We had a baby born, and when he was old enough to almost wiggle out of
his baby-carriage the wife asks me if I didn't think it was time to
consider seriously the future of my growing family. Well, she pretty
generally told me what I ought to do, and Wheezer Mills and Scoot
Schulte had been writing to me to come on South and share what looked
like a good prospect to them in the wrecking line.
I went South, and even after I'd inspected what they'd picked up for a
bargain I didn't reproach them; for, after all, what's an old wrecking
tug beside two old friends? The _Weeping Annie_ was her name, and she
had her virtues, but not the kind to take to sea with you.
We had great hopes that fall of what we would do in the _Annie_. But
luck was against us. It turned out a clear, mild winter, with wrecks
infrequent; so coming on to spring we swapped the _Annie_ for a
self-propelling steam-lighter with a pile-driving attachment on the
for'ard end, called the _Happy Day_.
We warned the new owner of the _Annie_ to keep a sharp eye out for her
little tricks, but he was a wise one and we were only a bunch of young
fellows that maybe were willing to hustle, but in his eyes didn't know
much. The new owner only waved his hand and said: "You boys watch out
for the _Happy_ and I will for the _Annie_."
We already guessed the _Happy Day_ must have had her secret faults, but
also we knew that if the _Annie_ hadn't sunk under us four or five
times while we had her it was owing to Scoot and his Leakitis. The
first time we ever saw any of it was one morning in a pudding-dish on
the galley-table while Scoot was gone up the street to get some bacon
to go with eggs for breakfast.
Wheezer noticed it before I did, and we thought it was some new kind of
a breakfast-food, especially when a note alongside it in Scoot's
writing said: "To be tried with one part milk." We gave it two parts
milk--we had milk aplenty--and sprinkled a little sugar over it.
Scoot's idea was to calk it into any open seam and let the water coming
in swell it up. After it swelled up it would harden till it was like
concrete. But that wasn't explained to us till later. It had reached
the swelling-up stage in both our stomachs when Scoot came back with
the bacon for breakfast. "Heaven's greatest gift to sufferin'
man--stomach-pumps!" said Wheezer when we were safe over it.
But the chap that took over the _Annie_ didn't have any Scoot Schulte
for a partner. About a week after he got her from us he went down to
the dock one morning to go aboard, but he didn't see her anywhere. "I
told 'em to have her here, six sharp!" he howls; "and here it's half
past and no sign of her." But the _Annie_ was there all the time, only
she was resting on bottom with only the top of her smoke-stack sticking
up, and he didn't know it was her smoke-stack. While her crew was
sleeping she'd been sinking. The men in the top bunks got out almost
in comfort, but the chaps in the lower bunks were breathing more water
than air when they woke up; there was nobody drowned, though. It seems
the Leakitis stuff had to be reapplied about once a month or it would
soften up and float away, but Scoot forgot to tell him that.
We expected to do great things with the _Happy Day_ in the lighterage
business; but there wasn't any lighterage business to do after we took
her over. After one month of it, with nothing but overhead charges, we
were ready to quit. I told Wheezer and Scoot to sell her for anything
they could get and send me my share. I was going North. I'd never let
on in my letters to my wife but what the prospects were fine, and she'd
been writing me of an option she'd got on a nice little single house
with a sun-parlor that would be great for the baby to play in, and I
saw where it was up to me to get back to some regular work. Besides,
I'd been seven months away and I wanted to see for myself if the baby
was actually walking.
To save borrowing money for my passage North, I shipped for deck-hand
on an oil-ship. I wanted to ship for seaman, but I heard the skipper
say to a man ahead of me: "I got all the seamen I need. What I want is
a couple of men to swab decks and look after paint and brass-work and
so on--deck-hands----"
He looked pretty sharp at me when I stepped up.
"My last job," I said before he could get started, "was rustling
freight on a harbor lighter," and I pointed out the _Happy Day_ to him
across the harbor. "Oh," he said, "that's all right. Sign here." So
I signed there, for deck-hand on the oil-ship _Yucatan_, Clarence
Judkins, master.
