A BURGLAR IN THE CABIN.
“Oh, this is ahead of being a cabin passenger on one of the big
liners!” Kit said to himself, as he hurried through the brick tunnel
that led to the wharf of Martin’s Stores. “The passenger knows where
he’s going, so he doesn’t have the fun of wondering. But I don’t know.
Maybe the ship has been chartered for China while I’ve been away; or it
might be for Russia, to carry grain. There’s no seaport in the world
that we mightn’t go to. I think one will suit me just about as well as
another, though I’d rather like to cross the ocean.”
Tom Haines was one of the first men he met on deck.
“Well, have you made up your mind where you’re going to take the yacht
to this voyage?” Kit asked, as they shook hands.
“Don’t call her a yacht!” Tom laughed. “We’d have too many big bills to
pay if she was our yacht. It’s better as it is: we get a salary and a
sea-voyage at the same time. Yes, we’re chartered for Nassau this trip,
to bring back pineapples and sponges; and we’ll be off in four or five
days.”
“For Nassau!” Kit repeated; “why, that’s--” but there he stopped.
“That’s right,” Tom said, still laughing. “Stick to your old rule and
never say you don’t know a thing, but go and find it out. I know what
you’re thinking about. You want to go down in the cabin and look at the
map to see where Nassau is. But I’ll save you the trouble. It’s the
capital of the Bahama Islands, in the northern West Indies, and about
a thousand miles from New York; so that will make a short voyage. But
there’s more news for you: you have a new cabin steward.”
“No!” Kit answered, not at all sorry to hear it. “Where’s the old
steward?”
“I should think in Bellevue Hospital by this time,” Tom replied,
“unless he’s reformed. He got on a terrible spree and fell to breaking
the crockery, so the Captain sent him off in a hurry. The new man is
a Scotchman named MacNish, and that’s all I can tell you about him.
There’s a new galley boy, too; but that doesn’t count for much.”
“Not to you,” Kit declared, “but it does to me, because now I’m not the
newest hand on the ship. But I must go down and report myself.”
He did not see the new steward, who was at work in the pantry; but
Captain Griffith called him into his stateroom.
“I am glad you are back promptly,” he said, “for to-morrow we begin
taking in cargo for Nassau, and I want you to keep tally as it comes on
board. It is not exactly cabin boy’s work, but you do it carefully,
and it is good experience for you.”
“I am only too glad to do it, sir,” Kit answered. “I want to make
myself useful.”
“I thought of raising your pay two or three dollars a month for this
extra work,” the Captain went on, “but I have concluded not to do it at
present. I don’t want to make a pet of you; it’s better that you should
work your way gradually like other people. You can go to the steward
now and see whether he has anything for you to do.”
There was nothing to be done at the moment, for the new steward had
everything in order. Kit had never seen the pantry so clean, nor the
cabin brass-work so well polished. Mr. MacNish was apparently about
forty years old, a plump man of medium height, his florid round face
smooth except for a little tuft of iron-gray whiskers under each ear.
“Looks more like an Englishman than a Scotchman,” Kit said to himself;
and his accent certainly was more English than Scotch; but his manner
was much pleasanter than the other steward’s, and he used so many
biblical quotations when he talked that Kit thought he must be a very
devout man.
For the next four days the cabin boy was busy keeping tally of the
general cargo as it came aboard, and after the same performance as
before of anchoring by the Liberty statue and the Captain coming out in
a tug, the _North Cape_ got under way for Nassau. There was not
much to be seen of the New Jersey coast this time, for she stood out
to the southeastward all the first night, and in two days and a half
crossed the Gulf Stream and ran into warmer weather. And every day Kit
thought more and more of the new steward. He was so kind and gentle,
so willing to do things himself rather than give Kit trouble, so neat
and industrious, and above all so pious in his conversation, that it
worried the cabin boy to see that Captain Griffith treated him rather
abruptly, as if he did not care much for him.
“Was that a little Bible I saw you have last night, my boy?” Mr.
MacNish asked Kit one morning. “Ah, I thought so. I like to see boys
read their Bible. And maybe you’d lend it to me sometimes. Mine must
have been stolen, I’m afraid, for I always carry it in my satchel. Oh,
it’s a great comfort, lad, in times of trouble. My good old father”
(his voice grew a little husky) “taught me to read my chapter every
day, and I don’t like to miss it. I hope to see the day when we’ll have
morning and evening service on every ship afloat.”
