things and saw the last passenger get away.
"'You hound,' the fellow yelled, 'you cowardly rascal--you insulter of
women!'
"You see, passengers get excited in such cases, get to lose their
heads. Cone never even looked at him, never took his eyes from the
settling ship.
"The engineer force had gone, the only men left aboard were the
quartermasters and mates. Cone spoke to Billings.
"'Get Redding and the rest--get in the boat, I'll come along in a
moment.'
"The _Champion_ was settling fast now. The roar of the steam and air
from between decks was deafening. Billings didn't quite get the words,
but he knew he was told to go--and he went. The third officer found
Redding lying with a broken head and dragged him to the side, lowered
him down and started after him. Just as he did this, there was a
ripping noise from below. It was like a tearing sort of explosion, a
rending. Cone had disappeared from the bridge and they waited no longer
but shoved clear. At that instant the _Champion_ surged ahead, lifted
her stern and dropped--she was gone.
"The suction whirled about, sucked the boat first one way and then
another, bringing her right over the foundering ship. Billings saw a
form jammed under the topmast backstay, saw a hand clutching something
white and he reached for it as the topmast went under.
"It was Cone. It was the skipper.
"They hauled him into the boat and he still clutched that thing in
his hand. He had been drawn under, been badly strangled and he was
unconscious, but his hand hold was firm and no one took notice of what
he held. It was the photograph of a woman.
"Billings didn't know anything about him; didn't know but what
the tales told were true--so he took the thing away from him and
said nothing about it; but Redding knew, Redding knew after he saw
it--months afterward when it was shown him--too late to stop the nasty
stories--oh, yes, it was the picture of his wife.
"Of course, Cone was living alone, had many affairs--so they said--and
it would not do to drag a woman into his ugly life. He had gone into
his room to get it--the picture--gone in to get it with that ship
sinking under him, the unsentimental and brutal Cone--oh, well, what's
the use?
"Yes, his hand was jammed between the backstay and the mast and
Billings just got him clear in time--funny, is it? Well, I don't know,
some men wouldn't have been so particular over a photograph, would have
used both their hands to fight clear with--what? But then, that's what
you call sentiment. No, you wouldn't expect it from Cone, wouldn't
expect to find it in a seaman with ruddy cheeks and quiet manner, soft
and a bit fat----"
"No," said Jackson, "you wouldn't expect a thing like that from Captain
Cone--that's right."
"No, you expect sentiment from the thin, poetical, big-eyed, tender
men, the men who slush and slobber it over at all occasions. You find
women looking for it in the tender talkers, the soft-spoken, the
amorous--oh, hell! did you ever see a man who looked the part--what?"
"I've sometimes had my doubts concerning heroes," said Johnson, "but
they are--the real ones--generally most common-looking, most quiet and
unassuming; but that Cone--well, he is a hard dose to swallow, and
that's a fact."
"Well, treat him decently when he comes back," said Simpson.
* * * * *
Some years later I met Cone at the dinner given by the Manager of the
Southern Fruit Company to the Captains of the West India fleet who ran
the steamers chartered under contract to fill the winter schedule.
There were as usual many British vessels in the trade, some Norwegian
and a few American, including myself.
Cone had passed entirely out of my ken and this time I took his hand
with the feeling that perhaps I had done the man an injustice by the
human judgment passed upon him. He was a very old man now and his hand
was still in a glove to hide the deformity which the accident had
caused. He looked very much the kindly old-time shipmaster, bright
of eye and vigorous to the last. He sat near me and remained silent
during the opening of the somewhat formal repast. The Manager had been
discussing some subject, for he seemed to wish to follow it at once.
"A thing's either right or wrong," said the Manager didactically, as he
looked over the gathering. He paused for the effect of his words to be
felt. He loved platitudes, although the leading man in his business and
a millionaire. "A thing is either right or wrong," he repeated, "and
a man is either right or wrong. There's a difference between them as
plain as between black and white."