Bayport wasn't a regular oil port, but a half-dozen trainloads of oil
had been dumped in there to head off some of our war-ships on some
manoeuvering cruise and hadn't headed 'em off; so now it was to be
transshipped North. After I'd signed on I came down aboard the _Happy
Day_ to get my dunnage.
"Judkins--Clarence Judkins, did you say, is the name o' the skipper o'
that oil-tanker you're goin' on?" asks Wheezer. "A well-set-up,
handsome-lookin' guy, the kind to ketch a lady's eye an' lookin' like
he believed in ketchin' 'em, an' a noily black piece o' whisker under
his ears? Yes? Then," says Wheezer, "lemme tell you about that
lad--Slick Clarence."
Wheezer generally had the asthma, but the mild winter of the South had
cleaned out his speaking-tubes, so that at this time he could talk
fluently. "Judkins used to go master o' big steam-yachts, but the last
time I seen him I was workin' for a ship-buildin' concern on the
Delaware, 'n' we was buildin' a big steam-yacht that Judkins was
superintendin' the buildin' of for a mult-eye millionaire. 'Anything
Captain Judkins wants let him have: anything he wants--anything and
everything,' says the millionaire, who had plenty o' money an' was a
good sport. I'd like to been workin' for him myself.
"When Clarence'd get a little wine in--he never touched no beer nor
cheap stuff--he used to like to have people listen to him talk," goes
on Wheezer. 'D'y' s'pose I'm goin' to be standin' around 'n' lookin'
on at those rich loafers havin' everythin' good in life an' me pikin'
along on a hundred an' seventy-five a month? Not much!' says Clarence.
'Imagine a man o' my class havin' to stand to attention to a gangway
when some o' those fat-waisted mushrooms an' their families come
puffin' over the side! Look at me, that's got more brains 'n' looks,
more class to me, than any owner ever I sailed out with--yeh, four
times as much as most of 'em. An' some of 'em--why, I wouldn't use
some of 'em to swab the decks o' their own yachts! Well, I might of
their own yachts,' Clarence adds after a while, 'but not o' no yacht o'
mine if I owned one. An' maybe I will be ownin' one afore long,' he
says.
"An' he did. Outer the extra stuff he ordered for the big steam-yacht
he built a little steam-yacht for himself 'n' sold her to a party that
never asked him how he come to be gettin' so fine a bargain for twenty
thousand dollars. So there's Slick Clarence Judkins," winds up
Wheezer. "An' will youse tell me what he's doin' master of a
noil-tanker at a hundred an' fifty a month?"
I couldn't tell him. But it was time to show up aboard the oil-ship,
and I did; and we lay in the harbor for two days, and when we did put
out, it was in weather that any longshoreman could have told was going
to be thick even if 'twouldn't be rough outside. About forty miles to
the east'ard of Bayport is Horseshoe Shoal. In thick weather inbound
vessels once in a while went enough out of their reckoning to fetch up
there; but anything outbound generally gave it a wide berth, because
there was no need to be cutting close to it. It was a long sand-spit
shoaling up so easy that in smooth weather a deep-draft ship could
slide up on it while she was yet a long way from where any surf showed
on it.
In less than four hours out of Bayport the _Yucatan's_ bow fetches up
nice and easy on Horseshoe and stays there. It was thick by now, with
no sea to speak of; but there was a long swell and we were deep loaded,
which meant that we were almost down to our main deck, and we carried
an open rail amidships, which meant that when a swell heaved up against
our side it didn't have to roll very high to roll aboard, and after
rolling aboard it just naturally kept on rolling across our deck and
over on the other side. It was like seeing surf breaking over a rock
in the ocean; and to men not used to a deep-loaded oil-ship, and not
knowing too much of the sea anyway, it wasn't hard to understand why
they might think they were in great danger. Anyway, the seamen or
deck-hands or seagoing laborers--whatever it was they shipped for--soon
began to pick out safe, high spots and to cling tight to them.