On the sixth day after leaving New York they sighted Nassau, and Kit
was delighted with the appearance of the place from the water. The big
square stone houses, with their upper and lower balconies enclosed with
green Venetian blinds; the red tiled roofs, white streets running up a
steep hill, palm trees waving gracefully over many of the roofs, old
forts, half in ruins, to the right and left of the town, and the warm
summer weather in midwinter, made it seem like a little fairy-land.
But these things had to be seen from a distance, for the _North
Cape_ drew too much water to cross the bar. She anchored outside,
half a mile from the town, close under the long narrow strip of rock
called Hog Island, where she was exposed to the north wind and would
have to hoist anchor and put to sea if a gale came.
By the next day the lighters were ready, for the cargo had to be landed
in lighters as it had been in Sisal, though the distance was not as
great, and Kit was set ashore early to check off every package as it
was put on the wharf. He was no beginner at this work now, and as the
people spoke English he found it much easier than at Sisal, though the
boatmen and ’longshoremen were all negroes, and spoke a mixed jargon of
Congo African and Colonial English that was sometimes almost as hard
to understand as the Spanish. The day was intensely hot, and there was
no tree or building on the wharf to give him shelter, and the lighters
arrived so fast that he not only had no chance to see anything of the
city, but had not even time to stop for dinner.
The only break in the long day was when the mail steamer, the
_Santiago_, arrived from New York. She also was too large to cross
the bar, and a little tug went out to her and carried her passengers
and mails ashore.
When the day’s work was over, Kit was quite ready to return to the ship
and eat his supper; but while they were washing dishes the steward
proposed that they should get permission and spend the evening on
shore.
“I feel so lost without the Holy Scriptures I brought from home,” he
said, “and the precious hymn book I used when I was younger than you
are. Ah, how many times they have made my heart light when it was sore
with trouble. I can buy new ones on shore, but they’ll not be like the
ones I used so long. And I want to mail a letter to my dear old father.
I think the Captain would let us go if you were to ask him.”
Kit was rapidly gaining experience of the world, but he still had a
great deal to learn about the people who live in it. That there are men
who try to hide their wickedness under a cloak of deep piety he had no
suspicion. It was very nice in the new steward, he thought, to take the
first opportunity to replace his lost Bible and mail a letter to his
aged father; and though he felt more like going to bed, he went to the
Captain and readily got permission for them both to go ashore, without
the least suspicion that the steward would much have preferred to go
alone, but was using him as a cat’s-paw because the Captain would be
more likely to oblige him.
They were taken to the landing-steps in the gig, with the understanding
that the boat would return for them at half-past ten, Mr. MacNish
carrying along a small leather satchel, strongly mounted with brass,
that looked quite luxurious for the steward of a tramp steamship.
“I want to make a few trifling purchases,” he explained, “and this will
be handy to carry them aboard in. Perhaps I can’t find what I want, but
I’ll not worry over it; ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’”
As they climbed up the slippery stone steps Kit noticed two men who
looked like Americans sitting on a bench in the little park, and
imagined that they looked very hard and sharp at him and his companion.
And he saw that the steward noticed them too; indeed there was little
that Mr. MacNish did not notice, now that they were ashore. He looked
around as if there might be highwaymen behind the trees, and clutched
his satchel a little tighter, though it was too dark for him to see the
men distinctly.
When they crossed the small park they were in Bay Street, the main
business street of the place; and they had not gone far before they
were in front of a dingy saloon, with doors standing wide open.
“I feel the chill of the night air,” Mr. MacNish said, stopping before
the door, “and it is dangerous to be chilled in the tropics. Let us go
in and get something to warm us.”
“I am warm enough, thank you,” Kit answered; “I don’t care for
anything.”
“You know the apostle advises us to take a little wine for the
stomach’s sake,” the steward urged.
“My stomach’s all right!” Kit laughed. “I suppose they didn’t have any
quinine in those days; quinine’s much better.”
“Then hold my satchel till I come out,” the steward said, putting it in
Kit’s hands; and a minute later he stood in front of the bar, pouring
out a tumblerful of something that looked stronger than wine.
