner, resenting

this lawlessness on one occasion, attempted to assert her rights, and

being on the lawful starboard tack, bore steadily down on the

_Ishmaelite_,--who budged not a quarter-point,--and, losing heart at

the last moment, luffed up, all shaking, in just the position to allow

the ring of her port anchor to catch on the bill of the _Ishmaelite's_

starboard anchor. As her own ring-stopper and shank-painter were weak,

the patent windlass unlocked, and the end of the cable not secured in

the chain-locker, the _Ishmaelite_ walked calmly away with the anchor

and a hundred fathoms of chain, which, at the next port, she sold as

legitimate spoil of the sea.

As her reputation increased, so did the hatred of men, while the number

of ports on the coast which she could safely enter became painfully

small. To avoid conflict with local authority, she had hurried to sea

without clearing at the custom-house from Boston, Bangor, Portland, and

Gloucester. She had carried local authority in the persons of

distressed United States marshals to sea with her from three other

ports, and landed it on some outlying point before the next meal-hour.

With her blunt jib-boom she had prodded a hole in the side of a

lighthouse supply-boat, and sailed away without answering questions.

The government was taking cognizance, and her description was written

on the fly-leaves of several revenue cutters' log-books, while Sunday

newspapers in the large cities began a series of special articles about

the mysterious schooner-rigged pirate of the fishing-fleet.

The future looked dark for her, and when the time came that she was

chased away from Plymouth harbor--which she had entered for

provisions--by a police launch, it seemed that the end was at hand; for

she had done no wrong in Plymouth, and the police boat was evidently

acting on general principles and instructions, which were vital enough

to extend the pursuit to the three-mile limit. Her trips had become

necessarily longer, and there was but two weeks' supply of food in the

lazarette. The New England coast was an enemy's country, but in the

crowded harbor of New York was a chance to lie unobserved at anchor

long enough to secure the stores she needed, which only a large city

can supply. So Cape Cod was doubled on the way to New York; but the

brisk offshore wind, which had helped her in escaping the police boat,

developed to a gale that blew her to sea, and increased in force as the

hours passed by.

Hard-headed, reckless fellows were these men who owned the _Rosebud_ and

ran her on shares and under laws of their own making. Had they been of

larger, broader minds, with no change of ethics they would have acquired

a larger, faster craft with guns, hoisted the black flag, and sailed

southward to more fruitful fields. Being what they were,--fishermen gone

wrong,--they labored within their limitations and gleaned upon known

ground.

They were eighteen in number, and they typified the maritime nations of

the world. Americans predominated, of course, but English, French,

German, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and Russian were among them. The cook

was a West India negro, and the captain--or their nearest approach to a

captain--a Portland Yankee. Both were large men, and held their

positions by reason of special knowledge and a certain magnetic mastery

of soul which dominated the others against their rules; for in this

social democracy captains and bosses were forbidden. The cook was an

expert in the galley and a thorough seaman; the other as able a seaman,

and a navigator past the criticism of the rest.

His navigation had its limits, however, and this gale defined them. He

could find his latitude by meridian observation, and his longitude by

morning sights and chronometer time; his dead-reckoning was

trustworthy, and he possessed a fair working conception of the set and

force of the Atlantic currents and the heave of the sea in a blow. But

his studies had not given him more than a rudimentary knowledge of

meteorology and the laws of storms. A gale was a gale to him, and he

knew that it would usually change its direction as a clock's hands will

in moving over the dial; and if, by chance, it should back around to

its former point, he prepared for heavier trouble, with no reference to

the fluctuations of the barometer, which instrument to him was merely a

weather-glass--about as valuable as a rheumatic big toe.

So, in the case we are considering, not knowing that he was caught by

the southern fringe of a St. Lawrence valley storm, with its center of

low barometer to the northwest and coming toward him, he hove to on the

port tack to avoid Cape Cod, and drifted to sea, shortening sail as the

wind increased, until, with nothing set but a small storm-mainsail, he

found himself in the sudden calm of the storm-center, which had

overtaken him. Here, in a tumultuous cross-sea, fifty miles off the

shore, deceived by the light, shifty airs and the patches of blue sky

showing between the rushing clouds, he made all sail and headed west,

only to have the masts whipped out as the whistling fury of wind on the

opposite side of the vortex caught and jibed the canvas.

It was manifestly a judgment of a displeased Providence; and, glad that

the hull was still tight, they cut away the wreck and rode out the

gale,--now blowing out of the north,--hanging to the tangle of spar and

cordage which had once been the foremast and its gear. It made a fairly

good sea-anchor, with the forestay--strong as any chain--for a cable,

and she lay snug under the haphazard breakwater and benefited by the

protection, as the seas must first break their heads over the wreckage

before reaching her. The mainmast was far away, with all that pertained

to it; but the solid, hard-pine jib-boom was still intact, and not one

of the sixteen dories piled spoon-fashion in the four nests had been

injured when the spars went by the board. So they were content to

smoke, sleep, and kill time as they could, until the gale and sea

should moderate, and they could rig a jury-foremast of the wreck.

But before they could begin,--while there was still wind enough to curl

the head of an occasional sea into foam,--a speck which had been

showing on the shortened horizon to windward, when the schooner lifted

out of the hollows, took form and identity--a two-masted steamer, with

English colors, union down, at the gaff. High out of water, her

broadside drift was faster than that of the dismasted craft riding to

her wreckage, and in a few hours she was dangerously near, directly

ahead, rolling heavily in the trough of the sea. They could see shreds

of canvas hanging from masts and gaffs.

"Wunner what's wrong wid her," said the cook, as he relinquished the

glasses to the next man. "Amos," he called to another, "you've been in

the ingine-room, you say. Is her ingine bus' down?"

"Dunno," answered Amos. "Steam's all right; see the jet comin' out o'

the stack? There! she's turnin' over--kickin' ahead. 'Bout time if she

wants to clear us. She's signalin'. What's that say, Elisha?"

The ensign was fluttering down, and a string of small flags going aloft

on the other part of the signal-halyards, while the steamer, heading

west, pushed ahead about a length under the impulse of her propeller.

Elisha, the navigator, went below, and returned with a couple of books,

which he consulted.

"Her number," he said. "She's the _Afghan Prince_ o' London." As the

schooner carried no signal-flags, he waved his sou'wester in answer,

and the flags came down, to be replaced by others.

"Rudder carried away," he read, and then looked with the glasses.

"Rudder seems all right; must mean his steerin'-gear. Why don't they

rig up suthin', or a drag over the stern?"

"Don't know enough," said an expatriated Englishman of the crew. "She's

one o' them bloomin', undermanned tramps, run by apprentices an' Thames

watermen. They're drivin' sailors an' sailin'-ships off the sea blarst

'em!"

"Martin," said Elisha to the cook, "what's the matter with our bein' a

drag for her?"

"Dead easy, if we kin git his line an' he knows how to rig a bridle."

"We can show him, if it comes to it. What ye say, boys? If we steer her

into port we're entitled to salvage. She's helpless; we're not, for

we've got a jury-rig under the bows. Hello! what's he sayin' now?"

Other flags had gone aloft on the steamer, which asked for the

longitude. Then followed others which said that the chronometer was

broken.

"Better 'n ever!" exclaimed Elisha, excitedly. "Can't navigate. Our

chronometer's all right; we never needed it, an' don't now, but it's a

big help in a salvage claim. What ye say? Can't we get our hemp cable

to him with a dory?"

Why not? They were fishermen, accustomed to dory work. A short confab

settled this point; a dory was thrown over, and Elisha and Amos pulled

to the steamer, which was now abreast, near enough for the name which

Elisha had read to be seen plainly on the stern, but not near enough

for the men shouting from her taffrail to make themselves heard on the

schooner. Elisha and Amos, in the dory, conferred with these men and

then returned.

"Badly rattled," they reported. "Tiller-ropes parted, an' not a man

aboard can put a long splice in a wire rope, an' o' course we said we

couldn't. They'll take our line, an' we're to chalk up the position an'

the course to New York. Clear case o' salvage. We furnish everything,

an' sacrifice our jury-material to aid 'em."

"What'll be our chance in court, I'm thinkin'," said one, doubtfully.

"Hadn't we better keep out o' the courts? It's been takin' most of our

time lately."

"What's the matter wi' ye?" yelled Elisha. "We owe a few hundreds, an'

mebbe a fine or two; an' there's anywhere from one to two hundred

thousand--hull an' cargo--that we save. We'll get no less than a third,

mebbe more. Go lay down, Bill."

Bill subsided. They knotted four or five dory rodings together, coiled

the long length of rope in the dory, unbent the end of their water-laid

cable from the anchor, and waited until the wallowing steamer had

drifted far enough to leeward to come within the steering-arc of a

craft with no canvas; then they cut away the wreck, crowded forward,

all hands spreading coats to the breeze, and when the schooner had paid

off, steered her down with the wind on the quarter until almost near

enough to hail the steamer, where they rounded to, safe in the

knowledge that she could not drift as fast as the other.

Away went the dory, paying out on the roding, the end of which was

fastened to the disconnected cable, and when it had reached the

steamer, a heaving-line was thrown, by which the roding was hauled

aboard. Then the dory returned, while the steamer's men hauled the

cable to their stern. The bridle, two heavy ropes leading from the

after-winch out the opposite quarter-chocks to the end of the cable,

was quickly rigged by the steamer's crew.

With a warning toot of the whistle, she went ahead, and the long

tow-line swept the sea-tops, tautened, strained, and creaked on the

windlass-bitts, and settled down to its work, while the schooner,

dropping into her wake, was dragged westward at a ten-knot rate.

"This is bully," said Elisha, gleefully. "Now I'll chalk out the

position an' give her the course--magnetic, to make sure."

He did so, and they held up in full view of the steamer's bridge a

large blackboard showing in six-inch letters the formula: "Lat. 41-20.

Lon. 69-10. Mag. Co. W. half S."

A toot of the whistle thanked them, and they watched the steamer, which

had been heading a little to the south of this course, painfully swing

her head up to it by hanging the schooner to the starboard leg of the

bridle; but she did not stop at west-half-south, and when she pointed

unmistakably as high as northwest, still dragging her tow by the

starboard bridle, a light broke on them.

