by Henry Oyen
Author of “The Snow Burner,” “The Man Trail,” “Gaston Olaf,” etc.
I
George Chanler’s offer of a position as literary secretary of his
Arctic expedition came to me one fine May morning when I was sitting
at my desk, glooming from an eighteenth-story height down upon the
East River, and dreading to begin the day’s work.
I had sat so for many mornings past. I was not happy; I was a failure.
I was thirty years old, had a college education; my health was
splendid and I was intelligent and ambitious. And I was precariously
occupying a position as country correspondent in Hurst’s Mail Order
Emporium, salary $25 a week, with every reason to believe that I had
achieved the limits of such success as my capabilities entitled me to.
“You ain’t got no punch, Mr. Pitt; that’s the matter vit’ you,” was my
employer’s verdict. “You’re a fine feller, but—oof! How you haf got
into the rut!”
I had. I was in so deeply that I had lost confidence and was losing
hope. That was why I, Gardner Pitt, bookman by instinct and office-cog
by vocation, was ripe for Chanler’s sensational offer.
My friendship with Chanler, which had been a close one at school where
I had done half his work for him, had of a necessity languished during
the last few years. There is not much room for friendship between a
poorly paid office man and an idle young millionaire. Yet it was
apparent that George had not forgotten, for now he turned to me when
he wanted some one to accompany him and write the history of his
Arctic achievements.
His offer came in the form of a long telegram from Seattle where he
was outfitting his new yacht, _Wanderer_. Being what he was George
gave me absolutely no useful information concerning the nature of his
expedition. In what most concerned me, however, his message was
sufficient: a light task, a Summer vacation, and at generous terms.
I looked out of the window at the wearying roofs of the city, and the
yellow paper crumpled in my fingers as I clenched my fist. There was
none of the adventurer in me. I was not in the optimistic frame of
mind necessary to an explorer. But Chanler’s offer was, at least, a
chance to escape from New York. I bade Mr. Hurst good-by, and went out
and sent a wire of acceptance.
* * * * *
Eight days later, shortly before noon, I stood on the curb outside the
station in Seattle bargaining with a cabman to drive me to the dock
where I had been directed to find a launch from the _Wanderer_
awaiting me that morning. The particular cabman that I happened to hit
upon was an honest man. He cheerfully admitted that he did not know
the exact location of the dock mentioned in my directions, but he
assured me that he knew in a general way in which section of the
water-front it must be.
“And when we get down there I’ll step in and ask at Billy Taylor’s,”
he said, as if that settled the matter. “Billy’ll know; he knows
everything that’s going along the water-front.”
Billy Taylor’s proved to be a tiny waterfront saloon which my man
entered with an alacrity that testified to a desire for something more
than information concerning my dock. I waited in patience for many
minutes with no sign of his return. I waited many more minutes in
impatience with a like result.
In my broken-spirited condition I was not fit or inclined to reprimand
a drinking cabman, but neither was I minded to sit idle while my man
filled himself up. I stepped out of the cab and thrust open the
swinging doors of the saloon.
I did not enter. My cabman was in the act of coming out, standing with
one hand absently thrust out toward the doors, his attention arrested
and held by something that was taking place in a small room at the
rear of the saloon. The door of this room was half open. I saw a
small, wiry man in seaman’s clothes leaning over a round table,
shaking his fist at a large man with light cropped hair who sat
opposite him. A bottle of beer, knocked over, was gurgling out its
contents on the floor. The large man was sitting up very stiff and
straight, but smiling easily at the other’s fury.
“No, you don’t, Foxy; no you don’t! You can’t come any of your
‘Captain’ business on me, you Laughing Devil,” screamed the little
man. “Ah, ha! That stung, eh? Didn’t think I knew what the Aleuts
called you, eh, Foxy? ‘Laughing Devil.’ An’ you talk like a captain to
me, and ask me to go North with you! Here: what became of Slade and
Harris, that let you into partnership with ’em after you’d lost your
sealer in Omkutsk Strait? And what became of the gold strike they’d
made? Eh? And you talk to me about a rich gold find you’ve got, and
want me to help you take a rich sucker up North——”
“Still,” said the big man suddenly. “Still, Madigan.”
He had been smiling up till then, his huge, red face lighted up like a
wrinkled red sun, but suddenly the light seemed to go out. The fat of
his face seemed to become like cast bronze, with two pin-points of
fire gleaming, balefully from under down-drawn lids. Several heavy
lines which had been hidden in genial wrinkles now were apparent, and,
though only the flat profile was visible to me, I saw, or rather I
felt, that the man’s face for the while was terrible.