While the steward was in the saloon, the two men who had been sitting
in the park passed by on the other side of the street, and Kit noticed
again that they were looking sharply at him and at Mr. MacNish. He was
positive now that they were watched, and it startled him; but he was
relieved to see that the two men paused and exchanged a few words with
a Nassau policeman a little further up the street. They could hardly
be highwaymen, he thought, if they were known to the police. When Mr.
MacNish came out of the saloon he spoke about them.
“Two men who look like Americans seem to be taking a great interest in
us,” he said. “They watched us pretty closely when we landed, and they
just walked past here, looking at us again.”
“What’s that!” MacNish exclaimed; “two men! What did they look like?”
Kit wondered that such a trifling thing should excite him so much, but
he described the men as well as he could.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” MacNish said, though his manner belied his words.
“You just imagine it. Here, we’ll turn up this way toward the hill; I
think the stores are better in the street above. You carry the satchel
for me a bit, my lad.”
They turned into a dark side street, and were no sooner around the
corner than the steward quickened the pace almost to a run. His manner
was so changed that Kit for the first time became suspicious, and
thought that he had better have nothing to do with the satchel.
“Here, you take your satchel, Mr. MacNish,” he said; “I can keep up
with you better if I have nothing to carry. We don’t need to hurry so
much, do we?”
MacNish snatched the satchel from his hands without replying, and
before they had taken ten steps more Kit was almost knocked down by two
men who sprang out from an alley and seized the steward by both arms
as if they were used to such work. By the dim light from a neighboring
shop window Kit saw that they were the men who had been in the park.
“Now, then, Slippery Jim, we want you,” one of the men said. “No
nonsense, unless you want some lead in you.”
Kit was too much astonished to speak, but the steward was equal to the
emergency. With a powerful jerk he wrenched himself free, and the next
moment Kit saw the gleam of a revolver in his hand and heard a shot
fired. It was done so quickly, however, that the bullet flew wide; and
the next minute two policemen in uniform emerged from the alley, and
all four men grappled with the desperate steward and bore him down.
His language as he lay struggling on his back on the sidewalk was
anything but pious; but he submitted to the inevitable when the
officers put handcuffs on his wrists and stood him on his feet.
“I am afraid you have made a mistake, gentlemen,” Kit at length said;
“this man is Mr. MacNish, steward of the steamship _North Cape_.”
“Steward nothing!” one of the men answered, contemptuously. “This man
is Slippery Jim, with fifty other names, and one of the slickest bank
burglars in the world. He’s the man that tapped the North Western bank
for a hundred and forty thousand dollars ten days ago, and I only hope
he’s got it in that satchel. Steward, indeed! He’s smart enough to turn
his hand to anything, and he took that way to escape from New York with
his booty. See here.”
As he spoke the man took hold of the whiskers on both sides of
MacNish’s face, and being false ones they came off very easily. Then he
rubbed his handkerchief across the steward’s face, and wiped off a big
patch of the pink stain that had given him a florid appearance.
“We got on his track just after you sailed,” the man continued, “and
followed him in the mail steamer. We are detectives from New York, and
you are a lucky boy that we don’t take you in as an accomplice.”
Meanwhile the other stranger had been trying to open the satchel.
Finding it securely locked, he impatiently took his knife and cut a
long slit in the leather and thrust in his hand.
“Here we have it!” he exclaimed, “or some of it. We’ll count it over at
the police station.”
Kit’s eyes bulged when he saw a big handful of greenbacks and bonds
taken from the satchel; not covetously, but in awe when he thought of
the great amount of stolen money he had been carrying.
The steward, seeing that his game had reached an end, was inclined to
laugh over his experiences on the _North Cape_.
“You’ll be wanting a new steward on the ship, Spooney,” he laughed,
“for I’ve accepted a steady situation on shore. I hope you’ll lend
your Bible to the next man; I found it awfully comforting. But I guess
I’ll not mail that letter to-night to my dear old papa; the old chap
was hanged about thirty years ago. I kept your blooming cabin in good
shape, anyhow, for a man with a hundred and forty thousand dollars in
his satchel.”
