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MEN, WOMEN, AND BOATS
By Stephen Crane
Edited With an Introduction by Vincent Starrett
NOTE
A Number of the tales and sketches here brought together appear now for
the first time between covers; others for the first time between covers
in this country. All have been gathered from out-of-print volumes and
old magazine files.
"The Open Boat," one of Stephen Crane's finest stories, is used with
the courteous permission of Doubleday, Page & Co., holders of the
copyright. Its companion masterpiece, "The Blue Hotel," because of
copyright complications, has had to be omitted, greatly to the regret
of the editor.
After the death of Stephen Crane, a haphazard and undiscriminating
gathering of his earlier tales and sketches appeared in London under
the misleading title, "Last Words." From this volume, now rarely met
with, a number of characteristic minor works have been selected, and
these will be new to Crane's American admirers; as follows: "The
Reluctant Voyagers," "The End of the Battle," "The Upturned Face," "An
Episode of War," "A Desertion," "Four Men in a Cave," "The Mesmeric
Mountain," "London Impressions," "The Snake."
Three of our present collection, printed by arrangement, appeared in
the London (1898) edition of "The Open Boat and Other Stories,"
published by William Heinemann, but did not occur in the American
volume of that title. They are "An Experiment in Misery," "The Duel
that was not Fought," and "The Pace of Youth."
For the rest, "A Dark Brown Dog," "A Tent in Agony," and "The Scotch
Express," are here printed for the first time in a book.
For the general title of the present collection, the editor alone is
responsible.
V. S.
MEN, WOMEN AND BOATS
CONTENTS
STEPHEN CRANE: _An Estimate_
THE OPEN BOAT
THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS
THE END OF THE BATTLE
THE UPTURNED FACE
AN EPISODE OF WAR
AN EXPERIMENT IN MISERY
THE DUEL THAT WAS NOT FOUGHT
A DESERTION
THE DARK-BROWN DOG
THE PACE OF YOUTH
SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES
A TENT IN AGONY
FOUR MEN IN A CAVE
THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN
THE SNAKE
LONDON IMPRESSIONS
THE SCOTCH EXPRESS
STEPHEN CRANE: _AN ESTIMATE_
It hardly profits us to conjecture what Stephen Crane might have
written about the World War had he lived. Certainly, he would have been
in it, in one capacity or another. No man had a greater talent for war
and personal adventure, nor a finer art in describing it. Few writers
of recent times could so well describe the poetry of motion as
manifested in the surge and flow of battle, or so well depict the
isolated deed of heroism in its stark simplicity and terror.
To such an undertaking as Henri Barbusse's "Under Fire," that powerful,
brutal book, Crane would have brought an analytical genius almost
clairvoyant. He possessed an uncanny vision; a descriptive ability
photographic in its clarity and its care for minutiae--yet
unphotographic in that the big central thing often is omitted, to be
felt rather than seen in the occult suggestion of detail. Crane would
have seen and depicted the grisly horror of it all, as did Barbusse,
but also he would have seen the glory and the ecstasy and the wonder of
it, and over that his poetry would have been spread.
While Stephen Crane was an excellent psychologist, he was also a true
poet. Frequently his prose was finer poetry than his deliberate essays
in poesy. His most famous book, "The Red Badge of Courage," is
essentially a psychological study, a delicate clinical dissection of
the soul of a recruit, but it is also a _tour de force_ of the
imagination. When he wrote the book he had never seen a battle: he had
to place himself in the situation of another. Years later, when he came
out of the Greco-Turkish _fracas_, he remarked to a friend: "'The Red
Badge' is all right."
Written by a youth who had scarcely passed his majority, this book has
been compared with Tolstoy's "Sebastopol" and Zola's "La Débâcle," and
with some of the short stories of Ambrose Bierce. The comparison with
Bierce's work is legitimate; with the other books, I think, less so.
Tolstoy and Zola see none of the traditional beauty of battle; they
apply themselves to a devoted--almost obscene--study of corpses and
carnage generally; and they lack the American's instinct for the rowdy
commonplace, the natural, the irreverent, which so materially aids his
realism. In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept down
where one expects a height: the most heroic deeds are accomplished with
studied awkwardness.
Crane was an obscure free-lance when he wrote this book. The effort, he
says, somewhere, "was born of pain--despair, almost." It was a better
piece of work, however, for that very reason, as Crane knew. It is far
from flawless. It has been remarked that it bristles with as many
grammatical errors as with bayonets; but it is a big canvas, and I am
certain that many of Crane's deviations from the rules of polite
rhetoric were deliberate experiments, looking to effect--effect which,
frequently, he gained.
Stephen Crane "arrived" with this book. There are, of course, many who
never have heard of him, to this day, but there was a time when he was
very much talked of. That was in the middle nineties, following
publication of "The Red Badge of Courage," although even before that he
had occasioned a brief flurry with his weird collection of poems called
"The Black Riders and Other Lines." He was highly praised, and highly
abused and laughed at; but he seemed to be "made." We have largely
forgotten since. It is a way we have.
Personally, I prefer his short stories to his novels and his poems;
those, for instance, contained in "The Open Boat," in "Wounds in the
Rain," and in "The Monster." The title-story in that first collection
is perhaps his finest piece of work. Yet what is it? A truthful record
of an adventure of his own in the filibustering days that preceded our
war with Spain; the faithful narrative of the voyage of an open boat,
manned by a handful of shipwrecked men. But Captain Bligh's account of
_his_ small boat journey, after he had been sent adrift by the
mutineers of the _Bounty_, seems tame in comparison, although of the
two the English sailor's voyage was the more perilous.
In "The Open Boat" Crane again gains his effects by keeping down the
tone where another writer might have attempted "fine writing" and have
been lost. In it perhaps is most strikingly evident the poetic cadences
of his prose: its rhythmic, monotonous flow is the flow of the gray
water that laps at the sides of the boat, that rises and recedes in
cruel waves, "like little pointed rocks." It is a desolate picture, and
the tale is one of our greatest short stories. In the other tales that
go to make up the volume are wild, exotic glimpses of Latin-America. I
doubt whether the color and spirit of that region have been better
rendered than in Stephen Crane's curious, distorted, staccato sentences.
"War Stories" is the laconic sub-title of "Wounds in the Rain." It was
not war on a grand scale that Crane saw in the Spanish-American
complication, in which he participated as a war correspondent; no such
war as the recent horror. But the occasions for personal heroism were
no fewer than always, and the opportunities for the exercise of such
powers of trained and appreciative understanding and sympathy as Crane
possessed, were abundant. For the most part, these tales are episodic,
reports of isolated instances--the profanely humorous experiences of
correspondents, the magnificent courage of signalmen under fire, the
forgotten adventure of a converted yacht--but all are instinct with the
red fever of war, and are backgrounded with the choking smoke of
battle. Never again did Crane attempt the large canvas of "The Red
Badge of Courage." Before he had seen war, he imagined its immensity
and painted it with the fury and fidelity of a Verestchagin; when he
was its familiar, he singled out its minor, crimson passages for
briefer but no less careful delineation.
In this book, again, his sense of the poetry of motion is vividly
evident. We see men going into action, wave on wave, or in scattering
charges; we hear the clink of their accoutrements and their breath
whistling through their teeth. They are not men going into action at
all, but men going about their business, which at the moment happens to
be the capture of a trench. They are neither heroes nor cowards. Their
faces reflect no particular emotion save, perhaps, a desire to get
somewhere. They are a line of men running for a train, or following a
fire engine, or charging a trench. It is a relentless picture, ever
changing, ever the same. But it contains poetry, too, in rich,
memorable passages.
In "The Monster and Other Stories," there is a tale called "The Blue
Hotel". A Swede, its central figure, toward the end manages to get
himself murdered. Crane's description of it is just as casual as that.
The story fills a dozen pages of the book; but the social injustice of
the whole world is hinted in that space; the upside-downness of
creation, right prostrate, wrong triumphant,--a mad, crazy world. The
incident of the murdered Swede is just part of the backwash of it all,
but it is an illuminating fragment. The Swede was slain, not by the
gambler whose knife pierced his thick hide: he was the victim of a
condition for which he was no more to blame than the man who stabbed
him. Stephen Crane thus speaks through the lips of one of the
characters:--
"We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even
a noun. He is a kind of an adverb. Every sin is
the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have
collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually
there are from a dozen to forty women really involved
in every murder, but in this case it seems
to be only five men--you, I, Johnnie, Old Scully,
and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came
merely as a culmination, the apex of a human movement,
and gets all the punishment."
And then this typical and arresting piece of irony:--
"The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon,
had its eyes fixed upon a dreadful legend that
dwelt atop of the cash-machine: 'This registers the
amount of your purchase.'"
In "The Monster," the ignorance, prejudice and cruelty of an entire
community are sharply focussed. The realism is painful; one blushes for
mankind. But while this story really belongs in the volume called
"Whilomville Stories," it is properly left out of that series. The
Whilomville stories are pure comedy, and "The Monster" is a hideous
tragedy.
Whilomville is any obscure little village one may happen to think of.
To write of it with such sympathy and understanding, Crane must have
done some remarkable listening in Boyville. The truth is, of course, he
was a boy himself--"a wonderful boy," somebody called him--and was
possessed of the boy mind. These tales are chiefly funny because they
are so true--boy stories written for adults; a child, I suppose, would
find them dull. In none of his tales is his curious understanding of
human moods and emotions better shown.
A stupid critic once pointed out that Crane, in his search for striking
effects, had been led into "frequent neglect of the time-hallowed
rights of certain words," and that in his pursuit of color he "falls
occasionally into almost ludicrous mishap." The smug pedantry of the
quoted lines is sufficient answer to the charges, but in support of
these assertions the critic quoted certain passages and phrases. He
objected to cheeks "scarred" by tears, to "dauntless" statues, and to
"terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that
largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an
ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions
subtly conveyed by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as
deliberate with him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an
imagist before our modern imagists were known.
This unconventional use of adjectives is marked in the Whilomville
tales. In one of them Crane refers to the "solemn odor of burning
turnips." It is the most nearly perfect characterization of burning
turnips conceivable: can anyone improve upon that "solemn odor"?
Stephen Crane's first venture was "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets." It
was, I believe, the first hint of naturalism in American letters. It
was not a best-seller; it offers no solution of life; it is an episodic
bit of slum fiction, ending with the tragic finality of a Greek drama.
It is a skeleton of a novel rather than a novel, but it is a powerful
outline, written about a life Crane had learned to know as a newspaper
reporter in New York. It is a singularly fine piece of analysis, or a
bit of extraordinarily faithful reporting, as one may prefer; but not a
few French and Russian writers have failed to accomplish in two volumes
what Crane achieved in two hundred pages. In the same category is
"George's Mother," a triumph of inconsequential detail piling up with a
cumulative effect quite overwhelming.
Crane published two volumes of poetry--"The Black Riders" and "War is
Kind." Their appearance in print was jeeringly hailed; yet Crane was
only pioneering in the free verse that is today, if not definitely
accepted, at least more than tolerated. I like the following love poem
as well as any rhymed and conventionally metrical ballad that I know:--
"Should the wide world roll away,
Leaving black terror,
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential,
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way."
"If war be kind," wrote a clever reviewer, when the second volume
appeared, "then Crane's verse may be poetry, Beardsley's black and
white creations may be art, and this may be called a book";--a smart
summing up that is cherished by cataloguers to this day, in describing
the volume for collectors. Beardsley needs no defenders, and it is
fairly certain that the clever reviewer had not read the book, for
certainly Crane had no illusions about the kindness of war. The
title-poem of the volume is an amazingly beautiful satire which answers
all criticism.
"Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
"Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, and his kingdom--
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
* * * * *
"Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind."
Poor Stephen Crane! Like most geniuses, he had his weaknesses and his
failings; like many, if not most, geniuses, he was ill. He died of
tuberculosis, tragically young. But what a comrade he must have been,
with his extraordinary vision, his keen, sardonic comment, his
fearlessness and his failings!
Just a glimpse of Crane's last days is afforded by a letter written
from England by Robert Barr, his friend--Robert Barr, who collaborated
with Crane in "The 0' Ruddy," a rollicking tale of old Ireland, or,
rather, who completed it at Crane's death, to satisfy his friend's
earnest request. The letter is dated from Hillhead, Woldingham, Surrey,
June 8, 1900, and runs as follows:--
"My Dear ----
"I was delighted to hear from you, and was much
interested to see the article on Stephen Crane you
sent me. It seems to me the harsh judgment of an
unappreciative, commonplace person on a man of
genius. Stephen had many qualities which lent
themselves to misapprehension, but at the core he
was the finest of men, generous to a fault, with
something of the old-time recklessness which used
to gather in the ancient literary taverns of London.
I always fancied that Edgar Allan Poe revisited the
earth as Stephen Crane, trying again, succeeding
again, failing again, and dying ten years sooner
than he did on the other occasion of his stay on
earth.
"When your letter came I had just returned from
Dover, where I stayed four days to see Crane off
for the Black Forest. There was a thin thread of
hope that he might recover, but to me he looked like
a man already dead. When he spoke, or, rather,
whispered, there was all the accustomed humor in
his sayings. I said to him that I would go over to
the Schwarzwald in a few weeks, when he was getting
better, and that we would take some convalescent
rambles together. As his wife was listening
he said faintly: 'I'll look forward to that,' but he
smiled at me, and winked slowly, as much as to say:
'You damned humbug, you know I'll take no more
rambles in this world.' Then, as if the train of
thought suggested what was looked on before as the
crisis of his illness, he murmured: 'Robert, when
you come to the hedge--that we must all go over--
it isn't bad. You feel sleepy--and--you don't
care. Just a little dreamy curiosity--which world
you're really in--that's all.'
"To-morrow, Saturday, the 9th, I go again to
Dover to meet his body. He will rest for a little
while in England, a country that was always good
to him, then to America, and his journey will be
ended.
"I've got the unfinished manuscript of his last
novel here beside me, a rollicking Irish tale, different
from anything he ever wrote before. Stephen
thought I was the only person who could finish it,
and he was too ill for me to refuse. I don't know
what to do about the matter, for I never could work
up another man's ideas. Even your vivid imagination
could hardly conjecture anything more ghastly
than the dying man, lying by an open window overlooking
the English channel, relating in a sepulchral
whisper the comic situations of his humorous hero
so that I might take up the thread of his story.
"From the window beside which I write this I
can see down in the valley Ravensbrook House,
where Crane used to live and where Harold Frederic,
he and I spent many a merry night together. When
the Romans occupied Britain, some of their legions,
parched with thirst, were wandering about these dry
hills with the chance of finding water or perishing.
They watched the ravens, and so came to the stream
which rises under my place and flows past Stephen's
former home; hence the name, Ravensbrook.
"It seems a strange coincidence that the greatest
modern writer on war should set himself down
where the greatest ancient warrior, Caesar, probably
stopped to quench his thirst.
"Stephen died at three in the morning, the same
sinister hour which carried away our friend Frederic
nineteen months before. At midnight, in Crane's
fourteenth-century house in Sussex, we two tried
to lure back the ghost of Frederic into that house of
ghosts, and to our company, thinking that if reappearing
were ever possible so strenuous a man as
Harold would somehow shoulder his way past the
guards, but he made no sign. I wonder if the less
insistent Stephen will suggest some ingenious method
by which the two can pass the barrier. I can imagine
Harold cursing on the other side, and welcoming
the more subtle assistance of his finely fibred
friend.
"I feel like the last of the Three Musketeers, the
other two gone down in their duel with Death. I
am wondering if, within the next two years, I also
shall get the challenge. If so, I shall go to the competing
ground the more cheerfully that two such
good fellows await the outcome on the other side.
"Ever your friend,
"ROBERT BARR."
The last of the Three Musketeers is gone, now, although he outlived his
friends by some years. Robert Barr died in 1912. Perhaps they are still
debating a joint return.
There could be, perhaps, no better close for a paper on Stephen Crane
than the subjoined paragraph from a letter written by him to a
Rochester editor:--
"The one thing that deeply pleases me is the
fact that men of sense invariably believe me to be
sincere. I know that my work does not amount to
a string of dried beans--I always calmly admit it--but
I also know that I do the best that is in me
without regard to praise or blame. When I was
the mark for every humorist in the country, I went
ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty
per cent of the humorists of the country, I go
ahead; for I understand that a man is born into the
world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all
responsible for his vision--he is merely responsible
for his quality of personal honesty. To keep
close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition."
VINCENT STARRETT.
THE OPEN BOAT
A Tale intended to be after the fact. Being the experience of four men
from the sunk steamer "Commodore"
I
None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and
were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were
of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white,
and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and
widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with
waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to
have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea.
These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and
each froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation.
The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six
inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were
rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest
dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was
a narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the
broken sea.
The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes
raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the
stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.
The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and
wondered why he was there.
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that
profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least,
to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm
fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a
vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a
day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a
scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of
a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the
waves, went low and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something
strange in his voice. Although steady, it was, deep with mourning, and
of a quality beyond oration or tears.
"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.
"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and
by the same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced and
reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for
it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high. The
manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing,
and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in
white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave,
requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully
bumping a crest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long
incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after
successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another
behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do
something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey
one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves
that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in
a dingey. As each slatey wall of water approached, it shut all else
from the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to
imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean,
the last effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the
move of the waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of
the crests.
In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes
must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed
from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been weirdly
picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they
had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun
swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the
color of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, streaked with
amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the
breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect
upon the color of the waves that rolled toward them.
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the
difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The
cook had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito
Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat
and pick us up."
"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.
"The crew," said the cook.
"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I
understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored
for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."
"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.
"No, they don't," said the correspondent.
"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.
"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'm
thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a
life-saving station."
"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.
II
As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through
the hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down
again the spray splashed past them. The crest of each of these waves
was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a
broad tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably
splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild
with lights of emerald and white and amber.
"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook; "If not, where
would we be? Wouldn't have a show."
"That's right," said the correspondent.
The busy oiler nodded his assent.
Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor,
contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think We've got much of a show
now, boys?" said he.
Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and
hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be
childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the
situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On
the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any
open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.
"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "We'll get ashore
all right."
But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler
quoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"
The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."
Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the
sea, near patches of brown seaweed that rolled on the waves with a
movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in
groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of
the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens
a thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the
men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and
sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at
them, telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to
alight on the top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to the
boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the air in
chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain's
head. "Ugly brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as if you
were made with a jack-knife." The cook and the correspondent swore
darkly at the creature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away
with the end of the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it, because
anything resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized this
freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently and
carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the
pursuit the captain breathed easier on account of his hair, and others
breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this time as
being somehow grewsome and ominous.
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed And also they
rowed.
They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the
oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the
oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very
ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining
one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of
truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to
change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand
along the thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the
man in the rowing seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all
done with most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each other,
the whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain
cried: "Look out now! Steady there!"
The brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were like
islands, bits of earth. They were traveling, apparently, neither one
way nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed
the men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.
The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on
a great swell, said that he had seen the light-house at Mosquito Inlet.
Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent was
at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the
lighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were
important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn
his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others,
and when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.
"See it?" said the captain.
"No," said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything."
"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that
direction."
At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and
this time his eyes chanced on a small still thing on the edge of the
swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an
anxious eye to find a light house so tiny.
"Think we'll make it, captain?"
"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else,"
said the captain.
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by
the crests, made progress that in the absence of seaweed was not
apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing wallowing,
miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great
spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.
"Bail her, cook," said the captain serenely.
"All right, captain," said the cheerful cook.
III
It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that
was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him.
They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they
were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be
common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spoke
always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a more
ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It
was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common
safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal and
heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there
was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been
taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best
experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it.
"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoat
on the end of an oar and give you two boys a chance to rest." So the
cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the overcoat.
The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig.
Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breaking
into the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success.
Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now
almost assumed color, and appeared like a little grey shadow on the
sky. The man at the oars could not be prevented from turning his head
rather often to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow.
At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could
see land. Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky, this
land seemed but a long black shadow on the sea. It certainly was
thinner than paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the
cook, who had coasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the
way, I believe they abandoned that life-saving station there about a
year ago."
"Did they?" said the captain.
The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now
obliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued
their old impetuous swooping at the dingey, and the little craft, no
longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or the
correspondent took the oars again.
Shipwrecks are _à propos_ of nothing. If men could only train for them
and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there
would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey none had slept
any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to
embarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the
deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.
For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the
correspondent was fond of rowing at this time. The correspondent
wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there
be people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an
amusement; it was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental
aberrations could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to
the muscles and a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in
general how the amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced
oiler smiled in full sympathy. Previously to the foundering, by the
way, the oiler had worked double-watch in the engine-room of the ship.
"Take her easy, now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves.
If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll
sure have to swim for it. Take your time."
Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line
of black and a line of white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain said
that he could make out a house on the shore. "That's the house of
refuge, sure," said the cook. "They'll see us before long, and come out
after us."
The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to
make us out now, if he's looking through a glass," said the captain.
"He'll notify the life-saving people."
"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the
wreck," said the oiler, in a low voice. "Else the lifeboat would be out
hunting us."
Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came
again. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally, a
new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low
thunder of the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the
lighthouse now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north,
Billie," said he.
"'A little more north,' sir," said the oiler.
Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and
all but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this
expansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of the
men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could
not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be
ashore.
Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat,
and they now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The
correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but
happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight
cigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly
scathless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and
thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and with
an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at
the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a
drink of water.
IV
"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life
about your house of refuge."
"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"
A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was
of dunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain,
and sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the
beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the
slim lighthouse lifted its little grey length.
Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny they
don't see us," said the men.
The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless,
thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the men
sat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure," said everybody.
It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within
twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact,
and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning
the eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the
dingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.
"Funny they don't see us."
The lightheartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their
sharpened minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of
incompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice. There was the shore
of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it
came no sign.
"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a
try for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us have
strength left to swim after the boat swamps."
And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for the
shore. There was a sudden tightening of muscle. There was some thinking.
"If we don't all get ashore--" said the captain. "If we don't all get
ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"
They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As for the
reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in them.
Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be
drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why,
in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to
come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely
to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese
of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do
better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's
fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has
decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me
all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd.... But no, she cannot
mean to drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after
all this work." Afterward the man might have had an impulse to shake
his fist at the clouds: "Just you drown me, now, and then hear what I
call you!"
The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed
always just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil
of foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the speech of them.
No mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could
ascend these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler
was a wily surfman. "Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live three
minutes more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea
again, captain?"
"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain.
This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady
oarsmanship, turned the boat in the middle of the surf and took her
safely to sea again.
There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed
sea to deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, they
must have seen us from the shore by now."
The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolate
east. A squall, marked by dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like
smoke from a burning building, appeared from the south-east.
"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?'
"Funny they haven't seen us."
"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're
fishin'. Maybe they think we're damned fools."
It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward,
but the wind and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea,
and sky formed their mighty angle, there were little dots which seemed
to indicate a city on the shore.
"St. Augustine?"
The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."
And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler
rowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of
more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite
anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the
theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots,
and other comforts.
"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.
"No," said the oiler. "Hang it!"
When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the
boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of
everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold
sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head,
pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest,
and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and
drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is
almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled
comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great
soft mattress.
"Look! There's a man on the shore!"
"Where?"
"There! See 'im? See 'im?"
"Yes, sure! He's walking along."
"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"
"He's waving at us!"
"So he is! By thunder!"
"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out
here for us in half-an-hour."
"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."
The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching
glance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating
stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in
the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The
oarsman did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.
"What's he doing now?"
"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think.... There he goes
again. Toward the house.... Now he's stopped again."
"Is he waving at us?"
"No, not now! he was, though."
"Look! There comes another man!"
"He's running."
"Look at him go, would you."
"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both
waving at us. Look!"
"There comes something up the beach."
"What the devil is that thing?"
"Why it looks like a boat."
"Why, certainly it's a boat."
"No, it's on wheels."
"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along
shore on a wagon."
"That's the life-boat, sure."
"No, by ----, it's--it's an omnibus."
"I tell you it's a life-boat."
"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big
hotel omnibuses."
"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you
suppose they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going around
collecting the life-crew, hey?"
"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag.
He's standing on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other two
fellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the fellow with the
flag. Maybe he ain't waving it."
"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why, certainly, that's his
coat."
"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his
head. But would you look at him swing it."
"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a
winter resort hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boarders
to see us drown."
"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"
"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a
life-saving station up there."
"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah,
there, Willie!"
"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you
suppose he means?"
"He don't mean anything. He's just playing."
"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea
and wait, or go north, or go south, or go to hell--there would be some
reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his coat
revolving like a wheel. The ass!"
"There come more people."
"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"
"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."
"That fellow is still waving his coat."
"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It
don't mean anything."
"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be
that there's a life-saving station there somewhere."
"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave."
"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever
since he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men
to bring a boat out? A fishing boat--one of those big yawls--could come
out here all right. Why don't he do something?"
"Oh, it's all right, now."
"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that
they've seen us."
A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on
the sea slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men
began to shiver.
"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood,
"if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here
all night!"
"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've
seen us now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out after
us."
The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this
gloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of
people. The spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made the
voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded.
"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking
him one, just for luck."
"Why? What did he do?"
"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."
In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and
then the oiler rowed. Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically,
turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse had
vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared,
just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed
before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. The
land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder
of the surf.
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am
going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule
the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?
Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about
to nibble the sacred cheese of life?"
The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged
to speak to the oarsman.
"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"
"'Keep her head up,' sir." The voices were weary and low.
This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and
listlessly in the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable
of noting the tall black waves that swept forward in a most sinister
silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.
The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the
water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke.
"Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"
V
"Pie," said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk
about those things, blast you!"
"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches, and--"
A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled
finally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south,
changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, a
small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the
furniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.
Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in the
dingey that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed by
thrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed extended far
under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain
forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave
came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chilling
water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and
groan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat
gurgled about them as the craft rocked.
The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he
lost the ability, and then arouse the other from his sea-water couch in
the bottom of the boat.
The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and the
overpowering sleep blinded him. And he rowed yet afterward. Then he
touched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his name. "Will you
spell me for a little while?" he said, meekly.
"Sure, Billie," said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himself
to a sitting position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler,
cuddling down in the sea-water at the cook's side, seemed to go to
sleep instantly.
The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without
snarling. The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boat
headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her, and to
preserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waves
were silent and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almost
upon the boat before the oarsman was aware.
In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure
that the captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be always
awake. "Captain, shall I keep her making for that light north, sir?"
The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points off
the port bow."
The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the
warmth which this clumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed
almost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth invariably chattered wildly
as soon as he ceased his labor, dropped down to sleep.
The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleeping
under-foot. The cook's arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with
their fragmentary clothing and haggard faces, they were the babes of
the sea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood.
Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a
growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the
boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his
life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking
his eyes and shaking with the new cold.
"Oh, I'm awful sorry, Billie," said the correspondent contritely.
"That's all right, old boy," said the oiler, and lay down again and was
asleep.
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent
thought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had
a voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end.
There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming
trail of phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black
waters. It might have been made by a monstrous knife.
Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with the
open mouth and looked at the sea.
Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish
light, and this time it was alongside the boat, and might almost have
been reached with an oar. The correspondent saw an enormous fin speed
like a shadow through the water, hurling the crystalline spray and
leaving the long glowing trail.
The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face was
hidden, and he seemed to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea.
They certainly were asleep. So, being bereft of sympathy, he leaned a
little way to one side and swore softly into the sea.
But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead or
astern, on one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled the
long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whirroo of the
dark fin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired.
It cut the water like a gigantic and keen projectile.
The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the same
horror that it would if he had been a picnicker. He simply looked at
the sea dully and swore in an undertone.
Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone. He wished
one of his companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it.
But the captain hung motionless over the water-jar, and the oiler and
the cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.
VI
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am
going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule
the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"
During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude
that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him,
despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an
abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard.
The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had
drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still--
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important,
and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him,
he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply
the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expression
of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the
desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one
knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself."
A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says
to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.
The men in the dingey had not discussed these matters, but each had, no
doubt, reflected upon them in silence and according to his mind. There
was seldom any expression upon their faces save the general one of
complete weariness. Speech was devoted to the business of the boat.
To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the
correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this
verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.
"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of
woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand,
And he said: 'I shall never see my own, my native land.'"
In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the
fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had
never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had
informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally
ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it
his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had
it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than the
breaking of a pencil's point.
Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was
no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet,
meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an
actuality--stern, mournful, and fine.
The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his
feet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his
chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came
between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square
forms was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues.
The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower
movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and
perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the
Legion who lay dying in Algiers.
The thing which had followed the boat and waited, had evidently grown
bored at the delay. There was no longer to be heard the slash of the
cut-water, and there was no longer the flame of the long trail. The
light in the north still glimmered, but it was apparently no nearer to
the boat. Sometimes the boom of the surf rang in the correspondent's
ears, and he turned the craft seaward then and rowed harder. Southward,
some one had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It was too low
and too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflection
upon the bluff back of it, and this could be discerned from the boat.
The wind came stronger, and sometimes a wave suddenly raged out like a
mountain-cat, and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a
broken crest.
The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. "Pretty
long night," he observed to the correspondent. He looked at the shore.
"Those life-saving people take their time."
"Did you see that shark playing around?"
"Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right."
"Wish I had known you were awake."
Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat.
"Billie!" There was a slow and gradual disentanglement. "Billie, will
you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
As soon as the correspondent touched the cold comfortable sea-water in
the bottom of the boat, and had huddled close to the cook's life-belt
he was deep in sleep, despite the fact that his teeth played all the
popular airs. This sleep was so good to him that it was but a moment
before he heard a voice call his name in a tone that demonstrated the
last stages of exhaustion. "Will you spell me?"
"Sure, Billie."
The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the correspondent
took his course from the wide-awake captain.
Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and the
captain directed the cook to take one oar at the stern and keep the
boat facing the seas. He was to call out if he should hear the thunder
of the surf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get
respite together. "We'll give those boys a chance to get into shape
again," said the captain. They curled down and, after a few preliminary
chatterings and trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither knew
they had bequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or
perhaps the same shark.
As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the
side and gave them a fresh soaking, but this had no power to break
their repose. The ominous slash of the wind and the water affected them
as it would have affected mummies.
"Boys," said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice,
"she's drifted in pretty close. I guess one of you had better take her
to sea again." The correspondent, aroused, heard the crash of the
toppled crests.
As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whisky-and-water, and this
steadied the chills out of him. "If I ever get ashore and anybody shows
me even a photograph of an oar--"
At last there was a short conversation.
"Billie.... Billie, will you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
VII
When the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and the sky were
each of the grey hue of the dawning. Later, carmine and gold was
painted upon the waters. The morning appeared finally, in its splendor,
with a sky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips of the
waves.
On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tall
white windmill reared above them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appeared
on the beach. The cottages might have formed a deserted village.
The voyagers scanned the shore. A conference was held in the boat.
"Well," said the captain, "if no help is coming we might better try a
run through the surf right away. If we stay out here much longer we
will be too weak to do anything for ourselves at all." The others
silently acquiesced in this reasoning. The boat was headed for the
beach. The correspondent wondered if none ever ascended the tall
wind-tower, and if then they never looked seaward. This tower was a
giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented
in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the
struggles of the individual--nature in the wind, and nature in the
vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor
treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It
is, perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with the
unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his
life, and have them taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another
chance. A distinction between right and wrong seems absurdly clear to
him, then, in this new ignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands
that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and
his words, and be better and brighter during an introduction or at a
tea.
"Now, boys," said the captain, "she is going to swamp, sure. All we can
do is to work her in as far as possible, and then when she swamps, pile
out and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now, and don't jump until she
swamps sure."
The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf.
"Captain," he said, "I think I'd better bring her about, and keep her
head-on to the seas and back her in."
"All right, Billie," said the captain. "Back her in." The oiler swung
the boat then and, seated in the stern, the cook and the correspondent
were obliged to look over their shoulders to contemplate the lonely and
indifferent shore.
The monstrous in-shore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were
again enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slanted
beach. "We won't get in very close," said the captain. Each time a man
could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward
the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation
there was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing the others,
knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glances
was shrouded.
As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the
fact. He tried to coerce his mind into thinking of it, but the mind was
dominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles said they did
not care. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it would be
a shame.
There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men
simply looked at the shore. "Now, remember to get well clear of the
boat when you jump," said the captain.
Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash,
and the long white comber came roaring down upon the boat.
"Steady now," said the captain. The men were silent. They turned their
eyes from the shore to the comber and waited. The boat slid up the
incline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and swung down the
long back of the wave. Some water had been shipped and the cook bailed
it out.
But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling, boiling flood of white
water caught the boat and whirled it almost perpendicular. Water
swarmed in from all sides. The correspondent had his hands on the
gunwale at this time, and when the water entered at that place he
swiftly withdrew his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.
The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled
deeper into the sea.
"Bail her out, cook! Bail her out," said the captain.
"All right, captain," said the cook.
"Now, boys, the next one will do for us, sure," said the oiler. "Mind
to jump clear of the boat."
The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly
swallowed the dingey, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into
the sea. A piece of lifebelt had lain in the bottom of the boat, and as
the correspondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his
left hand.
The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was
colder than he had expected to find it on the coast of Florida. This
appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be noted at
the time. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact
was somehow so mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation
that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was cold.
When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy
water. Afterward he saw his companions in the sea. The oiler was ahead
in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly. Off to the
correspondent's left, the cook's great white and corked back bulged out
of the water, and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good
hand to the keel of the overturned dingey.
There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent
wondered at it amid the confusion of the sea.
It seemed also very attractive, but the correspondent knew that it was
a long journey, and he paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver
lay under him, and sometimes he whirled down the incline of a wave as
if he were on a handsled.
But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset
with difficulty. He did not pause swimming to inquire what manner of
current had caught him, but there his progress ceased. The shore was
set before him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it
and understood with his eyes each detail of it.
As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling
to him, "Turn over on your back, cook! Turn over on your back and use
the oar."
"All right, sir." The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an
oar, went ahead as if he were a canoe.
Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with
the captain clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have appeared
like a man raising himself to look over a board fence, if it were not
for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent
marvelled that the captain could still hold to it.
They passed on, nearer to shore--the oiler, the cook, the captain--and
following them went the water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas.
The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy--a
current. The shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff,
topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture before
him. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in a
gallery looks at a scene from Brittany or Holland.
He thought: "I am going to drown? Can it be possible Can it be
possible? Can it be possible?" Perhaps an individual must consider his
own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.
But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small, deadly current,
for he found suddenly that he could again make progress toward the
shore. Later still, he was aware that the captain, clinging with one
hand to the keel of the dingey, had his face turned away from the shore
and toward him, and was calling his name. "Come to the boat! Come to
the boat!"
In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that
when one gets properly wearied, drowning must really be a comfortable
arrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a large degree
of relief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for
some months had been horror of the temporary agony. He did not wish to
be hurt.
Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with
most remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically
off him.
"Come to the boat," called the captain.
"All right, captain." As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain
let himself down to bottom and leave the boat. Then the correspondent
performed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large wave caught him
and flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat and
far beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics, and a
true miracle of the sea. An over-turned boat in the surf is not a
plaything to a swimming man.
The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but
his condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each
wave knocked him into a heap, and the under-tow pulled at him.
Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing
and running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook,
and then waded towards the captain, but the captain waved him away, and
sent him to the correspondent. He was naked, naked as a tree in winter,
but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a
strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent's
hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulae, said: "Thanks,
old man." But suddenly the man cried: "What's that?" He pointed a swift
finger. The correspondent said: "Go."
In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched
sand that was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea.
The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he
achieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particular
part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thud
was grateful to him.
It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets,
clothes, and flasks, and women with coffeepots and all the remedies
sacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to the men from the sea
was warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried
slowly up the beach, and the land's welcome for it could only be the
different and sinister hospitality of the grave.
When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight,
and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on
shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.
THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS
CHAPTER I
Two men sat by the sea waves.
"Well, I know I'm not handsome," said one gloomily. He was poking holes
in the sand with a discontented cane.
The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome with
perspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right.
Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line.
"To be sure you are not," he cried vehemently.
"You look like thunder. I do not desire to be unpleasant, but I must
assure you that your freckled skin continually reminds spectators of
white wall paper with gilt roses on it. The top of your head looks like
a little wooden plate. And your figure--heavens!"
For a time they were silent. They stared at the waves that purred near
their feet like sleepy sea-kittens.
Finally the first man spoke.
"Well," said he, defiantly, "what of it?"
"What of it?" exploded the other. "Why, it means that you'd look like
blazes in a bathing-suit."
They were again silent. The freckled man seemed ashamed. His tall
companion glowered at the scenery.
"I am decided," said the freckled man suddenly. He got boldly up from
the sand and strode away. The tall man followed, walking sarcastically
and glaring down at the round, resolute figure before him.
A bath-clerk was looking at the world with superior eyes through a hole
in a board. To him the freckled man made application, waving his hands
over his person in illustration of a snug fit. The bath-clerk thought
profoundly. Eventually, he handed out a blue bundle with an air of
having phenomenally solved the freckled man's dimensions.
The latter resumed his resolute stride.
"See here," said the tall man, following him, "I bet you've got a
regular toga, you know. That fellow couldn't tell--"
"Yes, he could," interrupted the freckled man, "I saw correct
mathematics in his eyes."
"Well, supposin' he has missed your size. Supposin'--"
"Tom," again interrupted the other, "produce your proud clothes and
we'll go in."
The tall man swore bitterly. He went to one of a row of little wooden
boxes and shut himself in it. His companion repaired to a similar box.
At first he felt like an opulent monk in a too-small cell, and he
turned round two or three times to see if he could. He arrived finally
into his bathing-dress. Immediately he dropped gasping upon a
three-cornered bench. The suit fell in folds about his reclining form.
There was silence, save for the caressing calls of the waves without.
Then he heard two shoes drop on the floor in one of the little coops.
He began to clamor at the boards like a penitent at an unforgiving door.
"Tom," called he, "Tom--"
A voice of wrath, muffled by cloth, came through the walls. "You go t'
blazes!"
The freckled man began to groan, taking the occupants of the entire row
of coops into his confidence.
"Stop your noise," angrily cried the tall man from his hidden den. "You
rented the bathing-suit, didn't you? Then--"
"It ain't a bathing-suit," shouted the freckled man at the boards.
"It's an auditorium, a ballroom, or something. It isn't a bathing-suit."
The tall man came out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He
walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping
in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate knuckles.
"Come out of there, y' ol' fool," said he, in an enraged whisper. "It's
only your accursed vanity. Wear it anyhow. What difference does it
make? I never saw such a vain ol' idiot!"
As he was storming the door opened, and his friend confronted him. The
tall man's legs gave way, and he fell against the opposite door.
The freckled man regarded him sternly.
"You're an ass," he said.
His back curved in scorn. He walked majestically down the alley. There
was pride in the way his chubby feet patted the boards. The tall man
followed, weakly, his eyes riveted upon the figure ahead.
As a disguise the freckled man had adopted the stomach of importance.
He moved with an air of some sort of procession, across a board walk,
down some steps, and out upon the sand.
There was a pug dog and three old women on a bench, a man and a maid
with a book and a parasol, a seagull drifting high in the wind, and a
distant, tremendous meeting of sea and sky. Down on the wet sand stood
a girl being wooed by the breakers.
The freckled man moved with stately tread along the beach. The tall
man, numb with amazement, came in the rear. They neared the girl.
Suddenly the tall man was seized with convulsions. He laughed, and the
girl turned her head.
She perceived the freckled man in the bathing-suit. An expression of
wonderment overspread her charming face. It changed in a moment to a
pearly smile.
This smile seemed to smite the freckled man. He obviously tried to
swell and fit his suit. Then he turned a shrivelling glance upon his
companion, and fled up the beach. The tall man ran after him, pursuing
with mocking cries that tingled his flesh like stings of insects. He
seemed to be trying to lead the way out of the world. But at last he
stopped and faced about.
"Tom Sharp," said he, between his clenched teeth, "you are an
unutterable wretch! I could grind your bones under my heel."
The tall man was in a trance, with glazed eyes fixed on the
bathing-dress. He seemed to be murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! Oh, good
Lord! I never saw such a suit!"
The freckled man made the gesture of an assassin.
"Tom Sharp, you--"
The other was still murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! I never saw such a suit!
I never--"
The freckled man ran down into the sea.
CHAPTER II
The cool, swirling waters took his temper from him, and it became a
thing that is lost in the ocean. The tall man floundered in, and the
two forgot and rollicked in the waves.
The freckled man, in endeavoring to escape from mankind, had left all
save a solitary fisherman under a large hat, and three boys in
bathing-dress, laughing and splashing upon a raft made of old spars.
The two men swam softly over the ground swells.
The three boys dived from their raft, and turned their jolly faces
shorewards. It twisted slowly around and around, and began to move
seaward on some unknown voyage. The freckled man laid his face to the
water and swam toward the raft with a practised stroke. The tall man
followed, his bended arm appearing and disappearing with the precision
of machinery.
The craft crept away, slowly and wearily, as if luring. The little
wooden plate on the freckled man's head looked at the shore like a
round, brown eye, but his gaze was fixed on the raft that slyly
appeared to be waiting. The tall man used the little wooden plate as a
beacon.
At length the freckled man reached the raft and climbed aboard. He lay
down on his back and puffed. His bathing-dress spread about him like a
dead balloon. The tall man came, snorted, shook his tangled locks and
lay down by the side of his companion.
They were overcome with a delicious drowsiness. The planks of the raft
seemed to fit their tired limbs. They gazed dreamily up into the vast
sky of summer.
"This is great," said the tall man. His companion grunted blissfully.
Gentle hands from the sea rocked their craft and lulled them to peace.
Lapping waves sang little rippling sea-songs about them. The two men
issued contented groans.
"Tom," said the freckled man.
"What?" said the other.
"This is great."
They lay and thought.
A fish-hawk, soaring, suddenly, turned and darted at the waves. The
tall man indolently twisted his head and watched the bird plunge its
claws into the water. It heavily arose with a silver gleaming fish.
"That bird has got his feet wet again. It's a shame," murmured the tall
man sleepily. "He must suffer from an endless cold in the head. He
should wear rubber boots. They'd look great, too. If I was him,
I'd--Great Scott!"
He had partly arisen, and was looking at the shore.
He began to scream. "Ted! Ted! Ted! Look!"
"What's matter?" dreamily spoke the freckled man. "You remind me of
when I put the bird-shot in your leg." He giggled softly.
The agitated tall man made a gesture of supreme eloquence. His
companion up-reared and turned a startled gaze shoreward.
"Lord!" he roared, as if stabbed.
The land was a long, brown streak with a rim of green, in which
sparkled the tin roofs of huge hotels. The hands from the sea had
pushed them away. The two men sprang erect, and did a little dance of
perturbation.
"What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned the freckled man,
wriggling fantastically in his dead balloon.
The changing shore seemed to fascinate the tall man, and for a time he
did not speak.
Suddenly he concluded his minuet of horror. He wheeled about and faced
the freckled man. He elaborately folded his arms.
"So," he said, in slow, formidable tones. "So! This all comes from your
accursed vanity, your bathing-suit, your idiocy; you have murdered your
best friend."