Any shipmaster that wanted to could, of course, have stopped all that
with ten words; but says Captain Clarence, waving his hand and singing
out from the bridge: "Have no fear, my lads. Trust to me. I will
bring you safe out of this." Which was a new one, he being, according
to Wheezer's account of him, more often given to damning their hides
and blue lights and in other little ways putting the fear of the bridge
into the deck of what ships he'd ever been master of. "Have no fear,
my men, I'll guard your lives," says Captain Clarence. And it sounded
fine, only a couple of wrecking tugs would have walked her off, and
certainly her own engines ought to have backed her off, if he'd only
stop making speeches and try them.
But Wheezer never said that Captain Clarence was any fool, and he
probably knew what he was doing every minute. He went for'ard now and
hove the lead a few times, and then hove it aft, and then came back to
the bridge looking more solemn than before; and, looking up at him,
there was no doubt that most of the crew thought if they didn't get off
that ship, and in a hurry, they were gone.
"But fear not," says Judkins; "we shall yet escape from this peril,"
and blows a distress signal, and right away comes an answer; and in
about a minute and a half, from almost under our stern, comes a
tugboat, the _Niobe_, with "Parson" Davies skipper of her. I'd never
met Davies, but I'd heard of him; and I'd seen the _Niobe_ laying off
Bayport Harbor when we came out, and what would be bringing her so
handy now, and she not hailing from Bayport at all, but from Westport,
a hundred miles farther away?
Judkins hailed the _Niobe_ to have a line ready, and then turns to us
and says: "Men, it would be a great deed for me to imperil your lives
to save this valuable ship and cargo to her owners; but what a nobler,
what a far nobler, deed it is to save human lives! Not my life, men,
but others'--your lives, fathers of families that I know some of you
are, or loving husbands, brothers, and sons of loving mothers. But can
we thus save her? No, no; we cannot. In a few hours it will be dark,
and these seas, which you see breaking over this noble ship, will most
surely batter her and all on her before morning. It would then be too
late to escape from her. Not," he says, waving his hand, "that we
shall not even now make a desperate attempt to get her off. We shall.
Indeed we shall!" and orders a line taken from the _Niobe_. I made it
my business--there was no competition--to be the man making the line
fast to our after-bitts, and a worn and ancient piece of hemp I saw it
was. The _Niobe_ backed off, and the line parted. She passed us
another line, and that parted. The second line was rottener than the
first, and while she was doing it I knew there was a store-new
200-fathom coil of a 13-inch hawser in our hold.
When the second line parts, Judkins waves his arms in despair and
orders the _Niobe_ to make fast under our high lee quarter, where it is
smooth as milk and plenty of water for a tug of her tonnage. "Captain
Davies," he calls out then, "what a fortunate event for us you happened
along!"
"Yes, captain," responds "Parson," his head out of his pilot-house
window. "A most heavenly inspiration it was which impelled me in this
direction in weather like this."
"Doubtless, doubtless, the hand o' Providence," says Judkins in a
downcast voice; and then, more lively: "What is your judgment of this
gale, Captain Davies?"
Gale! A man could have almost gone motor-boating with a bunch of
seaside hotel guests in it.
"If I know anything of weather, captain," says "Parson," rolling his
head this way and that at the sky, "she's comin' on to blow a
hurricane. And for you to keep your crew aboard your doomed ship
durin' the fury of it would be nothin' less than criminal, captain.
Not" (raising one pious hand) "that I would set my judgment over agin
yours, captain, for your vast experience of the sea qualifies you to
judge of these things even better than I."
By this time most of our crew had left their high roosts and were
crowding the lee rail to get aboard the _Niobe_; and Judkins says: "All
right, men--go aboard." And all went aboard the tug, Judkins checking
off every man by the ship's list as we passed him at the rail. And the
_Niobe_ headed back to Bayport.
On the run back to Bayport Judkins and Davies were alone in the cabin
of the tugboat. I spent all that same way back trying to figure out
their little game. I didn't feel too sure I had it right, but when the
_Niobe_ hit the dock I went four bells and the jingle up the street
looking for Wheezer, and found him where anybody in town could of a
Wednesday or Saturday night:
TERPSICHORE HALL
25 Cents for Gents--15 for Ladies
There was the illuminated sign hanging out over the sidewalk so that
even a drunken sailor couldn't miss it.