It was a relief to Kit when the officers took his former companion
away. He had heard of such desperate criminals, but had never been face
to face with one before. He had an hour yet before the boat would come,
and spent the time walking the streets, feeling sick at heart and a
little out of patience with himself.
“I don’t wonder he called me ‘Spooney,’” he reflected. “I ought to
have been smart enough to see through the man at once, as I think the
Captain did, to some extent. How easily he might have got me into a
heap of trouble if it had been worth his while! Even a poor boy with
nothing to be robbed of, has to be careful whom he associates with. So
remember that in the future, Mr. Kit Silburn!”
The Captain’s only remark, when he returned to the ship and told what
had happened, put Kit in a little better spirits.
“So that leaves us without a cabin steward,” the Captain said, “in a
small port where we can’t get another. I wish I could cut you right
straight in two, Christopher, for I want you in two places at once. As
soon as we have the cargo out you must act as steward till we get back
to New York; but for the present I must have you on shore.”
“I think I can manage with the steward’s work, sir,” Kit answered; “and
the cargo ought to be out in two or three days now.”
“And till then the engineers’ boy must look after the cabin too,” the
Captain added.
That night Kit had many things to think of as he lay in his berth.
Everybody feels a little sheepish to be so thoroughly deceived, and
he was no exception. But there were more important things to consider
than that. It was only a wretched burglar who had called him a spooney,
and his employer liked him well enough to want him in two places at
once. Kit was a good fellow, but he was human, like the rest of us, and
that remark of the Captain’s made him feel pretty well satisfied with
himself. And here was the steward’s place vacant. If he did good work
there for a week or two, he could get the place permanently, he felt
almost sure of that. But did he want it? He was not quite sure about
that. On the one hand it would bring him better pay, and on the other
hand if he became a steward he probably would never get any higher. And
after all, maybe the Captain would think him too young; and a dozen
more ifs and ands, and in the midst of it all he fell asleep.
For the next week he was the busiest boy in the Bahama Islands. As far
as possible he set things right for the day in the cabin before he went
ashore, then stood all day in the sun, checking off cargo, and was back
to the ship again in time to attend to supper. In the evening he washed
the dishes and cleaned up the pantry, and turned in early because he
had to turn out early. In those days it was only by good management
that he could get ten minutes of his own to write a short letter home.
“Well, you _are_ a softy!” Chock Cheevers said to him one morning
in the cabin--for it was Chock who had to wait on the Captain in Kit’s
absence. “Here you’re doing the steward’s work, and the cabin boy’s,
and the supercargo’s, all for six dollars a month. I’d strike for
double pay, anyhow, if I was you. I’m going to strike, myself, pretty
soon if this double work keeps on.”
“My child,” Kit laughed (he hardly noticed it himself, but he always
spoke to the mess-room boy now as if he were indeed the supercargo,
instead of only the cabin boy), “if I had time I would tell you how
many millions strikes cost every year without doing any good, for I
read it one day in an old newspaper. But I haven’t time; the boat is
waiting for me. You do the striking, and I’ll do the working. The
fellows who work don’t generally need to strike. Besides, I like to do
it.”
That evening Captain Griffith called Kit into his stateroom when his
work in the pantry was done.
“I want you to make me out a complete list of everything that has been
landed so far,” he said, “so that the agent ashore can receipt for the
goods. I suppose you see by this time something of what a supercargo’s
work is on board ship.”
“Yes, sir,” Kit answered; “he has to see that the whole cargo is taken
out and landed, and receipted for by the agent.”
“Yes, that and much more,” the Captain continued. “He is the agent on
board of the parties that charter the ship, and must look after their
interests in every way. He is not an employee of the ship, but of the
charterers. Suppose the _North Cape_ is chartered by John Smith &
Co. to carry a cargo to Rio Janeiro. They deliver their goods on the
wharf, and we load them and carry them to Rio, but beyond loading,
carrying, and unloading them, we legally have nothing to do with them.
