David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company.
The manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the
New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the
little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in
railroad tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate
as easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these
different punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the
sons turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman.
But David called himself a “demonstrator.” For a short time he even
succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as
demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and bookkeepers laughed them out
of it. They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly
because he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a
great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to
possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather
is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the
possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight.
He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had
existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a doctor
in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that David
emerged as a Son of Washington.
It was sister Anne, anxious to “get in” as a “Daughter” and wear
a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary
ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the
graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a
person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at
Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on
moving to New York, his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not
affect his record. To enter a society founded on heredity, the important
thing is first to catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him,
David entered the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors.
He was not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years
without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find
himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted, underpaid
salesman without a relative in the world, except a married sister in
Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of “Neck
or Nothing” Greene, a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a
man whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton. David's life had
lacked color. The day he carried his certificate of membership to the
big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his
two coats, was the proudest of his life.
The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said,
“All grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
great-great dad ever do for you?”
“Well, for one thing,” said David stiffly, “he fought in the War of the
Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England;
he made it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free
republic.”
“Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that,” protested Wyckoff,
“because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I read about
it in a book.”
“I am not grudging glory to others,” returned David; “I am only saying I
am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist.”
Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
frame that folded like a concertina.
“I don't want to be a descendant,” he said; “I'd rather be an ancestor.
Look at those.” Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with
the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at
the children.
“When I'm married,” he stammered, and at the words he blushed, “I hope
to be an ancestor.”
“If you're thinking of getting married,” said Wyckoff, “you'd better
hope for a raise in salary.”
The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not
the grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative
David was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to
attend the monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to
erect monuments on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in
joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones;
to inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those
present at the annual “banquet” at Delmonico's. In order that when he
opened these letters he might have an audience, he had given the society
his office address.
In these communications he was always addressed as “Dear Compatriot,”
and never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift
him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to
things uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know
what an aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an
aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was
overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and
he would smile and say to himself: “If they knew the meaning of the
blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How
easily with a word could I crush them!”
But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button.
They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
liable to give that impression.
When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the
person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss
Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and
prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a
figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found
something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours,
accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided
when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would
go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and
from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
The trouble befell when David discovered he had a
great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in
another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive
to achieve glory for himself.
From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young
person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed.
The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon--had, in a way,
raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales
of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he
sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke
with awe, touched her imagination.
“You shouldn't be content to just wear a button,” she urged. “If you're
a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one.”
“I know I'm not worthy of you,” David sighed.
“I don't mean that, and you know I don't,” Emily replied indignantly.
“It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of
your grandpa Hiram!”
“But HOW?” complained David. “What chance has a twenty-five dollar a
week clerk--”
It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of
Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
“If I were a Son of the Revolution,” said Emily, “I'd go to Cuba and
help free it.”
“Don't talk nonsense,” cried David. “If I did that I'd lose my job, and
we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I
know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill.”
“Did Lafayette talk like that?” demanded Emily. “Did he ask what have
the American rebels ever done for me?”
“If I were in Lafayette's class,” sighed David, “I wouldn't be selling
automatic punches.”
“There's your trouble,” declared Emily “You lack self-confidence. You're
too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to
yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!
You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join
the militia. That takes only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to
war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!”
Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
“Emily,” he said, “you're going to be awfully disappointed in me.”
Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But
when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
“No, I'm not,” she protested; “only I want a husband with a career, and
one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him.”
“I've often wished you would,” said David.
“Would what? Run your career for you?”
“No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so.”
“Maybe I'd like you better,” said Emily, “if you weren't so darned
polite.”
A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a
step forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David
was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted.
Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She
did not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in
the office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days--at
least she did not count them aloud.
David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she
was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in
ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from
Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed
her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to
the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him.
It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
him.
The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close
to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful,
and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons.
A year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish
Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary
manner.
On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to
leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute,
and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any
Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame
Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train
to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later,
when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and
dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked
back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.
In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment
he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a
shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in
mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down
under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train
or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched
a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead
trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was
not a sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of
the ocean at night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the
train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For,
in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would
have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his
companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
“I am alone,” he told himself, “on a railroad embankment, entirely
surrounded by alligators.”
And then he found he was not alone.
In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and
the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above
the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of
a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had
been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the
clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou
broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf
an ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his
pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the
company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure.
