They regarded with amazement and almost with incredulity his
manifestations of sensitive honor and of unselfish loyalty to duty. They
thought of him as a sort of freak, or what we should nowadays call a
crank.
Of course they could not fail to recognize his ability, but they thought
him a good deal of a fool, nevertheless, for not taking selfish
advantage of the opportunities that so frequently came to him. They
could not understand why he should go out of his way, as he very often
did, to render services to the firm which were in no way required or
expected of him. Especially they could not understand why, when he had
rendered such services in a way to attract Captain Hallam's pleased
attention he didn't "strike for something better," as they phrased their
thought.
In one especial case, their amazement over his neglect of an opportunity
bred something like contempt of him in their minds. It was the practice
of the Hallams to keep a fleet of heavily laden coal barges in a bend of
the river above the town, bringing them down one by one to the coalyards
at "The Point" below the city as they were needed. One day in the early
winter, a coal gauger being off duty, Duncan volunteered to go up to the
bend in his stead, and measure the coal in a great fleet of barges that
had just arrived.
He found the barges unsafely bestowed, and suggested to the captain of
the Hallam yard tug boat that he should tow them into a securer
anchorage. As night was at hand the captain of the tug refused, saying
that he would attend to the matter on the morrow.
That night the first storm of the winter broke upon the river, lashing
it to fury, and threatening with destruction every species of craft that
might venture away from moorings.
About midnight one of Duncan's bedroom windows was blown in, scattering
glass and fragments of sash over his bed, and startling him out of
sleep.
Instantly the thought of the exposed coal barges flashed into his mind.
He knew that they were utterly unfit to ride out a storm, being nothing
more than great oblong boxes, loaded nearly to their gunwales with coal.
He remembered, too, the exposed position in which they had been left for
the night.
Hastily drawing on his clothing he hurried to the landing place of the
yard tug. He found no preparations making there for any attempt to save
the barges and their enormously rich cargoes, or even to rescue the
helpless men who had been left on board of them. The engineer of the
tug, who always slept on board, was there, and so were the two deck
hands and the fireman, but the fires were banked, and the captain had
not responded to the duty call of the tempest.
As the immediate representative and chief lieutenant of Captain Hallam,
Guilford Duncan was recognized as a man somewhat entitled to give
orders. On this occasion he promptly assumed so much more of authority
as did not strictly belong to him.
He instantly ordered the engineer to get up steam. He directed one of
the two deck hands to go hurriedly to the tug captain's bedroom and
order him to come to the tug at once.
As he rattled off his orders for putting cable coils aboard, placing all
fenders in position, battening down the hatches, and doing all else that
might render the tug fitter for the perilous service that he intended
to exact of her, his voice took on the old ring of battle, and his
commands came quick, sharp, and penetrating from his set lips, like
those of an officer placing guns in position for a desperate fight.
The captain, who was also sole pilot of the tug, so far obeyed the order
sent to him as to come to the tug landing. But when he looked out upon
the storm-lashed river, he positively refused to obey Duncan's order to
go to the wheel.
"I'll never take the tug out in such a storm as this," he said doggedly.
"But think, man! There are twenty men or more up there on those coal
barges, whose lives simply _must_ be saved. And there is a hundred
thousand dollars' worth of coal there that may go to the bottom any
minute."
"I can't help that. I tell you the tug couldn't live a minute in such a
storm."
"In other words," answered Duncan with measureless contempt in his tone,
"you are a miserable coward, a white-livered wretch, whose life wouldn't
be worth saving if it were in danger. Go back to your bed! Go to sleep!
or _go to hell_, damn you, for the cowardly whelp that you are!"
Then turning to the engineer and the two deck hands, he asked hoarsely:
"Will you men stand to your duty while I go to the wheel?"
"We're with you while she floats, cap'n," said the engineer. "I always
did hate a coward."
"Have you got steam enough?"
"Yes, a hundred and fifty pounds pressure to the square inch, and she'll
need it all."
"All right. Cast her off," commanded Duncan as he stepped to his post in
the pilot house.