Captain Cone squirmed in his chair. He had listened to this sort of
thing before from the Manager. The Company, the greatest shipping firm
in the whole world, had paid him his salary, given him his liner and
here was the Manager setting forth again against the manner of trusted
employees who should know these self-evident truths. He interrupted.
"In fifty-five years spent knocking about the world upon every sea,
I've come to a different conclusion," said he quietly.
It was so different from the usual applause, the applause which
had already started and which would follow the Manager's splendid
appreciation of the obvious. Several diners--there were twelve at the
table--looked up quickly and wondered at the Captain.
"What--what do you mean?" asked the Manager softly, amazed at the
interruption. He had been coming to a point where he expected to
hurl a smashing argument against the methods of some men who handled
millions, and here he had been held up by a Captain, an employee of
his Company. There was a silence, awkward, impressive--and the old
seaman felt it, causing him to blush through his mahogany tan. He had
committed himself, and he was essentially a modest man.
"I don't know exactly how to explain," said the Captain slowly. "These
questions of human analysis are so very subtle, so elusive--I am only a
sailorman after all, and perhaps I see things differently from the view
taken by landsmen. There is much in the point of view. But it seems
that I am still reasonable, still logical--and I am able to perform my
duties even though I'm seventy."
He paused, passed his brown hand across his grizzled forehead, where
the hair still hung thickly. Then he let it drop slowly down over his
beard and his eyes seemed to have an introspective look. He spoke very
slowly and with considerable hesitation as one not used to the ready
flow of language, words every one of which had a meaning.
"There was a small matter," he continued, "which called my attention
to the human judgment. I don't know how to tell it, but--well, you
remember Jones, Captain Jones, who had an interest in the oil ships?
Yes; well, I was thinking of him.
"Jones was one of the first oil carriers. That was before the Standard
took charge. I had sailed with him as mate long before the war.
He got a great tank ship--lost her. Then came the squeeze of the
Consolidated, then the death of competition--and, well, Jones lost one
thing after another. Froze out. They made him watchman at the office,
made him night watchman, a man who had once run a ten-thousand-ton
oiler, a man who had made them millions by his care and industry. Then
he sank to the gutter and on forty dollars a month he tried to wrest a
living for seven children--four of them girls. You know the old story,
the sordid details. Jones had to take on liquor once in a while. He
would have gone mad without a drunk at least once a month. He figured
that it was best to get drunk than go mad, best for his family. It's
all well enough to talk, for the chicken-souled loafers who preach
to their flocks and then get their living through the generosity of
silly women, to call poor Jones a drunken reprobate, a useless loafer,
because he drank. But the red-hearted men, the men who knew him, knew
what he was suffering, knew what weight was pulling him down. In two
years he never bought a suit of clothes. He never spent anything
upon himself--except at certain times he felt that he must undergo
relaxation, must get away from himself--then he would get drunk, very
drunk.
"His wife--oh, yes, he had his wife. She knew him, knew what he had
gone through--she saw he got enough money for rum, helped him, stinted
herself, slaved, worked--well, she did everything a poor, high-spirited
woman could do."
Cone paused, took a drink, a mere sip, from his glass of water,
then pushed it from him. The looks of the guests annoyed him. A
prohibitionist from Maine glared at him and made him uncomfortable.
There was a half-suppressed sneer upon the lips of the Manager, but he
was a gentleman--and a host.
"Yes--I was speaking of his wife," he went on. "She helped him, held
him up with a mighty soul, a tremendous strength for a woman. All
through the dark and gloomy life he led, sleeping in the daytime and
wandering about the desolate offices at night, she was always ready,
always willing to lend a hand, steadying, guiding, always sound in
judgment and above all ready at all times to make any sacrifice for
either him or the children--yes, she was a great woman--may the God of
the sea hold her gently where she lies in its bosom--dead? Oh, yes,
she died long ago. The worst of the affair came about when Jones fell
sick. He finally broke down under the awful strain, couldn't stand
it--no, the liquor didn't hurt him, he was used to that. It was the
despair, the dead weight of crushed hopes, the knowledge of an old
man unable to make good against the tide, the tide which was sweeping
his children down to hell. The oldest girl was twenty and forced to
work at a place where--well, never mind, it was the same old sordid
story of a young woman staying, sticking out at a place where it was
impossible for her to come out as she went in. Ruin, and hell for her
afterward--convention, we call it--but what's the use? She was the old
man's favorite, and it hit him very hard, very hard indeed.