You didn't have to haul Wheezer into any dry dock to see that his lines
weren't laid down for speed, but his first rush, when I told him what
was in sight, carried him clear to the head of the dock.
"The salvage! O the lovely salvage! We'll get her off!" says Wheezer.
"We'll charter a tug, hah?"
I wasn't strong for chartering any tugs and let everybody know about
it. We had no money to be chartering tugs, anyway, and, besides, if I
had Judkins and Davies's little game sized up right, there'd be no
loose tugs left to charter out of Bayport that night. "We'll make it
in the _Happy Day_," I says.
"The _Happy Day_!" says Wheezer; and then: "Well, all right--if you
think she'll make it."
We went down to tell Scoot, and found him reading from a book he was
holding up before him with one hand and eating crackers and cheese and
a smoked herring from a plate atop of a galley-stove with the other.
"A wonderful, wonderful man, Confucius," says Scoot to Wheezer; and
then seeing me, too: "What! Hasn't that oil-packet departed yet?"
"Wonderful maybe, but stow him, whoever the loafer is, 'n' listen to me
'n' the captain," says Wheezer. And Scoot listens, and before I was
half through he stows Confucius--a fine, fat volume, with a leaf turned
down to mark the place--under his mattress.
"I shall need a helper," says Scoot. "And also I think it will be wise
for me to prepare some fresh applications of Leakitis if we are to put
out to sea in this venerable ark to-night."
Up to the Blue Light saloon there was always a bum or two looking for a
bit of change. On the way there I passed the Bayport Hotel and saw
that Captain Judkins and Captain Davies had already an admiring
audience to listen to the disaster to the _Yucatan_.
A hard-looking party was trying to hold the barkeeper up for a drink
when I reached the Blue Light. He was the only being in the place who
looked husky enough to lift more than the weight of his elbow to the
level of his shoulder. I offered him ten dollars for the next
twenty-four hours. "To work on a hurry-up job on a steam-lighter," I
explained. "That's if you're tough enough for it on a windy night," I
added.
"Tough work? William T. Coots is my name--and the T stands for tough."
"Come on then," I said, "here's one dollar down." It was the last
dollar I had.
William T. could never leave there with that dollar in his pocket. He
made a great fellow of himself by buying drinks for a bunch of bums,
and then I warped him in and grappled him to me. Passing the Bayport
Hotel this time, I could see Judkins and Davies still talking, only by
this time some of the crew were giving out interviews, too, and the
audience included two or three reporters, and all hands had moved from
the lobby to the barroom.
After a peek at that cheerful party and then at the dark harbor I
didn't blame William T. for wanting to go in and join them, but he had
signed to go a cruise on the _Happy Day_. I reasoned with him till he
told me for the third time that he was William T. Coots, a tough guy,
and was going to have one more drink. Then I dropped fair words,
walloped him back on to the sidewalk, ran him down aboard the _Happy
Day_, and introduced him to Scoot.
We put out. The _Happy Day_ was an ancient craft that had been built
right there in Bayport, and if she'd ever been outside the harbor
before, the oldest inhabitant couldn't recall it. How she was going to
act outside this night none of us would bet, but we hoped she'd
surprise us.
But she acted pretty much like we figured she would. She had a 65-foot
hammer hoist. We couldn't see ten feet away--it was a dark, drizzly
night--but we could feel the runways of that hoist waving somewhere up
in the clouds above us. And no harm in that, if it didn't come down on
our heads; and no harm when she wouldn't lift from a sea--she wasn't
built to--but if only she'd let one pass! But not a blessed one.
She'd slue around sideways, and the next one would hit her a swipe, and
aboard they'd come as if all the welcome in the world was waiting them.
The _Happy Day_ rated a deck-house amidships, with a galley and a
little L that Scoot had built on, with a bunk to sleep in of nights. A
sea coming aboard one side took the house along with it over the other
side. "O' course," said Wheezer, "it was nachally to be espected, but
if she'd waited till next week I was reckonin' to had her painted red
with blue trimmin's, an' sell her along o' the rest o' the lighter."