He knew, of course, that he was taking terrible risks. Having no pilot's
license he had no legal right to be at the wheel. Should disaster
overtake the tug he would be personally liable for the insurance
forfeited by his act in taking her out in contravention of the judgment
of her captain and pilot. Worse still, should any life be lost in the
adventure, Guilford Duncan would be held to answer for manslaughter.
Well-educated lawyer that he was, he knew all these facts. He perfectly
understood the fearful responsibilities he was taking upon himself. Yet
he faltered not nor failed. There was no moment's hesitation in his
mind. There were lives in peril up there in the bend, and a vast
property exposed to destruction. There was a chance that by taking these
risks he might save both. All that is best in the soul-impulse of the
soldier was his inspiration. He would do his duty--though that duty was
in no wise his except as he had made it his--and let consequences look
out for themselves.
This young fellow had often sniffed the breath of battle in his
nostrils. He had many times done and dared things that only a brave and
self-regardless man could have done and dared. To-night the old
enthusiasm of war came back to his soul, but with a difference. He had
often fought to destroy. He was facing danger now with saving and the
rescue of imperiled human lives for his purpose.
As the tug quitted her moorings and began her voyage up the river,
Duncan caught a glimpse of Captain Hallam's form hurrying toward the
landing. Almost immediately the tug began to plunge in perilous fashion,
thrusting her head under the waves, and shipping water enough to dampen
the fires and diminish steam pressure in a way that threatened failure
to the enterprise.
Failure in the work of rescue was the only thing that Guilford Duncan
feared.
He had already had the hatches securely battened down so that no water
could find its way into the hold. But when he saw that water was rapidly
rushing with every sea into the furnace room, threatening with
extinction the fires that could alone give power to the vessel, he
called one of the deck hands to the wheel, and instructing him as to the
course to be laid, himself hurriedly inspected ship. With the aid of the
other deck hand he quickly removed from bow to stern everything that had
weight. Then he and the deck hand and the fireman, with some aid from
the engineer, proceeded to shovel the coal supply from its bunkers
forward of the fire room into the captain's cabin aft of the furnaces.
This done, the tug no longer ran her prow into and under the tremendous
seas, but rode over them instead, shipping no further water.
Then Duncan returned to the pilot house, and a few minutes later reached
the imperiled fleet of coal barges.
There havoc had already begun. Three barges had gone down and two men
had been drowned. The rest of the barges were riding so uneasily that
their seams were opening, and the water that must presently swamp them
was finding its insidious way through their sides and bottoms.
When the tug appeared, all the men on board the coal barges clamored
piteously to be taken off at once.
"Stand to your duty, men!" shouted Duncan. "Don't be cowards. Do your
part of the work and we'll save all of you and all the coal. Only obey
orders promptly and I'll be responsible for the rest. Go to the pumps
and answer every command promptly."
He then ordered flaming torches kindled on every barge, and in the light
thus created he was able to tow one after another of the coal boats into
that harbor of safety in which the tug captain should have moored them
during the day before, the men meanwhile pumping to keep the water
down.
Then with his clothing drenched and frozen stiff upon him, he steered
the tug back to her landing place, through the now receding storm.
Kennedy, the tug captain, was there, waiting. As Duncan came ashore
Kennedy said menacingly:
"If I get my discharge for this I'll prosecute you for piloting without
a license."
The ice-encased and half-frozen young man made no reply. He simply
hurried ashore.
As he mounted to the top of the levee, though it was only a little after
daylight, Duncan encountered Captain Will Hallam, who stood there
waiting for him.
"Go to the hotel," said the employer. "I've ordered a piping hot bath
for you there, and a blazing wood fire. There's nothing like a wood fire
after a chilling such as you've had. When you get good and warm, go to
bed. When you wake naturally, telegraph to the office for me, and we'll
breakfast together. I've ordered the breakfast--the hotel keeper thinks
it will bankrupt him or make his fortune to furnish it, but that doesn't
matter. Get warm and get some sleep. Sleep as long as you can."
"I don't think I care for sleep," answered the half-frozen and wholly
exhausted young man. "But would you mind sending Dutch John to me at the
hotel? I'd like to have him rub me down with some Turkish towels after
my hot bath. Tell him I have a dollar for him if he rubs me well."