"She's goin' on her way with us," said Elisha. "No, no; she can't.

She's bound for London," he added. "Halifax, mebbe."

They waved their hats to port, and shouted in chorus at the steamer.

They were answered by caps flourished to starboard from the bridge, and

outstretched arms which pointed across the Atlantic Ocean, while the

course changed slowly to north, then faster as wind and sea bore on the

other bow, until the steamer steadied and remained at east-by-north.

"The rhumb course to the Channel," groaned Elisha, wildly. "The nerve

of it! An' I'm supposed to give the longitude every noon. Why, dammit,

boys, they'll claim they rescued us, an' like as not the English

courts'll allow them salvage on our little tub."

"Let go the tow-line! Let 'em go to h----l!" they shouted angrily, and

some started forward, but were stopped by the cook. His eyes gleamed in

his black face, and his voice was a little higher pitched than usual;

otherwise he was the steadiest man there.

"We'll hang right on to our bran-new cable, men," he said. "It's ours,

not theirs. 'Course we kin turn her adrif' ag'in, an' be wuss off, too;

we can't find de foremast now. But dat ain't de bes' way. John," he

called to the Englishman of the crew, "how many men do you' country

tramp steamers carry?"

John computed mentally, then muttered: "Two mates, six ash-cats,[1] two

flunkies, two quartermasters, watchman, deck-hands--oh, 'bout sixteen

or seventeen, Martin."

[1] Ash-cats: engineers and firemen.

"Boys, le' 's man de win'lass. We'll heave in on our cable, an' if we

kin git close enough to climb aboard, we'll reason it out wid dat

English cappen, who can't fin' his way roun' alone widout stealin'

little fishin'-schooners."

"Right!" they yelled. "Man the windlass. We'll show the lime-juice

thief who's doin' this."

"Amos," said Martin to the ex-engineer, "you try an' 'member all you

forgot 'bout ingines in case anything happens to de crew o' dat

steamer; an', Elisha, you want to keep good track o' where we go, so's

you kin find you' way back."

"I'll get the chronometer on deck now. I can take sights alone."

They took the cable to the windlass-barrel and began to heave. It was

hard work,--equal to heaving an anchor against a strong head wind and

ten-knot tideway,--and only half the crew could find room on the

windlass-brakes; so, while the first shift labored and swore and

encouraged one another, the rest watched the approach of a small tug

towing a couple of scows, which seemed to have arisen out of the sea

ahead of them. When the steamer was nearly upon her, she let go her

tow-line and ranged up alongside, while a man leaning out of the

pilot-house gesticulated to the steamer's bridge and finally shook his

fist. Then the tug dropped back abreast of the schooner. She was a

dingy little boat, the biggest and brightest of her fittings being the

name-board on her pilot-house, which spelled in large gilt letters the

appellation _J. C. Hawks_.

"Say," yelled her captain from his door, "I'm blown out wi' my barges,

short o' grub an' water. Can you gi' me some? That lime-juice sucker

ahead won't."

"Can you tow us to New York?" asked Elisha, who had brought up the

chronometer and placed it on the house, ready to take morning sights

for his longitude if the sun should appear.

"No; not unless I sacrifice the barges an' lose my contract wi' the

city. They're garbage-scows, an' I haven't power enough to hook on to

another. Just got coal enough to get in."

"An' what do you call this--a garbage-scow?" answered Elisha,

ill-naturedly. "We've got no grub or water to spare. We've got troubles

of our own."

"Dammit, man, we're thirsty here. Give us a breaker o' water. Throw it

overboard; I'll get it."

"No; told you we have none to spare; an' we're bein' yanked out to

sea."

"Well, gi' me a bottleful; that won't hurt you."

"No; sheer off. Git out o' this. We're not in the Samaritan business."

A forceful malediction came from the tug captain, and a whirling

monkey-wrench from the hand of the engineer, who had listened from the

engine-room door. It struck Elisha's chronometer and knocked it off the

house, box and all, into the sea. He answered the profanity in kind,

and sent an iron belaying-pin at the engineer; but it only dented the

tug's rail, and with these compliments the two craft separated, the tug

steaming back to her scows.

"That lessens our chance just so much," growled Elisha, as he joined

the rest. "Now we can't do all we agreed to."

"Keep dead-reckonin', 'Lisha," said Martin; "dat's good 'nough for us;

an', say, can't you take sights by a watch--jess for a bluff, to show

in de log-book?"

"Might; 't wouldn't be reliable. Good enough, though, for log-book

testimony. That's what I'll do."

Inch by inch they gathered in their cable and coiled it down, unmoved

by the protesting toots of the steamer's whistle. When half of it lay

on the deck, the steamer slowed down, while her crew worked at their

end of the rope; then she went ahead, the schooner dropped back to

nearly the original distance, and they saw a long stretch of new Manila

hawser leading out from the bridle and knotted to their cable. They

cursed and shook their fists, but pumped manfully on the windlass, and

by nightfall had brought the knot over their bows by means of a

"messenger," and were heaving on the new hawser.

"Weakens our case just that much more," growled Elisha. "We were to

furnish the tow-line."

"Heave away, my boys!" said Martin. "Dey's only so many ropes aboard

her, an' when we get 'em all we've got dat boat an' dem men."

So they warped their craft across the Western Ocean. Knot after knot,

hawser after hawser, came over the bows and cumbered the deck.

They would have passed them over the stern as fast as they came in,

were they not salvors with litigation ahead; for their hands must be

clean when they entered their claim, and to this end Elisha chalked out

the longitude daily at noon and showed it to the steamer, always

receiving a thankful acknowledgment on the whistle. He secured the

figures by his dead-reckoning; but the carefully kept log-book also

showed longitude by chronometer sights, taken when the sun shone, with

his old quadrant and older watch, and corrected to bring a result

plausibly near to that of the reckoning by log and compass. But the

log-book contained no reference to the loss of the chronometer. That

was to happen at the last.

On stormy days, when the sea rose, they dared not shorten their

tow-line, and the steamer-folk made sure that it was long enough to

eliminate the risk of its parting. So these days were passed in

idleness and profanity; and when the sea went down they would go to

work, hoping that the last tow-line was in their hands. But it was not

until the steamer had given them three Manila and two steel hawsers,

four weak--too weak--mooring-chains, and a couple of old and frayed

warping-lines, that the coming up to the bow of an anchor-chain of

six-inch link told them that the end was near, that the steamer had

exhausted her supply of tow-lines, and that her presumably sane skipper

would not give them his last means of anchoring--the other chain.

They were right. Either for this reason or because of the proximity to

English bottom, the steamer ceased her coyness, and her crew watched

from the taffrail, while those implacable, purposeful men behind crept

up to them. It was slow, laborious work; for the small windlass would

not grip the heavy links of the chain, and they must needs climb out a

few fathoms, making fast messengers to heave on, while the idle half of

them gathered in the slackened links by hand.

On a calm, still night they finally unshipped the windlass-brakes and

looked up at the round, black stern of the steamer not fifty feet

ahead. They were surrounded by lights of outgoing and incoming craft,

and they knew by soundings taken that day, when the steamer had slowed

down for the same purpose, that they were within the hundred-fathom

curve, close to the mouth of the Channel, but not within the three-mile

limit. Rejoicing at the latter fact, they armed themselves to a man

with belaying-pins from their still intact pin-rails, and climbed out

on the cable, the whole eighteen of them, man following man, in close

climbing order.

"Now, look here," said a portly man with a gilt-bound cap to the leader

of the line, as he threw a leg over the taffrail, "what's the meaning,

may I ask, of this unreasonable conduct?"

"You may ask, of course," said the man,--it was Elisha,--"but we'd like

to ask something, too" (he was sparring for time until more should

arrive); "we'd like to ask why you drag us across the Atlantic Ocean

against our will?"

Another man climbed aboard, and said:

"Yes; we 'gree to steer you into New York. You's adrif' in de trough of

de sea, an' you got no chronometer, an' you can't navigate, an' we come

'long--under command, mind you--an' give you our tow-line, an' tell you

de road to port. Wha' you mean by dis?"

"Tut, tut, my colored friend!" answered the man of gilt. "You were

dismasted and helpless, and I gave you a tow. It was on the high seas,

and I chose the port, as I had the right."

Another climbed on board.

"We were not helpless," rejoined Elisha. "We had a good jury-rig under

the bows, and we let it go to assist you. Are you the skipper here?"

"I am."

Martin's big fist smote him heavily in the face, and the blow was

followed by the crash of Elisha's belaying-pin on his head. The captain

fell, and for a while lay quiet. There were four big, strong men over

the rail now, and others coming. Opposing them were a second mate, an

engineer, a fireman, coal-passer, watchman, steward, and cook--easy

victims to these big-limbed fishermen. The rest of the crew were on

duty below decks or at the steering-winch. It was a short, sharp

battle; a few pistols exploded, but no one was hurt, and the firearms

were captured and their owners well hammered with belaying-pins; then,

binding all victims as they overcame them, the whole party raided the

steering-winch and engine-room, and the piracy was complete.

But from their standpoint it was not piracy--it was resistance to

piracy; and when Amos, the ex-engineer, had stopped the engines and

banked the fires, they announced to the captives bound to the rail

that, with all due respect for the law, national and international,

they would take that distressed steamboat into New York and deliver her

to the authorities, with a claim for salvage. The bargain had been made

on the American coast, and their log-book not only attested this, but

the well-doing of their part of the contract.

When the infuriated English captain, now recovered, had exhausted his

stock of adjectives and epithets, he informed them (and he was backed

by his steward and engineer) that there was neither food nor coal for

the run to New York; to which Elisha replied that, if so, the foolish

and destructive waste would be properly entered in the log-book, and

might form the basis of a charge of barratry by the underwriters, if it

turned out that any underwriters had taken a risk on a craft with such

an "all-fired lunatic" for a skipper as this. But they would go back;

they might be forced to burn some of the woodwork fittings (her decks

were of iron) for fuel, and as for food, though their own supply of

groceries was about exhausted, there were several cubic yards of salt

codfish in the schooner's hold, and this they would eat: they were used

to it themselves, and science had declared that it was good

brain-food--good for feeble-minded Englishmen who couldn't splice wire

nor take care of a chronometer.