When the house threatened to loosen up first, Scoot came up out of the
hold to rescue Confucius from his bunk, with a brier pipe he'd bought
years before this for a half-crown in Liverpool and a pair of
custom-made pants he used to wear to parties.
A couple of tons of water in the shape of a small sea chased Scoot back
down the ladder. A spry one, Scoot. He got out of the way, holding
Confucius and the pants high in the air. The back of William T's neck
happened to be about the middle of the region where most of that sea
landed below. After he'd coughed up what he could from his insides,
William T. had a word to say. Scoot had rigged up a bilge-pump which
worked from the hold. William T. was told to work that as well as
shovel the coal. What he wanted to say was that he'd shovel the coal
or he'd stand by the pump, but not both. "What did I ship for--what
for?" he demanded of Scoot.
Scoot was a little man, and he used to rig up a pair of big black
horn-rimmed spectacles he owned and talk with care before strangers,
but he wasn't so safe as he looked. His father, a delicatessen man,
had intended him for a chemist, and then died in time to save him from
it. Scoot had other notions, and only he met a Barbados negro with a
head made of the same mixture as two parts in five Portland cement
after it'd had two days to set--only for him Scoot said he might have
been a light-weight champion riding around in his own auto. After that
fight he said he'd never raise his hand to a man again. No, sir; it
would be a meat-axe for him--also he was going to draw the color line.
And the higher life for him thereafter.
"Only in toilsome essays to climb the heights
Does man from his baser nature rise,"
Scoot used to say. And he did essay to climb, but every once in so
often his foot would slip and down he'd come and begin to claw around
like anybody else.
"That big brute that toted me aboard here, and that other big brute up
on deck, mebbe they c'n lick me," said William T. now; "but no red
chin-whiskered, toothless runt like you kin."
Scoot wasn't shy any teeth. It was the way his under jaw was hung.
When he'd take to chewing with his front teeth, that lower jaw used to
come up outside the upper one. But it was true about his chin-whisker,
and he didn't like it.
"That so?" says Scoot, and stows his big horn spectacles in their case
and selects a nice long spanner; and when William T. came at him wide
open he tapped him--once, twice--neatly.
When William came to, Scoot was waving a full-sized twenty-pound shovel
before his eyes. Says Scoot: "Observe, please, this instrument. You
insert the forward end of it under this pile of coal--so; and you
elevate it--so: a hand here and a hand there; and you project it into
the firebox--so. And so on and so on, repeating ad noshum. You
savvy?" says Scoot. "Cause if you don't, then you hear me, son; I'll
whale the everlastin' livers 'n' lights outer your debased hide."
"You-all are sure a bunch o' tough guys," says William T.; and
thereafter Scoot went around applying Leakitis to the worst spots in
peace.
We were having our own recreation up on deck. I was to the wheel, of
course, and as long as I hung on there I was all right. But Wheezer
had to stay forward to keep a lookout. We didn't have any lights, and
we didn't want any wandering craft to be running over us in the dark
and drizzle. Wheezer wanted to climb up the hammer hoist to get out of
the way of the seas, but wasn't too sure he wouldn't come down and go
any minute over the side with it. He wound up by lashing himself to a
weather-deck bitt and letting most of the water in the Gulf of Mexico
flow over him. Being, as he said, a diver by trade, 'twas no strange
thing for him to be under water, but being under this way, he said he
missed the air-tube. In the middle of it he remembered he forgot to
say good-by to his partner at the dance-hall. "If anything happens us,
I hope she won't think I came out here to get lost a-purpose to get
away from her," said Wheezer.
From time to time Scoot stuck out his head to make sure we weren't yet
washed overboard, and to report on the leaks; and also on William T.
Scoot wouldn't call William any Olympic champion with a shovel,
but--doubtless we had noticed it--he was producing steam.
Which was so. Four miles an hour was all we ever figured on driving
the _Happy Day_ across smooth harbor routes, and here she was banging
out that many in a seaway on the open gulf, making fair allowance, of
course, for the side slips. She was all right, the old _Happy_, and
she brought us at daybreak to Horseshoe Shoal and the _Yucatan_, she
still with her bow fast but her stern loose to the seas. Without
wasting any time, I laid the _Happy Day_ alongside, and Wheezer was
about to go aboard her when he was met at the gangway by a cat.