To my amazement the infuriated sea-man’s abuse ceased as abruptly as
if the power of speech had been taken from him. He remained in his
threatening attitude, leaning across the table, his clenched fist
thrust forward, his mouth open; but his eyes were held by the
crop-haired man’s and not a sound came from his lips.
“Down, Madigan,” continued the big man. “It is my wish that you sit
down.”
A snarl came from the small man’s lips. He seemed about to break out
again, but suddenly he subsided and sat down. The big man nodded
stiffly, as one might at child who has obeyed an unpleasant command,
and the smaller man humbly closed the door.
My cabman came hurtling out through the swinging doors, nearly running
me down in his hurry.
“Hullo!” he cried. “Did you see that, too? Whee-yew! That was a funny
thing. That little fellow’s Tad Madigan, a mate that’s lost his
papers, and the toughest man along the water-front; and he—he shut up
like a schoolboy, didn’t he?”
Saloon brawls, even when displaying amazing characters, do not
interest me.
I reminded him that he had gone in to inquire about the location of my
dock.
“Oh, that’s a good joke on me,” he laughed. “Your dock’s right next
door here, and you can see the _Wanderer_ from Billy’s back room.”
A few minutes later I was standing in the midst of my baggage on this
dock, looking out across the water to where lay anchored the white,
clean-lined yacht, _Wanderer_.
It was a morning in early June, a day alive with bright, warm sun. A
slight breeze with a mingling of sea, and pine, and the subtle scents
of Spring in it, was coming up the Sound, and beneath its breath the
water was rippling into wavelets, each with a touch of sun on its tiny
crest.
An outdoor man might have thrilled with the scene, the sun, the fresh
Spring-scent and all. But I was fresh from the asphalt and stone walls
of New York, and I was broken-spirited, resigned to anything, elated
over nothing, that fate might allot me. I merely looked over the water
to the _Wanderer_ to see if the promised launch was on its way.
“Sure enough, Mister, there comes a little gas-boat for you now,”
exclaimed my cabman, pointing with his whip to a small launch that was
coming away from the yacht’s stern. “You’ll be all right; your friends
have seen you. Well, good luck to you, friend, and lots of it.”
“Thank you,” I said, “and the same to you.”
But I felt bitterly that there was little hope that his cheery wish
would be realized for me.
As the launch drew nearer the dock I saw that a bareheaded and
red-haired young man was in charge, and as it came quite near I saw
that the young man’s mouth was opening and closing prodigiously, and
from snatches of sound that drifted toward me above the noise of the
engine, I heard that he was singing joyously at the top of a strained
and thoroughly unmusical voice.
He drove the launch straight at the dock in a fashion that seemed to
threaten inevitable collision, but at the crucial moment the engine
suddenly was reversed, the rudder swung around, and the little craft
came sidling alongside against the timber on which I was standing; the
young man tossed a rope around a pile, and with a sudden spring he was
on the dock beside me.
“You’re Mr. Gardner Pitt, if your baggage is marked right,” he said,
though I had not seen the swift glance he had shot at the initials on
my bags.
He stood on his tip-toes, blinking in the sun, and filled his lungs
with a great draft of air.
“Gee! It’s some morning, ain’t it, Mr. Pitt? A-a-ah-ah!” he continued
with ineffable satisfaction. “It certainly is one grand thing to be
alive.”
I could not wholly subscribe to his sentiment at that time, but there
was such an aura of wholesome good humor about the young man that I
warmed toward him at once. He was probably twenty-three years old,
short and boyish of build: his face was a mass of freckles; his eyes
were very blue and merry; his nose very snubbed, his mouth large. He
wore one of the most awful red ties that ever tortured the eyes of
humanity, and the crime was aggravated by a pin containing a large
yellow stone; but when he grinned it was apparent that he was one of
those whom much is to be forgiven.
“I’m Freddy Pierce,” he said. “Wireless operator and odd-job-man on
the _Wanderer_. Say, Mr. Pitt, will you do me a favor?”
He looked at me with an expression of indescribable comicality on his
sun-wrinkled face, and, willy-nilly, I found myself smiling.
“Thank you for them kind words,” he laughed before I had opened my
mouth. “Knew you’d do it; knew I had you sized up right. Let me roll a
pill before we start back? Thanks.”
With amazing swiftness he had produced tobacco and paper, rolled a
cigaret, and sent a ring of smoke rolling upward through the clear
air.
“Mr. Pitt,” he said suddenly in a new tone, “do you know Captain
Brack?”
“No,” I said. “Who is Captain Brack?”
“Captain of the _Wanderer_,” was the reply.
“I don’t know him.”
He threw away his cigaret and began easing my baggage down into the
launch. He was serious for the moment.
“And—and say, Mr. Pitt, do you know a Jane—I mean, a lady named Miss
Baldwin?”