He was born with a nature as simple and primitive as the physical
conditions surrounding him, and endowed with a body so frail and
delicate that he barely survived these conditions--which were of frost,
and snow, and ice, with winter hurricanes straight from Greenland and
summer fogs fed by the Gulf Stream to breed pneumonia and kindred
diseases into stronger lungs than his.
But he survived to reach the age of eighteen, a tall, flat-chested,
weak-witted butt of the local school, who, while able to struggle along
with the ordinary studies at the foot of the class, was yet so poorly
endowed with the mathematical sense that he could only master the first
four rules of arithmetic. Fractions and decimals were unsolvable
mysteries to him. His name was Quinbey--first name John, later Jack.
He was of American birth, the only son of a fisherman, who had taken
his smack to an isolated village on the Nova Scotian coast. Here the
fisherman did well, and before the boy was half grown owned the finest
cottage in the village--which he bought cheap because it was perched on
the crest of the hill, exposed to every storm that blew, a nest that
none but a sailor could live in. With increasing prosperity he
installed a big base-burner, good for the anaemic boy, but bad for
himself.
The boy rid himself of coughs and colds; but the father, changing from
the chill and the wet of fishing to the warmth and ease of home life,
contracted pneumonia and died, leaving the boy in possession of the
house and the smack, but not enough ready money to last for a month.
Young Quinbey closed up the house, took in a partner with money, and
went fishing for a season, at the end of which the partner--a shrewd
business man--owned the smack.
The boy acquired a wonderful increase of health and strength, and a
consuming love for a pretty girl of the village, a trader's daughter
named Minnie, who repulsed him firmly and emphatically because of his
poverty--for the house and base-burner were not desirable assets--and
because of his weak mental and physical equipment.
But there is a school for weak mentality and physique--the Seven Seas.
And to this school went John Quinbey, first, however, putting in one
season on the Georges Bank, where, in a lucky craft, he made money.
Richer than ever before in his life, he returned home, to try again for
the heart and hand of Minnie, but found her married to the minister, a
man as weak, flat-chested, and anaemic as he himself had been.
He reasoned crudely. He did not meet Minnie, but took stock and measure
of the minister, a gentleman named Simpson; then, feeling his own
expanding chest and enlarging muscles, decided that Minnie would soon
be a widow, and he a strong man with money; for he could work, and,
having no vices, could save. So, for love of Minnie, he went back to
sea, resolved to become a captain, resolved to save every cent he
earned, and resolved to balk at no hardship that would lead him to
success.
At Boston, he shipped before the mast as able seaman in a big
deep-water ship. He was not an able seaman, nor did he become one on
this voyage; it required several; but each one marked a steady advance
in muscular strength, mental activity, and bank account; and, at the
end of the fifth, he signed as boatswain--an able man who knew his
work.
He was strong, broad-shouldered, and active; the slightly vacant look
in his face that had come from his boyhood incapacity had changed to a
frank stare that demanded consideration and respect. He seldom asked a
question twice now--once was usually enough. He had a fist that could
smash the panels of a door, a voice that he could not modulate to
conversational tones--so used was he to sending it against the wind. He
did not use tobacco, nor did he drink, for these things cost money, and
he was thinking of Minnie, most precious of all things in the world.
At the end of each voyage he visited home, deposited the money he had
brought, and waited in the street just long enough for a sight of
Minnie, sweet and matronly, and for a sight of the minister, who was
holding on to life with a remarkable tenacity. Then he would work his
way to Boston, and sign again.
Soon he became a second mate, but never a first, nor a captain. His
limitations in arithmetic prevented him from mastering navigation, a
necessary acquirement in a first mate or a skipper, and he remained in
the position he had reached, close to the sailors, but not of them;
sharing their hardships and hard work--for with every reefing or
furling match a second mate must go aloft with the men--standing watch
with them, washing down decks with them, getting drenched to the skin
as often as they, and differing from them only in increase of pay,
cabin food, and a dryer bed to sleep in.
But the dryer bed preserved him from the rheumatism and pulmonary
troubles that kill all sailors who do not drown, the better food
preserved his now iron physique, and the increased pay went into the
bank at home.
And so it continued until he was forty years old, when he went home to
find Minnie a widow with a grown-up son--a fat, weak-chinned,
pale-faced parody on manhood, who never had done a day's work in his
life--a "mamma's boy," who was destined for the ministry.
The dark, seamy-faced man of storm and strength, of stress and strain,
asked her again to be his wife. He asked her as he would have asked a
sailor to sign articles; and the frightened little woman accepted in
about the same spirit that would have influenced the sailor; but she
made one condition--that he would educate her son for the ministry.
He agreed. Her husband had left her almost nothing, while Quinbey had
about ten thousand dollars in the bank. From this he drew the expense
of a four years' course at Andover; and, taking the youth to this
famous theological college, arranged for his stay there in such a
manner as would insure his completing the course--that is, he paid to
the president for everything in advance, including, beside tuition and
board, a moderate amount of spending money, and traveling expense home
and back in vacation.