"That fellow is certainly a new brand," muttered Captain Hallam to
himself as he walked away up the levee. "But he's 'triple X' for
endurance and modesty and courage, and all the rest of it. What a
fighter he must have been! I'd like to see him in a hot battle, if I
were bullet proof myself. I'll bet bonds to brickbats he got all the
fight there was in them out of his men. But why doesn't he look out for
his own interests, I wonder? I'm still paying him the salary on which he
began. Any other man in my employ who could have done one-tenth of what
he has done, would have made me pay three times as much by this time.
But then, that's the reason. It's just because he is that sort that he
hasn't bothered about an increase of salary. By George! I'll give it to
him without the asking! I never did such a thing before in all my life.
It will startle the office people out of their wits, but they need
startling, and as for their wits--well----"
He didn't complete the sentence; for just then he met Dutch John.
"Go down to the hotel at once," he commanded. "Go on the run. Go to Mr.
Duncan's room and rub all the skin off his body. He'll give you a dollar
for a good rub. I'll give you five dollars more if he is satisfied."
"I must milk your cows first," answered the stolid German boy, whose
occupations were varied and sometimes conflicting.
"Oh, let the cows go hang! Or let the half-dozen accomplished young
ladies whom my wife employs to keep her establishment in order, milk
them! You go to the hotel and rub that man into condition. Damn the
cows!"
Obviously, young Duncan's performance of that stormy night had awakened
Captain Hallam to enthusiasm. He was not much given to enthusiasms, but
this one was thoroughly genuine.
"Yes, by George!" he said between his clenched teeth, "I'll multiply
that fellow's salary by three and let the office people wonder! Perhaps
it will give them a hint. No, it won't. Or at least they won't take the
hint. But anyhow, I'll do it, if only for what the newspapers call
'dramatic effect.'"
Entering the office, where, at this hour, the clerks were assembling,
Captain Hallam said, in his figurative fashion:
"That fellow Duncan has got more cogs in his gearing wheels than all the
rest of you put together. You call him a freak; you call him eccentric,
because he isn't like you. Now let me tell you that that's a sort of
eccentricity that you'll do well to cultivate. The less you are like
yourselves and the more you're like him, the better it will be for you.
He thinks. You don't. He does all he can. You do as little as you can.
He shall have his reward. He shall have a salary three times that of the
best man in the office. And more than that, he shall have the right to
command here. Whatever orders he gives shall be obeyed, just as if they
were my own. He is your model to imitate, so far as you can. But most of
you can't. Most of you care only to get through a day's work for a day's
wages. You have no loyalty, no concern for the business. Not a man jack
of you thought of the storm last night as a circumstance that imperiled
human life and my property. He did. You lay still in your beds listening
to the rain on the roof, and sinking into sweet slumbers to the tune of
its pattering. He was up and out, and risking his life to meet the
emergency. Can't you see that that makes all the difference between a
successful man and an unsuccessful one? Can't you understand that--oh,
pshaw! What's the use of talking to stumps?"
That was the very longest speech that Captain Will Hallam had ever made
in his life. It was not without effect. It did not inspire any of the
clerks to fresh endeavor, or to a more conscientious service. But it
made every one of them an implacable enemy of Guilford Duncan, and
inflamed every one of them with an insatiable desire to injure him
whenever occasion might offer.
Thus, by his night's heroic endeavor, Guilford Duncan had succeeded not
only in making an enemy of Captain Kennedy, but in making himself
_anathema_ _maranatha_ in the Hallam office besides.
He was taking a bath, however, at that time, and not thinking of these
matters.
X
ALLIANCE, OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE
"How did you come to do that?"
That was the first question Captain Hallam fired at Duncan after the
hotel waiter had quitted the room to bring a further supply of coffee
and broiled bacon.
"Why, it's simple enough," answered Duncan, with a touch of
embarrassment in his tone. "You see, I was up there yesterday gauging
coal. I knew the barges were anchored in a dangerous position, and so
when the storm broke, there wasn't anything else to do but get into my
clothes and send the tug up there to the rescue."
"But it wasn't your business to look after the coal up in the bend?"