Before starting back they made some preliminary and precautionary

preparations. While Martin inventoried the stores and Amos the

coal-supply, the others towed the schooner alongside and moored her.

Then they shackled the schooner's end of the chain cable around the

inner barrel of the windlass and riveted the key of the shackle. They

transhipped their clothing and what was left of the provisions. They

also took the log-book and charts, compass, empty outer

chronometer-case,--which Elisha handled tenderly and officiously by its

strap in full view of the captives,--windlass-brakes, tool-chest,

deck-tools, axes, handspikes, heavers, boat-hooks, belaying-pins, and

everything in the shape of weapon or missile by which disgruntled

Englishmen could do harm to the schooner or their rescuers.

Then they passed the rescued ones down to the schooner, and Martin told

them where they would find the iron kettle for boiling codfish, with

the additional information that with skill and ingenuity they could

make fish-balls in the same kettle.

Martin had reported a plenitude of provisions, and anathematized the

lying captain and steward; and Amos had declared his belief that with

careful economy in the use of coal they could steam to the American

coast with the supply in the bunkers: so they did not take any of the

codfish, and the hawsers, valuable as fuel in case of a shortage, were

left where they would be more valuable as evidence against the lawless,

incompetent Englishmen. And they also left the dories, all but one, for

reasons in Elisha's mind which he did not state at the time.

They removed the bonds of one man--who could release the others--and

cast off the fastenings; then, with Amos and a picked crew of pupils in

the boat's vitals, they went ahead and dropped the prison-hulk back to

the full length of the chain, while the furious curses of the prisoners

troubled the air. They found a little difficulty in steering by the

winch and deck-compass (they would have mended the tiller-ropes with a

section of backstay had they not bargained otherwise), but finally

mastered the knack, and headed westerly.

You cannot take an Englishman's ship from under him--homeward bound and

close to port--and drag him to sea again on a diet of salt codfish

without impinging on his sanity. When day broke they looked and saw the

hawsers slipping over the schooner's rail, and afterward a fountain of

fish arising from her hatches to follow the hawsers overboard.

"What's de game, I wunner?" asked Martin. "Tryin' to starve deyselves?"

"Dunno," answered Elisha, with a serious expression. "They're not doin'

it for nothin'. They're wavin' their hats at us. Somethin' on their

minds."

"We'll jes let 'em wave. We'll go 'long 'bout our business."

So they went at eight knots an hour; for, try as he might, Amos could

get no more out of the engine. "She's a divil to chew up coal," he

explained; "we may have to burn the boat yet."

"Hope not," said Elisha. "'Tween you an' me, Amos, this is a desperate

bluff we're makin', an' if we go to destroyin' property we may get no

credit for savin' it. We'd have no chance in the English courts at all,

but it's likely an American judge 'ud recognize our original

position--our bargain to steer her in."

"Too bad 'bout that tarred cable of ours," rejoined Amos; "three days'

good fuel in that, I calculate."

"Well, it's gone with the codfish, and the fact is properly entered in

the log as barratrous conduct on the part of the skipper. Enough to

prove him insane."

And further to strengthen this possible aspect of the case, Elisha

found a blank space on the leaf of the log-book which recorded the

first meeting and bargain to tow, and filled it with the potential

sentence, "Steamer's commander acts strangely." For a well-kept logbook

is excellent testimony in court.

Elisha's knowledge of navigation did not enable him to project a course

on the great circle--the shortest track between two points on the

earth's surface, and the route taken by steamers. But he possessed a

fairly practical and ingenious mind, and with a flexible steel

straight-edge rule, and a class-room globe in the skipper's room, laid

out his course between the lane-routes of the liners,--which he would

need to vary daily,--as it was not wise to court investigation. But he

signaled to two passing steamships for Greenwich time, and set his

watch, obtaining its rate of correction by the second favor; and with

this, and his surely correct latitude by meridian observation, he hoped

to make an accurate landfall in home waters.

And so the hours went by, with their captives waving caps ceaselessly,

until the third day's sun arose to show them an empty deck on the

schooner, over a dozen specks far astern and to the southward, and an

east-bound steamship on their port bow. The specks could be nothing but

the dories, and they were evidently trying to intercept the steamship.

Elisha yelled in delight.

"They've abandoned ship--just what I hoped for--in the dories. They've

no case at all now."

"But what for, Elisha?" asked Martin. "Mus' be hungry, I t'ink."

"Mebbe, or else they think that liner, who can stop only to save

life,--carries the mails, you see,--will turn round and put 'em in

charge here. Why, nothin' but an English man-o'-war could do that now."

They saw the steamship slow down, while the black specks flocked up to

her, and then go on her way. And they went on theirs; but three days

later they had reasoned out a better explanation of the Englishmen's

conduct. Martin came on deck with a worried face, and announced that,

running short of salt meat in the harness-cask, he had broken out the

barrels of beef, pork, and hard bread that he had counted upon, and

found their contents absolutely uneatable, far gone in putrescence,

alive with crawling things.

"Must ha' thought he was fitting out a Yankee hell-ship when he bought

this," said Elisha, in disgust, as he looked into the ill-smelling

barrels. "Overboard with it, boys!"

Overboard went the provisions, for starving animals could not eat of

them, and the odor permeated the ship. They resigned themselves to a

gloomy outlook--gloomier when Amos reported that the coal in the

bunkers would last but two days longer. He had been mistaken, he said;

he had calculated to run compound engines with Scotch boilers, not a

full-powered blast-furnace with six inches of scale on the

crown-sheets.

"And they knew this," groaned Elisha. "That's why they chucked the

stuff overboard--to bring us to terms, and never thinkin' they'd starve

first. They were dead luny, but we're lunier."

They stopped the engines and visited the schooner in the dory. Not a

scrap of food was there, and the fish-kettle was scraped bright. They

returned and went on. With plenty of coal there was still six days' run

ahead to New York. How many with wood fuel, chopped on empty stomachs

and burned in coal-furnaces, they could not guess. But they went to

work. There were three axes, two top-mauls, and several handspikes and

pinch-bars aboard, and with these they attacked bulkheads and spare

woodwork, and fed the fires with the fragments; for a glance down the

hatches had shown them nothing more combustible and detachable in the

cargo than a few layers of railroad iron, which covered and blocked the

openings to the lower hold.

With the tools at hand they could not supply the rapacious fires fast

enough to keep up steam, and the engines slowed to a five-knot rate. As

this would not maintain a sufficient tension on the dragging schooner

to steer by, they were forced to sacrifice the best item in their claim

for salvage: they spliced the tiller-ropes and steered from the

pilot-house. They would have sacrificed the schooner, too, for Amos

complained bitterly of the load on the engines; but Elisha would not

hear of it. She was the last evidence in their favor now, their last

connection with respectability.

"She and the pavement o' h----l," he growled fiercely, "are all we've

got to back us up. Without proof we're pirates under the law."

However, he made no entry in the log of the splicing, trusting that a

chance would come in port to remove the section of wire rope with which

they had joined the broken ends.

And, indeed, it seemed that their claim was dwindling. The chronometer

which they were to use for the steamer's benefit was lost; the tow-line

which they were to furnish had been given back to them; the course to

New York which they chalked out had not been accepted; the abandoning

of their ship by the Englishmen was clearly enforced by the pressure of

their own presence; and now they themselves had been forced to cancel

from the claim the schooner's value as a necessary drag behind the

steamer, by substituting a three hours' splicing-job, worth five

dollars in a rigging-loft, and possibly fifty if bargained for at sea.

Nothing was left them now but their good intentions, duly entered in

the log-book.

But fate, and the stupid understanding of some one or two of them,

decreed that their good intentions also should be taken from them. The

log-book disappeared, and the strictest search failing to bring it to

light, the conclusion was reached that it had been fed to the fires

among the wreckage of the skipper's room and furniture. They blasphemed

to the extent that the occasion required, and there was civil war for a

time, while the suspected ones were being punished; then they drew what

remaining comfort they could from burning the steamer's log-book and

track-chart, which contained data conflicting with their position in

the case, and resumed their labors.

Martin had raked and scraped together enough of food to give them two

scant meals; but these eaten, starvation began. The details of their

suffering need not be given. They chopped, hammered, and pried in

hunger and anxiety, and with lessening strength, while the days passed

by--fortunately spared the torture of thirst, for there was plenty of

water in the tanks. Upheld by the dominating influence of Elisha,

Martin, and Amos, they stripped the upper works and fed to the fires

every door and sash, every bulkhead and wooden partition, all chairs,

stools, and tables, cabin berths and forecastle bunks. Then they

attempted sending down the topmasts, but gave it up for lack of

strength to get mast-ropes aloft, and attacked instead the boats on the

chocks, of which there were four.

It was no part of the plan to ask help of passing craft and have their

distressed condition taken advantage of; but when the hopelessness of

the fight at last appealed to the master spirits, they consented to the

signaling of an east-bound steamer, far to the northward, in the hope

of getting food. So the English ensign, union down, was again flown

from the gaff. It was at a time when Elisha could not stand up at the

wheel, when Amos at the engines could not have reversed them, when

Martin--man of iron--staggered weakly around among the rest and struck

them with a pump-brake, keeping them at work. (They would strive under

the blows, and sit down when he had passed.) But the flag was not seen;

a haze arose between the two craft and thickened to fog.

By Elisha's reckoning they were on the Banks now, about a hundred miles

due south from Cape Sable, and nearer to Boston than to Halifax;

otherwise he might have made for the latter port and defied alien

prejudice. But the fog continued, and it was not port they were looking

for now; it was help, food: they were working for life, not salvage;

and, wasting no steam, they listened for whistles or fog-horns, but

heard none near enough to be answered by their weak voices.