He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug,
something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No
lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks
were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from
her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to
the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided for him. He had not
considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure.
The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who
means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily. He wore high
boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his
movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily
excited. He thrust himself close against David.
“Who the devil are you?” demanded the man from the tug. “How'd you get
here?”
“I walked,” said David.
“Walked?” the man snorted incredulously.
“I took the wrong train,” explained David pleasantly. “They put me off
about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going
to wait here for the next train north.”
The little man laughed mockingly.
“Oh, no you're not,” he said. “If you walked here, you can just walk
away again!” With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
gesture.
“You walk!” he commanded.
“I'll do just as I please about that,” said David.
As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
tug.
“I'll find some one who'll make you walk!” he called. “You WAIT, that's
all, you WAIT!”
David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station
the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he
judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks
and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself
hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any
other person.
“They're river pirates,” said David to himself, “or smugglers. They're
certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
of a perfectly harmless stranger?”
Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
“I wish that train would come,” he sighed. And instantly? as though in
answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard
the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his
course of action.
The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His
plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though
he had no lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only
stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his
arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in
amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred
yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it
blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear
of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a
train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as
unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly
tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
“Is the place haunted!” exclaimed David.
He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to
a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the
ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls
and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note
the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little
man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore
no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters
of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his
right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that
moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man
carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest
man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his
beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild
moonlight it flamed like a torch.
“What's your business?” demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
“I came here,” began David, “to wait for a train--”
The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
“Yes,” he shouted; “this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
wait for a train!”
In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
“Don't you lie to ME!” he bullied. “Do you know who I am? Do you know
WHO you're up against? I'm--”
The barkeeper person interrupted.
“Never mind who you are,” he said. “We know that. Find out who HE is.”
David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
“Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?” he protested. “I'm a
travelling man--”
“You won't travel any to-night,” mocked the red-haired one. “You've seen
what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!”
As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
“Tie him to a tree!” he suggested.
“Better take him on board,” said the barkeeper, “and send him back by
the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any.”
“What makes you think I want to hurt you?” demanded David. “Who do you
think I am?”
“We know who you are,” shouted the fiery-headed one. “You're a
blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
whichever you are you don't get away to-night!”
David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
“You have made a very serious mistake,” he said, “and whether you like
it or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the devil!”
Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting
to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head
rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance,
and in a strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
“Nine--ten--and OUT!”
When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of
a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf
cap who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed
wildly about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw
that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side
the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with
stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
“Sorry to disturb you,” said the youth in the golf cap, “but we drop the
pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him.”
David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as
large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
“What happened to me?” he demanded.
“You were sort of kidnapped, I guess,” laughed the young man. “It was a
raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad.”
“But why?” demanded David indignantly. “Why was I kidnapped? What had I
done? Who were those men who--”
From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
“Come on,” commanded the young man briskly. “The pilot's going ashore.
Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as--”
But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws
an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into
the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the
fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby
hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph
to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open
sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a
policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and
held her in its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by
the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great
was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's
ear.
“That's the revenue cutter!” he shouted. “She's been laying for us for
three weeks, and now,” he shrieked exultingly, “the old man's going to
give her a race for it.”
From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting
beyond his control.
“But how,” he demanded, “how do I get ashore?”
“You don't!”
“When he drops the pilot, don't I--”
“How can he drop the pilot?” yelled the youth. “The pilot's got to stick
by the boat. So have you.”
David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
face.
“Stick by what boat?” yelled David. “Who are these men? Who are you?
What boat is this?”
In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down
his spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
“THE THREE FRIENDS!” shrieked David. “She's a filibuster! She's a
pirate! Where're we going?
“To Cuba!”
David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
“What for?” he shrieked.
The young man regarded him coldly.
“To pick bananas,” he said.
“I won't go to Cuba,” shouted David. “I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law--”
David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged.
Like a hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to
stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did
not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he
would have crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to
David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots.
Their groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish,
rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the
waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight
the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the
tidings brought forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the
slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a
hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had
found a congenial spirit, he shouted Joyfully, “She's fired two blanks
at us!” he cried; “now she's firing cannon-balls!”
“Thank God,” whispered David; “perhaps she'll sink us!”