"Yes, I remember it very well. Poor old Jones, captain of a
ten-thousand-ton ship, owner of a quarter interest in one of the
biggest commercial enterprises in the world--six children and a wife
starving on forty dollars a month and the seventh child--yes, it
was pretty bad, especially bad for Jones, for he had done nothing
to deserve his fate, nothing but fight a combination which knew no
mercy. The relentless, implacable cruelty of corporations is well
enough known to you gentlemen. Their laws are like the laws of
Nature--transgress them and you must die. The laws of life are supposed
to be just, therefore it is probable that those of some corporations
are so likewise--I don't know. But they had smashed Jones. Crushed him
down--yes, there he was at forty a month, trying to forget, trying to
do something to keep his family alive, and then under the heaviest
strain he broke one day--broke and went down."
Many of the guests at the Manager's table had now resumed their
poise. Some at the farther end resumed conversation, overlooking the
story-teller and wondering a little at his bad form to monopolize the
talk of the complaisant dinner humor. But some of the men nearest
the Manager still listened and the old Captain watched them with his
dark bright eyes, eyes which seemed to sparkle like diamonds in the
light. They were the eyes which had pointed the way to many millions
of dollars' worth of cargo, many thousand passengers, and they watched
over them through many a wild and stormy night upon the bridge of his
ship in mid-ocean where the mind has much time to ponder over the
methods, the ethics of the commercial human.
"I found him at the hospital," went on Cone. "He was shaky, but he
fought his weakness back and went home at the end of two weeks to find
his wife down with pneumonia and the house full of famished children."
Cone stopped speaking for a moment and gazed across the table at the
polished buffet, seeming to see something in the mirror back of it. The
Manager looked up, saw his gaze and spoke:
"I know there's lots of hardships, Captain," said he, "and I don't lay
it all to the drink habit. Let your glass be filled--what?"
"Pardon me," said the old seaman. "I am old and forgetting my
story--I was just thinking a bit. This is not a temperance lecture at
all--no, no, that is not what I was thinking of." And he gazed at the
prohibitionist across the board who was fingering his napkin.
"No, the thing that I was coming to is this. Jones found things in a
desperate condition at his home. He must have money. It was an absolute
necessity to have medical attendance at once for his wife, and he
dreaded the free ward of the hospitals--he had gone into one once
himself and knew what it meant. He must have money for his children."
"A man might steal under those conditions without being very bad,"
interrupted a man sitting next to him.
"That isn't what he did," said the old Captain. "He met a friend on
the street while on his way to a pawnshop--and the friend heard his
tale. His friend was a bank messenger, at least he was carrying the
proceeds of a ship's cargo in a bag. You see, in those days, captains
were allowed to collect freights at certain points, being in the
companies, and these moneys were carried aboard the ship until she
reached her home port. Sometimes there were many thousand dollars. This
friend had been with Jones in the old days and he knew his history.
The money he carried was freights from an oil ship just arrived. There
was fifteen thousand dollars of it in gold, and it was the property of
the very corporation which had squeezed Jones and ruined him. Well,
the friend did the obvious, did the human thing. He opened the bag
and gave Jones just five hundred dollars in gold and then went along
to try and fix the matter up with the firm--it required lying--that
is bad; it required many other things which we will not discuss here,
but they are eminently bad, bad as they can be--and by dint of lying,
and pilfering, and--well, the friend made good the loss without ever
getting found out--yes, a horrible example, I admit. He made good the
five hundred and no one ever knew he was a thief. No one knows to this
day--except--anyway, Jones saved his wife, and at the end of the money
the friend helped him to buy into a schooner and he got command. They
paid twenty-five per cent. in those days and he pulled out making
enough to save the rest from abject poverty."
