It is very much the custom to view life as if it were exactly ruled in
two, like sleep and waking; the provinces of play and business standing
separate. The business side of my career in San Francisco has been now
disposed of; I approach the chapter of diversion; and it will be found
they had about an equal share in building up the story of the Wrecker--a
gentleman whose appearance may be presently expected.
With all my occupations, some six afternoons and two or three odd
evenings remained at my disposal every week: a circumstance the more
agreeable as I was a stranger in a city singularly picturesque.
From what I had once called myself, The Amateur Parisian, I grew (or
declined) into a waterside prowler, a lingerer on wharves, a frequenter
of shy neighbourhoods, a scraper of acquaintance with eccentric
characters. I visited Chinese and Mexican gambling-hells, German secret
societies, sailors' boarding-houses, and “dives” of every complexion of
the disreputable and dangerous. I have seen greasy Mexican hands pinned
to the table with a knife for cheating, seamen (when blood-money ran
high) knocked down upon the public street and carried insensible on
board short-handed ships, shots exchanged, and the smoke (and the
company) dispersing from the doors of the saloon. I have heard
cold-minded Polacks debate upon the readiest method of burning San
Francisco to the ground, hot-headed working men and women bawl and swear
in the tribune at the Sandlot, and Kearney himself open his subscription
for a gallows, name the manufacturers who were to grace it with their
dangling bodies, and read aloud to the delighted multitude a telegram of
adhesion from a member of the State legislature: all which preparations
of proletarian war were (in a moment) breathed upon and abolished by the
mere name and fame of Mr. Coleman. That lion of the Vigilantes had but
to rouse himself and shake his ears, and the whole brawling mob was
silenced. I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was,
to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be so
feared by a whole city; and if I was disappointed, in my character of
looker-on, to have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of a
shot or the hanging of a single millionnaire, philosophy tried to tell
me that this sight was truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns
and different epochs I might have had occasion to behold the cowardice
and carnage of street fighting; where else, but only there and then,
could I have enjoyed a view of Coleman (the intermittent despot) walking
meditatively up hill in a quiet part of town, with a very rolling gait,
and slapping gently his great thigh?
Minora Canamus. This historic figure stalks silently through a corner
of the San Francisco of my memory: the rest is bric-a-brac, the
reminiscences of a vagrant sketcher. My delight was much in slums.
Little Italy was a haunt of mine; there I would look in at the windows
of small eating-shops, transported bodily from Genoa or Naples, with
their macaroni, and chianti flasks, and portraits of Garibaldi, and
coloured political caricatures; or (entering in) hold high debate with
some ear-ringed fisher of the bay as to the designs of “Mr. Owstria” and
“Mr. Rooshia.” I was often to be observed (had there been any to observe
me) in that dis-peopled, hill-side solitude of Little Mexico, with its
crazy wooden houses, endless crazy wooden stairs, and perilous mountain
goat-paths in the sand. Chinatown by a thousand eccentricities drew
and held me; I could never have enough of its ambiguous, interracial
atmosphere, as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at its
outlandish, necromantic-looking vegetables set forth to sell in
commonplace American shop-windows, its temple doors open and the scent
of the joss-stick streaming forth on the American air, its kites of
Oriental fashion hanging fouled in Western telegraph-wires, its flights
of paper prayers which the trade-wind hunts and dissipates along
Western gutters. I was a frequent wanderer on North Beach, gazing at
the straits, and the huge Cape-Horners creeping out to sea, and imminent
Tamalpais. Thence, on my homeward way, I might visit that strange and
filthy shed, earth-paved and walled with the cages of wild animals and
birds, where at a ramshackle counter, amid the yells of monkeys, and a
poignant atmosphere of menagerie, forty-rod whiskey was administered by
a proprietor as dirty as his beasts. Nor did I even neglect Nob
Hill, which is itself a kind of slum, being the habitat of the mere
millionnaire. There they dwell upon the hill-top, high raised above
man's clamour, and the trade-wind blows between their palaces about
deserted streets.
But San Francisco is not herself only. She is not only the most
interesting city in the Union, and the hugest smelting-pot of races and
the precious metals. She keeps, besides, the doors of the Pacific, and
is the port of entry to another world and an earlier epoch in man's
history. Nowhere else shall you observe (in the ancient phrase) so many
tall ships as here convene from round the Horn, from China, from Sydney,
and the Indies; but scarce remarked amid that crowd of deep-sea giants,
another class of craft, the Island schooner, circulates: low in the
water, with lofty spars and dainty lines, rigged and fashioned like
a yacht, manned with brown-skinned, soft-spoken, sweet-eyed native
sailors, and equipped with their great double-ender boats that tell a
tale of boisterous sea-beaches. These steal out and in again, unnoted by
the world or even the newspaper press, save for the line in the clearing
column, “Schooner So-and-so for Yap and South Sea Islands”--steal out
with nondescript cargoes of tinned salmon, gin, bolts of gaudy cotton
stuff, women's hats, and Waterbury watches, to return, after a year,
piled as high as to the eaves of the house with copra, or wallowing
deep with the shells of the tortoise or the pearl oyster. To me, in my
character of the Amateur Parisian, this island traffic, and even the
island world, were beyond the bounds of curiosity, and how much more of
knowledge. I stood there on the extreme shore of the West and of to-day.