Duncan slowly drank three sips of coffee before answering that eagerly
questioning remark. Then he leant forward and said, slowly and with
emphasis:
"I conceive it to be my business, and my duty as well as my pleasure, to
do all that I can to promote the interest of the man who employs me."
"But that was a risky thing to do. You took your life in your hands, you
know?"
"I suppose I did, but that's a small matter. There were twenty other
lives in danger. And what is one man's life when there is a duty to be
done? We've all got to die sometime."
Captain Hallam did not utter the thought that was in him. That thought
was:
"Well, of all the queer men I have ever had to deal with, you are
certainly the queerest! Still, I think I understand you, and that's
queerer still."
Instead of speaking he sipped his coffee. Then he rose and "tickled the
denunciator." That was his phrase for ringing for a servant.
"Put some more wood on the fire," he commanded when the servant came.
"I've put it all on, a'ready," answered the man.
"Well, bring some more."
"It'll be extry charge, sir."
"Never mind that," said Captain Hallam. "Do as you are told, and when
the thing is over I'll issue a loan, raise some money, and pay the bill.
You know who I am, don't you?"
"No, sir. You see, I've just come to Cairo."
"Very well, then. Go to the office of the hotel and tell the people
there that Captain Will Hallam is ordering more wood than you think he
can pay for. They'll tell you what to do. In the meantime, here's a
quarter for you."
This by-play with the serving man relieved Captain Hallam of a sense of
embarrassment which he felt in approaching the next thing he had in
mind.
"What do you want, Duncan, for last night's work?"
Duncan looked at his companion for half a minute before answering. Then
he said:
"I want that tug captain of yours discharged."
"Why?"
"Because he's a coward and an utterly unfit man. Human life may depend
upon his courage at any moment, and he has no courage."
"Is that _all_ you want?"
"Yes. That's all."
"Why don't you demand an increase in your salary? Anybody else would.
But, perhaps you don't care for a bigger salary? You're a queer sort,
you know."
"Oh, yes; I care very much for an increase," answered Duncan.
"Then why didn't you seize upon the opportunity to ask for it?"
"Must I tell you, frankly?"
"I wish you would. It might help me to understand you."
"Well, it is simple enough. You gave me employment when I was
desperately in need of it. I should be an ingrate if I did not consider
your interests in all that I do. I think I ought to have a larger
salary than you are now paying me. I think I earn it, and it has been
my purpose to ask for it when the proper time should come."
"Then why haven't you been in a hurry to ask for it now? There couldn't
be a better time."
"Pardon me, but I cannot agree with you. It so happens that just at this
moment I have several very important matters of yours in my charge. You
have entrusted them to me, and they have come so exclusively under my
control that nobody else--not even you--could conduct them to a
successful issue so well as I can. Under such circumstances, of course,
I cannot make any personal demand upon you, without indecency. To do so
would be to take advantage of your necessities. It would amount to a
threat that, if you refused my demands, I would abandon these
enterprises and leave you to get out of all their difficulties as best
you could. Don't you see, Captain Hallam, that under such circumstances,
I simply could not make a demand upon you for more salary, or for
anything else of personal advantage to myself?"
"No, I don't see it at all. And yet, somehow, I seem to understand you.
If I were in your place I'd regard these circumstances as trump cards,
and I'd lead them for all they are worth. So would any other man in the
Mississippi Valley--or anywhere else, I think."
"That may perhaps be so, and I suppose I am 'queer,' as you say. But to
me it would seem a despicable thing to take advantage of the fact that
you need me in these affairs of yours. You have bidden me be frank. I
will be so. When I came to Cairo I sought work of the hard, physical
kind, at the small wages that such work commands. You quickly gave me
better work and larger pay than I had expected to earn for months to
come. Little by little you have advanced me in your regard until now I
seem to enjoy your confidence. When you first brought me into contact
with the big men of affairs--more or less big--I was oppressed with an
exaggerated sense of their greatness. Presently, I discovered that while
you are always deferential toward them, you are distinctly their
superior in intellect and in your grasp of affairs. You allow them to
think that they are your masters, while in fact you never fail to have
your way, and to compel them and the many millions of other people's
money whose use they control, to your own purposes."