And so the boat, dragging the dismal mockery behind her, plodded and

groped her way on the course which Elisha had shaped for Boston, while

man after man dropped in his tracks, refusing to rise; and those that

were left nourished the fires as they could, until the afternoon of the

third day of fog, when the thumping, struggling engines halted,

started, made a half-revolution, and came to a dead stop. Amos crawled

on deck and forward to the bridge, where, with Elisha's help, he

dragged on the whistle-rope and dissipated the remaining steam in a

wheezy, gasping howl, which lasted about a half-minute. It was answered

by a furious siren-blast from directly astern; and out of the fog, at

twenty knots an hour, came a mammoth black steamer. Seeming to heave

the small tramp out of the way with her bow wave, she roared by at six

feet distance, and in ten seconds they were looking at her vanishing

stern. But ten minutes later the stern appeared in view, as the liner

backed toward them. The reversed English ensign still hung at the gaff;

and the starving men, some prostrate on the deck, some clinging to the

rails, unable to shout, had painted to the flag of distress and

beckoned as the big ship rushed by.

* * * * *

"There's a chance," said the captain of this liner to the pilot, as he

rejoined him on the bridge an hour later, "of international complications

over this case, and I may have to lose a trip to testify. That's the

_Afghan Prince_ and consort that I was telling you about. Strange,

isn't it, that I should pick up these fellows after picking up the

legitimate crew going east? I don't know which crew was the hungriest.

The real crew charge this crowd with piracy. By George, it's rather

funny!"

"And these men," said the pilot, with a laugh, "would have claimed

salvage?"

"Yes, and had a good claim, too, for effort expended; but they've

offset it by their violence. Their chance was good in the English

courts, if they'd only allowed the steamer to go on; and then, too,

they abandoned her in a more dangerous position than where they found

her. You see, they met her off Nantucket with sea-room, and nothing

wrong with her but broken tiller-ropes; and they quit her here close to

Sandy Hook, in a fog, more than likely to hit the beach before morning.

Then, in that case, she belongs to the owners or underwriters."

"Why didn't they make Boston?" asked the pilot.

"Tried to, but overran their distance. Chronometer must have been 'way

out. I talked to the one who navigated, and found that he'd never

thought of allowing for local attraction,--didn't happen to run against

the boat's deviation table,--and so, with all that railway iron below

hatches, he fetched clear o' Nantucket, and 'way in here."

"That's tough. The salvage of that steamer would make them rich,

wouldn't it? And I think they might have got it if they could have held

out."

"Yes; think they might. But here's another funny thing about it. They

needn't have starved. They needn't have chopped her to pieces for fuel.

I just remember, now. Her skipper told me there was good anthracite

coal in her hold, and Chicago canned meats, Minnesota flour, beef,

pork, and all sorts of good grub. He carried some of the rails in the

'tween-deck for steadying ballast, and I suppose it prevented them

looking farther. And now they'll lose their salvage, and perhaps have

to pay it on their own schooner if anything comes along and picks them

up. That's the craft that'll get the salvage."

"Not likely," said the pilot; "not in this fog, and the wind and sea

rising. I'll give 'em six hours to fetch up on the Jersey coast. A mail

contract with the government is sometimes a nuisance, isn't it,

captain? How many years would it take you to save money to equal your

share of the salvage if you had yanked that tramp and the schooner into

New York?"

"It would take more than one lifetime," answered the captain, a little

sadly. "A skipper on a mail-boat is the biggest fool that goes to sea."

The liner did not reach quarantine until after sundown, hence remained

there through the night. As she was lifting her anchor in the morning,

preparatory to steaming up to her dock, the crew of the _Rosebud_,

refreshed by food and sleep, but still weak and nerveless, came on deck

to witness a harrowing sight. The _Afghan Prince_ was coming toward the

anchorage before a brisk southeast wind. Astern of her, held by the

heavy iron chain, was their schooner. Moored to her, one on each side,

were two garbage-scows; and at the head of the parade, pretending to

tow them all,--puffing, rolling, and smoking in the effort to keep a

strain on the tow-line,--and tooting joyously with her whistle, was a

little, dingy tugboat, with a large gilt name on her pilot-house--_J.

C. Hawks_.

BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES

He stood before the recruiting officer, trembling with nervousness,

anxious of face, and clothed in rags; but he was clean, for, knowing

the moral effect of cleanliness, he had lately sought the beach and

taken a swim.

"Want to enlist?" asked the officer, taking his measure with trained

eye.

"Yes, sir; I read you wanted men in the navy."

"Want seamen, firemen, and landsmen. What's your occupation? You look

like a tramp."

"Yes," he answered bitterly, "I'm a tramp. That's all they'd let me be.

I used to be a locomotive engineer--before the big strike. Then they

blacklisted me, and I've never had a job above laborin' work since.

It's easy to take to the road and stay at it when you find you can't

make over a dollar a day at back-breakin' work after earnin' three and

four at the throttle. An engineer knows nothin' but his trade, sir.

Take it away, and he's a laborin' man.

"I'd ha' worked and learned another, but they jailed me--put me in

choky, 'cause I had no visible means o' support. I had no money, and

was a criminal under the law. And they kept at it,--jailed me again and

again as a vagrant,--when all I wanted was work. After a while I didn't

care. But now's my chance, sir, if you'll take me on. I don't know much

about boats and the sea, but I can fire an engine, and know something

about steam."

"A fireman's work on board a war-vessel is very different from that of

a locomotive fireman," said the officer, leaning back in his chair.

"I know, sir; that may be," the tramp replied eagerly; "but I can

shovel coal, and I can learn, and I can work. I'm not very strong now,

'cause I haven't had much to eat o' late years; but I'm not a drinkin'

man--why, that costs more than grub. Give me a chance, sir; I'm an

American; I'm sick o' bein' hunted from jail to jail, like a wild

animal, just 'cause I can't be satisfied with pick-and-shovel work.

I've spent half o' the last five years in jail as a vagrant. I put in a

month at Fernandina, and then I was chased out o' town. They gave me

two months at Cedar Keys, and I came here, only to get a month more in

this jail. I got out this mornin', and was told by the copper who

pinched me to get out o' Pensacola or he'd run me in again. And he's

outside now waitin' for me. I dodged past 'im to get in."

"Pass this man in to the surgeon," said the officer, with something

like a sympathetic snort in the tone of his voice; for he also was an

American.

An orderly escorted him to the surgeon, who examined him and passed

him. Then the recruit signed his name to a paper.

"Emaciated," wrote the surgeon in his daily report; "body badly

nourished, and susceptible to any infection. Shows slight febrile

symptoms, which should be attended to. An intelligent man; with good

food and care will become valuable."

The tramp marched to the receiving-ship with a squad of other recruits,

and on the way smiled triumphantly into the face of a mulatto

policeman, who glared at him. He had signed his name on a piece of

paper, and the act had changed his status. From a hunted fugitive and

habitual criminal he had become a defender of his country's honor--a

potential hero.

On board the receiving-ship he was given an outfit of clothes and

bedding; but before he had learned more than the correct way to lash

his hammock and tie his silk neckerchief he was detailed for sea duty,

and with a draft of men went to Key West in a navy-yard tug; for war

was on, and the fleet blockading Havana needed men.

At Key West he was appointed fireman on a torpedo-boat, where his

work--which he soon learned--was to keep up steam in a tubular boiler.

But he learned nothing of the rest of the boat, her business, or the

reason of her construction. Seasickness prevented any assertion of

curiosity at first, and later the febrile symptoms which the examining

surgeon had noted developed in him until he could think of nothing

else. There being no doctor aboard to diagnose his case, he was jeered

by his fellows, and kept at work until he dropped; then he took to his

hammock. Shooting pains darted through him, centering in his head,

while his throat was dry and his thirst tormenting.

Life on a torpedo-boat engaged in despatch duty and rushing through a

Gulf Stream sea at thirty knots is torture to a healthy, nervous

system. It sent this sick man into speedy delirium. He could eat very

little, but he drank all the water that was given him. Moaning and

muttering, tossing about in his hammock, never asleep, but sometimes

unconscious, at other times raving, and occasionally lucid, he

presented a problem which demanded solution. His emaciated face,

flushed at first, had taken on a peculiar bronzed appearance, and there

were some who declared that it was Yellow Jack. But nothing could be

done until they reached the fleet and could interview a cruiser with a

surgeon.

The sick man solved the problem. He scrambled out of his hammock at

daylight in the morning and dressed himself in his blue uniform,

carefully tying his black neckerchief in the regulation knot. Then,

muttering the while, he gained the deck.

The boat was charging along at full speed, throwing aside a bow wave

nearly as high as herself. Three miles astern, just discernible in the

half-light, was a pursuing ram-bowed gunboat, spitting shot and shell;

and forward near the conning-tower were two blue-coated, brass-buttoned

officers, watching the pursuer through binoculars.

The crazed brain of the sick man took cognizance of nothing but the

blue coats and brass buttons. He did not look for locust clubs and

silver shields. These were policemen--his deadliest enemies; but he

would escape them this time.

With a yell he went overboard, and, being no swimmer, would have

drowned had not one of the blue-coated officers flung a lifebuoy. He

came to the surface somewhat saner, and seized the white ring, which

supported him, while the torpedo-boat rushed on. She could not stop for

one man in time of war, with a heavily armed enemy so near.

A twenty-knot gunboat cannot chase a thirty-knot torpedo-boat very long

without losing her below the horizon; but this pursuit lasted ten

minutes from the time the sick man went overboard before the gunboat

ceased firing and slackened speed. The quarry was five miles away, out

of Spanish range, and the floating man directly under her bow. He was

seen and taken on board, with Spanish profanity sounding in his

unregarding ears.

He lay on the deck, a bedraggled heap, gibbering and shivering, while a

surgeon, with cotton in his nostrils and smelling-salts in his hand,

diagnosed his case. Then the gunboat headed north and dropped anchor in

the bight of a small, crescent-shaped sand-key of the Florida Reef. For

the diagnosis was such as to suggest prompt action. Two brave men

bundled him into the dinghy, lowered it, pulled ashore, and laid him on

the sand.

Returning, they stripped and threw away their clothing, sank the boat

with a buoy on the painter, took a swim, and climbed aboard to be

further disinfected. Then the gunboat lifted her anchor and steamed

eastward, her officers watching through glasses a small, low

torpedo-boat, far to the southeast,--too far to be reached by gun

fire,--which was steering a parallel course, and presumably watching

the gunboat.