Seventeen hundred years ago, and seven thousand miles to the east,
a legionary stood, perhaps, upon the wall of Antoninus, and looked
northward toward the mountains of the Picts. For all the interval of
time and space, I, when I looked from the cliff-house on the broad
Pacific, was that man's heir and analogue: each of us standing on the
verge of the Roman Empire (or, as we now call it, Western civilization),
each of us gazing onward into zones unromanised. But I was dull. I
looked rather backward, keeping a kind eye on Paris; and it required a
series of converging incidents to change my attitude of nonchalance for
one of interest, and even longing, which I little dreamed that I should
live to gratify.
The first of these incidents brought me in acquaintance with a certain
San Francisco character, who had something of a name beyond the limits
of the city, and was known to many lovers of good English. I had
discovered a new slum, a place of precarious, sandy cliffs, deep, sandy
cuttings, solitary, ancient houses, and the butt-ends of streets. It was
already environed. The ranks of the street-lamps threaded it unbroken.
The city, upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled with
traffic. To-day, I do not doubt the very landmarks are all swept away;
but it offered then, within narrow limits, a delightful peace, and (in
the morning, when I chiefly went there) a seclusion almost rural. On a
steep sand-hill, in this neighbourhood, toppled, on the most insecure
foundation, a certain row of houses, each with a bit of garden, and all
(I have to presume) inhabited. Thither I used to mount by a crumbling
footpath, and in front of the last of the houses, would sit down to
sketch. The very first day I saw I was observed, out of the ground-floor
window by a youngish, good-looking fellow, prematurely bald, and with
an expression both lively and engaging. The second, as we were still
the only figures in the landscape, it was no more than natural that
we should nod. The third, he came out fairly from his intrenchments,
praised my sketch, and with the impromptu cordiality of artists carried
me into his apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a museum of
strange objects,--paddles and battle-clubs and baskets, rough-hewn stone
images, ornaments of threaded shell, cocoanut bowls, snowy cocoanut
plumes--evidences and examples of another earth, another climate,
another race, and another (if a ruder) culture. Nor did these objects
lack a fitting commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance.
Doubtless you have read his book. You know already how he tramped and
starved, and had so fine a profit of living, in his days among the
islands; and meeting him, as I did, one artist with another, after
months of offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he would
speak, and with what pleasure I would hear. It was in such talks, which
we were both eager to repeat, that I first heard the names--first fell
under the spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first of
them that I returned (a happy man) with _Omoo_ under one arm, and my
friend's own adventures under the other.
The second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a bearing on
my future. I was standing, one day, near a boat-landing under Telegraph
Hill. A large barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming more
than usually close about the point to reach her moorings; and I was
observing her with languid inattention, when I observed two men to
stride across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently
dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing where I
stood. In a surprisingly short time they came tearing up the steps; and
I could see that both were too well dressed to be foremast hands--the
first even with research, and both, and specially the first, appeared
under the empire of some strong emotion.
“Nearest police office!” cried the leader.
“This way,” said I, immediately falling in with their precipitate pace.
“What's wrong? What ship is that?”
“That's the Gleaner,” he replied. “I am chief officer, this gentleman's
third; and we've to get in our depositions before the crew. You see they
might corral us with the captain; and that's no kind of berth for me.
I've sailed with some hard cases in my time, and seen pins flying like
sand on a squally day--but never a match to our old man. It never let
up from the Hook to the Farallones; and the last man was dropped not
sixteen hours ago. Packet rats our men were, and as tough a crowd as
ever sand-bagged a man's head in; but they looked sick enough when the
captain started in with his fancy shooting.”
“O, he's done up,” observed the other. “He won't go to sea no more.”
“You make me tired,” retorted his superior. “If he gets ashore in one
piece and isn't lynched in the next ten minutes, he'll do yet. The
owners have a longer memory than the public; they'll stand by him; they
don't find as smart a captain every day in the year.”
“O, he's a son of a gun of a fine captain; there ain't no doubt of
that,” concurred the other, heartily. “Why, I don't suppose there's been
no wages paid aboard that Gleaner for three trips.”
“No wages?” I exclaimed, for I was still a novice in maritime affairs.