He turned away. His companion reeled as if stricken by an unexpected
arm.
He stretched out his hands. "Tom, Tom," wailed he, beseechingly, "don't
be such a fool."
The broad back of his friend was occupied by a contemptuous sneer.
Three ships fell off the horizon. Landward, the hues were blending. The
whistle of a locomotive sounded from an infinite distance as if tooting
in heaven.
"Tom! Tom! My dear boy," quavered the freckled man, "don't speak that
way to me."
"Oh, no, of course not," said the other, still facing away and throwing
the words over his shoulder. "You suppose I am going to accept all this
calmly, don't you? Not make the slightest objection? Make no protest at
all, hey?"
"Well, I--I----" began the freckled man.
The tall man's wrath suddenly exploded. "You've abducted me! That's the
whole amount of it! You've abducted me!"
"I ain't," protested the freckled man. "You must think I'm a fool."
The tall man swore, and sitting down, dangled his legs angrily in the
water. Natural law compelled his companion to occupy the other end of
the raft.
Over the waters little shoals of fish spluttered, raising tiny
tempests. Languid jelly-fish floated near, tremulously waving a
thousand legs. A row of porpoises trundled along like a procession of
cog-wheels. The sky became greyed save where over the land sunset
colors were assembling.
The two voyagers, back to back and at either end of the raft,
quarrelled at length.
"What did you want to follow me for?" demanded the freckled man in a
voice of indignation.
"If your figure hadn't been so like a bottle, we wouldn't be here,"
replied the tall man.
CHAPTER III
The fires in the west blazed away, and solemnity spread over the sea.
Electric lights began to blink like eyes. Night menaced the voyagers
with a dangerous darkness, and fear came to bind their souls together.
They huddled fraternally in the middle of the raft.
"I feel like a molecule," said the freckled man in subdued tones.
"I'd give two dollars for a cigar," muttered the tall man.
A V-shaped flock of ducks flew towards Barnegat, between the voyagers
and a remnant of yellow sky. Shadows and winds came from the vanished
eastern horizon.
"I think I hear voices," said the freckled man.
"That Dollie Ramsdell was an awfully nice girl," said the tall man.
When the coldness of the sea night came to them, the freckled man found
he could by a peculiar movement of his legs and arms encase himself in
his bathing-dress. The tall man was compelled to whistle and shiver. As
night settled finally over the sea, red and green lights began to dot
the blackness. There were mysterious shadows between the waves.
"I see things comin'," murmured the freckled man.
"I wish I hadn't ordered that new dress-suit for the hop to-morrow
night," said the tall man reflectively.
The sea became uneasy and heaved painfully, like a lost bosom, when
little forgotten heart-bells try to chime with a pure sound. The
voyagers cringed at magnified foam on distant wave crests. A moon came
and looked at them.
"Somebody's here," whispered the freckled man.
"I wish I had an almanac," remarked the tall man, regarding the moon.
Presently they fell to staring at the red and green lights that
twinkled about them.
"Providence will not leave us," asserted the freckled man.
"Oh, we'll be picked up shortly. I owe money," said the tall man.
He began to thrum on an imaginary banjo.
"I have heard," said he, suddenly, "that captains with healthy ships
beneath their feet will never turn back after having once started on a
voyage. In that case we will be rescued by some ship bound for the
golden seas of the south. Then, you'll be up to some of your confounded
devilment and we'll get put off. They'll maroon us! That's what they'll
do! They'll maroon us! On an island with palm trees and sun-kissed
maidens and all that. Sun-kissed maidens, eh? Great! They'd--"
He suddenly ceased and turned to stone. At a distance a great, green
eye was contemplating the sea wanderers.
They stood up and did another dance. As they watched the eye grew
larger.
Directly the form of a phantom-like ship came into view. About the
great, green eye there bobbed small yellow dots. The wanderers could
hear a far-away creaking of unseen tackle and flapping of shadowy
sails. There came the melody of the waters as the ship's prow thrust
its way.
The tall man delivered an oration.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "here come our rescuers. The brave fellows! How I
long to take the manly captain by the hand! You will soon see a white
boat with a star on its bow drop from the side of yon ship. Kind
sailors in blue and white will help us into the boat and conduct our
wasted frames to the quarter-deck, where the handsome, bearded captain,
with gold bands all around, will welcome us. Then in the hard-oak
cabin, while the wine gurgles and the Havanas glow, we'll tell our tale
of peril and privation."
The ship came on like a black hurrying animal with froth-filled maw.
The two wanderers stood up and clasped hands. Then they howled out a
wild duet that rang over the wastes of sea.
The cries seemed to strike the ship.
Men with boots on yelled and ran about the deck. They picked up heavy
articles and threw them down. They yelled more. After hideous creakings
and flappings, the vessel stood still.
In the meantime the wanderers had been chanting their song for help.
Out in the blackness they beckoned to the ship and coaxed.
A voice came to them.
"Hello," it said.
They puffed out their cheeks and began to shout. "Hello! Hello! Hello!"
"Wot do yeh want?" said the voice.
The two wanderers gazed at each other, and sat suddenly down on the
raft. Some pall came sweeping over the sky and quenched their stars.
But almost the tall man got up and brawled miscellaneous information.
He stamped his foot, and frowning into the night, swore threateningly.
The vessel seemed fearful of these moaning voices that called from a
hidden cavern of the water. And now one voice was filled with a menace.
A number of men with enormous limbs that threw vast shadows over the
sea as the lanterns flickered, held a debate and made gestures.
Off in the darkness, the tall man began to clamor like a mob. The
freckled man sat in astounded silence, with his legs weak.
After a time one of the men of enormous limbs seized a rope that was
tugging at the stem and drew a small boat from the shadows. Three
giants clambered in and rowed cautiously toward the raft. Silver water
flashed in the gloom as the oars dipped.
About fifty feet from the raft the boat stopped. "Who er you?" asked a
voice.
The tall man braced himself and explained. He drew vivid pictures, his
twirling fingers illustrating like live brushes.
"Oh," said the three giants.
The voyagers deserted the raft. They looked back, feeling in their
hearts a mite of tenderness for the wet planks. Later, they wriggled up
the side of the vessel and climbed over the railing.
On deck they met a man.
He held a lantern to their faces. "Got any chewin' tewbacca?" he
inquired.
"No," said the tall man, "we ain't."
The man had a bronze face and solitary whiskers. Peculiar lines about
his mouth were shaped into an eternal smile of derision. His feet were
bare, and clung handily to crevices.
Fearful trousers were supported by a piece of suspender that went up
the wrong side of his chest and came down the right side of his back,
dividing him into triangles.
"Ezekiel P. Sanford, capt'in, schooner 'Mary Jones,' of N'yack, N. Y.,
genelmen," he said.
"Ah!" said the tall man, "delighted, I'm sure."
There were a few moments of silence. The giants were hovering in the
gloom and staring.
Suddenly astonishment exploded the captain.
"Wot th' devil----" he shouted. "Wot th' devil yeh got on?"
"Bathing-suits," said the tall man.
CHAPTER IV
The schooner went on. The two voyagers sat down and watched. After a
time they began to shiver. The soft blackness of the summer night
passed away, and grey mists writhed over the sea. Soon lights of early
dawn went changing across the sky, and the twin beacons on the
highlands grew dim and sparkling faintly, as if a monster were dying.
The dawn penetrated the marrow of the two men in bathing-dress.
The captain used to pause opposite them, hitch one hand in his
suspender, and laugh.
"Well, I be dog-hanged," he frequently said.
The tall man grew furious. He snarled in a mad undertone to his
companion. "This rescue ain't right. If I had known--"
He suddenly paused, transfixed by the captain's suspender. "It's goin'
to break," cried he, in an ecstatic whisper. His eyes grew large with
excitement as he watched the captain laugh. "It'll break in a minute,
sure."
But the commander of the schooner recovered, and invited them to drink
and eat. They followed him along the deck, and fell down a square black
hole into the cabin.
It was a little den, with walls of a vanished whiteness. A lamp shed an
orange light. In a sort of recess two little beds were hiding. A wooden
table, immovable, as if the craft had been builded around it, sat in
the middle of the floor. Overhead the square hole was studded with a
dozen stars. A foot-worn ladder led to the heavens.
The captain produced ponderous crackers and some cold broiled ham. Then
he vanished in the firmament like a fantastic comet.
The freckled man sat quite contentedly like a stout squaw in a blanket.
The tall man walked about the cabin and sniffed. He was angered at the
crudeness of the rescue, and his shrinking clothes made him feel too
large. He contemplated his unhappy state.
Suddenly, he broke out. "I won't stand this, I tell you! Heavens and
earth, look at the--say, what in the blazes did you want to get me in
this thing for, anyhow? You're a fine old duffer, you are! Look at that
ham!"
The freckled man grunted. He seemed somewhat blissful. He was seated
upon a bench, comfortably enwrapped in his bathing-dress.
The tall man stormed about the cabin.
"This is an outrage! I'll see the captain! I'll tell him what I think
of--"
He was interrupted by a pair of legs that appeared among the stars. The
captain came down the ladder. He brought a coffee pot from the sky.
The tall man bristled forward. He was going to denounce everything.
The captain was intent upon the coffee pot, balancing it carefully, and
leaving his unguided feet to find the steps of the ladder.
But the wrath of the tall man faded. He twirled his fingers in
excitement, and renewed his ecstatic whisperings to the freckled man.
"It's going to break! Look, quick, look! It'll break in a minute!"
He was transfixed with interest, forgetting his wrongs in staring at
the perilous passage.
But the captain arrived on the floor with triumphant suspenders.
"Well," said he, "after yeh have eat, maybe ye'd like t'sleep some! If
so, yeh can sleep on them beds."
The tall man made no reply, save in a strained undertone. "It'll break
in about a minute! Look, Ted, look quick!"
The freckled man glanced in a little bed on which were heaped boots and
oilskins. He made a courteous gesture.
"My dear sir, we could not think of depriving you of your beds. No,
indeed. Just a couple of blankets if you have them, and we'll sleep
very comfortable on these benches."
The captain protested, politely twisting his back and bobbing his head.
The suspenders tugged and creaked. The tall man partially suppressed a
cry, and took a step forward.
The freckled man was sleepily insistent, and shortly the captain gave
over his deprecatory contortions. He fetched a pink quilt with yellow
dots on it to the freckled man, and a black one with red roses on it to
the tall man.
Again he vanished in the firmament. The tall man gazed until the last
remnant of trousers disappeared from the sky. Then he wrapped himself
up in his quilt and lay down. The freckled man was puffing contentedly,
swathed like an infant. The yellow polka-dots rose and fell on the vast
pink of his chest.
The wanderers slept. In the quiet could be heard the groanings of
timbers as the sea seemed to crunch them together. The lapping of water
along the vessel's side sounded like gaspings. A hundred spirits of the
wind had got their wings entangled in the rigging, and, in soft voices,
were pleading to be loosened.
The freckled man was awakened by a foreign noise. He opened his eyes
and saw his companion standing by his couch.
His comrade's face was wan with suffering. His eyes glowed in the
darkness. He raised his arms, spreading them out like a clergyman at a
grave. He groaned deep in his chest.
"Good Lord!" yelled the freckled man, starting up. "Tom, Tom, what's
th' matter?"
The tall man spoke in a fearful voice. "To New York," he said, "to New
York in our bathing-suits."
The freckled man sank back. The shadows of the cabin threw mysteries
about the figure of the tall man, arrayed like some ancient and potent
astrologer in the black quilt with the red roses on it.
CHAPTER V
Directly the tall man went and lay down and began to groan.
The freckled man felt the miseries of the world upon him. He grew angry
at the tall man awakening him. They quarrelled.
"Well," said the tall man, finally, "we're in a fix."
"I know that," said the other, sharply.
They regarded the ceiling in silence.
"What in the thunder are we going to do?" demanded the tall man, after
a time. His companion was still silent. "Say," repeated he, angrily,
"what in the thunder are we going to do?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said the freckled man in a dismal voice.
"Well, think of something," roared the other. "Think of something, you
old fool. You don't want to make any more idiots of yourself, do you?"
"I ain't made an idiot of myself."
"Well, think. Know anybody in the city?"
"I know a fellow up in Harlem," said the freckled man.
"You know a fellow up in Harlem," howled the tall man. "Up in Harlem!
How the dickens are we to--say, you're crazy!"
"We can take a cab," cried the other, waxing indignant.
The tall man grew suddenly calm. "Do you know any one else?" he asked,
measuredly.
"I know another fellow somewhere on Park Place."
"Somewhere on Park Place," repeated the tall man in an unnatural
manner. "Somewhere on Park Place." With an air of sublime resignation
he turned his face to the wall.
The freckled man sat erect and frowned in the direction of his
companion. "Well, now, I suppose you are going to sulk. You make me
ill! It's the best we can do, ain't it? Hire a cab and go look that
fellow up on Park--What's that? You can't afford it? What nonsense! You
are getting--Oh! Well, maybe we can beg some clothes of the captain.
Eh? Did I see 'im? Certainly, I saw 'im. Yes, it is improbable that a
man who wears trousers like that can have clothes to lend. No, I won't
wear oilskins and a sou'-wester. To Athens? Of course not! I don't know
where it is. Do you? I thought not. With all your grumbling about other
people, you never know anything important yourself. What? Broadway?
I'll be hanged first. We can get off at Harlem, man alive. There are no
cabs in Harlem. I don't think we can bribe a sailor to take us ashore
and bring a cab to the dock, for the very simple reason that we have
nothing to bribe him with. What? No, of course not. See here, Tom
Sharp, don't you swear at me like that. I won't have it. What's that? I
ain't, either. I ain't. What? I am not. It's no such thing. I ain't.
I've got more than you have, anyway. Well, you ain't doing anything so
very brilliant yourself--just lying there and cussin'." At length the
tall man feigned prodigiously to snore. The freckled man thought with
such vigor that he fell asleep.
After a time he dreamed that he was in a forest where bass drums grew
on trees. There came a strong wind that banged the fruit about like
empty pods. A frightful din was in his ears.
He awoke to find the captain of the schooner standing over him.
"We're at New York now," said the captain, raising his voice above the
thumping and banging that was being done on deck, "an' I s'pose you
fellers wanta go ashore." He chuckled in an exasperating manner. "Jes'
sing out when yeh wanta go," he added, leering at the freckled man.
The tall man awoke, came over and grasped the captain by the throat.
"If you laugh again I'll kill you," he said.
The captain gurgled and waved his legs and arms.
"In the first place," the tall man continued, "you rescued us in a
deucedly shabby manner. It makes me ill to think of it. I've a mind to
mop you 'round just for that. In the second place, your vessel is bound
for Athens, N. Y., and there's no sense in it. Now, will you or will
you not turn this ship about and take us back where our clothes are, or
to Philadelphia, where we belong?"
He furiously shook the captain. Then he eased his grip and awaited a
reply.
"I can't," yelled the captain, "I can't. This vessel don't belong to
me. I've got to--"
"Well, then," interrupted the tall man, "can you lend us some clothes?"
"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. His face was red, and
his eyes were glaring.
"Well, then," said the tall man, "can you lend us some money?"
"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. Something overcame
him and he laughed.
"Thunderation," roared the tall man. He seized the captain, who began
to have wriggling contortions. The tall man kneaded him as if he were
biscuits. "You infernal scoundrel," he bellowed, "this whole affair is
some wretched plot, and you are in it. I am about to kill you."
The solitary whisker of the captain did acrobatic feats like a strange
demon upon his chin. His eyes stood perilously from his head. The
suspender wheezed and tugged like the tackle of a sail.
Suddenly the tall man released his hold. Great expectancy sat upon his
features. "It's going to break!" he cried, rubbing his hands.
But the captain howled and vanished in the sky.
The freckled man then came forward. He appeared filled with sarcasm.
"So!" said he. "So, you've settled the matter. The captain is the only
man in the world who can help us, and I daresay he'll do anything he
can now."
"That's all right," said the tall man. "If you don't like the way I run
things you shouldn't have come on this trip at all."
They had another quarrel.
At the end of it they went on deck. The captain stood at the stern
addressing the bow with opprobrious language. When he perceived the
voyagers he began to fling his fists about in the air.
"I'm goin' to put yeh off!" he yelled. The wanderers stared at each
other.
"Hum," said the tall man.
The freckled man looked at his companion. "He's going to put us off,
you see," he said, complacently.
The tall man began to walk about and move his shoulders. "I'd like to
see you do it," he said, defiantly.
The captain tugged at a rope. A boat came at his bidding.
"I'd like to see you do it," the tall man repeated, continually. An
imperturbable man in rubber boots climbed down in the boat and seized
the oars. The captain motioned downward. His whisker had a triumphant
appearance.
The two wanderers looked at the boat. "I guess we'll have to get in,"
murmured the freckled man.
The tall man was standing like a granite column. "I won't," said he. "I
won't! I don't care what you do, but I won't!"
"Well, but--" expostulated the other. They held a furious debate.
In the meantime the captain was darting about making sinister gestures,
but the back of the tall man held him at bay. The crew, much depleted
by the departure of the imperturbable man into the boat, looked on from
the bow.
"You're a fool," the freckled man concluded his argument.
"So?" inquired the tall man, highly exasperated.
"So! Well, if you think you're so bright, we'll go in the boat, and
then you'll see."
He climbed down into the craft and seated himself in an ominous manner
at the stern.
"You'll see," he said to his companion, as the latter floundered
heavily down. "You'll see!"
The man in rubber boots calmly rowed the boat toward the shore. As they
went, the captain leaned over the railing and laughed. The freckled man
was seated very victoriously.
"Well, wasn't this the right thing after all?" he inquired in a
pleasant voice. The tall man made no reply.
CHAPTER VI
As they neared the dock something seemed suddenly to occur to the
freckled man.
"Great heavens!" he murmured. He stared at the approaching shore.
"My, what a plight, Tommy!" he quavered.
"Do you think so?" spoke up the tall man. "Why, I really thought you
liked it." He laughed in a hard voice. "Lord, what a figure you'll cut."
This laugh jarred the freckled man's soul. He became mad.
"Thunderation, turn the boat around!" he roared. "Turn 'er round,
quick! Man alive, we can't--turn 'er round, d'ye hear!"
The tall man in the stern gazed at his companion with glowing eyes.
"Certainly not," he said. "We're going on. You insisted Upon it." He
began to prod his companion with words.
The freckled man stood up and waved his arms.
"Sit down," said the tall man. "You'll tip the boat over."
The other man began to shout.
"Sit down!" said the tall man again.
Words bubbled from the freckled man's mouth. There was a little torrent
of sentences that almost choked him. And he protested passionately with
his hands.
But the boat went on to the shadow of the docks. The tall man was
intent upon balancing it as it rocked dangerously during his comrade's
oration.
"Sit down," he continually repeated.
"I won't," raged the freckled man. "I won't do anything." The boat
wobbled with these words.
"Say," he continued, addressing the oarsman, "just turn this boat
round, will you? Where in the thunder are you taking us to, anyhow?"
The oarsman looked at the sky and thought. Finally he spoke. "I'm doin'
what the cap'n sed."
"Well, what in th' blazes do I care what the cap'n sed?" demanded the
freckled man. He took a violent step. "You just turn this round or--"
The small craft reeled. Over one side water came flashing in. The
freckled man cried out in fear, and gave a jump to the other side. The
tall man roared orders, and the oarsman made efforts. The boat acted
for a moment like an animal on a slackened wire. Then it upset.
"Sit down!" said the tall man, in a final roar as he was plunged into
the water. The oarsman dropped his oars to grapple with the gunwale. He
went down saying unknown words. The freckled man's explanation or
apology was strangled by the water.
Two or three tugs let off whistles of astonishment, and continued on
their paths. A man dozing on a dock aroused and began to caper.
The passengers on a ferry-boat all ran to the near railing. A
miraculous person in a small boat was bobbing on the waves near the
piers. He sculled hastily toward the scene. It was a swirl of waters in
the midst of which the dark bottom of the boat appeared, whale-like.
Two heads suddenly came up.
"839," said the freckled man, chokingly. "That's it! 839!"
"What is?" said the tall man.
"That's the number of that feller on Park Place. I just remembered."
"You're the bloomingest--" the tall man said.
"It wasn't my fault," interrupted his companion. "If you hadn't--" He
tried to gesticulate, but one hand held to the keel of the boat, and
the other was supporting the form of the oarsman. The latter had fought
a battle with his immense rubber boots and had been conquered.
The rescuer in the other small boat came fiercely. As his craft glided
up, he reached out and grasped the tall man by the collar and dragged
him into the boat, interrupting what was, under the circumstances, a
very brilliant flow of rhetoric directed at the freckled man. The
oarsman of the wrecked craft was taken tenderly over the gunwale and
laid in the bottom of the boat. Puffing and blowing, the freckled man
climbed in.
"You'll upset this one before we can get ashore," the other voyager
remarked.
As they turned toward the land they saw that the nearest dock was lined
with people. The freckled man gave a little moan.
But the staring eyes of the crowd were fixed on the limp form of the
man in rubber boots. A hundred hands reached down to help lift the body
up. On the dock some men grabbed it and began to beat it and roll it. A
policeman tossed the spectators about. Each individual in the heaving
crowd sought to fasten his eyes on the blue-tinted face of the man in
the rubber boots. They surged to and fro, while the policeman beat them
indiscriminately.
The wanderers came modestly up the dock and gazed shrinkingly at the
throng. They stood for a moment, holding their breath to see the first
finger of amazement levelled at them.
But the crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to view the man in
rubber boots, whose face fascinated them. The sea-wanderers were as
though they were not there.
They stood without the jam and whispered hurriedly.
"839," said the freckled man.
"All right," said the tall man.
Under the pommeling hands the oarsman showed signs of life. The
voyagers watched him make a protesting kick at the leg of the crowd,
the while uttering angry groans.