Wheezer always did have a terrible respect for the laws of the sea.
"Ain't there some law about ship's cats?" he asks now; and Scoot digs
out his case and adjusts his glasses, and after a little meditation
says: "There are, Wheezer, many superstitions and traditions connected
with the sea. A marvellous vehicle of misinformation and credulous
belief, the sea. Reflect on the vogue which sea-serpents have enjoyed.
Reflect on how the ferocity of sharks has been exaggerated. It is
doubtless the fact, Wheezer, that jaded imaginations thankfully
accepted these ancient fallacies to render more startling the
dénouement of their dramas. To such, doubtless, do we owe the
invention of the cat on abandoned ships to frustrate the hopes of those
who would claim honest salvage." Scoot took another breath. "It is
usually a black cat, but even so for a cat to rank before the law as
the equal of a human creature is absurd. This, I perceive" (Scoot let
the back of his head settle on to his shoulder so's to have a good
look) "is not a black but a gray cat, Wheezer--a lean, gray feline. In
the days of the ancient Persians, Wheezer, a gray cat was a symbol
of----"
"Scat, you slab-sided gray symbol!" barked Wheezer just then, and the
cat scatted with a long leap from the rail of the oil-ship on to
Scoot's shoulder, and from there into the hold of the _Happy Day_.
"Whatever the Persians thought o' cats, this cat's off her now, Scoot,"
said Wheezer--"she's sure abandoned now," and went aboard.
"It looked hungry passing me," said Scoot, and called down to Billie T.
to feed it a little lubricating oil on a shovel. "It's nourishing and
fattening," says Scoot, "and we'll keep it aboard. Every seagoing ship
should have one for luck."
Wheezer reported not another soul aboard the oil-ship; and, under the
laws of the sea, that made her ours to do what we pleased with. And we
had our own notions of how to work her off the bar. We broke out ten
or a dozen barrels of oil and poured them over the troubled waters.
Then I belted and bolted Wheezer into his diving-suit, and broke out
our steam-drill--left over from the _Weeping Annie_--and Wheezer
dropped over and began to bore holes under the bow of the oil-ship.
Scoot had never been shipmates with an oil-burner before, and he went
below to get acquainted with this one. I was busy wiring charges of
dynamite for what we had to do next, so to William T. was left the job
of pumping air to Wheezer. Twice Wheezer came up, his cheeks bulging
out when I unscrewed his helmet, to ask me to explain to William T.
that pumping the air ahead of time and then resting up to wait till
that was used up wasn't the way of it--not if Wheezer was to stay
alive. Regular and steady, that was the word, said Wheezer.
Wheezer got all his holes bored and the dynamite planted in them. This
was a lot of dynamite left over when we traded the _Weeping Annie_;
we'd kept it in the hold of the _Happy Day_, which was another reason
for Scoot to sleep aboard her nights. He said he wasn't going to let
her blow up some night and no one on board to prove who did it.
When we were all ready on deck, Scoot said he guessed he'd take a
chance on her engines. He would not bet on what would happen, but he
guaranteed we'd get action of some kind, even if it was no more than a
cylinder-head blown through the side of the ship, if we'd only come
below and help him out. So we passed him this and that, turned this
jigger and that jigger to his orders, and by and by he lights a row of
jets and her engines turned all right.
"Any time now," says Scoot, and I touched off the dynamite, and what
looked like a million cubic yards of mixed stuff comes splattering up
from under her bow. William T., who was leaning over the bow to see
how it worked, got most of the oil, that being on top. Then I gave
Scoot the bells, he backed her engines, and off she came smooth and
easy.
While William T. was picking the oil and sand and mud and sea-water out
of his eyes and ears and nose and mouth, and complaining that somebody
oughter tipped him off, I called to him to shift the _Happy Day's_ line
so she could drift astern of the ship. "And whatever yuh do, son, hang
onter her line," Wheezer warned him. By this time William had shed his
first independent views of things and was obeying orders fine; so when
the _Happy Day_ went whirling astern, William was hanging on to the end
of the line. Down the deck he went skidding on his heels, and over the
rail, still hanging on to the line.