“Not to sailor-men before the mast,” agreed the mate. “Men cleared out;
wasn't the soft job they maybe took it for. She isn' the first ship that
never paid wages.”
I could not but observe that our pace was progressively relaxing; and
indeed I have often wondered since whether the hurry of the start were
not intended for the gallery alone. Certain it is at least, that when we
had reached the police office, and the mates had made their deposition,
and told their horrid tale of five men murdered, some with savage
passion, some with cold brutality, between Sandy Hook and San Francisco,
the police were despatched in time to be too late. Before we arrived,
the ruffian had slipped out upon the dock, had mingled with the crowd,
and found a refuge in the house of an acquaintance; and the ship was
only tenanted by his late victims. Well for him that he had been
thus speedy. For when word began to go abroad among the shore-side
characters, when the last victim was carried by to the hospital, when
those who had escaped (as by miracle) from that floating shambles,
began to circulate and show their wounds in the crowd, it was strange
to witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the
city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured
to brutality, and above all, brutality to sailors, shook their fists at
heaven: if hands could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner,
his shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was
headed up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay: in two ships already
he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet, by last
accounts, he now commands another on the Western Ocean.
As I have said, I was never quite certain whether Mr. Nares (the mate)
did not intend that his superior should escape. It would have been like
his preference of loyalty to law; it would have been like his prejudice,
which was all in favour of the after-guard. But it must remain a matter
of conjecture only. Well as I came to know him in the sequel, he was
never communicative on that point, nor indeed on any that concerned the
voyage of the Gleaner. Doubtless he had some reason for his reticence.
Even during our walk to the police office, he debated several times with
Johnson, the third officer, whether he ought not to give up himself, as
well as to denounce the captain. He had decided in the negative, arguing
that “it would probably come to nothing; and even if there was a stink,
he had plenty good friends in San Francisco.” And to nothing it came;
though it must have very nearly come to something, for Mr. Nares
disappeared immediately from view and was scarce less closely hidden
than his captain.
Johnson, on the other hand, I often met. I could never learn this man's
country; and though he himself claimed to be American, neither his
English nor his education warranted the claim. In all likelihood he
was of Scandinavian birth and blood, long pickled in the forecastles
of English and American ships. It is possible that, like so many of his
race in similar positions, he had already lost his native tongue. In
mind, at least, he was quite denationalised; thought only in English--to
call it so; and though by nature one of the mildest, kindest, and most
feebly playful of mankind, he had been so long accustomed to the cruelty
of sea discipline, that his stories (told perhaps with a giggle) would
sometimes turn me chill. In appearance, he was tall, light of weight,
bold and high-bred of feature, dusky-haired, and with a face of a clean
even brown: the ornament of outdoor men. Seated in a chair, you might
have passed him off for a baronet or a military officer; but let him
rise, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack that came rolling toward you, crab-like;
let him but open his lips, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack that piped and
drawled his ungrammatical gibberish. He had sailed (among other
places) much among the islands; and after a Cape Horn passage with
its snow-squalls and its frozen sheets, he announced his intention of
“taking a turn among them Kanakas.” I thought I should have lost him
soon; but according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had first to
dissipate his wages. “Guess I'll have to paint this town red,” was his
hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder
course of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little
parlour behind Black Tom's public house, with a select corps of old
particular acquaintances, all from the South Seas, and all patrons of a
long yarn, a short pipe, and glasses round.
Black Tom's, to the front, presented the appearance of a fourth-rate
saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, dirt, negrohead tobacco, bad cigars,
worse gin, and guitars and banjos in a state of decline. The proprietor,
a powerful coloured man, was at once a publican, a ward politician,
leader of some brigade of “lambs” or “smashers,” at the wind of whose
clubs the party bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, and (what
hurt nothing) an active and reliable crimp. His front quarters,
then, were noisy, disreputable, and not even safe. I have seen worse
frequented saloons where there were fewer scandals; for Tom was often
drunk himself; and there is no doubt the Lambs must have been a useful
body, or the place would have been closed. I remember one day, not long
before an election, seeing a blind man, very well dressed, led up to the
counter and remain a long while in consultation with the negro. The pair
looked so ill-assorted, and the awe with which the drinkers fell back
and left them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so unusual in
such a place, that I turned to my next neighbour with a question. He
told me the blind man was a distinguished party boss, called by some
the King of San Francisco, but perhaps better known by his picturesque
Chinese nickname of the Blind White Devil. “The Lambs must be wanted
pretty bad, I guess,” my informant added. I have here a sketch of the
Blind White Devil leaning on the counter; on the next page, and taken
the same hour, a jotting of Black Tom threatening a whole crowd of
customers with a long Smith and Wesson: to such heights and depths we
rose and fell in the front parts of the saloon.