"He's better," said the tall man, softly; "let's make off."
Together they stole noiselessly up the dock. Directly in front of it
they found a row of six cabs.
The drivers on top were filled with a mighty curiosity. They had driven
hurriedly from the adjacent ferry-house when they had seen the first
running sign of an accident. They were straining on their toes and
gazing at the tossing backs of the men in the crowd.
The wanderers made a little detour, and then went rapidly towards a
cab. They stopped in front of it and looked up.
"Driver," called the tall man, softly.
The man was intent.
"Driver," breathed the freckled man. They stood for a moment and gazed
imploringly.
The cabman suddenly moved his feet. "By Jimmy, I bet he's a gonner," he
said, in an ecstacy, and he again relapsed into a statue.
The freckled man groaned and wrung his hands. The tall man climbed into
the cab.
"Come in here," he said to his companion. The freckled man climbed in,
and the tall man reached over and pulled the door shut. Then he put his
head out the window.
"Driver," he roared, sternly, "839 Park Place--and quick."
The driver looked down and met the eye of the tall man. "Eh?--Oh--839?
Park Place? Yessir." He reluctantly gave his horse a clump on the back.
As the conveyance rattled off the wanderers huddled back among the
dingy cushions and heaved great breaths of relief.
"Well, it's all over," said the freckled man, finally. "We're about out
of it. And quicker than I expected. Much quicker. It looked to me
sometimes that we were doomed. I am thankful to find it not so. I am
rejoiced. And I hope and trust that you--well, I don't wish to--perhaps
it is not the proper time to--that is, I don't wish to intrude a moral
at an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I think the time
is ripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your selfishness, your
villainous temper, and your various other faults can make it just as
unpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they frequently do for
other people. You can see what you brought us to, and I most sincerely
hope, my dear, dear fellow, that I shall soon see those signs in you
which shall lead me to believe that you have become a wiser man."
THE END OF THE BATTLE
A sergeant, a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of the
Line had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They
would be at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of
their own people. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on
this duty. He said that he was over-worked. There were at least two
sergeants, he claimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go
on this arduous mission. He was treated unfairly; he was abused by his
superiors; why did any damned fool ever join the army? As for him he
would get out of it as soon as possible; he was sick of it; the life of
a dog. All this he said to the corporal, who listened attentively,
giving grunts of respectful assent. On the way to this post two
privates took occasion to drop to the rear and pilfer in the orchard of
a deserted plantation. When the sergeant discovered this absence, he
grew black with a rage which was an accumulation of all his
irritations. "Run, you!" he howled. "Bring them here! I'll show them--"
A private ran swiftly to the rear. The remainder of the squad began to
shout nervously at the two delinquents, whose figures they could see in
the deep shade of the orchard, hurriedly picking fruit from the ground
and cramming it within their shirts, next to their skins. The
beseeching cries of their comrades stirred the criminals more than did
the barking of the sergeant. They ran to rejoin the squad, while
holding their loaded bosoms and with their mouths open with aggrieved
explanations.
Jones faced the sergeant with a horrible cancer marked in bumps on his
left side. The disease of Patterson showed quite around the front of
his waist in many protuberances. "A nice pair!" said the sergeant, with
sudden frigidity. "You're the kind of soldiers a man wants to choose
for a dangerous outpost duty, ain't you?"
The two privates stood at attention, still looking much aggrieved. "We
only--" began Jones huskily.
"Oh, you 'only!'" cried the sergeant. "Yes, you 'only.' I know all
about that. But if you think you are going to trifle with me--"
A moment later the squad moved on towards its station. Behind the
sergeant's back Jones and Patterson were slyly passing apples and pears
to their friends while the sergeant expounded eloquently to the
corporal. "You see what kind of men are in the army now. Why, when I
joined the regiment it was a very different thing, I can tell you. Then
a sergeant had some authority, and if a man disobeyed orders, he had a
very small chance of escaping something extremely serious. But now!
Good God! If I report these men, the captain will look over a lot of
beastly orderly sheets and say--'Haw, eh, well, Sergeant Morton, these
men seem to have very good records; very good records, indeed. I can't
be too hard on them; no, not too hard.'" Continued the sergeant: "I
tell you, Flagler, the army is no place for a decent man."
Flagler, the corporal, answered with a sincerity of appreciation which
with him had become a science. "I think you are right, sergeant," he
answered.
Behind them the privates mumbled discreetly. "Damn this sergeant of
ours. He thinks we are made of wood. I don't see any reason for all
this strictness when we are on active service. It isn't like being at
home in barracks! There is no great harm in a couple of men dropping
out to raid an orchard of the enemy when all the world knows that we
haven't had a decent meal in twenty days."
The reddened face of Sergeant Morton suddenly showed to the rear. "A
little more marching and less talking," he said.
When he came to the house he had been ordered to occupy the sergeant
sniffed with disdain. "These people must have lived like cattle," he
said angrily. To be sure, the place was not alluring. The ground floor
had been used for the housing of cattle, and it was dark and terrible.
A flight of steps led to the lofty first floor, which was denuded but
respectable. The sergeant's visage lightened when he saw the strong
walls of stone and cement. "Unless they turn guns on us, they will
never get us out of here," he said cheerfully to the squad. The men,
anxious to keep him in an amiable mood, all hurriedly grinned and
seemed very appreciative and pleased. "I'll make this into a fortress,"
he announced. He sent Jones and Patterson, the two orchard thieves, out
on sentry-duty. He worked the others, then, until he could think of no
more things to tell them to do. Afterwards he went forth, with a
major-general's serious scowl, and examined the ground in front of his
position. In returning he came upon a sentry, Jones, munching an apple.
He sternly commanded him to throw it away.
The men spread their blankets on the floors of the bare rooms, and
putting their packs under their heads and lighting their pipes, they
lived an easy peace. Bees hummed in the garden, and a scent of flowers
came through the open window. A great fan-shaped bit of sunshine smote
the face of one man, and he indolently cursed as he moved his primitive
bed to a shadier place.
Another private explained to a comrade: "This is all nonsense anyhow.
No sense in occupying this post. They--"
"But, of course," said the corporal, "when she told me herself that she
cared more for me than she did for him, I wasn't going to stand any of
his talk--" The corporal's listener was so sleepy that he could only
grunt his sympathy.
There was a sudden little spatter of shooting. A cry from Jones rang
out. With no intermediate scrambling, the sergeant leaped straight to
his feet. "Now," he cried, "let us see what you are made of! If," he
added bitterly, "you are made of anything!"
A man yelled: "Good God, can't you see you're all tangled up in my
cartridge belt?"
Another man yelled: "Keep off my legs! Can't you walk on the floor?"
To the windows there was a blind rush of slumberous men, who brushed
hair from their eyes even as they made ready their rifles. Jones and
Patterson came stumbling up the steps, crying dreadful information.
Already the enemy's bullets were spitting and singing over the house.
The sergeant suddenly was stiff and cold with a sense of the importance
of the thing. "Wait until you see one," he drawled loudly and calmly,
"then shoot."
For some moments the enemy's bullets swung swifter than lightning over
the house without anybody being able to discover a target. In this
interval a man was shot in the throat. He gurgled, and then lay down on
the floor. The blood slowly waved down the brown skin of his neck while
he looked meekly at his comrades.
There was a howl. "There they are! There they come!" The rifles
crackled. A light smoke drifted idly through the rooms. There was a
strong odor as if from burnt paper and the powder of firecrackers. The
men were silent. Through the windows and about the house the bullets of
an entirely invisible enemy moaned, hummed, spat, burst, and sang.
The men began to curse. "Why can't we see them?" they muttered through
their teeth. The sergeant was still frigid. He answered soothingly as
if he were directly reprehensible for this behavior of the enemy. "Wait
a moment. You will soon be able to see them. There! Give it to them!" A
little skirt of black figures had appeared in a field. It was really
like shooting at an upright needle from the full length of a ballroom.
But the men's spirits improved as soon as the enemy--this mysterious
enemy--became a tangible thing, and far off. They had believed the foe
to be shooting at them from the adjacent garden.
"Now," said the sergeant ambitiously, "we can beat them off easily if
you men are good enough."
A man called out in a tone of quick, great interest. "See that fellow
on horseback, Bill? Isn't he on horseback? I thought he was on
horseback."
There was a fusilade against another side of the house. The sergeant
dashed into the room which commanded the situation. He found a dead
soldier on the floor. He rushed out howling: "When was Knowles killed?
When was Knowles killed? When was Knowles killed? Damn it, when was
Knowles killed?" It was absolutely essential to find out the exact
moment this man died. A blackened private turned upon his sergeant and
demanded: "How in hell do I know?" Sergeant Morton had a sense of anger
so brief that in the next second he cried: "Patterson!" He had even
forgotten his vital interest in the time of Knowles' death.
"Yes?" said Patterson, his face set with some deep-rooted quality of
determination. Still, he was a mere farm boy.
"Go in to Knowles' window and shoot at those people," said the sergeant
hoarsely. Afterwards he coughed. Some of the fumes of the fight had
made way to his lungs.
Patterson looked at the door into this other room. He looked at it as
if he suspected it was to be his death-chamber. Then he entered and
stood across the body of Knowles and fired vigorously into a group of
plum trees.
"They can't take this house," declared the sergeant in a contemptuous
and argumentative tone. He was apparently replying to somebody. The man
who had been shot in the throat looked up at him. Eight men were firing
from the windows. The sergeant detected in a corner three wounded men
talking together feebly. "Don't you think there is anything to do?" he
bawled. "Go and get Knowles' cartridges and give them to somebody who
can use them! Take Simpson's too." The man who had been shot in the
throat looked at him. Of the three wounded men who had been talking,
one said: "My leg is all doubled up under me, sergeant." He spoke
apologetically.
Meantime the sergeant was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in the
blood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military boot
made a greasy red streak on the floor.
"Why, we can hold this place!" shouted the sergeant jubilantly. "Who
says we can't?"
Corporal Flagler suddenly spun away from his window and fell in a heap.
"Sergeant," murmured a man as he dropped to a seat on the floor out of
danger, "I can't stand this. I swear I can't. I think we should run
away."
Morton, with the kindly eyes of a good shepherd, looked at the man.
"You are afraid, Johnston, you are afraid," he said softly. The man
struggled to his feet, cast upon the sergeant a gaze full of
admiration, reproach, and despair, and returned to his post. A moment
later he pitched forward, and thereafter his body hung out of the
window, his arms straight and the fists clenched. Incidentally this
corpse was pierced afterwards by chance three times by bullets of the
enemy.
The sergeant laid his rifle against the stonework of the window-frame
and shot with care until his magazine was empty. Behind him a man,
simply grazed on the elbow, was wildly sobbing like a girl. "Damn it,
shut up!" said Morton, without turning his head. Before him was a vista
of a garden, fields, clumps of trees, woods, populated at the time with
little fleeting figures.
He grew furious. "Why didn't he send me orders?" he cried aloud. The
emphasis on the word "he" was impressive. A mile back on the road a
galloper of the Hussars lay dead beside his dead horse.
The man who had been grazed on the elbow still set up his bleat.
Morton's fury veered to this soldier. "Can't you shut up? Can't you
shut up? Can't you shut up? Fight! That's the thing to do. Fight!"
A bullet struck Morton, and he fell upon the man who had been shot in
the throat. There was a sickening moment. Then the sergeant rolled off
to a position upon the bloody floor. He turned himself with a last
effort until he could look at the wounded who were able to look at him.
"Kim up, the Kickers," he said thickly. His arms weakened and he
dropped on his face.
After an interval a young subaltern of the enemy's infantry, followed
by his eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over the
threshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned with
a shrug to his sergeant. "God, I should have estimated them at least
one hundred strong."
UPTURNED FACE
"What will we do now?" said the adjutant, troubled and excited.
"Bury him," said Timothy Lean.
The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of
their comrade. The face was chalk-blue; gleaming eyes stared at the
sky. Over the two upright figures was a windy sound of bullets, and on
the top of the hill Lean's prostrate company of Spitzbergen infantry
was firing measured volleys.
"Don't you think it would be better--" began the adjutant. "We might
leave him until tomorrow."
"No," said Lean. "I can't hold that post an hour longer. I've got to
fall back, and we've got to bury old Bill."
"Of course," said the adjutant, at once. "Your men got intrenching
tools?"
Lean shouted back to his little line, and two men came slowly, one with
a pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostina
sharp-shooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here," said Lean
gruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf,
became hurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see
whence the bullets came. The dull beat of the pick striking the earth
sounded amid the swift snap of close bullets. Presently the other
private began to shovel.
"I suppose," said the adjutant, slowly, "we'd better search his clothes
for--things."
Lean nodded. Together in curious abstraction they looked at the body.
Then Lean stirred his shoulders suddenly, arousing himself.
"Yes," he said, "we'd better see what he's got." He dropped to his
knees, and his hands approached the body of the dead officer. But his
hands wavered over the buttons of the tunic. The first button was
brick-red with drying blood, and he did not seem to dare touch it.
"Go on," said the adjutant, hoarsely.
Lean stretched his wooden hand, and his fingers fumbled the
blood-stained buttons. At last he rose with ghastly face. He had
gathered a watch, a whistle, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, a
little case of cards and papers. He looked at the adjutant. There was a
silence. The adjutant was feeling that he had been a coward to make
Lean do all the grisly business.
"Well," said Lean, "that's all, I think. You have his sword and
revolver?"
"Yes," said the adjutant, his face working, and then he burst out in a
sudden strange fury at the two privates. "Why don't you hurry up with
that grave? What are you doing, anyhow? Hurry, do you hear? I never saw
such stupid--"
Even as he cried out in his passion the two men were laboring for their
lives. Ever overhead the bullets were spitting.
The grave was finished, It was not a masterpiece--a poor little shallow
thing. Lean and the adjutant again looked at each other in a curious
silent communication.
Suddenly the adjutant croaked out a weird laugh. It was a terrible
laugh, which had its origin in that part of the mind which is first
moved by the singing of the nerves. "Well," he said, humorously to
Lean, "I suppose we had best tumble him in."
"Yes," said Lean. The two privates stood waiting, bent over their
implements. "I suppose," said Lean, "it would be better if we laid him
in ourselves."
"Yes," said the adjutant. Then apparently remembering that he had made
Lean search the body, he stooped with great fortitude and took hold of
the dead officer's clothing. Lean joined him. Both were particular that
their fingers should not feel the corpse. They tugged away; the corpse
lifted, heaved, toppled, flopped into the grave, and the two officers,
straightening, looked again at each other--they were always looking at
each other. They sighed with relief.
The adjutant said, "I suppose we should--we should say something. Do
you know the service, Tim?"
"They don't read the service until the grave is filled in," said Lean,
pressing his lips to an academic expression.
"Don't they?" said the adjutant, shocked that he had made the mistake.
"Oh, well," he cried, suddenly, "let us--let us say something--while he
can hear us."
"All right," said Lean. "Do you know the service?"
"I can't remember a line of it," said the adjutant.
Lean was extremely dubious. "I can repeat two lines, but--"
"Well, do it," said the adjutant. "Go as far as you can. That's better
than nothing. And the beasts have got our range exactly."
Lean looked at his two men. "Attention," he barked. The privates came
to attention with a click, looking much aggrieved. The adjutant lowered
his helmet to his knee. Lean, bareheaded, he stood over the grave. The
Rostina sharpshooters fired briskly.
"Oh, Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death, but his
spirit has leaped toward Thee as the bubble arises from the lips of the
drowning. Perceive, we beseech, O Father, the little flying bubble,
and--".
Lean, although husky and ashamed, had suffered no hesitation up to this
point, but he stopped with a hopeless feeling and looked at the corpse.
The adjutant moved uneasily. "And from Thy superb heights--" he began,
and then he too came to an end.
"And from Thy superb heights," said Lean.
The adjutant suddenly remembered a phrase in the back part of the
Spitzbergen burial service, and he exploited it with the triumphant
manner of a man who has recalled everything, and can go on.
"Oh, God, have mercy--"
"Oh, God, have mercy--" said Lean.
"Mercy," repeated the adjutant, in quick failure.
"Mercy," said Lean. And then he was moved by some violence of feeling,
for he turned suddenly upon his two men and tigerishly said, "Throw the
dirt in."
The fire of the Rostina sharpshooters was accurate and continuous.
* * * * *
One of the aggrieved privates came forward with his shovel. He lifted
his first shovel-load of earth, and for a moment of inexplicable
hesitation it was held poised above this corpse, which from its
chalk-blue face looked keenly out from the grave. Then the soldier
emptied his shovel on--on the feet.
Timothy Lean felt as if tons had been swiftly lifted from off his
forehead. He had felt that perhaps the private might empty the shovel
on--on the face. It had been emptied on the feet. There was a great
point gained there--ha, ha!--the first shovelful had been emptied on
the feet. How satisfactory!
The adjutant began to babble. "Well, of course--a man we've messed with
all these years--impossible--you can't, you know, leave your intimate
friends rotting on the field. Go on, for God's sake, and shovel, you!"
The man with the shovel suddenly ducked, grabbed his left arm with his
right hand, and looked at his officer for orders. Lean picked the
shovel from the ground. "Go to the rear," he said to the wounded man.
He also addressed the other private. "You get under cover, too; I'll
finish this business."
The wounded man scrambled hard still for the top of the ridge without
devoting any glances to the direction whence the bullets came, and the
other man followed at an equal pace; but he was different, in that he
looked back anxiously three times.
This is merely the way--often--of the hit and unhit.
Timothy Lean filled the shovel, hesitated, and then in a movement which
was like a gesture of abhorrence he flung the dirt into the grave, and
as it landed it made a sound--plop! Lean suddenly stopped and mopped
his brow--a tired laborer.
"Perhaps we have been wrong," said the adjutant. His glance wavered
stupidly. "It might have been better if we hadn't buried him just at
this time. Of course, if we advance to-morrow the body would have
been--"
"Damn you," said Lean, "shut your mouth!" He was not the senior officer.
He again filled the shovel and flung the earth. Always the earth made
that sound--plop! For a space Lean worked frantically, like a man
digging himself out of danger.
Soon there was nothing to be seen but the chalk-blue face. Lean filled
the shovel. "Good God," he cried to the adjutant. "Why didn't you turn
him somehow when you put him in? This--" Then Lean began to stutter.
The adjutant understood. He was pale to the lips. "Go on, man," he
cried, beseechingly, almost in a shout. Lean swung back the shovel. It
went forward in a pendulum curve. When the earth landed it made a
sound--plop!
AN EPISODE OF WAR
The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he had
poured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and other
representatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined the
breastwork had come for each squad's portion.
The lieutenant was frowning and serious at this task of division. His
lips pursed as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap
until brown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on
the blanket. He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and
the corporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square,
when suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near
him as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault. The others
cried out also when they saw blood upon the lieutenant's sleeve.
He had winced like a man stung, swayed dangerously, and then
straightened. The sound of his hoarse breathing was plainly audible. He
looked sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of a
wood, where now were many little puffs of white smoke. During this
moment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and
awed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not
expected--when they had leisure to observe it.
As the lieutenant stared at the wood, they too swung their heads, so
that for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated the
distant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of a
bullet's journey.
The officer had, of course, been compelled to take his sword into his
left hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middle
of the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he
looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what
to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden
become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of
stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or a
spade.
Finally he tried to sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand,
at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a
feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in a
desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during
the time of it he breathed like a wrestler.
But at this instant the men, the spectators, awoke from their
stone-like poses and crowded forward sympathetically. The
orderly-sergeant took the sword and tenderly placed it in the scabbard.
At the time, he leaned nervously backward, and did not allow even his
finger to brush the body of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange
dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from this new and terrible
majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which
hangs before the revelations of all existence--the meaning of ants,
potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a
bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and
makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His
comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear
vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong,
precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, grey unknown.
And so the orderly-sergeant, while sheathing the sword, leaned
nervously backward.
There were others who proffered assistance. One timidly presented his
shoulder and asked the lieutenant if he cared to lean upon it, but the
latter waved him away mournfully. He wore the look of one who knows he
is the victim of a terrible disease and understands his helplessness.
He again stared over the breastwork at the forest, and then turning
went slowly rearward. He held his right wrist tenderly in his left hand
as if the wounded arm was made of very brittle glass.
And the men in silence stared at the wood, then at the departing
lieutenant--then at the wood, then at the lieutenant.
As the wounded officer passed from the line of battle, he was enabled
to see many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to
him. He saw a general on a black horse gazing over the lines of blue
infantry at the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide galloped
furiously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt, saluted, and presented
a paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like an historical painting.
To the rear of the general and his staff a group, composed of a bugler,
two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard, all upon
maniacal horses, were working like slaves to hold their ground,
preserve, their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the air
about them, and caused their chargers to make furious quivering leaps.
A battery, a tumultuous and shining mass, was swirling toward the
right. The wild thud of hoofs, the cries of the riders shouting blame
and praise, menace and encouragement, and, last the roar of the wheels,
the slant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to an intent
pause. The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made
halts as dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled
onward, this aggregation of wheels, levers, motors, had a beautiful
unity, as if it were a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that
reached into the depths of man's emotion.
The lieutenant, still holding his arm as if it were of glass, stood
watching this battery until all detail of it was lost, save the figures
of the riders, which rose and fell and waved lashes over the black mass.
Later, he turned his eyes toward the battle where the shooting
sometimes crackled like bush-fires, sometimes sputtered with
exasperating irregularity, and sometimes reverberated like the thunder.
He saw the smoke rolling upward and saw crowds of men who ran and
cheered, or stood and blazed away at the inscrutable distance.
He came upon some stragglers, and they told him how to find the field
hospital. They described its exact location. In fact, these men, no
longer having part in the battle, knew more of it than others. They
told the performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of
every general. The lieutenant, carrying his wounded arm rearward,
looked upon them with wonder.