Finding himself overboard, he climbed up on the _Happy Day_. By this
time we were well off the bank in pretty good water, and I sung out to
William that I would swing around and get him, and gave the necessary
bells when the time came for Scoot to back her; but Scoot, I guess,
wasn't yet full shipmates with his oil-burning machinery, for we kept
right on going ahead till we went clean through and over the _Happy
Day_.
I remember seeing the cat climbing up the hammer hoist when it saw what
was coming and clawing into its place up top; and how when the _Happy_
went under and the tall hoist careened over toward us, the cat made one
flying leap on to the oil-ship's deck. When Scoot heard of that later,
he said: "We'll name it Confucius--a wonderful, wise cat."
When William T. saw what was coming, he took a running long dive and
overboard from the other end of the _Happy Day_. Wheezer stove in the
heads of four or five more barrels of oil and dumped them over the side
so's to make it easier for William clawing around in the seaway. When
he came swimming aboard, he was wanting to know wasn't there any jobs
that didn't require him to swaller any more oil--shovelling coal or
working bilge-pumps, he didn't care. So we let him go down to the
engine-room to help out Scoot.
We ought to have seen the morning papers before we did to enjoy what
happened next. Captain Davis of the _Niobe_ was to depart at daybreak
to make another desperate attempt to save the oil-ship in the teeth of
the storm, the morning papers said. And he did. We met him on our way
back to Bayport, and he steamed around us two or three times. Then he
steamed away for Westport. He didn't say a word himself, but she
carried the most eloquent stern, the _Niobe_, that ever I looked at
through glasses when she was steaming away.
The oil-ship was down by the head a trifle where the dynamite had
loosened her bow-plates a little, but nothing to hurt. We got her into
port all right.
But getting a salvaged ship into port don't always end a man's
troubles. There was a slick young lawyer came to us. He said he'd
like to handle our case. We asked what his charge would be, and he
said: "Oh, that will be all right--I'll make my price to suit you
boys." We said all right, go ahead, and "Now, boys," he says then,
"what's the story? Give it to me straight."
I tells him the story. He rubs his hands and chuckles, and says:
"Good! Great! Nothing to it--a pipe! But listen to me, boys. When
you get up there in court, don't go trying to make any joke of it the
same as you just done to me. Everything is all fixed up nicely for you
to play heroes' parts. Here are all the newspaper accounts--look--of
Captain Davies's heroic work and seamanship, as told by Captain
Judkins, and of Captain Judkins's humane and heroic work as told by
Davies. Even the crew--look--give out interviews of what heroes they
were. And, lemme tell you, I've seen the _Happy Day_ many a time, and
I wouldn't go outside in her for a million dollars. Now play it up,
play it up--the storm, the peril, your own heroic efforts, you know."
Which was all right to say; but imagine any human being getting up to
tell of our trip and leave out the funny little parts, especially when
we see Judkins sitting in a back bench listening, though he didn't
listen too long. He all at once got up and didn't come back.
In the old days we'd have been awarded 50 or 60 per cent for our part,
and she was a million-dollar ship with her cargo; but the insurance
companies don't let any loose-footed seafarers put across anything like
that these days. We got thirty thousand dollars for salving the ship,
and ten thousand more for the loss of the _Happy Day_.
Our slick lawyer said we hadn't played it up right. "But never mind,"
he said; "I've been allowed full damages for the _Happy Day_ and awards
for your time and some of the risk you-all ran. There's twenty
thousand for you boys."
Wheezer and Scoot looked at me, and I looked at the lawyer. "Twenty
thousand? Don't you think it's too much for us?" I asks.
"Why," he says, "it is a lot o' money for you boys to be carrying away
for one night's work. But I generally split it that way--fifty-fifty."
We were in his office. I told Wheezer and Scoot to wait for me below.
"Perhaps there'd better be no witnesses," I whispered to Scoot, and
they got out.
The bright young lawyer takes another look at me after I lock the door
and come back to him. "What do you mean to do?" he says.