But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far
as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was like
those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries
of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching
head, of the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered
him, David fell into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull
consciousness of his position. At such moments he added to his misery by
speculating upon the other misfortunes that might have befallen him
on shore. Emily, he decided, had given him up for lost and
married--probably a navy officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett
and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had
caused them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as
a defaulter, as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were
being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
passed; to David it seemed many ages.
On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and
fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought
him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a
bowl of smoking soup.
David considered it a doubtful attention.
But he said, “You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
with these pirates?”
The youth laughed good-naturedly.
“They're not pirates, they're patriots,” he said, “and I'm not mixed
up with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
captain.”
“The barkeeper with the derby hat?” said David.
“He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler,” Carr corrected, “and he's the
greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway,
and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about
this expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found
out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story
either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest,
and he's promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I
can write as much about it as I darn please.”
“Then you're a reporter?” said David.
“I'm what we call a cub reporter,” laughed Carr. “You see, I've always
dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose,
I can tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!”
“And you LIKE this?” groaned David.
“I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are,” said Carr, “but I've a
stomach like a Harlem goat.” He stooped and lowered his voice. “Now,
here are two fake filibusters,” he whispered. “The men you read about in
the newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster, nobody knows it!”
Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
“All they ask,” whispered Carr, “is money and advertisement. If they
knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls
himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida
coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is
a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English
officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen
battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the
red-cross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans.
The Junta thinks they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here
to work the machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do
will be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring.”
A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screwdriver
Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part
of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her expedition,
and that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats
she was preparing to defend herself.
“They've got an automatic gun in that crate,” said Carr, “and they're
going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
you.”
David shook his head feebly.
“I can't move!” he protested. “I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba.”
For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
unintelligent.
“I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together
in his life,” he whispered to Carr. “I never did, either, but I've put
hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work.”
“What's wrong with it?” said Carr.
Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
saw it first.
“Land!” he hailed.
The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
rose in a fierce chorus.
“Cuba libre!” they yelled.
The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken
with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each
topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like
columns of marble rose the royal palms.
“You MUST look!” Carr entreated David, “it's just as it is in the
pictures!
“Then I don't have to look,” groaned David.
The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a
sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore
of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans
waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful
voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban
patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of
their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition
of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box
of shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
“In two hours, if we have smooth water,” shouted Lighthouse Harry,
“we ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask,” he cried
mightily, “is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!”
His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three
Friends she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal
questions or extend courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug
was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she
raced in pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there
came from the gun-boat the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell
into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he
tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and
gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship
was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
feet splashed into a wave.
From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
removed from any of the greater emotions.
“It's no use!” he protested. “They can't do! It's not connected!”
“WHAT'S not connected?” yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted,
half-dragged him to his feet.
“If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it,” he
shouted, “or I'll--”
David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on
the instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness
of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding
through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the change had
come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was
shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once
more was a sane, sound young man.
With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism.
He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that
his work was good.
They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them
to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a
continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked
feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open,
pulled on the trigger and found it gave before his forefinger.
He shouted with delight.
“I've got it working,” he yelled.
He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one
of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the
tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell
splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
in volleys.
To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived
it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click
as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against
the weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
unceasingly:
“Cuba libre!” it yelled. “To hell with Spain!” and he found that the
voice was his own.
The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
“And the best of it is,” he exclaimed joyfully, “it's true!”
For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself
aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun
served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight
of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the
limelight a cub reporter had projected a new “hero,” a ready-made,
warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
They were seated in the pilot-house, “Jimmy” Doyle, Carr, and David, the
patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba,
and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished
reading aloud his account of the engagement.
“You will tell the story just as I have written it,” commanded the proud
author. “Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind.
You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your
wish you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board.
That was just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you
took command of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe
Bay.”
Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. “You certainty did, Dave,”
protested the great man, “I seen you when you done it!”
At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
spread across the map of the United States.
Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower
Broadway tendered congratulations.
“Of course, it's a great surprise to us,” Burdett and Sons would protest
and wink heavily. “Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd
no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him
go, would we?” Then again they would wink heavily. “I suppose you know,”
they would say, “that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene,
who won the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'” And
then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and
exclaim: “Here's to Cuba libre!”
When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the
Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and
all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her
best hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as
Burdett and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
“David!” she sobbed, “promise me you'll never, never do it again!”