At the roadside a brigade was making coffee and buzzing with talk like
a girls' boarding-school. Several officers came out to him and inquired
concerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, began
to scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing."
He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the
sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered
under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding
away in the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the
habit of being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung his head,
feeling, in this presence, that he did not know how to be correctly
wounded.
The low white tents of the hospital were grouped around an old
school-house. There was here a singular commotion. In the foreground
two ambulances interlocked wheels in the deep mud. The drivers were
tossing the blame of it back and forth, gesticulating and berating,
while from the ambulances, both crammed with wounded, there came an
occasional groan. An interminable crowd of bandaged men were coming and
going. Great numbers sat under the trees nursing heads or arms or legs.
There was a dispute of some kind raging on the steps of the
school-house. Sitting with his back against a tree a man with a face as
grey as a new army blanket was serenely smoking a corn-cob pipe. The
lieutenant wished to rush forward and inform him that he was dying.
A busy surgeon was passing near the lieutenant. "Good-morning," he
said, with a friendly smile. Then he caught sight of the lieutenant's
arm and his face at once changed. "Well, let's have a look at it." He
seemed possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant. This
wound evidently placed the latter on a very low social plane. The
doctor cried out impatiently, "What mutton-head had tied it up that way
anyhow?" The lieutenant answered, "Oh, a man."
When the wound was disclosed the doctor fingered it disdainfully.
"Humph," he said. "You come along with me and I'll 'tend to you." His
voice contained the same scorn as if he were saying, "You will have to
go to jail."
The lieutenant had been very meek, but now his face flushed, and he
looked into the doctor's eyes. "I guess I won't have it amputated," he
said.
"Nonsense, man! Nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the doctor. "Come along,
now. I won't amputate it. Come along. Don't be a baby."
"Let go of me," said the lieutenant, holding back wrathfully, his
glance fixed upon the door of the old school-house, as sinister to him
as the portals of death.
And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm. When he
reached home, his sisters, his mother, his wife sobbed for a long time
at the sight of the flat sleeve. "Oh, well," he said, standing
shamefaced amid these tears, "I don't suppose it matters so much as all
that."
AN EXPERIMENT IN MISERY
It was late at night, and a fine rain was swirling softly down, causing
the pavements to glisten with hue of steel and blue and yellow in the
rays of the innumerable lights. A youth was trudging slowly, without
enthusiasm, with his hands buried deep in his trousers' pockets, toward
the downtown places where beds can be hired for coppers. He was clothed
in an aged and tattered suit, and his derby was a marvel of
dust-covered crown and torn rim. He was going forth to eat as the
wanderer may eat, and sleep as the homeless sleep. By the time he had
reached City Hall Park he was so completely plastered with yells of
"bum" and "hobo," and with various unholy epithets that small boys had
applied to him at intervals, that he was in a state of the most
profound dejection. The sifting rain saturated the old velvet collar of
his overcoat, and as the wet cloth pressed against his neck, he felt
that there no longer could be pleasure in life. He looked about him
searching for an outcast of highest degree that they too might share
miseries, but the lights threw a quivering glare over rows and circles
of deserted benches that glistened damply, showing patches of wet sod
behind them. It seemed that their usual freights had fled on this night
to better things. There were only squads of well-dressed Brooklyn
people who swarmed towards the bridge.
The young man loitered about for a time and then went shuffling off
down Park Row. In the sudden descent in style of the dress of the crowd
he felt relief, and as if he were at last in his own country. He began
to see tatters that matched his tatters. In Chatham Square there were
aimless men strewn in front of saloons and lodging-houses, standing
sadly, patiently, reminding one vaguely of the attitudes of chickens in
a storm. He aligned himself with these men, and turned slowly to occupy
himself with the flowing life of the great street.
Through the mists of the cold and storming night, the cable cars went
in silent procession, great affairs shining with red and brass, moving
with formidable power, calm and irresistible, dangerful and gloomy,
breaking silence only by the loud fierce cry of the gong. Two rivers of
people swarmed along the sidewalks, spattered with black mud, which
made each shoe leave a scarlike impression. Overhead elevated trains
with a shrill grinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon
its leglike pillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab
squatting over the street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could
be heard. Down an alley there were somber curtains of purple and black,
on which street lamps dully glittered like embroidered flowers.
A saloon stood with a voracious air on a corner. A sign leaning against
the front of the door-post announced "Free hot soup to-night!" The
swing doors, snapping to and fro like ravenous lips, made gratified
smacks as the saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with
astounding and endless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner
as the men came from all directions like sacrifices to a heathenish
superstition.
Caught by the delectable sign the young man allowed himself to be
swallowed. A bartender placed a schooner of dark and portentous beer on
the bar. Its monumental form upreared until the froth a-top was above
the crown of the young man's brown derby.
"Soup over there, gents," said the bartender affably. A little yellow
man in rags and the youth grasped their schooners and went with speed
toward a lunch counter, where a man with oily but imposing whiskers
ladled genially from a kettle until he had furnished his two mendicants
with a soup that was steaming hot, and in which there were little
floating suggestions of chicken. The young man, sipping his broth, felt
the cordiality expressed by the warmth of the mixture, and he beamed at
the man with oily but imposing whiskers, who was presiding like a
priest behind an altar. "Have some more, gents?" he inquired of the two
sorry figures before him. The little yellow man accepted with a swift
gesture, but the youth shook his head and went out, following a man
whose wondrous seediness promised that he would have a knowledge of
cheap lodging-houses.
On the sidewalk he accosted the seedy man. "Say, do you know a cheap
place to sleep?"
The other hesitated for a time, gazing sideways. Finally he nodded in
the direction of the street, "I sleep up there," he said, "when I've
got the price."
"How much?"
"Ten cents."
The young man shook his head dolefully. "That's too rich for me."
At that moment there approached the two a reeling man in strange
garments. His head was a fuddle of bushy hair and whiskers, from which
his eyes peered with a guilty slant. In a close scrutiny it was
possible to distinguish the cruel lines of a mouth which looked as if
its lips had just closed with satisfaction over some tender and piteous
morsel. He appeared like an assassin steeped in crimes performed
awkwardly.
But at this time his voice was tuned to the coaxing key of an
affectionate puppy. He looked at the men with wheedling eyes, and began
to sing a little melody for charity.
"Say, gents, can't yeh give a poor feller a couple of cents t' git a
bed? I got five, and I gits anudder two I gits me a bed. Now, on th'
square, gents, can't yeh jest gimme two cents t' git a bed? Now, yeh
know how a respecter'ble gentlem'n feels when he's down on his luck,
an' I--"
The seedy man, staring with imperturbable countenance at a train which
clattered overhead, interrupted in an expressionless voice--"Ah, go t'
h----!"
But the youth spoke to the prayerful assassin in tones of astonishment
and inquiry. "Say, you must be crazy! Why don't yeh strike somebody
that looks as if they had money?"
The assassin, tottering about on his uncertain legs, and at intervals
brushing imaginary obstacles from before his nose, entered into a long
explanation of the psychology of the situation. It was so profound that
it was unintelligible.
When he had exhausted the subject, the young man said to him:
"Let's see th' five cents."
The assassin wore an expression of drunken woe at this sentence, filled
with suspicion of him. With a deeply pained air he began to fumble in
his clothing, his red hands trembling. Presently he announced in a
voice of bitter grief, as if he had been betrayed--"There's on'y four."
"Four," said the young man thoughtfully. "Well, look here, I'm a
stranger here, an' if ye'll steer me to your cheap joint I'll find the
other three."
The assassin's countenance became instantly radiant with joy. His
whiskers quivered with the wealth of his alleged emotions. He seized
the young man's hand in a transport of delight and friendliness.
"B' Gawd," he cried, "if ye'll do that, b' Gawd, I'd say yeh was a
damned good fellow, I would, an' I'd remember yeh all m' life, I would,
b' Gawd, an' if I ever got a chance I'd return the compliment"--he
spoke with drunken dignity--"b' Gawd, I'd treat yeh white, I would, an'
I'd allus remember yeh."
The young man drew back, looking at the assassin coldly. "Oh, that's
all right," he said. "You show me th' joint--that's all you've got t'
do."
The assassin, gesticulating gratitude, led the young man along a dark
street. Finally he stopped before a little dusty door. He raised his
hand impressively. "Look-a-here," he said, and there was a thrill of
deep and ancient wisdom upon his face, "I've brought yeh here, an'
that's my part, ain't it? If th' place don't suit yeh, yeh needn't git
mad at me, need yeh? There won't be no bad feelin', will there?"
"No," said the young man.
The assassin waved his arm tragically, and led the march up the steep
stairway. On the way the young man furnished the assassin with three
pennies. At the top a man with benevolent spectacles looked at them
through a hole in a board. He collected their money, wrote some names
on a register, and speedily was leading the two men along a
gloom-shrouded corridor.
Shortly after the beginning of this journey the young man felt his
liver turn white, for from the dark and secret places of the building
there suddenly came to his nostrils strange and unspeakable odors, that
assailed him like malignant diseases with wings. They seemed to be from
human bodies closely packed in dens; the exhalations from a hundred
pairs of reeking lips; the fumes from a thousand bygone debauches; the
expression of a thousand present miseries.
A man, naked save for a little snuff-colored undershirt, was parading
sleepily along the corridor. He rubbed his eyes, and, giving vent to a
prodigious yawn, demanded to be told the time.
"Half-past one."
The man yawned again. He opened a door, and for a moment his form was
outlined against a black, opaque interior. To this door came the three
men, and as it was again opened the unholy odors rushed out like
fiends, so that the young man was obliged to struggle as against an
overpowering wind.
It was some time before the youth's eyes were good in the intense gloom
within, but the man with benevolent spectacles led him skilfully,
pausing but a moment to deposit the limp assassin upon a cot. He took
the youth to a cot that lay tranquilly by the window, and showing him a
tall locker for clothes that stood near the head with the ominous air
of a tombstone, left him.
The youth sat on his cot and peered about him. There was a gas-jet in a
distant part of the room, that burned a small flickering orange-hued
flame. It caused vast masses of tumbled shadows in all parts of the
place, save where, immediately about it, there was a little grey haze.
As the young man's eyes became used to the darkness, he could see upon
the cots that thickly littered the floor the forms of men sprawled out,
lying in deathlike silence, or heaving and snoring with tremendous
effort, like stabbed fish.
The youth locked his derby and his shoes in the mummy case near him,
and then lay down with an old and familiar coat around his shoulders. A
blanket he handed gingerly, drawing it over part of the coat. The cot
was covered with leather, and as cold as melting snow. The youth was
obliged to shiver for some time on this affair, which was like a slab.
Presently, however, his chill gave him peace, and during this period of
leisure from it he turned his head to stare at his friend the assassin,
whom he could dimly discern where he lay sprawled on a cot in the
abandon of a man filled with drink. He was snoring with incredible
vigor. His wet hair and beard dimly glistened, and his inflamed nose
shone with subdued lustre like a red light in a fog.
Within reach of the youth's hand was one who lay with yellow breast and
shoulders bare to the cold drafts. One arm hung over the side of the
cot, and the fingers lay full length upon the wet cement floor of the
room. Beneath the inky brows could be seen the eyes of the man exposed
by the partly opened lids. To the youth it seemed that he and this
corpse-like being were exchanging a prolonged stare, and that the other
threatened with his eyes. He drew back, watching his neighbor from the
shadows of his blanket edge. The man did not move once through the
night, but lay in this stillness as of death like a body stretched out
expectant of the surgeon's knife.
And all through the room could be seen the tawny hues of naked flesh,
limbs thrust into the darkness, projecting beyond the cots; upreared
knees, arms hanging long and thin over the cot edges. For the most part
they were statuesque, carven, dead. With the curious lockers standing
all about like tombstones, there was a strange effect of a graveyard
where bodies were merely flung.
Yet occasionally could be seen limbs wildly tossing in fantastic
nightmare gestures, accompanied by guttural cries, grunts, oaths. And
there was one fellow off in a gloomy corner, who in his dreams was
oppressed by some frightful calamity, for of a sudden he began to utter
long wails that went almost like yells from a hound, echoing wailfully
and weird through this chill place of tombstones where men lay like the
dead.
The sound in its high piercing beginnings, that dwindled to final
melancholy moans, expressed a red and grim tragedy of the unfathomable
possibilities of the man's dreams. But to the youth these were not
merely the shrieks of a vision-pierced man: they were an utterance of
the meaning of the room and its occupants. It was to him the protest of
the wretch who feels the touch of the imperturbable granite wheels, and
who then cries with an impersonal eloquence, with a strength not from
him, giving voice to the wail of a whole section, a class, a people.
This, weaving into the young man's brain, and mingling with his views
of the vast and sombre shadows that, like mighty black fingers, curled
around the naked bodies, made the young man so that he did not sleep,
but lay carving the biographies for these men from his meagre
experience. At times the fellow in the corner howled in a writhing
agony of his imaginations.
Finally a long lance-point of grey light shot through the dusty panes
of the window. Without, the young man could see roofs drearily white in
the dawning. The point of light yellowed and grew brighter, until the
golden rays of the morning sun came in bravely and strong. They touched
with radiant color the form of a small fat man, who snored in
stuttering fashion. His round and shiny bald head glowed suddenly with
the valor of a decoration. He sat up, blinked at the sun, swore
fretfully, and pulled his blanket over the ornamental splendors of his
head.
The youth contentedly watched this rout of the shadows before the
bright spears of the sun, and presently he slumbered. When he awoke he
heard the voice of the assassin raised in valiant curses. Putting up
his head, he perceived his comrade seated on the side of the cot
engaged in scratching his neck with long finger-nails that rasped like
files.
"Hully Jee, dis is a new breed. They've got can-openers on their feet."
He continued in a violent tirade.
The young man hastily unlocked his closet and took out his shoes and
hat. As he sat on the side of the cot lacing his shoes, he glanced
about and saw that daylight had made the room comparatively commonplace
and uninteresting. The men, whose faces seemed stolid, serene or
absent, were engaged in dressing, while a great crackle of bantering
conversation arose.
A few were parading in unconcerned nakedness. Here and there were men
of brawn, whose skins shone clear and ruddy. They took splendid poses,
standing massively like chiefs. When they had dressed in their ungainly
garments there was an extraordinary change. They then showed bumps and
deficiencies of all kinds.
There were others who exhibited many deformities. Shoulders were
slanting, humped, pulled this way and pulled that way. And notable
among these latter men was the little fat man who had refused to allow
his head to be glorified. His pudgy form, builded like a pear, bustled
to and fro, while he swore in fishwife fashion. It appeared that some
article of his apparel had vanished.
The young man attired speedily, and went to his friend the assassin. At
first the latter looked dazed at the sight of the youth. This face
seemed to be appealing to him through the cloud wastes of his memory.
He scratched his neck and reflected. At last he grinned, a broad smile
gradually spreading until his countenance was a round illumination.
"Hello, Willie," he cried cheerily.
"Hello," said the young man. "Are yeh ready t' fly?"
"Sure." The assassin tied his shoe carefully with some twine and came
ambling.
When he reached the street the young man experienced no sudden relief
from unholy atmospheres. He had forgotten all about them, and had been
breathing naturally, and with no sensation of discomfort or distress.
He was thinking of these things as he walked along the street, when he
was suddenly startled by feeling the assassin's hand, trembling with
excitement, clutching his arm, and when the assassin spoke, his voice
went into quavers from a supreme agitation.
"I'll be hully, bloomin' blowed if there wasn't a feller with a
nightshirt on up there in that joint."
The youth was bewildered for a moment, but presently he turned to smile
indulgently at the assassin's humor.
"Oh, you're a d--d liar," he merely said.
Whereupon the assassin began to gesture extravagantly, and take oath by
strange gods. He frantically placed himself at the mercy of remarkable
fates if his tale were not true.
"Yes, he did! I cross m' heart thousan' times!" he protested, and at
the moment his eyes were large with amazement, his mouth wrinkled in
unnatural glee.
"Yessir! A nightshirt! A hully white nightshirt!"
"You lie!"
"No, sir! I hope ter die b'fore I kin git anudder ball if there wasn't
a jay wid a hully, bloomin' white nightshirt!"
His face was filled with the infinite wonder of it. "A hully white
nightshirt," he continually repeated.
The young man saw the dark entrance to a basement restaurant. There was
a sign which read "No mystery about our hash"! and there were other
age-stained and world-battered legends which told him that the place
was within his means. He stopped before it and spoke to the assassin.
"I guess I'll git somethin' t' eat."
At this the assassin, for some reason, appeared to be quite
embarrassed. He gazed at the seductive front of the eating place for a
moment. Then he started slowly up the street. "Well, good-bye, Willie,"
he said bravely.
For an instant the youth studied the departing figure. Then he called
out, "Hol' on a minnet." As they came together he spoke in a certain
fierce way, as if he feared that the other would think him to be
charitable. "Look-a-here, if yeh wanta git some breakfas' I'll lend yeh
three cents t' do it with. But say, look-a-here, you've gota git out
an' hustle. I ain't goin' t' support yeh, or I'll go broke b'fore
night. I ain't no millionaire."
"I take me oath, Willie," said the assassin earnestly, "th' on'y thing
I really needs is a ball. Me t'roat feels like a fryin'-pan. But as I
can't get a ball, why, th' next bes' thing is breakfast, an' if yeh do
that for me, b'Gawd, I say yeh was th' whitest lad I ever see."
They spent a few moments in dexterous exchanges of phrases, in which
they each protested that the other was, as the assassin had originally
said, "a respecter'ble gentlem'n." And they concluded with mutual
assurances that they were the souls of intelligence and virtue. Then
they went into the restaurant.
There was a long counter, dimly lighted from hidden sources. Two or
three men in soiled white aprons rushed here and there.
The youth bought a bowl of coffee for two cents and a roll for one
cent. The assassin purchased the same. The bowls were webbed with brown
seams, and the tin spoons wore an air of having emerged from the first
pyramid. Upon them were black mosslike encrustations of age, and they
were bent and scarred from the attacks of long-forgotten teeth. But
over their repast the wanderers waxed warm and mellow. The assassin
grew affable as the hot mixture went soothingly down his parched
throat, and the young man felt courage flow in his veins.
Memories began to throng in on the assassin, and he brought forth long
tales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness as
from an old woman. "--great job out'n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin'
though all time. I was there three days, and then I went an' ask 'im t'
lend me a dollar. 'G-g-go ter the devil,' he ses, an' I lose me job."
"South no good. Damn niggers work for twenty-five an' thirty cents a
day. Run white man out. Good grub, though. Easy livin'."
"Yas; useter work little in Toledo, raftin' logs. Make two or three
dollars er day in the spring. Lived high. Cold as ice, though, in the
winter."
"I was raised in northern N'York. O-a-ah, yeh jest oughto live there.
No beer ner whisky, though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot
grub yeh can eat. B'Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till th'
ol' man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git t'
hell outa here, an' go die,' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father,' I
ses, 'you are,' an' I quit 'im."
As they were passing from the dim eating place, they encountered an old
man who was trying to steal forth with a tiny package of food, but a
tall man with an indomitable moustache stood dragon fashion, barring
the way of escape. They heard the old man raise a plaintive protest.
"Ah, you always want to know what I take out, and you never see that I
usually bring a package in here from my place of business."
As the wanderers trudged slowly along Park Row, the assassin began to
expand and grow blithe. "B'Gawd, we've been livin' like kings," he
said, smacking appreciative lips.
"Look out, or we'll have t' pay fer it t'night," said the youth with
gloomy warning.
But the assassin refused to turn his gaze toward the future. He went
with a limping step, into which he injected a suggestion of lamblike
gambols. His mouth was wreathed in a red grin.
In the City Hall Park the two wanderers sat down in the little circle
of benches sanctified by traditions of their class. They huddled in
their old garments, slumbrously conscious of the march of the hours
which for them had no meaning.
The people of the street hurrying hither and thither made a blend of
black figures changing yet frieze-like. They walked in their good
clothes as upon important missions, giving no gaze to the two wanderers
seated upon the benches. They expressed to the young man his infinite
distance from all that he valued. Social position, comfort, the
pleasures of living, were unconquerable kingdoms. He felt a sudden awe.
And in the background a multitude of buildings, of pitiless hues and
sternly high, were to him emblematic of a nation forcing its regal head
into the clouds, throwing no downward glances; in the sublimity of its
aspirations ignoring the wretches who may flounder at its feet. The
roar of the city in his ear was to him the confusion of strange
tongues, babbling heedlessly; it was the clink of coin, the voice if
the city's hopes which were to him no hopes.
He confessed himself an outcast, and his eyes from under the lowered
rim of his hat began to glance guiltily, wearing the criminal
expression that comes with certain convictions.
THE DUEL THAT WAS NOT FOUGHT
Patsy Tulligan was not as wise as seven owls, but his courage could
throw a shadow as long as the steeple of a cathedral. There were men on
Cherry Street who had whipped him five times, but they all knew that
Patsy would be as ready for the sixth time as if nothing had happened.
Once he and two friends had been away up on Eighth Avenue, far out of
their country, and upon their return journey that evening they stopped
frequently in saloons until they were as independent of their
surroundings as eagles, and cared much less about thirty days on
Blackwell's.
On Lower Sixth Avenue they paused in a saloon where there was a good
deal of lamp-glare and polished wood to be seen from the outside, and
within, the mellow light shone on much furbished brass and more
polished wood. It was a better saloon than they were in the habit of
seeing, but they did not mind it. They sat down at one of the little
tables that were in a row parallel to the bar and ordered beer. They
blinked stolidly at the decorations, the bartender, and the other
customers. When anything transpired they discussed it with dazzling
frankness, and what they said of it was as free as air to the other
people in the place.