"But you don't mean you approve of that fellow, that thief who
appropriated other people's money, his employers' money, do you?" asked
the Manager in amazement. "The thing for him to have done was to have
gone to the firm and stated the case, told of the poverty of Jones,
told how he should be helped. No human being would have refused him."
"On the contrary, the friend did just those things--afterward--and
as I said before, corporations know no laws but their own. They are
relentless as the laws of Nature, as implacable as the laws of health.
Go where there is cholera, get the germ into your system, and you
will understand what I mean. No human feeling, no sympathy--nothing
will save you but your own powers of resistance. You will necessarily
die unless you can stand it. Most people die. And it may be right to
have things this way--I don't know, I don't set up as a judge; I am a
sailor. But I am human--and I don't hate my neighbor, I don't look upon
my friend as my enemy. Perhaps I am wrong. Still the thief in this case
suffered much. He was for years afraid of being found out. That shows
the whole horrible futility of it all. He suffered more than Jones,
for Jones knew from where the money came, knew it was money which by
his judgment should have gone to him anyway. Jones refused to pay it
back and wanted to publish the fact that he had gotten even with the
corporation to the extent of five hundred dollars.
"Of course, he didn't do it. The friend persuaded him not to, and when
he went into the coaster he forgot to talk about it even when under the
effects of his drinks.
"You see, it was about that time the insurance troubles came about.
Marine insurance had a tumble owing to the loss of several heavy
ships and other matters not worth discussing now. You were badly hit
yourself, I believe,"--and the old Captain nodded to the Manager,
who smiled acquiescence--"you told me at the time--if I remember
rightly--that one more vessel gone and you would go to the wall.
"The friend owned shares in that schooner, owned more than half of
her, and he it was that let her go out, made her go to sea after
her policies ran out. He would not stop her carrying, for it meant
laying her up and Jones would have to go ashore again until things
straightened out. It was the hurricane season and she had to go light
to Cuba.
"I remember something of the affair, for I happened to be on the dock
when she sailed. Jones was standing aft giving orders, and his wife,
with her three daughters, were below in the cabin. It was a pretty
picture of commercial life, a picture of a man doing his work with his
family or part of it around him, and I almost envied him his place.
What does an old liner skipper ever have of domestic life? Never gets
home, never sees his wife but once or twice a year, and the company
never lets her go aboard the ship at all if they can help it. Well,
she sailed out that August day, and the next thing we heard of him was
that his schooner was driven ashore during a gale. She rammed up on
one of the Bahamas, Castle Rock, I believe, and then broke up. Some of
the crew and his daughters were saved--he and his wife went down--lost
before they could get them ashore.
"And so there it is--did the men do all that was right or did they
do all that was wrong? That's the question. Where is the line of
demarkation, where does the wrong leave off and right begin, or how is
the mixture to be sifted down? We go by rules, we must play according
to rules or the game becomes chaos. But do the rules always hold, do
they always cover every emergency? I don't know, but I believe there is
bad, or what is called bad, in all men, also there is good--it depends
upon the man--not the rule."
There was a long pause. The Manager gazed curiously at his guest.
"You say the schooner went ashore on Castle Rock?"
"I said--well, it was somewhere about there, I don't know exactly,"
replied the old seaman, annoyed.
"There never was a wreck on Castle Rock that I ever heard of," said the
Manager, eying the old Captain curiously, "but there was the _Hattie
Davis_ that was lost on the Great Inagua Bank--she wasn't insured, I
believe."
"Yes, she was lost on the Great Inagua," assented the Captain, leaning
back, as though the story were closed.
"You had a large interest in her, I believe," said the Manager slowly,
"and I recollect, now, you lost all in her----"
"The light was not so good as it is now," quickly put in the old
seaman. "It used to show only in clear weather--and it's almost always
clear through the passage--I remember how the passengers used to be
glad when we entered the passage coming up from Cuba in the old Panama
ships--rough in the tumble off Maysi when the wind holds nor'east for
a spell."
The Manager was gazing at the old skipper strangely. Then he suddenly
turned and started to discuss other matters with his guests. The
dinner went along without incident and afterward we arose to go to the
smoking-room for our cigars.
