THE OLD SAILOR WITH THE WOODEN LEG
IT was only in the country--in the woods and sheltered fence
corners--that the patches of snow still remained on this sixth day of
April. In New York the sun shone warmly upon the sidewalks, washed
clean by the shower of the night before, and the tiny patches of grass
in the parks and squares were quite green again.
About the middle of the forenoon a man stumped along a street leading
to what remains of the Battery park--a man dressed in a half uniform of
navy blue, and with a face (where the beard did not hide the cuticle)
as brown as a berry.
At first glance one would have pronounced this person to be a sailor,
and have been correct in the surmise, too.
The man’s frame was of huge mold, with massive development of chest and
limbs, and a head like a lion’s. But his bronzed cheeks were somewhat
hollow, and his step halting, this latter not altogether owing to
the fact that his right leg had been amputated at the knee and the
deficiency supplied by an old fashioned wooden leg.
Still, despite his evident infirmity, the old seaman looked cheerfully
out upon the world on this bright April morning, and pegged along the
sidewalk and into the park with smiling good nature.
Not a beggar had accosted him during his walk down town without having
a nickel tossed to him, and it was with vast contentment that the
wooden legged sailor at length seated himself upon a bench, from which
vantage point he could overlook the bay and its multitudinous shipping.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, sniffing the air which blew in from the sea, like a
hungry dog. “This is _life_, this is! Thank heaven I’ve got away from
them swabs of doctors at last. Another week at that ere hospital would
ha’ been the death o’ me. Still, I reckon they meant well ’nough.”
He sat there for some time in cheerful silence, and drank in the
exhilarating air, his pea cloth jacket thrown open to the breeze,
baring the broad expanse of flannel shirt beneath.
“A few days o’ this’ll put me right on my feet,” he said, with delight,
“better’n all the tonics the old sawbones ever invented. Lord! if I’d
had this breeze a-blowin’ inter my winder up there to the hospital, I’d
been out a fortnight ago.
“The old man ain’t dead yet. It was a pretty hard tug, I admit; but
here I be!”
He slapped his leg with such vigor that a flock of sparrows flew up
with sudden affright from the path; but this energetic gesture was
taken in another sense by the group of urchins which had gathered
near by to talk and fight (much after the manner of their feathered
prototypes, by the way) over the morning’s sale of papers.
At the old man’s motion half a dozen of these sharp eyed little rascals
broke away from the group, and ran shrieking toward him, wildly waving
their few remaining wares in his face.
“’Ere you are, sir! _Tribune_, _Sun_, _World_!”
“_Tribune_,” said the old sailor, laughing heartily as though he saw
something extremely ludicrous in their mistake.
“My last ’un, sir. Thankee!”
The successful Arab pocketed his money and went back to his friends,
while the sailor slowly unfolded the sheet and took up the thread of
his reflections again.
“Once I get my sea legs on,” he thought, fumbling in his pocket for
a pair of huge, steel bowed spectacles, which he carefully wiped and
placed astride his nose “once I get my sea legs on, I’ll take a trip up
ter Rhode Island and see the cap’n’s boy, unless he turns up in answer
to my letter.
“Poor lad! he’s doubtless heart broken by Cap’n Horace’s death, and
won’t feel much like goin’ into this ’ere treasure huntin’ business;
but for his own good I’ll have ter rouse him up. It would be what the
cap’n would wish, I know.”
He let the paper lie idly on his knee a moment, and a mist rose in his
eyes.
“Never mind if the old brig _has_ gone to pieces before we get there,”
he muttered. “I’ve got a little shot in the locker yet, an’ the boy
shan’t come ter want. I’ll do my duty by him as though he was my own
son, that I will!”
He picked up the paper again, and turned naturally to the shipping
news, which he ran over carelessly, smiling the while. Finally his eye
was attracted by something near the bottom of the column.
“Eh, what’s this?” he exclaimed. “What’s this about the Silver Swan?”
With great excitement he read the following news item, following each
line of the text with his stumpy forefinger:
Captain Millington, of the English steamer Manitoba, which arrived
here yesterday from Brazil, reports that he passed a very dangerous
wreck in latitude 22:03, longitude 70:32. It was the hull of a brig,
apparently in good condition, but with her masts snapped off close to
the decks, and all her rigging carried away. The name on her stern
was Silver Swan, Boston.
This is the same derelict reported by the steamer Montevideo at
Savannah several weeks ago. According to Captain Millington, the
wreck of the brig is a great menace to all vessels plying between
this and South American ports, as its course seems to be right across
the great highway followed by most of the steamship lines.
It will be remembered that the Silver Swan was wrecked over two
months ago on Reef Eight, southwest of Cuba, grounding, according to
the report of the survivors of her crew, upright on the rock. The
captain of the Montevideo sighted her not far from the reef, from
which she was doubtless loosened by the westerly gale of February
13th; but since that time she has floated some distance to the north
and east, and if she follows the same tactics as many of her sister
derelicts, she may zigzag across the course of the South American
steamers for months.
The cruisers Kearsarge and Vesuvius are both lying in port at
present, and it will be respectfully suggested to the Navy Department
that one or both of those vessels be sent to destroy this and several
others of the most dangerous derelicts now floating off our coast.
“Shiver my timbers, sir!”
With this forcible and exceedingly salty ejaculation, the old sailor
with the wooden leg dropped the newspaper to the walk, and his
spectacles along with it, and springing up, trampled upon them both.
But in his great excitement he noticed neither the torn paper nor the
ruined glasses. He stumped up and down the walk for several moments
before he became calm enough to think coherently.
In fact, the blue-coated policeman on the corner had begun to eye him
suspiciously.
“The Silver Swan afloat--a derelict!” he muttered. “This ’ere is a
sitiwation I didn’t look for. An’ then, them blasted cruisers are
liable to go down there and blow her into kingdom come any minute. The
Silver Swan on Reef Eight was bad enough, but the Silver Swan afloat,
at the mercy of the gales as well as other vessels, is worse!
“Now, what in creation’ll I do about it? I haven’t heard from the boy
yet, and there’s little enough time as it is. Why, she might sink ’most
any time with all them di’monds the cap’n told about aboard her!
“I’ll take a steamer to get down there ahead of them confounded
iron pots” (by this disrespectful term did he designate Uncle Sam’s
cruisers), “but who under the canopy’s got a steamer to charter?
“By the great horn spoon, I have it!” he exclaimed, after a moment’s
thought. “Adoniram Pepper is just the fellow.”
With this declaration he jammed his hat on his head, and stumped off as
rapidly as one good leg and one wooden one could carry him, toward the
shipping merchant’s office on Water Street.