At midnight there were few people in the saloon. Patsy and his friends
still sat drinking. Two well-dressed men were at another table, smoking
cigars slowly and swinging back in their chairs. They occupied
themselves with themselves in the usual manner, never betraying by a
wink of an eyelid that they knew that other folk existed. At another
table directly behind Patsy and his companions was a slim little Cuban,
with miraculously small feet and hands, and with a youthful touch of
down upon his lip. As he lifted his cigarette from time to time his
little finger was bended in dainty fashion, and there was a green flash
when a huge emerald ring caught the light. The bartender came often
with his little brass tray. Occasionally Patsy and his two friends
quarrelled.
Once this little Cuban happened to make some slight noise and Patsy
turned his head to observe him. Then Patsy made a careless and rather
loud comment to his two friends. He used a word which is no more than
passing the time of day down in Cherry Street, but to the Cuban it was
a dagger-point. There was a harsh scraping sound as a chair was pushed
swiftly back.
The little Cuban was upon his feet. His eyes were shining with a rage
that flashed there like sparks as he glared at Patsy. His olive face
had turned a shade of grey from his anger. Withal his chest was thrust
out in portentous dignity, and his hand, still grasping his wine-glass,
was cool and steady, the little finger still bended, the great emerald
gleaming upon it. The others, motionless, stared at him.
"Sir," he began ceremoniously. He spoke gravely and in a slow way, his
tone coming in a marvel of self-possessed cadences from between those
lips which quivered with wrath. "You have insult me. You are a dog, a
hound, a cur. I spit upon you. I must have some of your blood."
Patsy looked at him over his shoulder.
"What's th' matter wi' che?" he demanded. He did not quite understand
the words of this little man who glared at him steadily, but he knew
that it was something about fighting. He snarled with the readiness of
his class and heaved his shoulders contemptuously. "Ah, what's eatin'
yeh? Take a walk! You hain't got nothin' t' do with me, have yeh? Well,
den, go sit on yerself."
And his companions leaned back valorously in their chairs, and
scrutinized this slim young fellow who was addressing Patsy.
"What's de little Dago chewin' about?"
"He wants t' scrap!"
"What!"
The Cuban listened with apparent composure. It was only when they
laughed that his body cringed as if he was receiving lashes. Presently
he put down his glass and walked over to their table. He proceeded
always with the most impressive deliberation.
"Sir," he began again. "You have insult me. I must have
s-s-satisfac-shone. I must have your body upon the point of my sword.
In my country you would already be dead. I must have
s-s-satisfac-shone."
Patsy had looked at the Cuban with a trifle of bewilderment. But at
last his face began to grow dark with belligerency, his mouth curved in
that wide sneer with which he would confront an angel of darkness. He
arose suddenly in his seat and came towards the little Cuban. He was
going to be impressive too.
"Say, young feller, if yeh go shootin' off yer face at me, I'll wipe d'
joint wid yeh. What'cher gaffin' about, hey? Are yeh givin' me er
jolly? Say, if yeh pick me up fer a cinch, I'll fool yeh. Dat's what!
Don't take me fer no dead easy mug." And as he glowered at the little
Cuban, he ended his oration with one eloquent word, "Nit!"
The bartender nervously polished his bar with a towel, and kept his
eyes fastened upon the men. Occasionally he became transfixed with
interest, leaning forward with one hand upon the edge of the bar and
the other holding the towel grabbed in a lump, as if he had been turned
into bronze when in the very act of polishing.
The Cuban did not move when Patsy came toward him and delivered his
oration. At its conclusion he turned his livid face toward where, above
him, Patsy was swaggering and heaving his shoulders in a consummate
display of bravery and readiness. The Cuban, in his clear, tense tones,
spoke one word. It was the bitter insult. It seemed fairly to spin from
his lips and crackle in the air like breaking glass.
Every man save the little Cuban made an electric movement. Patsy roared
a black oath and thrust himself forward until he towered almost
directly above the other man. His fists were doubled into knots of bone
and hard flesh. The Cuban had raised a steady finger.
"If you touch me wis your hand, I will keel you."
The two well-dressed men had come swiftly, uttering protesting cries.
They suddenly intervened in this second of time in which Patsy had
sprung forward and the Cuban had uttered his threat. The four men were
now a tossing, arguing; violent group, one well-dressed man lecturing
the Cuban, and the other holding off Patsy, who was now wild with rage,
loudly repeating the Cuban's threat, and maneuvering and struggling to
get at him for revenge's sake.
The bartender, feverishly scouring away with his towel, and at times
pacing to and fro with nervous and excited tread, shouted out--
"Say, for heaven's sake, don't fight in here. If yeh wanta fight, go
out in the street and fight all yeh please. But don't fight in here."
Patsy knew one only thing, and this he kept repeating:
"Well, he wants t' scrap! I didn't begin dis! He wants t' scrap."
The well-dressed man confronting him continually replied--
"Oh, well, now, look here, he's only a lad. He don't know what he's
doing. He's crazy mad. You wouldn't slug a kid like that."
Patsy and his aroused companions, who cursed and growled, were
persistent with their argument. "Well, he wants t' scrap!" The whole
affair was as plain as daylight when one saw this great fact. The
interference and intolerable discussion brought the three of them
forward, battleful and fierce.
"What's eatin' you, anyhow?" they demanded. "Dis ain't your business,
is it? What business you got shootin' off your face?"
The other peacemaker was trying to restrain the little Cuban, who had
grown shrill and violent.
"If he touch me wis his hand I will keel him. We must fight like
gentlemen or else I keel him when he touch me wis his hand."
The man who was fending off Patsy comprehended these sentences that
were screamed behind his back, and he explained to Patsy.
"But he wants to fight you with swords. With swords, you know."
The Cuban, dodging around the peacemakers, yelled in Patsy's face--
"Ah, if I could get you before me wis my sword! Ah! Ah! A-a-ah!" Patsy
made a furious blow with a swift fist, but the peacemakers bucked
against his body suddenly like football players.
Patsy was greatly puzzled. He continued doggedly to try to get near
enough to the Cuban to punch him. To these attempts the Cuban replied
savagely--
"If you touch me wis your hand, I will cut your heart in two piece."
At last Patsy said--"Well, if he's so dead stuck on fightin' wid
swords, I'll fight 'im. Soitenly! I'll fight 'im." All this palaver had
evidently tired him, and he now puffed out his lips with the air of a
man who is willing to submit to any conditions if he can only bring on
the row soon enough. He swaggered, "I'll fight 'im wid swords. Let 'im
bring on his swords, an' I'll fight 'im 'til he's ready t' quit."
The two well-dressed men grinned. "Why, look here," they said to Patsy,
"he'd punch you full of holes. Why he's a fencer. You can't fight him
with swords. He'd kill you in 'bout a minute."
"Well, I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow," said Patsy, stouthearted and
resolute. "I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow, an' I'll stay wid 'im as
long as I kin."
As for the Cuban, his lithe body was quivering in an ecstasy of the
muscles. His face radiant with a savage joy, he fastened his glance
upon Patsy, his eyes gleaming with a gloating, murderous light. A most
unspeakable, animal-like rage was in his expression.
"Ah! ah! He will fight me! Ah!" He bended unconsciously in the posture
of a fencer. He had all the quick, springy movements of a skilful
swordsman. "Ah, the b-r-r-rute! The b-r-r-rute! I will stick him like a
pig!"
The two peacemakers, still grinning broadly, were having a great time
with Patsy.
"Why, you infernal idiot, this man would slice you all up. You better
jump off the bridge if you want to commit suicide. You wouldn't stand a
ghost of a chance to live ten seconds."
Patsy was as unshaken as granite. "Well, if he wants t' fight wid
swords, he'll get it. I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow."
One man said--"Well, have you got a sword? Do you know what a sword is?
Have you got a sword?"
"No, I ain't got none," said Patsy honestly, "but I kin git one." Then
he added valiantly--"An' quick, too."
The two men laughed. "Why, can't you understand it would be sure death
to fight a sword duel with this fellow?"
"Dat's all right! See? I know me own business. If he wants t' fight one
of dees d--n duels, I'm in it, understan'"
"Have you ever fought one, you fool?"
"No, I ain't. But I will fight one, dough! I ain't no muff. If he wants
t' fight a duel, by Gawd, I'm wid 'im! D'yeh understan' dat!" Patsy
cocked his hat and swaggered. He was getting very serious.
The little Cuban burst out--"Ah, come on, sirs: come on! We can take
cab. Ah, you big cow, I will stick you, I will stick you. Ah, you will
look very beautiful, very beautiful. Ah, come on, sirs. We will stop at
hotel--my hotel. I there have weapons."
"Yeh will, will yeh? Yeh bloomin' little black Dago!" cried Patsy in
hoarse and maddened reply to the personal part of the Cuban's speech.
He stepped forward. "Git yer d--n swords," he commanded. "Git yer
swords. Git 'em quick! I'll fight wi' che! I'll fight wid anyt'ing,
too! See? I'll fight yeh wid a knife an' fork if yeh say so! I'll fight
yer standin' up er sittin' down!" Patsy delivered this intense oration
with sweeping, intensely emphatic gestures, his hands stretched out
eloquently, his jaw thrust forward, his eyes glaring.
"Ah!" cried the little Cuban joyously. "Ah, you are in very pretty
temper. Ah, how I will cut your heart in two piece, my dear, d-e-a-r
friend." His eyes, too, shone like carbuncles, with a swift, changing
glitter, always fastened upon Patsy's face.
The two peacemakers were perspiring and in despair. One of them blurted
out--
"Well, I'll be blamed if this ain't the most ridiculous thing I ever
saw."
The other said--"For ten dollars I'd be tempted to let these two
infernal blockheads have their duel."
Patsy was strutting to and fro, and conferring grandly with his friends.
"He took me for a muff. He t'ought he was goin' t' bluff me out,
talkin' 'bout swords. He'll get fooled." He addressed the
Cuban--"You're a fine little dirty picter of a scrapper, ain't che?
I'll chew yez up, dat's what I will!"
There began then some rapid action. The patience of well-dressed men is
not an eternal thing. It began to look as if it would at last be a
fight with six corners to it. The faces of the men were shining red
with anger. They jostled each other defiantly, and almost every one
blazed out at three or four of the others. The bartender had given up
protesting. He swore for a time and banged his glasses. Then he jumped
the bar and ran out of the saloon, cursing sullenly.
When he came back with a policeman, Patsy and the Cuban were preparing
to depart together. Patsy was delivering his last oration--
"I'll fight yer wid swords! Sure I will! Come ahead, Dago! I'll fight
yeh anywheres wid anyt'ing! We'll have a large, juicy scrap, an' don't
yeh forgit dat! I'm right wid yez. I ain't no muff! I scrap with a man
jest as soon as he ses scrap, an' if yeh wanta scrap, I'm yer kitten.
Understan' dat?"
The policeman said sharply--"Come, now; what's all this?" He had a
distinctly business air.
The little Cuban stepped forward calmly. "It is none of your business."
The policeman flushed to his ears. "What?"
One well-dressed man touched the other on the sleeve. "Here's the time
to skip," he whispered. They halted a block away from the saloon and
watched the policeman pull the Cuban through the door. There was a
minute of scuffle on the sidewalk, and into this deserted street at
midnight fifty people appeared at once as if from the sky to watch it.
At last the three Cherry Hill men came from the saloon, and swaggered
with all their old valor toward the peacemakers.
"Ah," said Patsy to them, "he was so hot talkin' about this duel
business, but I would a-given 'im a great scrap, an' don't yeh forgit
it."
For Patsy was not as wise as seven owls, but his courage could throw a
shadow as long as the steeple of a cathedral.
A DESERTION
The yellow gaslight that came with an effect of difficulty through the
dust-stained windows on either side of the door gave strange hues to
the faces and forms of the three women who stood gabbling in the
hallway of the tenement. They made rapid gestures, and in the
background their enormous shadows mingled in terrific conflict.
"Aye, she ain't so good as he thinks she is, I'll bet. He can watch
over 'er an' take care of 'er all he pleases, but when she wants t'
fool 'im, she'll fool 'im. An' how does he know she ain't foolin' im'
now?"
"Oh, he thinks he's keepin' 'er from goin' t' th' bad, he does. Oh,
yes. He ses she's too purty t' let run round alone. Too purty! Huh! My
Sadie--"
"Well, he keeps a clost watch on 'er, you bet. On'y las' week, she met
my boy Tim on th' stairs, an' Tim hadn't said two words to 'er b'fore
th' ol' man begin to holler. 'Dorter, dorter, come here, come here!'"
At this moment a young girl entered from the street, and it was evident
from the injured expression suddenly assumed by the three gossipers
that she had been the object of their discussion. She passed them with
a slight nod, and they swung about into a row to stare after her.
On her way up the long flights the girl unfastened her veil. One could
then clearly see the beauty of her eyes, but there was in them a
certain furtiveness that came near to marring the effects. It was a
peculiar fixture of gaze, brought from the street, as of one who there
saw a succession of passing dangers with menaces aligned at every
corner.
On the top floor, she pushed open a door and then paused on the
threshold, confronting an interior that appeared black and flat like a
curtain. Perhaps some girlish idea of hobgoblins assailed her then, for
she called in a little breathless voice, "Daddie!"
There was no reply. The fire in the cooking-stove in the room crackled
at spasmodic intervals. One lid was misplaced, and the girl could now
see that this fact created a little flushed crescent upon the ceiling.
Also, a series of tiny windows in the stove caused patches of red upon
the floor. Otherwise, the room was heavily draped with shadows.
The girl called again, "Daddie!"
Yet there was no reply.
"Oh, Daddie!"
Presently she laughed as one familiar with the humors of an old man.
"Oh, I guess yer cussin' mad about yer supper, Dad," she said, and she
almost entered the room, but suddenly faltered, overcome by a feminine
instinct to fly from this black interior, peopled with imagined dangers.
Again she called, "Daddie!" Her voice had an accent of appeal. It was
as if she knew she was foolish but yet felt obliged to insist upon
being reassured. "Oh, Daddie!"
Of a sudden a cry of relief, a feminine announcement that the stars
still hung, burst from her. For, according to some mystic process, the
smoldering coals of the fire went aflame with sudden, fierce
brilliance, splashing parts of the walls, the floor, the crude
furniture, with a hue of blood-red. And in the light of this dramatic
outburst of light, the girl saw her father seated at a table with his
back turned toward her.
She entered the room, then, with an aggrieved air, her logic evidently
concluding that somebody was to blame for her nervous fright. "Oh, yer
on'y sulkin' 'bout yer supper. I thought mebbe ye'd gone somewheres."
Her father made no reply. She went over to a shelf in the corner, and,
taking a little lamp, she lit it and put it where it would give her
light as she took off her hat and jacket in front of the tiny mirror.
Presently she began to bustle among the cooking utensils that were
crowded into the sink, and as she worked she rattled talk at her
father, apparently disdaining his mood.
"I'd 'a' come home earlier t'night, Dad, on'y that fly foreman, he kep'
me in th' shop 'til half-past six. What a fool! He came t' me, yeh
know, an' he ses, 'Nell, I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice.' Oh, I
know him an' his brotherly advice. 'I wanta give yeh some brotherly
advice. Yer too purty, Nell,' he ses, 't' be workin' in this shop an'
paradin' through the streets alone, without somebody t' give yeh good
brotherly advice, an' I wanta warn yeh, Nell. I'm a bad man, but I
ain't as bad as some, an' I wanta warn yeh.' 'Oh, g'long 'bout yer
business,' I ses. I know 'im. He's like all of 'em, on'y he's a little
slyer. I know 'im. 'You g'long 'bout yer business,' I ses. Well, he ses
after a while that he guessed some evenin' he'd come up an' see me.
'Oh, yeh will,' I ses, 'yeh will? Well, you jest let my ol' man ketch
yeh comin' foolin' 'round our place. Yeh'll wish yeh went t' some other
girl t' give brotherly advice.' 'What th' 'ell do I care fer yer
father?' he ses. 'What's he t' me?' 'If he throws yeh downstairs,
yeh'll care for 'im,' I ses. 'Well,' he ses, 'I'll come when 'e ain't
in, b' Gawd, I'll come when 'e ain't in.' 'Oh, he's allus in when it
means takin' care 'o me,' I ses. 'Don't yeh fergit it, either. When it
comes t' takin' care o' his dorter, he's right on deck every single
possible time.'"
After a time, she turned and addressed cheery words to the old man.
"Hurry up th' fire, Daddie! We'll have supper pretty soon."
But still her father was silent, and his form in its sullen posture was
motionless.
At this, the girl seemed to see the need of the inauguration of a
feminine war against a man out of temper. She approached him breathing
soft, coaxing syllables.
"Daddie! Oh, Daddie! O--o--oh, Daddie!"
It was apparent from a subtle quality of valor in her tones that this
manner of onslaught upon his moods had usually been successful, but
to-night it had no quick effect. The words, coming from her lips, were
like the refrain of an old ballad, but the man remained stolid.
"Daddie! My Daddie! Oh, Daddie, are yeh mad at me, really--truly mad at
me!"
She touched him lightly upon the arm. Should he have turned then he
would have seen the fresh, laughing face, with dew-sparkling eyes,
close to his own.
"Oh, Daddie! My Daddie! Pretty Daddie!"
She stole her arm about his neck, and then slowly bended her face
toward his. It was the action of a queen who knows that she reigns
notwithstanding irritations, trials, tempests.
But suddenly, from this position, she leaped backward with the mad
energy of a frightened colt. Her face was in this instant turned to a
grey, featureless thing of horror. A yell, wild and hoarse as a
brute-cry, burst from her. "Daddie!" She flung herself to a place near
the door, where she remained, crouching, her eyes staring at the
motionless figure, spattered by the quivering flashes from the fire.
Her arms extended, and her frantic fingers at once besought and
repelled. There was in them an expression of eagerness to caress and an
expression of the most intense loathing. And the girl's hair that had
been a splendor, was in these moments changed to a disordered mass that
hung and swayed in witchlike fashion.
Again, a terrible cry burst from her. It was more than the shriek of
agony--it was directed, personal, addressed to him in the chair, the
first word of a tragic conversation with the dead.
It seemed that when she had put her arm about its neck, she had jostled
the corpse in such a way that now she and it were face to face. The
attitude expressed an intention of arising from the table. The eyes,
fixed upon hers, were filled with an unspeakable hatred.
* * * * *
The cries of the girl aroused thunders in the tenement. There was a
loud slamming of doors, and presently there was a roar of feet upon the
boards of the stairway. Voices rang out sharply.
"What is it?"
"What's th' matter?"
"He's killin' her!"
"Slug 'im with anythin' yeh kin lay hold of, Jack!"
But over all this came the shrill, shrewish tones of a woman. "Ah, th'
damned ol' fool, he's drivin' 'er inteh th' street--that's what he's
doin'. He's drivin' 'er inteh th' street."
A DARK-BROWN DOG
A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder
against a high board fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while
kicking carelessly at the gravel.
Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellow
dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved
with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing.
After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air
down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck.
Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled.
He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The dog
hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances with
his tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologetic
manner the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendly
pattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each moment
of the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened to
overturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck the
dog a blow upon the head.
This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog,
and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child's
feet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition in
childish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in
a peculiar manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he
offered a small prayer to the child.
He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, that
the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, to
keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in
the most serious way and no doubt considered that he had committed some
grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in
every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and
petitioned him, and offered more prayers.
At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home.
The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes
upon the retreating form.
Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. The
latter wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at times
to investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he
discovered the little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air
of a footpad.
The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. The dog lay
down and prayed until the child had finished, and resumed his journey.
Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit again.
On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat the dog,
proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in contempt as an
unimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For being this
quality of animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed regret,
but he continued stealthily to follow the child. His manner grew so
very guilty that he slunk like an assassin.
When the child reached his doorstep, the dog was industriously ambling
a few yards in the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he again
confronted the child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped upon
it and fell forward.
The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview.
During it the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He
performed a few gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw
him to be a valuable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and
seized the rope.
He dragged his captive into a hall and up many long stairways in a dark
tenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he could not hobble very
skilfully up the stairs because he was very small and soft, and at last
the pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic that the dog became
panic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged toward a grim unknown.
His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He began to wiggle his head
frantically and to brace his legs.
The child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. The
child was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose,
and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to the
door of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold.
No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to
the dog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection
upon his new friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding
comrades.
When the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog was
examined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at him
from all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like a
scorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor,
and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that he
was roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck,
when the father of the family came in from work.
The parent demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kid
howl for. It was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted
to introduce a disreputable dog into the family.
A family council was held. On this depended the dog's fate, but he in
no way heeded, being busily engaged in chewing the end of the child's
dress.
The affair was quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, was
in a particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived
that it would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to
remain, he decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took
his friend off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while
the father quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass
that the dog was a member of the household.
He and the child were associated together at all times save when the
child slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large
folk kicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and
violent objections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly,
with tears raining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect
his friend, he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan
from the hand of his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy
in the dog. Ever after, the family were careful how they threw things
at the dog. Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles
and feet. In a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and
some chairs, he would display strategic ability of a high order,
dodging, feinting and scuttling about among the furniture. He could
force three or four people armed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of
coal, to use all their ingenuity to get in a blow. And even when they
did, it was seldom that they could do him a serious injury or leave any
imprint.
But when the child was present these scenes did not occur. It came to
be recognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst into
sobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practically
unquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard.
However, the child could not always be near. At night, when he was
asleep, his dark-brown friend would raise from some black corner a
wild, wailful cry, a song of infinite loneliness and despair, that
would go shuddering and sobbing among the buildings of the block and
cause people to swear. At these times the singer would often be chased
all over the kitchen and hit with a great variety of articles.
Sometimes, too, the child himself used to beat the dog, although it is
not known that he ever had what truly could be called a just cause. The
dog always accepted these thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. He
was too much of a dog to try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge.