"Come along with me, Cone," said the Manager, "I have a new orchid I
picked up I want to show you; you always liked flowers, you know."
Afterward I passed them and overheard the Manager saying in a low
tone--"Well, you always had a hell of a reputation, Cone, anyway,
but under the circumstances--well, there might be some sort of
justification. You are too full of that damned sentiment for any
business whatever. Still, I'll admit that it isn't so much what a man
does that matters--that is, it doesn't matter so much as _how_ it is
done--and _who_ does it."
And so this was Cone? This was the master who had earned a reputation
for some very queer things as seamen see them. I remember the old days,
the words of poor old Simpson who had long gone to the port of missing
ships. Sentimental Captain Cone, stout, grizzled, bronzed, the man who
lost his hand holding to the picture of a wife who had been false to
him and who had accused him of many things too hard to print. It was
strange.
I suddenly felt I would like to see Simpson, to acknowledge he was not
so far wrong after all.
"The judgment of man is not good," I said in answer to some question
relative to nothing concerning Cone, and with this platitude upon my
lips I went home.
ON GOING TO SEA
We sat together upon the quarter-deck under the awning of the _Harvest
Queen_. My own ship lay in the berth opposite, and I had come over for
a quiet smoke with Captain Large. He sailed in the morning, and was
bound for Frisco around Cape Horn. I would not see him again for a year
or two--probably never; but he and I had sailed together and I had been
his mate. We talked of things, confidences, the talk of old shipmates
who know each other very well, and who are passing to know each other
as memories. I had shipped five apprentices, two sons of prominent men
in the shipping circles of New York, and I wondered at the outcome.
"I never take them any more," said Large. "I took one out of here a few
years ago, and--well, I don't care to repeat the job."
"But the boys are good--signed on regular--what can they do?" I asked.
"I don't know, but I'll tell you what one did in the _Wildwood_ when I
took him to China. I don't know how to explain it. The strangeness of
it all, the peculiar development that came about under seeming natural
causes--hereditary, you will say, and perhaps that is right I have
often studied it over, often lain awake in my bunk wondering at it all,
what peculiar ideas grew in a brain that was almost human--almost,
for when you think of what he did you cannot believe he was quite so,
even though his father was the President of the Marine Association and
had commanded the best American ships in his day." The old skipper sat
quiet for some minutes and seemed to be thinking, studying over some
problem. His cigar shone like a spark in the warm night, but the smoke
was invisible. I waited. Apprentices were new to me. I had not had much
chance to study the training of youth. My own way had been rough. I had
at last gotten my ship after a life of strenuous endeavor and often
desperate effort, and I wanted to learn all I could. Men I knew. I had
handled them by and large from every part of the globe, and discipline,
iron discipline, was a thing my ship was noted for. She had a bad name.
"You see," said Large, his deep voice booming softly in the night,
"there is something intangible that a human being inherits from his
forbears. We look at the successful man as a target to aim at, an
idol we point out for youth to emulate. We don't always analyze the
greatness. A successful man is often so from the stress he puts upon
others. He will not stay in equilibrium. He keeps going on up, up
beyond the place his own production entitles him. He becomes predatory,
but unlike wolves or felines he preys upon his own kind.
"When President Jackson of the Bengal Line asked me to take Willie,
his son, I did so with the feeling that it was an honor conferred upon
me, the captain of one of the ships. Jackson had earned his position
by his own efforts and fought his way up to the top. I remembered him
well enough when he was a master, but he was now President of the Line.
He had a very sinister reputation in the old ships, but that was all
forgotten now.
"Willie came aboard looking like a physical wreck. He was a slight
youth of fifteen, stoop-shouldered, pale of face, but with the eye
of his father, and the peculiar settling of the corners of his mouth
noticeable in the old man. 'Be sure you bring him back safely,' said
his father, giving me a look I long remembered. 'Be sure you take good
care of him--and bring him back.' I didn't quite know what he meant. I
don't yet; but I know why he said it. I began to think of it before we
were at sea a week.