Then, with Sammy Simpson off his mind for four years at least, Quinbey
returned, and married the woman he loved, feeling that he had now
earned happiness and the right to remain on land--and smoke.
But he was not born for happiness, and did not recognize it when it
came to him. He opened up his house on the hill, fired up the
base-burner, and the two sat around it for a month trying to assimilate
each other; but they could not. He knew nothing of women; she nothing
of such men as him. He never smiled; and, when he joked, the joke was
lost in the rumble and grumble of his voice. He caressed her with the
gentleness of a grizzly fondling the hunter, and was nonplussed and set
back when she cried out in pain.
Afraid of him at first, she soon realized that he knew no better, and
responded with the weapons of woman. The man, inured to cold and pain
and fatigue, yet was sensitive as a child when it came to his feelings.
When she learned this, she kept his nerves quivering with quiet smiles,
soft and sarcastic little speeches, and deadening silences, the meaning
of which did not strike him at the time because of his transparent
frankness and honesty.
He became afraid of her; and she, following up her advantage, wheedled
him out of money for clothes, which, though he could not see the need
of them, he cheerfully gave her. He loved her devotedly; and, though he
never smiled, yet he never frowned, nor spoke a harsh word to her.
But she thought him harsh, and, justified by the thought, continued the
marital loot until she grew brave enough to demand a gold watch for
Sammy's birthday.
This was not in his program, and he told her so. Then followed a
lecture on the duties and shortcomings of fathers, which lasted an
hour, and left him shaking like a sick man, sprawled out in the big
chair by the fire, and smoking like a high-pressure tug. But she had
brought him around, and he had arisen to go out to the town's one
jeweler, when she lost all she had won.
"Where are you going?" she asked sharply, as he put on his hat.
"Going out, Minnie," he said, in his jokeless voice, "to get some
catnip for you."
He meant it good-humoredly; but it was taken otherwise. The jeweler had
no gold watches; but, after a two hours' search, he dug up a
wholesaler's catalogue, and, with this in his pocket, Quinbey returned
to have Minnie select a watch from it; but she, her trunks, and her
belongings were gone, while a note on the table apprised him that she
would live with no man who called her a cat.
Troubled in mind, he followed her to the home of her parents, but he
was not admitted--nor given a chance to show her the catalogue.
He slept on the problem, and in the morning resolved that a little
absence would be good for her; so, as the season had opened, he packed
his bag and went out on a fishing trip with friends of his, expecting
to be back in a month. It was eight years later when he returned.
His adventures during those eight years can only be summarized. The
fishing schooner was cut down by a big ship out of Halifax bound around
the Horn; and Quinbey alone of her crew succeeded in springing to her
martingale-stay as the smaller craft went under. No one else was saved,
though the ship hove to and put out boats to search. Then the ship went
on, and, as she met no inbound craft, Quinbey was forced to go with
her.
But she did not round Cape Horn. A strong current threw her onto the
Patagonian coast near Cape Virgins in a dead calm, and a sudden gale of
wind and heavy sea ground her to pieces.
Only John Quinbey was a swimmer of sufficient strength to reach the
beach, and here he lay, half dead, for a day, when he arose and struck
inland, knowing that Punta Arenas was about a hundred and fifty miles
along the coast of the Magellan Strait, and hoping to reach it.
He did not at once. The giant savages of this region caught him and
made him one of them, preventing his escape. He was accustomed to
hardship, and lived their life, tormented only by the thought that the
money at home was deposited in his name, and that he had made no
provision whereby the foolish little wife could draw from the bank.
But he still hoped to escape; and, as the tribe drifted inland, he was
allowed more liberty. He never abused it, waiting for a final dash,
always returning from a jaunt in reasonable time, and earning the
confidence of his captors.
When over seven years had passed, he found, in the foothills of the
Latorre Mountains, a large, heavy lump of dark metal, which he scraped
with his knife and recognized as gold. It was fully the size of a draw
bucket, but of what value he could not determine, except that it
represented a fortune.
Strong man though he was, he could not carry it a hundred yards without
resting, yet he carried it, not back to the tribe, but in a
southwesterly direction, toward Punta Arenas. When forced to return, he
hid it, taking careful bearings, and rejoined his masters. He waited a
few days before the next trip, then moved it a few miles farther on.
In this way, exciting no suspicion, he shifted his find, step by step,
until he had it on a well-defined trail that could lead nowhere but to
the lonely port he was making for. Then, after a few days' rest, he
packed a bundle of dried meat, took with him a native-made rope by
which to drag the heavy nugget, and left the camp in the dark of night.
He reached his treasure by daylight, and started along the trail. He
was not pursued, and ten days later, half starved, half mad, his
shoulders bleeding from the chafe of the rope, and every bone in his
body aching with the pain of fatigue, he dragged his burden onto a
rickety wharf at Punta Arenas where an eastbound steamer was coaling.
Her captain was an honest man. He took Quinbey on board, took him to
Boston, and helped him turn the nugget into cash--fifty thousand
dollars. Then Quinbey went home.