He received the blows with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave
his friend the moment the child had finished, and was ready to caress
the child's hand with his little red tongue.
When misfortune came upon the child, and his troubles overwhelmed him,
he would often crawl under the table and lay his small distressed head
on the dog's back. The dog was ever sympathetic. It is not to be
supposed that at such times he took occasion to refer to the unjust
beatings his friend, when provoked, had administered to him.
He did not achieve any notable degree of intimacy with the other
members of the family. He had no confidence in them, and the fear that
he would express at their casual approach often exasperated them
exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction in underfeeding
him, but finally his friend the child grew to watch the matter with
some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often successful in
secret for himself.
So the dog prospered. He developed a large bark, which came wondrously
from such a small rug of a dog. He ceased to howl persistently at
night. Sometimes, indeed, in his sleep, he would utter little yells, as
from pain, but that occurred, no doubt, when in his dreams he
encountered huge flaming dogs who threatened him direfully.
His devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He wagged
at his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He could
detect the sound of the child's step among all the noises of the
neighborhood. It was like a calling voice to him.
The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this
terrible potentate, the child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever
lived for an instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the
mystic, hidden fields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love
and fidelity and perfect faith.
The child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observe
strange things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usually
jogged aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. This
necessitated his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure the
child was coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance of
these journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud
to be the retainer of so great a monarch.
One day, however, the father of the family got quite exceptionally
drunk. He came home and held carnival with the cooking utensils, the
furniture and his wife. He was in the midst of this recreation when the
child, followed by the dark-brown dog, entered the room. They were
returning from their voyages.
The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He dived
under the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safe
place. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unaware
of the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at his
friend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. He
started to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of a
little dark-brown dog en route to a friend.
The head of the family saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl of
joy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yelling
in supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for
cover. The man kicked out with a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to
swerve as if caught in a tide. A second blow of the coffee-pot laid him
upon the floor.
Here the child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a
knight. The father of the family paid no attention to these calls of
the child, but advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down
twice in swift succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of
escape. He rolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar
manner. At the same time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a
small prayer.
But the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him
that it would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So he
reached down and, grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming,
up. He swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and
then flung him with great accuracy through the window.
The soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering
plants in an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a
flower-pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the
flight of the dog. A woman who had been hanging out clothes in a yard
began to caper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her
arms gave vent to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a
gagged prisoner. Children ran whooping.
The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on the roof of a shed five
stories below. From thence it rolled to the pavement of an alleyway.
The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirge-like cry, and
toddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach the
alley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, one
step at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above.
When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his
dark-brown friend.
THE PACE OF YOUTH
I
Stimson stood in a corner and glowered. He was a fierce man and had
indomitable whiskers, albeit he was very small.
"That young tarrier," he whispered to himself. "He wants to quit makin'
eyes at Lizzie. This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know,
he'll get fired."
His brow creased in a frown, he strode over to the huge open doors and
looked at a sign. "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round," it read, and the
glory of it was great. Stimson stood and contemplated the sign. It was
an enormous affair; the letters were as large as men. The glow of it,
the grandeur of it was very apparent to Stimson. At the end of his
contemplation, he shook his head thoughtfully, determinedly. "No, no,"
he muttered. "This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know,
he'll get fired."
A soft booming sound of surf, mingled with the cries of bathers, came
from the beach. There was a vista of sand and sky and sea that drew to
a mystic point far away in the northward. In the mighty angle, a girl
in a red dress was crawling slowly like some kind of a spider on the
fabric of nature. A few flags hung lazily above where the bathhouses
were marshalled in compact squares. Upon the edge of the sea stood a
ship with its shadowy sails painted dimly upon the sky, and high
overhead in the still, sun-shot air a great hawk swung and drifted
slowly.
Within the Merry-Go-Round there was a whirling circle of ornamental
lions, giraffes, camels, ponies, goats, glittering with varnish and
metal that caught swift reflections from windows high above them. With
stiff wooden legs, they swept on in a never-ending race, while a great
orchestrion clamored in wild speed. The summer sunlight sprinkled its
gold upon the garnet canopies carried by the tireless racers and upon
all the devices of decoration that made Stimson's machine magnificent
and famous. A host of laughing children bestrode the animals, bending
forward like charging cavalrymen, and shaking reins and whooping in
glee. At intervals they leaned out perilously to clutch at iron rings
that were tendered to them by a long wooden arm. At the intense moment
before the swift grab for the rings one could see their little nervous
bodies quiver with eagerness; the laughter rang shrill and excited.
Down in the long rows of benches, crowds of people sat watching the
game, while occasionally a father might arise and go near to shout
encouragement, cautionary commands, or applause at his flying
offspring. Frequently mothers called out: "Be careful, Georgie!" The
orchestrion bellowed and thundered on its platform, filling the ears
with its long monotonous song. Over in a corner, a man in a white apron
and behind a counter roared above the tumult: "Popcorn! Popcorn!"
A young man stood upon a small, raised platform, erected in a manner of
a pulpit, and just without the line of the circling figures. It was his
duty to manipulate the wooden arm and affix the rings. When all were
gone into the hands of the triumphant children, he held forth a basket,
into which they returned all save the coveted brass one, which meant
another ride free and made the holder very illustrious. The young man
stood all day upon his narrow platform, affixing rings or holding forth
the basket. He was a sort of general squire in these lists of
childhood. He was very busy.
And yet Stimson, the astute, had noticed that the young man frequently
found time to twist about on his platform and smile at a girl who shyly
sold tickets behind a silvered netting. This, indeed, was the great
reason of Stimson's glowering. The young man upon the raised platform
had no manner of license to smile at the girl behind the silvered
netting. It was a most gigantic insolence. Stimson was amazed at it.
"By Jiminy," he said to himself again, "that fellow is smiling at my
daughter." Even in this tone of great wrath it could be discerned that
Stimson was filled with wonder that any youth should dare smile at the
daughter in the presence of the august father.
Often the dark-eyed girl peered between the shining wires, and, upon
being detected by the young man, she usually turned her head quickly to
prove to him that she was not interested. At other times, however, her
eyes seemed filled with a tender fear lest he should fall from that
exceedingly dangerous platform. As for the young man, it was plain that
these glances filled him with valor, and he stood carelessly upon his
perch, as if he deemed it of no consequence that he might fall from it.
In all the complexities of his daily life and duties he found
opportunity to gaze ardently at the vision behind the netting.
This silent courtship was conducted over the heads of the crowd who
thronged about the bright machine. The swift eloquent glances of the
young man went noiselessly and unseen with their message. There had
finally become established between the two in this manner a subtle
understanding and companionship. They communicated accurately all that
they felt. The boy told his love, his reverence, his hope in the
changes of the future. The girl told him that she loved him, and she
did not love him, that she did not know if she loved him. Sometimes a
little sign, saying "cashier" in gold letters, and hanging upon the
silvered netting, got directly in range and interfered with the tender
message.
The love affair had not continued without anger, unhappiness, despair.
The girl had once smiled brightly upon a youth who came to buy some
tickets for his little sister, and the young man upon the platform,
observing this smile, had been filled with gloomy rage. He stood like a
dark statue of vengeance upon his pedestal and thrust out the basket to
the children with a gesture that was full of scorn for their hollow
happiness, for their insecure and temporary joy. For five hours he did
not once look at the girl when she was looking at him. He was going to
crush her with his indifference; he was going to demonstrate that he
had never been serious. However, when he narrowly observed her in
secret he discovered that she seemed more blythe than was usual with
her. When he found that his apparent indifference had not crushed her
he suffered greatly. She did not love him, he concluded. If she had
loved him she would have been crushed. For two days he lived a
miserable existence upon his high perch. He consoled himself by
thinking of how unhappy he was, and by swift, furtive glances at the
loved face. At any rate he was in her presence, and he could get a good
view from his perch when there was no interference by the little sign:
"Cashier."
But suddenly, swiftly, these clouds vanished, and under the imperial
blue sky of the restored confidence they dwelt in peace, a peace that
was satisfaction, a peace that, like a babe, put its trust in the
treachery of the future. This confidence endured until the next day,
when she, for an unknown cause, suddenly refused to look at him.
Mechanically he continued his task, his brain dazed, a tortured victim
of doubt, fear, suspicion. With his eyes he supplicated her to
telegraph an explanation. She replied with a stony glance that froze
his blood. There was a great difference in their respective reasons for
becoming angry. His were always foolish, but apparent, plain as the
moon. Hers were subtle, feminine, as incomprehensible as the stars, as
mysterious as the shadows at night.
They fell and soared and soared and fell in this manner until they knew
that to live without each other would be a wandering in deserts. They
had grown so intent upon the uncertainties, the variations, the
guessings of their affair that the world had become but a huge
immaterial background. In time of peace their smiles were soft and
prayerful, caresses confided to the air. In time of war, their youthful
hearts, capable of profound agony, were wrung by the intricate emotions
of doubt. They were the victims of the dread angel of affectionate
speculation that forces the brain endlessly on roads that lead nowhere.
At night, the problem of whether she loved him confronted the young man
like a spectre, looming as high as a hill and telling him not to delude
himself. Upon the following day, this battle of the night displayed
itself in the renewed fervor of his glances and in their increased
number. Whenever he thought he could detect that she too was suffering,
he felt a thrill of joy.
But there came a time when the young man looked back upon these
contortions with contempt. He believed then that he had imagined his
pain. This came about when the redoubtable Stimson marched forward to
participate.
"This has got to stop," Stimson had said to himself, as he stood and
watched them. They had grown careless of the light world that clattered
about them; they were become so engrossed in their personal drama that
the language of their eyes was almost as obvious as gestures. And
Stimson, through his keenness, his wonderful, infallible penetration,
suddenly came into possession of these obvious facts. "Well, of all the
nerves," he said, regarding with a new interest the young man upon the
perch.
He was a resolute man. He never hesitated to grapple with a crisis. He
decided to overturn everything at once, for, although small, he was
very fierce and impetuous. He resolved to crush this dreaming.
He strode over to the silvered netting. "Say, you want to quit your
everlasting grinning at that idiot," he said, grimly.
The girl cast down her eyes and made a little heap of quarters into a
stack. She was unable to withstand the terrible scrutiny of her small
and fierce father.
Stimson turned from his daughter and went to a spot beneath the
platform. He fixed his eyes upon the young man and said--
"I've been speakin' to Lizzie. You better attend strictly to your own
business or there'll be a new man here next week." It was as if he had
blazed away with a shotgun. The young man reeled upon his perch. At
last he in a measure regained his composure and managed to stammer:
"A--all right, sir." He knew that denials would be futile with the
terrible Stimson. He agitatedly began to rattle the rings in the
basket, and pretend that he was obliged to count them or inspect them
in some way. He, too, was unable to face the great Stimson.
For a moment, Stimson stood in fine satisfaction and gloated over the
effect of his threat.
"I've fixed them," he said complacently, and went out to smoke a cigar
and revel in himself. Through his mind went the proud reflection that
people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended in quick
and abject submission.
II
One evening, a week after Stimson had indulged in the proud reflection
that people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended in
quick and abject submission, a young feminine friend of the girl behind
the silvered netting came to her there and asked her to walk on the
beach after "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round" was closed for the
night. The girl assented with a nod.
The young man upon the perch holding the rings saw this nod and judged
its meaning. Into his mind came an idea of defeating the watchfulness
of the redoubtable Stimson. When the Merry-Go-Round was closed and the
two girls started for the beach, he wandered off aimlessly in another
direction, but he kept them in view, and as soon as he was assured that
he had escaped the vigilance of Stimson, he followed them.
The electric lights on the beach made a broad band of tremoring light,
extending parallel to the sea, and upon the wide walk there slowly
paraded a great crowd, intermingling, intertwining, sometimes
colliding. In the darkness stretched the vast purple expanse of the
ocean, and the deep indigo sky above was peopled with yellow stars.
Occasionally out upon the water a whirling mass of froth suddenly
flashed into view, like a great ghostly robe appearing, and then
vanished, leaving the sea in its darkness, whence came those bass tones
of the water's unknown emotion. A wind, cool, reminiscent of the wave
wastes, made the women hold their wraps about their throats, and caused
the men to grip the rims of their straw hats. It carried the noise of
the band in the pavilion in gusts. Sometimes people unable to hear the
music glanced up at the pavilion and were reassured upon beholding the
distant leader still gesticulating and bobbing, and the other members
of the band with their lips glued to their instruments. High in the sky
soared an unassuming moon, faintly silver.
For a time the young man was afraid to approach the two girls; he
followed them at a distance and called himself a coward. At last,
however, he saw them stop on the outer edge of the crowd and stand
silently listening to the voices of the sea. When he came to where they
stood, he was trembling in his agitation. They had not seen him.
"Lizzie," he began. "I----"
The girl wheeled instantly and put her hand to her throat.
"Oh, Frank, how you frightened me," she said--inevitably.
"Well, you know, I--I----" he stuttered.
But the other girl was one of those beings who are born to attend at
tragedies. She had for love a reverence, an admiration that was greater
the more that she contemplated the fact that she knew nothing of it.
This couple, with their emotions, awed her and made her humbly wish
that she might be destined to be of some service to them. She was very
homely.
When the young man faltered before them, she, in her sympathy, actually
over-estimated the crisis, and felt that he might fall dying at their
feet. Shyly, but with courage, she marched to the rescue.
"Won't you come and walk on the beach with us?" she said.
The young man gave her a glance of deep gratitude which was not without
the patronage which a man in his condition naturally feels for one who
pities it. The three walked on.
Finally, the being who was born to attend at this tragedy said that she
wished to sit down and gaze at the sea, alone.
They politely urged her to walk on with them, but she was obstinate.
She wished to gaze at the sea, alone. The young man swore to himself
that he would be her friend until he died.
And so the two young lovers went on without her. They turned once to
look at her.
"Jennie's awful nice," said the girl.
"You bet she is," replied the young man, ardently.
They were silent for a little time.
At last the girl said--
"You were angry at me yesterday."
"No, I wasn't."
"Yes, you were, too. You wouldn't look at me once all day."
"No, I wasn't angry. I was only putting on."
Though she had, of course, known it, this confession seemed to make her
very indignant. She flashed a resentful glance at him.
"Oh, you were, indeed?" she said with a great air.
For a few minutes she was so haughty with him that he loved her to
madness. And directly this poem, which stuck at his lips, came forth
lamely in fragments.
When they walked back toward the other girl and saw the patience of her
attitude, their hearts swelled in a patronizing and secondary
tenderness for her.
They were very happy. If they had been miserable they would have
charged this fairy scene of the night with a criminal heartlessness;
but as they were joyous, they vaguely wondered how the purple sea, the
yellow stars, the changing crowds under the electric lights could be so
phlegmatic and stolid.
They walked home by the lakeside way, and out upon the water those gay
paper lanterns, flashing, fleeting, and careering, sang to them, sang a
chorus of red and violet, and green and gold; a song of mystic bands of
the future.
One day, when business paused during a dull sultry afternoon, Stimson
went up town. Upon his return, he found that the popcorn man, from his
stand over in a corner, was keeping an eye upon the cashier's cage, and
that nobody at all was attending to the wooden arm and the iron rings.
He strode forward like a sergeant of grenadiers.
"Where in thunder is Lizzie?" he demanded, a cloud of rage in his eyes.
The popcorn man, although associated long with Stimson, had never got
over being dazed.
"They've--they've--gone round to th'--th'--house," he said with
difficulty, as if he had just been stunned.
"Whose house?" snapped Stimson.
"Your--your house, I s'pose," said the popcorn man.
Stimson marched round to his home. Kingly denunciations surged, already
formulated, to the tip of his tongue, and he bided the moment when his
anger could fall upon the heads of that pair of children. He found his
wife convulsive and in tears.
"Where's Lizzie?"
And then she burst forth--"Oh--John--John--they've run away, I know
they have. They drove by here not three minutes ago. They must have
done it on purpose to bid me good-bye, for Lizzie waved her hand
sadlike; and then, before I could get out to ask where they were going
or what, Frank whipped up the horse."
Stimson gave vent to a dreadful roar.
"Get my revolver--get a hack--get my revolver, do you hear--what the
devil--" His voice became incoherent.
He had always ordered his wife about as if she were a battalion of
infantry, and despite her misery, the training of years forced her to
spring mechanically to obey; but suddenly she turned to him with a
shrill appeal.
"Oh, John--not--the--revolver."
"Confound it, let go of me!" he roared again, and shook her from him.
He ran hatless upon the street. There were a multitude of hacks at the
summer resort, but it was ages to him before he could find one. Then he
charged it like a bull.
"Uptown!" he yelled, as he tumbled into the rear seat.
The hackman thought of severed arteries. His galloping horse distanced
a large number of citizens who had been running to find what caused
such contortions by the little hatless man.
It chanced as the bouncing hack went along near the lake, Stimson gazed
across the calm grey expanse and recognized a color in a bonnet and a
pose of a head. A buggy was traveling along a highway that led to
Sorington. Stimson bellowed--"There--there--there they are--in that
buggy."
The hackman became inspired with the full knowledge of the situation.
He struck a delirious blow with the whip. His mouth expanded in a grin
of excitement and joy. It came to pass that this old vehicle, with its
drowsy horse and its dusty-eyed and tranquil driver, seemed suddenly to
awaken, to become animated and fleet. The horse ceased to ruminate on
his state, his air of reflection vanished. He became intent upon his
aged legs and spread them in quaint and ridiculous devices for speed.
The driver, his eyes shining, sat critically in his seat. He watched
each motion of this rattling machine down before him. He resembled an
engineer. He used the whip with judgment and deliberation as the
engineer would have used coal or oil. The horse clacked swiftly upon
the macadam, the wheels hummed, the body of the vehicle wheezed and
groaned.
Stimson, in the rear seat, was erect in that impassive attitude that
comes sometimes to the furious man when he is obliged to leave the
battle to others. Frequently, however, the tempest in his breast came
to his face and he howled--
"Go it--go it--you're gaining; pound 'im! Thump the life out of 'im;
hit 'im hard, you fool!" His hand grasped the rod that supported the
carriage top, and it was clenched so that the nails were faintly blue.
Ahead, that other carriage had been flying with speed, as from
realization of the menace in the rear. It bowled away rapidly, drawn by
the eager spirit of a young and modern horse. Stimson could see the
buggy-top bobbing, bobbing. That little pane, like an eye, was a
derision to him. Once he leaned forward and bawled angry sentences. He
began to feel impotent; his whole expedition was a tottering of an old
man upon a trail of birds. A sense of age made him choke again with
wrath. That other vehicle, that was youth, with youth's pace; it was
swift-flying with the hope of dreams. He began to comprehend those two
children ahead of him, and he knew a sudden and strange awe, because he
understood the power of their young blood, the power to fly strongly
into the future and feel and hope again, even at that time when his
bones must be laid in the earth. The dust rose easily from the hot road
and stifled the nostrils of Stimson.
The highway vanished far away in a point with a suggestion of
intolerable length. The other vehicle was becoming so small that
Stimson could no longer see the derisive eye.
At last the hackman drew rein to his horse and turned to look at
Stimson.
"No use, I guess," he said.
Stimson made a gesture of acquiescence, rage, despair. As the hackman
turned his dripping horse about, Stimson sank back with the
astonishment and grief of a man who has been defied by the universe. He
had been in a great perspiration, and now his bald head felt cool and
uncomfortable. He put up his hand with a sudden recollection that he
had forgotten his hat.
At last he made a gesture. It meant that at any rate he was not
responsible.
A TENT IN AGONY
A SULLIVAN COUNTY TALE
Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless forest to fish. They
pitched their tent fair upon the brow of a pine-clothed ridge of riven
rocks whence a bowlder could be made to crash through the brush and
whirl past the trees to the lake below. On fragrant hemlock boughs they
slept the sleep of unsuccessful fishermen, for upon the lake
alternately the sun made them lazy and the rain made them wet. Finally
they ate the last bit of bacon and smoked and burned the last fearful
and wonderful hoecake.
Immediately a little man volunteered to stay and hold the camp while
the remaining three should go the Sullivan county miles to a farmhouse
for supplies. They gazed at him dismally. "There's only one of you--the
devil make a twin," they said in parting malediction, and disappeared
down the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin. When it came
night and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little
man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with
logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a
thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the
approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead
leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to
fit his back, his pipe dropped from his mouth, his knees smote each
other. "Hah!" he bellowed hoarsely in menace. A growl replied and a
bear paced into the light of the fire. The little man supported himself
upon a sapling and regarded his visitor.
The bear was evidently a veteran and a fighter, for the black of his
coat had become tawny with age. There was confidence in his gait and
arrogance in his small, twinkling eye. He rolled back his lips and
disclosed his white teeth. The fire magnified the red of his mouth. The
little man had never before confronted the terrible and he could not
wrest it from his breast. "Hah!" he roared. The bear interpreted this
as the challenge of a gladiator. He approached warily. As he came near,
the boots of fear were suddenly upon the little man's feet. He cried
out and then darted around the campfire. "Ho!" said the bear to
himself, "this thing won't fight--it runs. Well, suppose I catch it."
So upon his features there fixed the animal look of going--somewhere.
He started intensely around the campfire. The little man shrieked and
ran furiously. Twice around they went.
The hand of heaven sometimes falls heavily upon the righteous. The bear
gained.
In desperation the little man flew into the tent. The bear stopped and
sniffed at the entrance. He scented the scent of many men. Finally he
ventured in.