An idiot, a lunatic, with bloodshot eyes glaring from a yellow face,

raved, rolled, and staggered bareheaded under the sun about the sandy

crescent until sundown, then fell prostrate and unconscious into the

water on the beach, luckily turning over so that his nostrils were not

immersed. The tide went down, leaving him damp and still on the sands.

In about an hour a sigh, followed by a deep, gasping breath, escaped

him; another long inhalation succeeded, and another; then came steady,

healthy breathing and childlike sleep, with perspiration oozing from

every pore. He had passed a crisis.

About midnight the cloudy sky cleared and the tropic stars came out,

while the tide climbed the beach again, and lapped at the sleeping

man's feet; but he did not waken, even when the Spanish gunboat stole

slowly into the bay from the sea and dropped anchor with a loud

rattling of chain in the hawse-pipe. A boat was lowered, and a single

man sculled it ashore; then lifting out a small cask and bag, he placed

them high on the sands and looked around.

Spying the sleeping man, half immersed now, he approached and felt of

the damp clothing and equally damp face. Not noticing that he breathed

softly, the man crossed himself, then moved quickly and nervously

toward his boat, muttering, "Muerto, muerto!" Pushing out, he sculled

rapidly toward the anchored craft, and disposed of the boat and his

clothing as had been done before; then he swam to the gangway and

climbed aboard.

Shortly after, the sleeping man, roused by the chill of the water,

crawled aimlessly up the sand and slept again--safe beyond the

tide-line. In three hours he sat up and rubbed his eyes, half awake,

but sane.

Strange sights and sounds puzzled him. He knew nothing of this starlit

beach and stretch of sparkling water--nothing of that long black craft

at anchor, with the longer beam of white light reaching over the sea

from her pilot-house. He could only surmise that she was a war-vessel

from the ram-bow,--a feature of the government model which had

impressed him at Key West,--and from the noise she was making. She

quivered in a maze of flickering red flashes, and the rattling din of

her rapid-fire and machine guns transcended in volume all the roadside

blastings he had heard in his wanderings. Dazed and astonished, he rose

to his feet, but, too weak to stand, sat down again and looked.

Half a mile seaward, where the beam of light ended, a small craft, low

down between two crested waves, was speeding toward the gunboat in the

face of her fire. The water about her was lashed into turmoil by the

hail of projectiles; but she kept on, at locomotive speed, until within

a thousand feet of the gunboat, when she turned sharply to starboard,

doubled on her track, and raced off to sea, still covered by the

search-light and followed by shot and shell while the gunners could see

her.

When the gun fire ceased, a hissing of steam could be heard in the

distance, and a triumphant Spanish yell answered. The small enemy had

been struck, and the gunboat slipped her cable and followed.

The tired brain could not cope with the problem, and again the man

slept, to awaken at sunrise with ravenous hunger and thirst, and a

memory of what seemed to be horrible dreams,--vague recollections of

painful experiences,--torturing labor with aching muscles and blistered

hands; harsh words and ridicule from strong, bearded men; and running

through and between, the shadowy figures of blue-coated, brass-buttoned

men, continually ordering him on, and threatening arrest. The spectacle

of the night was as dream-like as the rest; for he remembered nothing

of the gunboat which had rescued and marooned him.

His face had lost its yellowish-bronze color, but was pale and

emaciated as ever, while his sunken eyes held the soft light which

always comes of extreme physical suffering. He was too weak to remain

on his feet, but in the effort to do so he spied the cask and bag

higher up on the beach and crawled to them. Prying a plug from the

bunghole with his knife, he found water, sweet and delicious, which he

drank by rolling the cask carefully and burying his lips in the

overflow. Evidently some one in authority on the gunboat had decreed

that he should not die of hunger or thirst, for the bag contained hard

bread.

Stronger after a meal, he climbed the highest sand-dune and studied the

situation. An outcropping of coral formed the backbone of the thin

crescent which held him, and which was about half a mile between the

points. To the south, opening out from the bay, was a clear stretch of

sea, green in the sunlight, deep blue in the shadows of the clouds, and

on the horizon were a few sails and smoke columns. West and east were

other sandy islets and coral reefs, and to the north a continuous line

of larger islands which might be inhabited, but gave no indication of

it.

Out in the bay, bobbing to the heave of the slight ground-swell, were

the three white buoys left by the Spaniards to mark the sunken boats

and slipped cable; and far away on the beach, just within the western

point, was something long and round, which rolled in the gentle surf

and glistened in the sunlight. He knew nothing of buoys, but they

relieved his loneliness; they were signs of human beings, who must have

placed him there with the bread and water, and who might come for him.

"Wonder if I got pinched again, and this is some new kind of a choky,"

he mused. "Been blamed sick and silly, and must ha' lost the job and

got jailed again. Just my luck! S'pose the jug was crowded and they run

me out here. Wish they'd left me a hat. Wonder how long I'm in for this

time."

He descended to the beach and found that repeated wettings of his hair

relieved him from the headache that the sun's heat was bringing on; and

satisfied that the strong hand of local law had again closed over him,

he resigned himself to the situation, resenting only the absence of a

shade-tree or a hat. "Much better 'n the calaboose in El Paso," he

muttered, "or the brickyard in Chicago."

As he lolled on the sand, the glistening thing over at the western

point again caught his eye. After a moment's scrutiny he rose and

limped toward it, following the concave of the beach, and often pausing

to rest and bathe his head. It was a long journey for him, and the

tide, at half-ebb when he started, was rising again when he came

abreast of the object and sat down to look at it. It was of metal, long

and round, rolling nearly submerged, and held by the alternate surf and

undertow parallel with the beach, about twenty feet out.

He waded in, grasped it by a T-shaped projection in the middle, and

headed it toward the shore. Then he launched it forward with all his

strength--not much, but enough to lift a bluntly pointed end out of

water as it grounded and exposed a small, four-bladed steel wheel,

shaped something like a windmill. He examined this, but could not

understand it, as it whirled freely either way and seemed to have no

internal connection. The strange cylinder was about sixteen feet long

and about eighteen inches in diameter.

"Boat o' some kind," he muttered; "but what kind? That screw's too

small to make it go. Let's see the other end."

He launched it with difficulty, and noticed that when floating end on

to the surf it ceased to roll and kept the T-shaped projection

uppermost, proving that it was ballasted. Swinging it, he grounded the

other end, which was radically different in appearance. It was long and

finely pointed, with four steel blades or vanes, two horizontal and two

vertical,--like the double tails of an ideal fish,--and in hollowed

parts of these vanes were hung a pair of unmistakable propellers, one

behind the other, and of opposite pitch and motion.

"One works on the shaft, t' other on a sleeve," he mused, as he turned

them. "A roundhouse wiper could see that. Bevel-gearin' inside, I

guess. It's a boat, sure enough, and this reverse action must be to

keep her from rolling."

On each of the four vanes he found a small blade, showing by its

connection that it possessed range of action, yet immovable as the vane

itself, as though held firmly by inner leverage. Those on the

horizontal vanes were tilted upward. Just abaft the T-shaped

projection--which, fastened firmly to the hull, told him nothing of its

purpose--were numerous brass posts buried flush with the surface, in

each of which was a square hole, as though intended to be turned with a

key or crank. Some were marked with radiating lines and numbers, and

they evidently controlled the inner mechanism, part of which he could

see--little brass cog-wheels, worms, and levers--through a fore-and-aft

slot near the keyholes.

Rising from the forward end of this slot, and lying close to the metal

hull in front of it, was a strong lever of brass, L-shaped, connected

internally, and indicating to his trained mechanical mind that its only

sphere of action was to lift up and sink back into the slot. He

fingered it, but did not yet try to move it. A little to the left of

this lever was a small blade of steel, curved to fit the convex

hull,--which it hugged closely,--and hinged at its forward edge. This,

too, must have a purpose,--an internal connection,--and he did not

disturb it until he had learned more.

To the right of the brass lever was an oblong hatch about eight inches

long, flush with the hull, and held in place by screws. Three seams,

with lines of screws, encircled the round hull, showing that it was

constructed in four sections; and these screws, with those in the

hatch, were strong and numerous--placed there to stay.

Fatigued from his exertion, he moistened his hair, sat down, and

watched the incoming tide swing the craft round parallel with the

beach. As the submerged bow raised to a level with the stern, he

noticed that the small blades on the horizontal vanes dropped from

their upward slant to a straight line with the vanes.

"Rudders," he said, "horizontal rudders. Can't be anything else." With

his chin in his hand and his wrinkled brow creased with deeper

corrugations, he put his mind through a process of inductive reasoning.

"Horizontal rudders," he mused, "must be to keep her from diving, or to

make her dive. They work automatically, and I s'pose the vertical

rudders are the same. There's nothing outside to turn 'em with. That

boat isn't made to ride in,--no way to get into her,--and she isn't big

enough, anyhow. And as you can't get into her, that brass lever must be

what starts and stops her. Wonder what the steel blade's for. 'T isn't

a handy shape for a lever,--to be handled with fingers,--too sharp; but

it has work to do, or it wouldn't be there. That section o' railroad

iron on top must be to hang the boat by,--a traveler,--when she's out

o' water.

"And the fan-wheel on the nose--what's that for? If it's a speed or

distance indicator, the dial's inside, out o' sight. There's no

exhaust, so the motive power can't be steam. Clockwork or electricity,

maybe. Mighty fine workmanship all through! That square door is fitted

in for keeps, and she must ha' cost a heap. Now, as she has horizontal

rudders, she's intended to steer up and down; and as there's no way to

get into her or to stay on her, and as she can't be started from the

inside or steered from the outside, I take it she's a model o' one o'

those submarine boats I've heard of--some fellow's invention that's got

away from him. Guess I'll try that lever and see what happens. I'll

bury the propellers, though; no engine ought to race."

He pushed the craft into deeper water, pointed it shoreward, and

cautiously lifted the curved blade to a perpendicular position, as high

as it would go. Nothing happened. He lowered it, raised it again,--it

worked very easily,--then, leaving it upright, he threw the long brass

lever back into the slot. A slight humming came from within, the

propellers revolved slowly, and the craft moved ahead until the bow

grounded. Then he followed and lifted the lever out of the slot to its

first position, shutting off the power.