Meanwhile, away in the back quarters, sat the small informal South Sea
club, talking of another world and surely of a different century. Old
schooner captains they were, old South Sea traders, cooks, and mates:
fine creatures, softened by residence among a softer race: full men
besides, though not by reading, but by strange experience; and for days
together I could hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had
indeed some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, when not a mere
ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist. Even through Johnson's
inarticulate speech, his “O yes, there ain't no harm in them Kanakas,”
or “O yes, that's a son of a gun of a fine island, mountainious right
down; I didn't never ought to have left that island,” there pierced a
certain gusto of appreciation: and some of the rest were master-talkers.
From their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated
landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image
of the islands and the island life: precipitous shores, spired mountain
tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the
reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an
imperial brightness; man moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman
lovelier than Eve; the primal curse abrogated, the bed made ready for
the stranger, life set to perpetual music, and the guest welcomed, the
boat urged, and the long night beguiled, with poetry and choral song. A
man must have been an unsuccessful artist; he must have starved on the
streets of Paris; he must have been yoked to a commercial force like
Pinkerton, before he can conceive the longings that at times assailed
me. The draughty, rowdy city of San Francisco, the bustling office where
my friend Jim paced like a caged lion daily between ten and four, even
(at times) the retrospect of Paris, faded in comparison. Many a man less
tempted would have thrown up all to realise his visions; but I was by
nature unadventurous and uninitiative: to divert me from all former
paths and send me cruising through the isles of paradise, some force
external to myself must be exerted; Destiny herself must use the fitting
wedge; and little as I deemed it, that tool was already in her hand of
brass.
I sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy, silvered saloon,
a free lunch at my one elbow, at the other a “conscientious nude” from
the brush of local talent; when, with the tramp of feet and a sudden
buzz of voices, the swing-doors were flung broadly open and the place
carried as by storm. The crowd which thus entered (mostly seafaring
men, and all prodigiously excited) contained a sort of kernel or general
centre of interest, which the rest merely surrounded and advertised, as
children in the Old World surround and escort the Punch-and-Judy man;
the word went round the bar like wildfire that these were Captain
Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying Scud, picked up by a
British war-ship on Midway Island, arrived that morning in San Francisco
Bay, and now fresh from making the necessary declarations. Presently I
had a good sight of them: four brown, seamanlike fellows, standing by
the counter, glass in hand, the centre of a score of questioners.
One was a Kanaka--the cook, I was informed; one carried a cage with a
canary, which occasionally trilled into thin song; one had his left arm
in a sling and looked gentlemanlike, and somewhat sickly, as though
the injury had been severe and he was scarce recovered; and the captain
himself--a red-faced, blue-eyed, thickset man of five and forty--wore
a bandage on his right hand. The incident struck me; I was struck
particularly to see captain, cook, and foremost hands walking the street
and visiting saloons in company; and, as when anything impressed me,
I got my sketch-book out, and began to steal a sketch of the four
castaways. The crowd, sympathising with my design, made a clear lane
across the room; and I was thus enabled, all unobserved myself, to
observe with a still-growing closeness the face and the demeanour of
Captain Trent.
Warmed by whiskey and encouraged by the eagerness of the bystanders,
that gentleman was now rehearsing the history of his misfortune. It was
but scraps that reached me: how he “filled her on the starboard tack,”
and how “it came up sudden out of the nor'nor'west,” and “there she was,
high and dry.” Sometimes he would appeal to one of the men--“That was
how it was, Jack?”--and the man would reply, “That was the way of it,
Captain Trent.” Lastly, he started a fresh tide of popular sympathy by
enunciating the sentiment, “Damn all these Admirality Charts, and that's
what I say!” From the nodding of heads and the murmurs of assent that
followed, I could see that Captain Trent had established himself in the
public mind as a gentleman and a thorough navigator: about which period,
my sketch of the four men and the canary-bird being finished, and all
(especially the canary-bird) excellent likenesses, I buckled up my book,
and slipped from the saloon.
Little did I suppose that I was leaving Act I, Scene I, of the drama of
my life; and yet the scene, or rather the captain's face, lingered for
some time in my memory. I was no prophet, as I say; but I was something
else: I was an observer; and one thing I knew, I knew when a man was
terrified. Captain Trent, of the British brig Flying Scud, had been
glib; he had been ready; he had been loud; but in his blue eyes I could
detect the chill, and in the lines of his countenance spy the agitation
of perpetual terror. Was he trembling for his certificate? In my
judgment, it was some livelier kind of fear that thrilled in the man's
marrow as he turned to drink. Was it the result of recent shock, and had
he not yet recovered the disaster to his brig? I remembered how a friend
of mine had been in a railway accident, and shook and started for a
month; and although Captain Trent of the Flying Scud had none of the
appearance of a nervous man, I told myself, with incomplete conviction,
that his must be a similar case.