The little man crouched in a distant corner. The bear advanced,
creeping, his blood burning, his hair erect, his jowls dripping. The
little man yelled and rustled clumsily under the flap at the end of the
tent. The bear snarled awfully and made a jump and a grab at his
disappearing game. The little man, now without the tent, felt a
tremendous paw grab his coat tails. He squirmed and wriggled out of his
coat like a schoolboy in the hands of an avenger. The bear bowled
triumphantly and jerked the coat into the tent and took two bites, a
punch and a hug before he, discovered his man was not in it. Then he
grew not very angry, for a bear on a spree is not a black-haired
pirate. He is merely a hoodlum. He lay down on his back, took the coat
on his four paws and began to play uproariously with it. The most
appalling, blood-curdling whoops and yells came to where the little man
was crying in a treetop and froze his blood. He moaned a little speech
meant for a prayer and clung convulsively to the bending branches. He
gazed with tearful wistfulness at where his comrade, the campfire, was
giving dying flickers and crackles. Finally, there was a roar from the
tent which eclipsed all roars; a snarl which it seemed would shake the
stolid silence of the mountain and cause it to shrug its granite
shoulders. The little man quaked and shrivelled to a grip and a pair of
eyes. In the glow of the embers he saw the white tent quiver and fall
with a crash. The bear's merry play had disturbed the center pole and
brought a chaos of canvas upon his head.
Now the little man became the witness of a mighty scene. The tent began
to flounder. It took flopping strides in the direction of the lake.
Marvellous sounds came from within--rips and tears, and great groans
and pants. The little man went into giggling hysterics.
The entangled monster failed to extricate himself before he had
walloped the tent frenziedly to the edge of the mountain. So it came to
pass that three men, clambering up the hill with bundles and baskets,
saw their tent approaching. It seemed to them like a white-robed
phantom pursued by hornets. Its moans riffled the hemlock twigs.
The three men dropped their bundles and scurried to one side, their
eyes gleaming with fear. The canvas avalanche swept past them. They
leaned, faint and dumb, against trees and listened, their blood
stagnant. Below them it struck the base of a great pine tree, where it
writhed and struggled. The three watched its convolutions a moment and
then started terrifically for the top of the hill. As they disappeared,
the bear cut loose with a mighty effort. He cast one dishevelled and
agonized look at the white thing, and then started wildly for the inner
recesses of the forest.
The three fear-stricken individuals ran to the rebuilt fire. The little
man reposed by it calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed
him with interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long,
pompous puff. "There's only one of me--and the devil made a twin," he
said.
FOUR MEN IN A CAVE
LIKEWISE FOUR QUEENS, AND A SULLIVAN COUNTY HERMIT
The moon rested for a moment on the top of a tall pine on a hill.
The little man was standing in front of the campfire making orations to
his companions.
"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city if we
investigate this thing," said he, in conclusion.
They were won.
The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its black
mouth had gaped at him. The four men took a lighted pine-knot and
clambered over boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountainside
lay a little tilted hole. At its side they halted.
"Well?" said the little man.
They fought for last place and the little man was overwhelmed. He tried
to struggle from under by crying that if the fat, pudgy man came after,
he would be corked. But he finally administered a cursing over his
shoulder and crawled into the hole. His companions gingerly followed.
A passage, the floor of damp clay and pebbles, the walls slimy,
green-mossed, and dripping, sloped downward. In the cave atmosphere the
torches became studies in red blaze and black smoke.
"Ho!" cried the little man, stifled and bedraggled, "let's go back."
His companions were not brave. They were last. The next one to the
little man pushed him on, so the little man said sulphurous words and
cautiously continued his crawl.
Things that hung seemed to be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to drop
upon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemed
alive and writhing. When the little man endeavored to stand erect the
ceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. His
clothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by
smoke, tried to pierce the darkness always before his torch.
"Oh, I say, you fellows, let's go back," cried he. At that moment he
caught the gleam of trembling light in the blurred shadows before him.
"Ho!" he said, "here's another way out."
The passage turned abruptly. The little man put one hand around the
corner, but it touched nothing. He investigated and discovered that the
little corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone a
yellow light.
The little man wriggled painfully about, and descended feet in advance.
The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care.
The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and
roared thunderously below him, lesser stone loosened by the men above
him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and,
turning halfway about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and
careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the
rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were
in his blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. The
pause of the little man angered him.
"Go on, you fool!" he shouted. "Poor, painted man, you are afraid."
"Ho!" said the little man. "Come down here and go on yourself,
imbecile!"
The pudgy man vibrated with passion. He leaned downward. "Idiot--"
He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed into
the man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a
slippery incline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost
the support of one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote
the next man, who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon
the cursing little man.
They slid in a body down over the slippery, slimy floor of the passage.
The stone avenue must have wibble-wobbled with the rush of this ball of
tangled men and strangled cries. The torches went out with the combined
assault upon the little man. The adventurers whirled to the unknown in
darkness. The little man felt that he was pitching to death, but even
in his convolutions he bit and scratched at his companions, for he was
satisfied that it was their fault. The swirling mass went some twenty
feet, and lit upon a level, dry place in a strong, yellow light of
candles. It dissolved and became eyes.
The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small
fire smoldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In
another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets.
Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel.
Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did
not curse the little man, nor did the little man swear, in the
abstract. Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the center of the room of
rocks.
A great, gray stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle of
the floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung from
the ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped
in his yellow fingers, stood a man. He was an infinitely sallow person
in the brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his
apparel was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed
glinting, fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless.
Fascinated, their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to
their feet. The gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the
group until it found the face of the little man. There it stayed and
burned.
The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under the
glass.
Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from a
cave, cold, solemn, and damp.
"It's your ante," he said.
"What?" said the little man.
The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either the
chatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box.
His visitors' flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones.
They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. They
whispered.
"A vampire!" said one.
"A ghoul!" said another.
"A Druid before the sacrifice," murmured another.
"The shade of an Aztec witch doctor," said the little man.
As they looked, the inscrutable face underwent a change. It became a
livid background for his eyes, which blazed at the little man like
impassioned carbuncles. His voice arose to a howl of ferocity. "It's
your ante!" With a panther-like motion he drew a long, thin knife and
advanced, stooping. Two cadaverous hounds came from nowhere, and,
scowling and growling, made desperate feints at the little man's legs.
His quaking companions pushed him forward.
Tremblingly he put his hand to his pocket.
"How much?" he said, with a shivering look at the knife that glittered.
The carbuncles faded.
"Three dollars," said the hermit, in sepulchral tones which rang
against the walls and among the passages, awakening long-dead spirits
with voices. The shaking little man took a roll of bills from a pocket
and placed "three ones" upon the altar-like stone. The recluse looked
at the little volume with reverence in his eyes. It was a pack of
playing cards.
Under the three swinging candles, upon the altar-like stone, the grey
beard and the agonized little man played at poker. The three other men
crouched in a corner, and stared with eyes that gleamed with terror.
Before them sat the cadaverous hounds licking their red lips. The
candles burned low, and began to flicker. The fire in the corner
expired.
Finally, the game came to a point where the little man laid down his
hand and quavered: "I can't call you this time, sir. I'm dead broke."
"What?" shrieked the recluse. "Not call me! Villain Dastard! Cur! I
have four queens, miscreant." His voice grew so mighty that it could
not fit his throat. He choked wrestling with his lungs for a moment.
Then the power of his body was concentrated in a word: "Go!"
He pointed a quivering, yellow finger at a wide crack in the rock. The
little man threw himself at it with a howl. His erstwhile frozen
companions felt their blood throb again. With great bounds they plunged
after the little man. A minute of scrambling, falling, and pushing
brought them to open air. They climbed the distance to their camp in
furious springs.
The sky in the east was a lurid yellow. In the west the footprints of
departing night lay on the pine trees. In front of their replenished
camp fire sat John Willerkins, the guide.
"Hello!" he shouted at their approach. "Be you fellers ready to go deer
huntin'?"
Without replying, they stopped and debated among themselves in whispers.
Finally, the pudgy man came forward.
"John," he inquired, "do you know anything peculiar about this cave
below here?"
"Yes," said Willerkins at once; "Tom Gardner."
"What?" said the pudgy man.
"Tom Gardner."
"How's that?"
"Well, you see," said Willerkins slowly, as he took dignified pulls at
his pipe, "Tom Gardner was once a fambly man, who lived in these here
parts on a nice leetle farm. He uster go away to the city orften, and
one time he got a-gamblin' in one of them there dens. He went ter the
dickens right quick then. At last he kum home one time and tol' his
folks he had up and sold the farm and all he had in the worl'. His
leetle wife she died then. Tom he went crazy, and soon after--"
The narrative was interrupted by the little man, who became possessed
of devils.
"I wouldn't give a cuss if he had left me 'nough money to get home on
the doggoned, grey-haired red pirate," he shrilled, in a seething
sentence. The pudgy man gazed at the little man calmly and sneeringly.
"Oh, well," he said, "we can tell a great tale when we get back to the
city after having investigated this thing."
"Go to the devil," replied the little man.
THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN
A TALE OF SULLIVAN COUNTY
On the brow of a pine-plumed hillock there sat a little man with his
back against a tree. A venerable pipe hung from his mouth, and
smoke-wreaths curled slowly skyward, he was muttering to himself with
his eyes fixed on an irregular black opening in the green wall of
forest at the foot of the hill. Two vague wagon ruts led into the
shadows. The little man took his pipe in his hands and addressed the
listening pines.
"I wonder what the devil it leads to," said he.
A grey, fat rabbit came lazily from a thicket and sat in the opening.
Softly stroking his stomach with his paw, he looked at the little man
in a thoughtful manner. The little man threw a stone, and the rabbit
blinked and ran through an opening. Green, shadowy portals seemed to
close behind him.
The little man started. "He's gone down that roadway," he said, with
ecstatic mystery to the pines. He sat a long time and contemplated the
door to the forest. Finally, he arose, and awakening his limbs, started
away. But he stopped and looked back.
"I can't imagine what it leads to," muttered he. He trudged over the
brown mats of pine needles, to where, in a fringe of laurel, a tent was
pitched, and merry flames caroused about some logs. A pudgy man was
fuming over a collection of tin dishes. He came forward and waved a
plate furiously in the little man's face.
"I've washed the dishes for three days. What do you think I am--"
He ended a red oration with a roar: "Damned if I do it any more."
The little man gazed dim-eyed away. "I've been wonderin' what it leads
to."
"What?"
"That road out yonder. I've been wonderin' what it leads to. Maybe,
some discovery or something," said the little man.
The pudgy man laughed. "You're an idiot. It leads to ol' Jim Boyd's
over on the Lumberland Pike."
"Ho!" said the little man, "I don't believe that."
The pudgy man swore. "Fool, what does it lead to, then?"
"I don't know just what, but I'm sure it leads to something great or
something. It looks like it."
While the pudgy man was cursing, two more men came from obscurity with
fish dangling from birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviously
herculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cup
of coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man was
wandering off.
"He's gone to look at that hole," cried the pudgy man.
The little man went to the edge of the pine-plumed hillock, and,
sitting down, began to make smoke and regard the door to the forest.
There was stillness for an hour. Compact clouds hung unstirred in the
sky. The pines stood motionless, and pondering.
Suddenly the little man slapped his knees and bit his tongue. He stood
up and determinedly filled his pipe, rolling his eye over the bowl to
the doorway. Keeping his eyes fixed he slid dangerously to the foot of
the hillock and walked down the wagon ruts. A moment later he passed
from the noise of the sunshine to the gloom of the woods.
The green portals closed, shutting out live things. The little man
trudged on alone.
Tall tangled grass grew in the roadway, and the trees bended
obstructing branches. The little man followed on over pine-clothed
ridges and down through water-soaked swales. His shoes were cut by
rocks of the mountains, and he sank ankle-deep in mud and moss of
swamps. A curve just ahead lured him miles.
Finally, as he wended the side of a ridge, the road disappeared from
beneath his feet. He battled with hordes of ignorant bushes on his way
to knolls and solitary trees which invited him. Once he came to a tall,
bearded pine. He climbed it, and perceived in the distance a peak. He
uttered an ejaculation and fell out.
He scrambled to his feet, and said: "That's Jones's Mountain, I guess.
It's about six miles from our camp as the crow flies."
He changed his course away from the mountain, and attacked the bushes
again. He climbed over great logs, golden-brown in decay, and was
opposed by thickets of dark-green laurel. A brook slid through the ooze
of a swamp, cedars and hemlocks hung their spray to the edges of pools.
The little man began to stagger in his walk. After a time he stopped
and mopped his brow.
"My legs are about to shrivel up and drop off," he said.... "Still if I
keep on in this direction, I am safe to strike the Lumberland Pike
before sundown."
He dived at a clump of tag-alders, and emerging, confronted Jones's
Mountain.
The wanderer sat down in a clear space and fixed his eyes on the
summit. His mouth opened widely, and his body swayed at times. The
little man and the peak stared in silence.
A lazy lake lay asleep near the foot of the mountain. In its bed of
water-grass some frogs leered at the sky and crooned. The sun sank in
red silence, and the shadows of the pines grew formidable. The
expectant hush of evening, as if some thing were going to sing a hymn,
fell upon the peak and the little man.
A leaping pickerel off on the water created a silver circle that was
lost in black shadows. The little man shook himself and started to his
feet, crying: "For the love of Mike, there's eyes in this mountain! I
feel 'em! Eyes!"
He fell on his face.
When he looked again, he immediately sprang erect and ran.
"It's comin'!"
The mountain was approaching.
The little man scurried, sobbing through the thick growth. He felt his
brain turning to water. He vanquished brambles with mighty bounds.
But after a time he came again to the foot of the mountain.
"God!" he howled, "it's been follerin' me." He grovelled.
Casting his eyes upward made circles swirl in his blood.
"I'm shackled I guess," he moaned. As he felt the heel of the mountain
about to crush his head, he sprang again to his feet. He grasped a
handful of small stones and hurled them.
"Damn you," he shrieked loudly. The pebbles rang against the face of
the mountain.
The little man then made an attack. He climbed with hands and feet
wildly. Brambles forced him back and stones slid from beneath his feet.
The peak swayed and tottered, and was ever about to smite with a
granite arm. The summit was a blaze of red wrath.
But the little man at last reached the top. Immediately he swaggered
with valor to the edge of the cliff. His hands were scornfully in his
pockets.
He gazed at the western horizon, edged sharply against a yellow sky.
"Ho!" he said. "There's Boyd's house and the Lumberland Pike."
The mountain under his feet was motionless.
THE SNAKE
Where the path wended across the ridge, the bushes of huckleberry and
sweet fern swarmed at it in two curling waves until it was a mere
winding line traced through a tangle. There was no interference by
clouds, and as the rays of the sun fell full upon the ridge, they
called into voice innumerable insects which chanted the heat of the
summer day in steady, throbbing, unending chorus.
A man and a dog came from the laurel thickets of the valley where the
white brook brawled with the rocks. They followed the deep line of the
path across the ridges. The dog--a large lemon and white
setter--walked, tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.
Suddenly from some unknown and yet near place in advance there came a
dry, shrill whistling rattle that smote motion instantly from the limbs
of the man and the dog. Like the fingers of a sudden death, this sound
seemed to touch the man at the nape of the neck, at the top of the
spine, and change him, as swift as thought, to a statue of listening
horror, surprise, rage. The dog, too--the same icy hand was laid upon
him, and he stood crouched and quivering, his jaw dropping, the froth
of terror upon his lips, the light of hatred in his eyes.
Slowly the man moved his hands toward the bushes, but his glance did
not turn from the place made sinister by the warning rattle. His
fingers, unguided, sought for a stick of weight and strength. Presently
they closed about one that seemed adequate, and holding this weapon
poised before him the man moved slowly forward, glaring. The dog with
his nervous nostrils fairly fluttering moved warily, one foot at a
time, after his master.
But when the man came upon the snake, his body underwent a shock as if
from a revelation, as if after all he had been ambushed. With a
blanched face, he sprang forward and his breath came in strained gasps,
his chest heaving as if he were in the performance of an extraordinary
muscular trial. His arm with the stick made a spasmodic, defensive
gesture.
The snake had apparently been crossing the path in some mystic travel
when to his sense there came the knowledge of the coming of his foes.
The dull vibration perhaps informed him, and he flung his body to face
the danger. He had no knowledge of paths; he had no wit to tell him to
slink noiselessly into the bushes. He knew that his implacable enemies
were approaching; no doubt they were seeking him, hunting him. And so
he cried his cry, an incredibly swift jangle of tiny bells, as burdened
with pathos as the hammering upon quaint cymbals by the Chinese at
war--for, indeed, it was usually his death-music.
"Beware! Beware! Beware!"
The man and the snake confronted each other. In the man's eyes were
hatred and fear. In the snake's eyes were hatred and fear. These
enemies maneuvered, each preparing to kill. It was to be a battle
without mercy. Neither knew of mercy for such a situation. In the man
was all the wild strength of the terror of his ancestors, of his race,
of his kind. A deadly repulsion had been handed from man to man through
long dim centuries. This was another detail of a war that had begun
evidently when first there were men and snakes. Individuals who do not
participate in this strife incur the investigations of scientists. Once
there was a man and a snake who were friends, and at the end, the man
lay dead with the marks of the snake's caress just over his East Indian
heart. In the formation of devices, hideous and horrible, Nature
reached her supreme point in the making of the snake, so that priests
who really paint hell well fill it with snakes instead of fire. The
curving forms, these scintillant coloring create at once, upon sight,
more relentless animosities than do shake barbaric tribes. To be born a
snake is to be thrust into a place a-swarm with formidable foes. To
gain an appreciation of it, view hell as pictured by priests who are
really skilful.
As for this snake in the pathway, there was a double curve some inches
back of its head, which, merely by the potency of its lines, made the
man feel with tenfold eloquence the touch of the death-fingers at the
nape of his neck. The reptile's head was waving slowly from side to
side and its hot eyes flashed like little murder-lights. Always in the
air was the dry, shrill whistling of the rattles.
"Beware! Beware! Beware!"
The man made a preliminary feint with his stick. Instantly the snake's
heavy head and neck were bended back on the double curve and instantly
the snake's body shot forward in a low, strait, hard spring. The man
jumped with a convulsive chatter and swung his stick. The blind,
sweeping blow fell upon the snake's head and hurled him so that
steel-colored plates were for a moment uppermost. But he rallied
swiftly, agilely, and again the head and neck bended back to the double
curve, and the steaming, wide-open mouth made its desperate effort to
reach its enemy. This attack, it could be seen, was despairing, but it
was nevertheless impetuous, gallant, ferocious, of the same quality as
the charge of the lone chief when the walls of white faces close upon
him in the mountains. The stick swung unerringly again, and the snake,
mutilated, torn, whirled himself into the last coil.
And now the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of his
forefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped the
stick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake,
tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself
upon this stick which was taking his life.
At the end, the man clutched his stick and stood watching in silence.
The dog came slowly and with infinite caution stretched his nose
forward, sniffing. The hair upon his neck and back moved and ruffled as
if a sharp wind was blowing, the last muscular quivers of the snake
were causing the rattles to still sound their treble cry, the shrill,
ringing war chant and hymn of the grave of the thing that faces foes at
once countless, implacable, and superior.
"Well, Rover," said the man, turning to the dog with a grin of victory,
"we'll carry Mr. Snake home to show the girls."
His hands still trembled from the strain of the encounter, but he pried
with his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thing
upon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walked
tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.
LONDON IMPRESSIONS
CHAPTER I
London at first consisted of a porter with the most charming manners in
the world, and a cabman with a supreme intelligence, both observing my
profound ignorance without contempt or humor of any kind observable in
their manners. It was in a great resounding vault of a place where
there were many people who had come home, and I was displeased because
they knew the detail of the business, whereas I was confronting the
inscrutable. This made them appear very stony-hearted to the sufferings
of one of whose existence, to be sure, they were entirely unaware, and
I remember taking great pleasure in disliking them heartily for it. I
was in an agony of mind over my baggage, or my luggage, or my--perhaps
it is well to shy around this terrible international question; but I
remember that when I was a lad I was told that there was a whole nation
that said luggage instead of baggage, and my boyish mind was filled at
the time with incredulity and scorn. In the present case it was a thing
that I understood to involve the most hideous confessions of imbecility
on my part, because I had evidently to go out to some obscure point and
espy it and claim it, and take trouble for it; and I would rather have
had my pockets filled with bread and cheese, and had no baggage at all.
Mind you, this was not at all a homage that I was paying to London. I
was paying homage to a new game. A man properly lazy does not like new
experiences until they become old ones. Moreover, I have been taught
that a man, any man, who has a thousand times more points of
information on a certain thing than I have will bully me because of it,
and pour his advantages upon my bowed head until I am drenched with his
superiority. It was in my education to concede some license of the kind
in this case, but the holy father of a porter and the saintly cabman
occupied the middle distance imperturbably, and did not come down from
their hills to clout me with knowledge. From this fact I experienced a
criminal elation. I lost view of the idea that if I had been
brow-beaten by porters and cabmen from one end of the United States to
the other end I should warmly like it, because in numbers they are
superior to me, and collectively they can have a great deal of fun out
of a matter that would merely afford me the glee of the latent butcher.
This London, composed of a porter and a cabman, stood to me subtly as a
benefactor. I had scanned the drama, and found that I did not believe
that the mood of the men emanated unduly from the feature that there
was probably more shillings to the square inch of me than there were
shillings to the square inch of them. Nor yet was it any manner of
palpable warm-heartedness or other natural virtue. But it was a perfect
artificial virtue; it was drill, plain, simple drill. And now was I
glad of their drilling, and vividly approved of it, because I saw that
it was good for me. Whether it was good or bad for the porter and the
cabman I could not know; but that point, mark you, came within the pale
of my respectable rumination.
I am sure that it would have been more correct for me to have alighted
upon St. Paul's and described no emotion until I was overcome by the
Thames Embankment and the Houses of Parliament. But as a matter of fact
I did not see them for some days, and at this time they did not concern
me at all. I was born in London at a railroad station, and my new
vision encompassed a porter and a cabman. They deeply absorbed me in
new phenomena, and I did not then care to see the Thames Embankment nor
the Houses of Parliament. I considered the porter and the cabman to be
more important.