Delighted with his success, he backed it out farther than before and

again threw back the brass lever, this time with the curved blade down

flat on the hull. With the sinking of the lever into the slot the

mechanism within gave forth a rushing sound, the propellers at the

stern threw up a mound of foam, and the craft shot past him, dived

until it glanced on the sandy bottom, then slid a third of its length

out of water on the beach and stopped, the propellers still churning,

and the small wheel on the nose still spinning with the motion given it

by the water.

"Air-pressure!" he exclaimed, as he shut it off. He had seen a line of

bubbles rise as the thing dived. "An air-engine, and the whole thing

must be full o' compressed air. The brass lever turns it on, and if the

steel blade's up it gives it the slow motion; if it's down, she gets

full speed at once. Now I know why it's blade-shaped. It's so the water

itself can push it down--after she starts."

He did not try to launch it; he waited until the tide floated it, then

pushed it along the beach toward his store of food, arriving at high

water too exhausted to do more that day than ground his capture and

break hard bread. And as the afternoon drew to a close the fatigue in

his limbs became racking pain; either as a result of his exposure, or

as a later symptom of the fever, he was now in the clutch of a new

enemy--rheumatism.

Then, with the coming of night came a return of his first violent

symptoms; he was hot, shivery, and feverish by turns, with dry tongue

and throat, and a splitting headache; but in this condition he could

still take cognizance of a black, ram-bowed gunboat, which stole into

the bay from the east and dropped anchor near the buoys.

A half-moon shone in the western sky, and by its light the steamer

presented an unkempt, broken appearance, even to the untrained eye of

this castaway. Her after-funnel was but half as high as the other;

there were gaps in her iron rail, and vacancies below the twisted

davits where boats should be; and her pilot-house was wrecked--the

starboard door and nearest window merged in a large, ragged hole.

Officers on the bridge gave orders in foreign speech, in tones which

came shoreward faintly. Men sprang overboard with ropes, which they

fastened to the buoys; then they swam back, and for an hour or two the

whole crew was busy getting the boats to the davits and the end of the

cable into the hawse-pipe.

The man on the beach recognized the craft he had seen when he wakened.

He felt that she must in some way be connected with his being there,

and he waited, expecting to see a boat put off; but when both boats

were hoisted and he heard the humming of a steam-windlass, he gave up

this expectation and tried to hail.

His voice could not rise above a hoarse whisper. The anchor was fished,

and after an interval he heard the windlass again, heaving in the other

chain. They were going away--going to leave him there to die.

He crawled and stumbled down to the water's edge. The tide was up

again, rippling around the strange thing he had resolved to navigate.

It was not a boat, but it would go ahead, and it would float--it would

possibly float him.

With strength born of desperation and fear, he pushed it, inch by inch,

into the water until it was clear of the sand, and tried the engine on

the slow motion. The propellers turned and satisfied him. He shut off

the power, swung the thing round until it pointed toward the steamer,

and seated himself astride of it, just abaft the T-shaped projection in

the middle. The long cylinder sank with him, and when it had steadied

to a balance between his weight and its buoyancy he found that it bore

him, shoulders out; and the position he had taken--within reach of the

levers behind him--lifted the blunt nose higher than the stern, but not

out of water. This was practicable.

He reached behind, raised the blade lever, threw back the large brass

lever, and the craft went ahead, at about the speed of a healthy man's

walk. He kept his left hand on the blade lever to hold it up, and by

skilful paddling with his right maintained his balance and assisted his

legs in steering. He had never learned to swim, but he felt less fear

of drowning than of slow death on the island.

In five minutes he was near enough to the steamer to read her name. He

pulled the starting-lever forward, stopping his headway; for he must be

sure of his welcome.

"Say, boss," he called faintly and hoarsely, "take me along, can't you?

Or else gi' me some medicine. I'm blamed sick--I'll die if I stay

here."

The noise of the windlass and chain prevented this being heard, but at

last, after repeated calls on his part, a Spanish howl went up from

amidships, and a sailor sprang from one of the boats to the deck,

crossed himself, and pointing to the man in the water, ran forward.

"Madre de Dios!" he yelled. "El aparecido del muerto."

Work stopped, and a call down a hatchway stopped the windlass. In ports

and dead-lights appeared faces; and those on deck, officers and men,

crowded to the rail, some to cross themselves, some to sink on their

knees, others to grip the rail tightly, while they stared in silence at

the torso and livid face in the moonlight on the sea--the ghastly face

of the man they had marooned to die alone, who had been seen later dead

on the beach.

"Take me with you, boss," he pleaded with his weak voice. "I'm sick; I

can't hold on much longer."

It was not the dead man's body washed out from the beach, for it moved,

it spoke. And it was not a living man; no man may recover from advanced

yellow fever, and this man had been found afterward, dead--cold and

still. And no living man may swim in this manner--high out of water,

patting and splashing with one hand. It was a ghost. It had come to

punish them.

"Por que nos atormentan asi, hombre, deja?" cried a white-faced

officer.

"Can't you hear me?" asked the apparition. "I'll come closer."

He threw back the starting-lever, and the thing began moving. Then a

rifle-barrel protruded from a dead-light. There was a report and a

flash, and a bullet passed through his hair. The shock startled him,

and he lost his balance. In the effort to recover it his leg knocked

down the blade lever, and the steel cylinder sprang forward, leaving

him floundering in the water. Pointed upward, it appeared for a moment

on the surface, then dived like a porpoise and disappeared. In five

seconds something happened to the gunboat.

Coincident with a sound like near-by thunder, the black craft lifted

amidships like a bending jack-knife, and up from the shattered deck,

and out from ports, doors, and dead-lights, came a volcano of flame and

smoke. The sea beneath followed in a mound, which burst like a great

bubble, sending a cloud of steam and spray and whitish-yellow smoke

aloft to mingle with the first and meet the falling fragments. These

fell for several seconds--hatches, gratings, buckets, ladders,

splinters of wood, parts of men, and men whole, but limp.

A side-ladder fell near the choking and half-stunned sick man, and he

seized it. Before he could crawl on top the two halves of the gunboat

had sunk in a swirl of bubbles and whirlpools.

A few broken and bleeding swimmers approached to share his support, saw

his awful face in the moonlight, and swam away.

A few hours later a gray cruiser loomed up close by and directed a

search-light at him. Then a gray cutter full of white-clad men

approached and took him off the ladder. He was delirious again, and

bleeding from mouth, nose, and ears.

* * * * *

The surgeon and the torpedo-lieutenant came up from the sick-bay, the

latter with enthusiasm on his face,--for he was young,--and joined a

group of officers on the quarterdeck.

"He'll pull through, gentlemen," said the surgeon. "He is the man

Mosher lost overboard, though he doesn't know anything about it, nor

how he got on that sand-key. I suppose the _Destructor_ picked him

up and landed him. He found bread and water, he says. You see, the

first symptoms are similar in Yellow Jack and relapsing bilious fever.

I don't wonder that Mosher was nervous."

"Then it _was_ the _Destructor_?" asked an ensign, pulling out a

note-book and a pencil. "And Lieutenant Mosher was right, after all?"

"Yes; this man read her name before she blew up; and a Spanish sailor

has waked up and confirmed it. She was the _Destructor_, just over, and

trying to get into Havana. Instead of blowing up in Algeciras Bay, as

they thought, she had left with despatches for Havana, only to blow up

on the Florida Reef."

"The _Destructor_," said the ensign, as he pocketed his note-book and

pencil, "carried fifty-five men. Don't we get the bounty as the nearest

craft?"

"Not much," said the young and enthusiastic torpedo-lieutenant. "We

were not even within signal distance, and came along by accident.

Listen, all of you. When an American war-craft sinks or destroys a

larger enemy, there is a bounty due her crew of two hundred dollars for

every man on board the enemy. That is law, isn't it?" They nodded. "If

a submarine boat can be a war-craft, so may a Whitehead torpedo, and

certainly is one, being built for war. A war-craft abandoned is a

derelict, and the man who finds her becomes her lawful commander for

the time. If he belongs to the navy his position is strengthened, and

if he is alone he is not only commander, but the whole crew, and

consequently he is entitled to all the bounty she may earn. That is

law.

"Now, listen hard. Lieutenant Mosher sent one torpedo at the gunboat;

it missed and became derelict, while Mosher escaped under one boiler.

This man found the derelict adrift, puzzled out the action, waited

until the gunboat came back for her anchor, then straddled his craft,

and rode out with the water-tripper up. They shot at him. He turned his

dog loose and destroyed the enemy. If the _Destructor_ carried

fifty-five men he is entitled to eleven thousand dollars, and the

government must pay, for that is law."

THE BATTLE OF THE MONSTERS

Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson, patient of

Dr. Brown, Ward 3, Room 6:

August 3. Arrived at hospital in extreme mental distress, having

been bitten on wrist three hours previously by dog known to have

been rabid. Large, strong man, full-blooded and well nourished.

Sanguine temperament. Pulse and temperature higher than normal, due

to excitement. Cauterized wound at once (2 P.M.) and inoculated

with antitoxin.

As patient admits having recently escaped, by swimming ashore, from

lately arrived cholera ship, now at quarantine, he has been

isolated and clothing disinfected. Watch for symptoms of cholera.

August 3, 6 P.M. Microscopic examination of blood corroborative of

Metschnikoff's theory of fighting leucocytes. White corpuscles

gorged with bacteria.

He was an amphibian, and, as such, undeniably beautiful; for the

sunlight, refracted and diffused in the water, gave his translucent,

pearl-blue body all the shifting colors of the spectrum. Vigorous and

graceful of movement, in shape he resembled a comma of three

dimensions, twisted, when at rest, to a slight spiral curve; but in

traveling he straightened out with quick successive jerks, each one

sending him ahead a couple of lengths. Supplemented by the undulatory

movement of a long continuation of his tail, it was his way of

swimming, good enough to enable him to escape his enemies; this, and

riding at anchor in a current by his cable-like appendage, constituting

his main occupation in life. The pleasure of eating was denied him;

nature had given him a mouth, but he used it only for purposes of

offense and defense, absorbing his food in a most unheard-of

manner--through the soft walls of his body.