At this point Hallam uttered a low chuckle.
"A little later I discovered another fact," continued Duncan. "It slowly
dawned upon my mind that you put me forward in your conferences with
them, because you valued my suggestions and my initiative more than you
did theirs. Thinking of that I came at last to the conclusion that I
must, in fact, be superior to these men in those qualities that
originate, execute, achieve. Otherwise, with your genius for affairs,
you would have suppressed me and listened to them."
Again Hallam chuckled.
"Then another thought occurred to me. The only reason why they can
execute plans that I conceive, while I cannot, is that they have
considerable money of their own and command of much greater sums not
their own, while I have neither. They have the tools and the materials.
I have neither. The clumsiest mechanic, who has tools and materials to
work with, can do things that the most skillful mechanic who has neither
tools nor materials, cannot do.
"I have decided, therefore, to possess myself of tools and materials, in
order that I may make myself a master workman, and do my part in the
great nation-building enterprises of the time and country."
"Would you mind explaining what you mean by that?" interrupted Hallam,
whose eagerness in listening had caused him to let his second cup of
coffee grow cold.
Duncan arose, without answering, crossed the room, pressed the button,
and then said:
"It is a subject that I very much wish to talk with you about. But your
coffee is cold. When you get a fresh cup, I'll explain."
He said no more till the waiter came, served the coffee and left the
room. Then he began:
"People who live all their lives in the mountains have no adequate
conception or perception of the grandeur of the scenery that surrounds
them. We never any of us fully understand the things against which we
'rub our eyes,' as a witty Frenchman has put it. It is for that reason,
perhaps, that what is going on here in the West does not impress you in
the same way in which it impresses me. You men of affairs are just now
beginning to do the very greatest work of nation building that has ever
been done since time began. But you are so close to your work that you
do not appreciate its collossal proportions. You have no perspective. In
that I have the advantage of you. Coming, as I do, out of the dead past,
contemplating the present as I do, and looking to the future as I must,
I see the grandeur to which your detailed work is tending, with a
clearness of vision impossible to you because of your nearness to it.
May I go on and set forth the whole of my thought?"
"Yes, certainly. I want to hear. Go on!"
"Well, then, let me explain and illustrate. A little while ago, in going
over your accounts, I discovered that the cotton and grain you shipped
from Cairo to New York must be five times transferred from one car to
another. That entailed enormous and needless expense in addition to the
delay. A few weeks ago I suggested to a conference of railroad nabobs at
your house that you should organize a line of through freight cars,
which should be loaded at Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago, or anywhere else
in the West, and hauled through to New York, Boston, or anywhere else in
the East, without breaking bulk. The saving of expense was so obvious
that you put a hundred thousand dollars into the line and the railroad
magnates made specially good terms for the hauling of the car. You
expect and will get dividends from your investment. The railroad men see
profit for their companies in the operation of the line. That is all
that you and they foresee of advantage. In my view that is the very
smallest part of the matter."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, taking cotton as a basis of reckoning, this through-line system of
transportation, owned independently of the railroads, will make an
important saving in the cost of raw materials to the owners of New
England mills. They will run more spindles and set more looms agoing
than they would have done without the through line's cheapening of raw
material. They will pay better wages and reap larger profits. They will
produce more goods, and they will sell them at a smaller price. The
farmer in the West will pay less for his cotton goods and get more for
his grain because of the through line's cheapening of transportation. He
and his wife and his children will dress better at less cost than they
otherwise could do. Bear in mind that the line's cars will carry other
things than cotton. The people of the East will get their breadstuffs
and their bacon and their beef far cheaper because of its existence than
they otherwise could.
"That is one step in advance, and it is only one. The success of this
line is now assured. A dozen or a score of other through freight lines
will be organized and operated in competition with it. The present
line's rate of one and a half cents per ton per mile will presently be
cut down by competition to half a cent per ton per mile, or even less. I
shall not be surprised if, with the improvement of railroads and with
their closer co-operation the freight rate shall ultimately be reduced
even to one-fifth or one-tenth of a cent per ton per mile.