Yet he enjoyed a few social pleasures. Though the organs of the five

senses were missing in his economy, he possessed an inner sixth sense

which answered for all and also gave him power of speech. He would

converse, swap news and views, with creatures of his own and other

species, provided that they were of equal size and prowess; but he

wasted no time on any but his social peers. Smaller creatures he

pursued when they annoyed him; larger ones pursued him.

The sunlight, which made him so beautiful to look at, was distasteful

to him; it also made him too visible. He preferred a half-darkness and

less fervor to life's battle--time to judge of chances, to figure on an

enemy's speed and turning-circle, before beginning flight or pursuit.

But his dislike of it really came of a stronger animus--a shuddering

recollection of three hours once passed on dry land in a comatose

condition, which had followed a particularly long and intense period of

bright sunlight. He had never been able to explain the connection, but

the awful memory still saddened his life.

And now it seemed, as he swam about, that this experience might be

repeated. The light was strong and long-continued, the water

uncomfortably warm, and the crowd about him denser--so much so as to

prevent him from attending properly to a social inferior who had

crossed his bow. But just as his mind grasped the full imminence of the

danger, there came a sudden darkness, a crash and vibration of the

water, then a terrible, rattling roar of sound. The social inferior

slipped from his mouth, and with his crowding neighbors was washed far

away, while he felt himself slipping along, bounding and rebounding

against the projections of a corrugated wall which showed white in the

gloom. There was an unpleasant taste to the water, and he became aware

of creatures in his vicinity unlike any he had known,--quickly darting

little monsters about a tenth as large as himself,--thousands of them,

black and horrid to see, each with short, fish-like body and square

head like that of a dog; with wicked mouth that opened and shut

nervously; with hooked flippers on the middle part, and a bunch of

tentacles on the fore that spread out ahead and around. A dozen of them

surrounded him menacingly; but he was young and strong, much larger

than they, and a little frightened. A blow of his tail killed two, and

the rest drew off.

The current bore them on until the white wall rounded off and was lost

to sight beyond the mass of darting creatures. Here was slack water,

and with desperate effort he swam back, pushing the small enemies out

of his path, meeting some resistance and receiving a few bites, until,

in a hollow in the wall, he found temporary refuge and time to think.

But he could not solve the problem. He had not the slightest idea where

he was or what had happened--who and what were the strange black

creatures, or why they had threatened him.

His thoughts were interrupted. Another vibrant roar sounded, and there

was pitch-black darkness; then he was pushed and washed away from his

shelter, jostled, bumped, and squeezed, until he found himself in a

dimly lighted tunnel, which, crowded as it was with swimmers, was

narrow enough to enable him to see both sides at once. The walls were

dark brown and blue, broken up everywhere into depressions or caves,

some of them so deep as to be almost like blind tunnels. The dog-faced

creatures were there--as far as he could see; but besides them, now,

were others, of stranger shape--of species unknown to him.

A slow current carried them on, and soon they entered a larger tunnel.

He swam to the opposite wall, gripped a projection, and watched in

wonder and awe the procession gliding by. He soon noticed the source of

the dim light. A small creature with barrel-like body and innumerable

legs or tentacles, wavering and reaching, floated past. Its body

swelled and shrank alternately, with every swelling giving out a

phosphorescent glow, with every contraction darkening to a faint red

color. Then came a group of others; then a second living lamp; later

another and another: they were evenly distributed, and illumined the

tunnel.

There were monstrous shapes, living but inert, barely pulsing with

dormant life, as much larger than himself as the dog-headed kind were

smaller--huge, unwieldy, disk-shaped masses of tissue, light gray at

the margins, dark red in the middle. They were in the majority, and

blocked the view. Darting and wriggling between and about them were

horrible forms, some larger than himself, others smaller. There were

serpents, who swam with a serpent's motion. Some were serpents in form,

but were curled rigidly into living corkscrews, and by sculling with

their tails screwed their way through the water with surprising

rapidity. Others were barrel- or globe-shaped, with swarming tentacles.

With these they pulled themselves along, in and out through the crowd,

or, bringing their squirming appendages rearward,--each an individual

snake,--used them as propellers, and swam. There were creatures in the

form of long cylinders, some with tentacles by which they rolled along

like a log in a tideway; others, without appendages, were as inert and

helpless as the huge red-and-gray disks. He saw four ball-shaped

creatures float by, clinging together; then a group of eight, then one

of twelve. All these, to the extent of their volition, seemed to be in

a state of extreme agitation and excitement.

The cause was apparent. The tunnel from which he had come was still

discharging the dog-faced animals by the thousand, and he knew now the

business they were on. It was war--war to the death. They flung

themselves with furious energy into the parade, fighting and biting all

they could reach. A hundred at a time would pounce on one of the large

red-and-gray creatures, almost hiding it from view; then, and before

they had passed out of sight, they would fall off and disperse, and the

once living victim would come with them, in parts. The smaller, active

swimmers fled, but if one was caught, he suffered; a quick dart, a

tangle of tentacles, an embrace of the wicked flippers, a bite--and a

dead body floated on.

And now into the battle came a ponderous engine of vengeance and

defense. A gigantic, lumbering, pulsating creature, white and

translucent but for the dark, active brain showing through its walls,

horrible in the slow, implacable deliberation of its movements, floated

down with the current. It was larger than the huge red-and-gray

creatures. It was formless, in the full irony of the definition--for it

assumed all forms. It was long--barrel-shaped; it shrank to a sphere,

then broadened laterally, and again extended above and below. In turn

it was a sphere, a disk, a pyramid, a pentahedron, a polyhedron. It

possessed neither legs, flippers, nor tentacles; but out from its

heaving, shrinking body it would send, now from one spot, now from

another, an active arm, or feeler, with which it swam, pulled, or

pushed. An unlucky invader which one of them touched made few more

voluntary movements; for instantly the whole side of the whitish mass

bristled with arms. They seized, crushed, killed it, and then pushed it

bodily through the living walls to the animal's interior to serve for

food. And the gaping fissure healed at once, like the wounds of

Milton's warring angels.

The first white monster floated down, killing as he went; then came

another, pushing eagerly into the fray; then came two, then three, then

dozens. It seemed that the word had been passed, and the army of

defense was mustering.

Sick with horror, he watched the grim spectacle from the shelter of the

projection, until roused to an active sense of danger to himself--but

not from the fighters. He was anchored by his tail, swinging easily in

the eddy, and now felt himself touched from beneath, again from above.

A projection down-stream was extending outward and toward him. The cave

in which he had taken refuge was closing on him like a great mouth--as

though directed by an intelligence behind the wall. With a terrified

flirt of his tail he flung himself out, and as he drifted down with the

combat the walls of the cave crunched together. It was well for him

that he was not there.

The current was clogged with fragments of once living creatures, and

everywhere, darting, dodging, and biting, were the fierce black

invaders. But they paid no present attention to him or to the small

tentacled animals. They killed the large, helpless red-and-gray kind,

and were killed by the larger white monsters, each moment marking the

death and rending to fragments of a victim, and the horrid interment of

fully half his slayers. The tunnel grew larger, as mouth after mouth of

tributary tunnels was passed; but as each one discharged its quota of

swimming and drifting creatures, there was no thinning of the crowd.

As he drifted on with the inharmonious throng, he noticed what seemed

the objective of the war. This was the caves which lined the tunnel.

Some were apparently rigid, others were mobile. A large red-and-gray

animal was pushed into the mouth of one of the latter, and the walls

instantly closed; then they opened, and the creature drifted out, limp

and colorless, but alive; and with him came fragments of the wall,

broken off by the pressure. This happened again and again, but the

large creature was never quite killed--merely squeezed. The tentacled

non-combatants and the large white fighters seemed to know the danger

of these tunnel mouths, possibly from bitter experiences, for they

avoided the walls; but the dog-faced invaders sought this death, and

only fought on their way to the caves. Sometimes two, often four or

more, would launch themselves together into a hollow, but to no avail;

their united strength could not prevent the closing in of the

mechanical maw, and they were crushed and flung out, to drift on with

other debris.

Soon the walls could not be seen for the pushing, jostling crowd, but

everywhere the terrible, silent war went on until there came a time

when fighting ceased; for each must look out for himself. They seemed

to be in an immense cave, and the tide was broken into cross-currents

rushing violently to the accompaniment of rhythmical thunder. They were

shaken, jostled, pushed about and pushed together, hundreds of the

smaller creatures dying from the pressure. Then there was a moment of

comparative quiet, during which fighting was resumed, and there could

be seen the swiftly flying walls of a large tunnel. Next they were

rushed through a labyrinth of small caves with walls of curious,

branching formation, sponge-like and intricate. It required energetic

effort to prevent being caught in the meshes, and the large

red-and-gray creatures were sadly torn and crushed, while the white

ones fought their way through by main strength. Again the flying walls

of a tunnel, again a mighty cave, and the cross-currents, and the

rhythmical thunder, and now a wild charge down an immense tunnel, the

wall of which surged outward and inward, in unison with the roaring of

the thunder.

The thunder died away in the distance, though the walls still

surged--even those of a smaller tunnel which divided the current and

received them. Down-stream the tunnel branched again and again, and

with the lessening of the diameter was a lessening of the current's

velocity, until, in a maze of small, short passages, the invaders,

content to fight and kill in the swifter tide, again attacked the

caves.

But to the never-changing result: they were crushed, mangled, and cast

out, the number of suicides, in this neighborhood, largely exceeding

those killed by the white warriors. And yet, in spite of the large

mortality among them, the attacking force was increasing. Where one

died two took his place; and the reason was soon made plain--they were

reproducing. A black fighter, longer than his fellows, a little

sluggish of movement, as though from the restrictive pressure of a

large, round protuberance in his middle, which made him resemble a

snake which had swallowed an egg, was caught by a white monster and

instantly embraced by a multitude of feelers. He struggled, bit, and

broke in two; then the two parts escaped the grip of the astonished

captor, and wriggled away, the protuberance becoming the head of the

rear portion, which immediately joined the fight, snapping and biting

with unmistakable jaws. This phenomenon was repeated.

And on went the battle. Illumined by the living lamps, and watched by

terrified non-combatants, the horrid carnival continued with

never-slacking fury and ever-changing background--past the mouths of

tributary tunnels which increased the volume and velocity of the

current and added to the fighting strength, on through widening

archways to a repetition of the cross-currents, the thunder, and the

sponge-like maze, down past the heaving walls of larger tunnels to

branched passages, where, in comparative slack water, the siege of the

caves was resumed. For hour after hour this went on, the invaders dying

by hundreds, but increasing by thousands and ten thousands, as the

geometrical progression advanced, until, with swimming-spaces nearly

choked by their bodies, living and dead, there came the inevitable turn

in the tide of battle. A white monster was killed.

Glutted with victims, exhausted and sluggish, he was pounced upon by

hundreds, hidden from view by a living envelop of black, which pulsed

and throbbed with his death-throes. A feeler reached out, to be bitten

off; then another, to no avail. His strength was gone, and the

assailants bit and burrowed until they reached a vital part, when the

great mass assumed a spherical form and throbbed no more. They dropped

off, and, as the mangled ball floated on, charged on the next enemy

with renewed fury and courage born of their victory. This one died as

quickly.

And as though it had been foreseen, and a policy arranged to meet it,

the white army no longer fought in the open, but lined up along the

walls to defend the immovable caves. They avoided the working jaws of

the other kind, which certainly needed no garrison, and drifting slowly

in the eddies, fought as they could, with decreasing strength and

increasing death-rate. And thus it happened that our conservative

non-combatant, out in midstream, found himself surrounded by a horde of

black enemies who had nothing better to do than attack him.

And they did. As many as could crowd about him closed their wicked jaws

in his flesh. Squirming with pain, rendered trebly strong by his

terror, he killed them by twos and threes as he could reach them with

his tail. He shook them off with nervous contortions, only to make room

for more. He plunged, rolled, launched himself forward and back, up and

down, out and in, bending himself nearly double, then with lightning

rapidity throwing himself far into the reverse curve. He was fighting

for his life, and knew it. When he could, he used his jaws, only once

to an enemy. He saw dimly at intervals that the white monsters were

watching him; but none offered to help, and he had not time to call.

He thought that he must have become the object of the war; for from all

sides they swarmed, crowding about him, seeking a place on which to

fasten their jaws. Little by little the large red-and-gray creatures,

the non-combatants, and the phosphorescent animals were pushed aside,

and he, the center of an almost solid black mass, fought, in utter

darkness, with the fury of extreme fright. He had no appreciation of

the passing of time, no knowledge of his distance from the wall, or the

destination of this never-pausing current. But finally, after an

apparently interminable period, he heard dimly, with failing

consciousness, the reverberations of the thunder, and knew momentary

respite as the violent cross-currents tore his assailants away. Then,

still in darkness, he felt the crashing and tearing of flesh against

obstructing walls and sharp corners, the repetition of thunder and the

roar of the current which told him he was once more in a large tunnel.

An instant of light from a venturesome torch showed him to his enemies,

and again he fought, like a whale in his last flurry, slowly dying from

exhaustion and pain, but still potential to kill--terrible in his

agony. There was no counting of scalps in that day's work; but perhaps

no devouring white monster in all the defensive army could have shown a

death-list equal to this. From the surging black cloud there was a

steady outflow of the dead, pushed back by the living.

Weaker and weaker, while they mangled his flesh, and still in darkness,

he fought them down through branching passages to another network of

small tunnels, where he caught a momentary view of the walls and the

stolid white guard, thence on to what he knew was open space. And here

he felt that he could fight no more. They had covered him completely,

and, try as he might with his failing strength, he could not dislodge

them. So he ceased his struggles; and numb with pain, dazed with

despair, he awaited the end.

But it did not come. He was too exhausted to feel surprise or joy when

they suddenly dropped away from him; but the instinct of

self-preservation was still in force, and he swam toward the wall. The

small creatures paid him no attention; they scurried this way and that,

busy with troubles of their own, while he crept stupidly and painfully

between two white sentries floating in the eddies,--one of whom

considerately made room for him,--and anchored to a projection, luckily

choosing a harbor that was not hostile.

"Any port in a storm, eh, neighbor?" said the one who had given him

room, and who seemed to notice his dazed condition. "You'll feel better

soon. My, but you put up a good fight, that's what you did!"

He could not answer, and the friendly guard resumed his vigil. In a few

moments, however, he could take cognizance of what was going on in the

stream. There was a new army in the fight, and reinforcements were

still coming. A short distance above him was a huge rent in the wall,

and the caves around it, crushed and distorted, were grinding fiercely.

Protruding through the rent and extending half-way across the tunnel

was a huge mass of some strange substance, roughly shaped to a

cylindrical form. It was hollow, and out of it, by thousands and

hundred thousands, was pouring the auxiliary army, from which the black

fighters were now fleeing for dear life.

The newcomers, though resembling in general form the creatures they

pursued, were much larger and of two distinct types. Both were light

brown in color; but while one showed huge development of head and jaw,

with small flippers, the other kind reversed these attributes, their

heads being small, but their flippers long and powerful. They ran their

quarry down in the open, and seized them with outreaching tentacles. No

mistakes were made--no feints or false motions; and there was no

resistance by the victims. Where one was noticed he was doomed. The

tentacles gathered him in--to a murderous bite or a murderous embrace.

At last, when the inflow had ceased,--when there must have been

millions of the brown killers in the tunnel,--the great hollow cylinder

turned slowly on its axis and backed out through the rent in the wall,

which immediately closed, with a crushing and scattering of fragments.

Though the allies were far down-stream now, the war was practically

ended; for the white defenders remained near the walls, and the black

invaders were in wildest panic, each one, as the resistless current

rushed him past, swimming against the stream, to put distance between

himself and the destroyer below. But before long an advance-guard of

the brown enemy shot out from the tributaries above, and the tide of

retreat swung backward. Then came thousands of them, and the massacre

was resumed.

"Hot stuff, eh?" said his friendly neighbor to him.

"Y-y-y-es--I guess so," he answered, rather vacantly; "I don't know. I

don't know anything about it. I never saw such doings. What is it all

for? What does it mean?"

"Oh, this is nothing; it's all in a lifetime. Still, I admit it might

ha' been serious for us--and you, too--if we hadn't got help."

"But who are they, and what? They all seem of a family, and are killing

each other."

"Immortal shade of Darwin!" exclaimed the other sentry, who had not

spoken before. "Where were you brought up? Don't you know that

variations from type are the deadliest enemies of the parent stock?

These two brown breeds are the hundredth or two-hundredth cousins of

the black kind. When they've killed off their common relative, and get

to competing for grub, they'll exterminate each other, and we'll be rid

of 'em all. Law of nature. Understand?"

"Oh, y-yes, I understand, of course; but what did the black kind attack

me for? And what do they want, anyway?"

"To follow out their destiny, I s'pose. They're the kind of folks who

have missions. Reformers, we call 'em--who want to enforce their

peculiar ideas and habits on other people. Sometimes we call them

expansionists--fond of colonizing territory that doesn't belong to

them. They wanted to get through the cells to the lymph-passages,

thence on to the brain and spinal marrow. Know what that means?

Hydrophobia."

"What's that?"

"Oh, say, now! You're too easy."

"Come, come," said the other, good-naturedly; "don't guy him. He never

had our advantages. You see, neighbor, we get these points from the

subjective brain, which knows all things and gives us our instructions.

We're the white corpuscles,--phagocytes, the scientists call us,--and

our work is to police the blood-vessels, and kill off invaders that

make trouble. Those red-and-gray chumps can't take care of themselves,

and we must protect 'em. Understand? But this invasion was too much for

us, and we had to have help from outside. You must have come in with

the first crowd--think I saw you--in at the bite. Second crowd came in

through an inoculation tube, and just in time to pull you through."

"I don't know," answered our bewildered friend. "In at the bite? What

bite? I was swimming round comfortable-like, and there was a big noise,

and then I was alongside of a big white wall, and then----"

"Exactly; the dog's tooth. You got into bad company, friend, and you're

well out of it. That first gang is the microbe of rabies, not very well

known yet, because a little too small to be seen by most microscopes.

All the scientists seem to have learned about 'em is that a colony a

few hundred generations old--which they call a culture, or serum--is

death on the original bird; and that's what they sent in to help out.

Pasteur's dead, worse luck, but sometime old Koch'll find out what

we've known all along--that it's only variation from type."

"Koch!" he answered eagerly and proudly. "Oh, I know Koch; I've met

him. And I know about microscopes, too. Why, Koch had me under his

microscope once. He discovered my family, and named us--the comma

bacilli--the Spirilli of Asiatic Cholera."

In silent horror they drew away from him, and then conversed together.

Other white warriors drifting along stopped and joined the conference,

and when a hundred or more were massed before him, they spread out to a

semi-spherical formation and closed in.

"What's the matter?" he asked nervously. "What's wrong? What are you

going to do? I haven't done anything, have I?"

"It's not what you've done, stranger," said his quondam friend, "or

what we're going to do. It's what you're going to do. You're going to

die. Don't see how you got past quarantine, anyhow."

"What--why--I don't want to die. I've done nothing. All I want is peace

and quiet, and a place to swim where it isn't too light nor too dark. I

mind my own affairs. Let me alone--you hear me--let me alone!"

They answered him not. Slowly and irresistibly the hollow formation

contracted--individuals slipping out when necessary--until he was

pushed, still protesting, into the nearest movable cave. The walls

crashed together and his life went out. When he was cast forth he was

in five pieces.

And so our gentle, conservative, non-combative cholera microbe, who

only wanted to be left alone to mind his own affairs, met this violent

death, a martyr to prejudice and an unsympathetic environment.

* * * * *

Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson:

August 18. As period of incubation for both cholera and hydrophobia

has passed and no initial symptoms of either disease have been

noticed, patient is this day discharged, cured.

FROM THE ROYAL-YARD DOWN

As night descended, cold and damp, the wind hauled, and by nine o'clock

the ship was charging along before a half-gale and a rising sea from

the port quarter. When the watch had braced the yards, the mate ordered

the spanker brailed in and the mizzen-royal clued up, as the ship

steered hard. This was done, and the men coiled up the gear.