It is the supercargo’s business to tally the goods delivered on the
wharf and put on board, see them safely landed at their destination,
and take the consignee’s receipt for them. But more than that, he
must take care of the cargo on the voyage. If there is live stock, he
sees that it is fed and cared for. If there are fruits or vegetables,
he takes care that they are kept cool in hot climates, and kept
from freezing in northern latitudes. In short,” he concluded, “the
supercargo must take as great care of the cargo as if it belonged to
him, always under the owners’ orders. And he is a passenger on the
ship, living in the cabin with the captain, and having nothing to
do, of course, with the management of the vessel. There are always
two interests on a chartered ship,--the interest of the ship, which
the captain takes care of, and the interest of the cargo, which is
the supercargo’s work. Unfortunately we have had only small charters
lately, that did not warrant the employment of a supercargo, so his
work has been left for me to do. When we are chartered for large and
valuable cargoes, the charterers always put a supercargo on board.”
Kit’s work on shore did not end when the small general cargo was
discharged, as he expected. Nassau business men have an easy way of
thinking that things can be done just as well to-morrow as to-day;
and when the _North Cape_ was empty her return cargo of sponges
and pineapples was not ready. He had to make frequent visits to Mr.
Johnson, the pineapple man, and Mr. Sawyer, the sponge man, to hurry
them up.
“I am just going out to the pine fields now,” Mr. Johnson said when
Kit first visited him; “come along, and see for yourself how things
are.”
Kit climbed into the carriage with him, and they drove out about two
miles back of the city to the nearest fields, where he saw for the
first time how pineapples grow. The field was a large one of twenty or
thirty acres, very rocky, but with soil between the protruding rocks
that was almost as red as bricks, and covered with plants from three to
four feet high, each plant with many long, narrow, stiff “leaves,” and
each leaf sharp with spines along its sides and a needle-like point.
The score of colored men who were cutting the pines all wore leather
leggings, he noticed, to protect them from the sharp points.
“And only one pineapple to a plant!” Kit exclaimed; “I thought they
would bear more than that.”
“Only one,” Mr. Johnson laughed. “The pine is a very large fruit to
grow on so small a plant, and each plant produces only one. When it is
ripe, we cut it, and that plant’s usefulness is over, except that it
sends out a great many little shoots, called slips, which we take up
and plant for next year’s crop. You see the pine grows on a long stalk
in the middle of the plant, and shoots up like a big cabbage head out
of a bush.”
With the promise of enough pines to begin loading next day, Kit went
to Mr. Sawyer’s sponge yard to hurry matters there, and was told that
Mr. Sawyer was at the Sponge Exchange; and through going there to find
him he learned enough about sponges to make him open his eyes wide.
The Exchange was a large stone building on one of the wharves, with a
series of broad open arches on each side, so that it seemed to have no
walls; and its concrete floor was covered with separate heaps of sponge.
“This is the most important industry we have in Nassau,” Mr. Sawyer
explained, “and this Exchange is the largest sponge market in the
world. The merchants fit out small sailboats for sponging, and the
colored men who navigate them get the sponges sometimes by diving,
sometimes by grasping them with long-handled rakes, like oyster tongs.
The sponges are cleaned with lime and sea-water, and then are brought
here and sold by auction. The members of the Exchange are so expert at
the business that for a pile of sponges worth two hundred dollars, the
bids frequently do not vary more than five or six cents. From here they
go to the sponge yard of the purchaser, where they are cleaned again
and sorted, and pressed into bales. I will go up to my yard with you
and see what the prospects are.”
The ground of the sponge yard was covered a foot deep with bits of
waste sponge, and a dozen colored men and women were sitting about with
scissors in their hands, examining the sponges, feeling them, cutting
out rough bits of stone or coral, and sometimes sewing loose ends
together to give the sponge a better shape. A rough, ragged, shapeless
sponge, after it went through these black hands, came out smooth and
shapely.
“Here is where we make the bales,” Mr. Sawyer explained, leading Kit
into a shed where a pile of sponge as big as a room was put under a
powerful press and squeezed down to the size of a cotton bale. “Sponge
is very compressible, of course. Some of these colored men take a
sponge as big as a bushel basket, and with crude levers press it into a
small cigar box. It is not only my own sponge, of course, that you are
to be loaded with; I buy wherever I can, and I think I can promise you
five hundred bales by two o’clock to begin on.”
With his mission successfully accomplished, Kit returned to the ship
and began his new duties as steward.
“Two more things to stow away in my knowledge box,” he said to himself.
“I’ve had precious little time to learn from books, but my work has
taught me some things from experience; all about Sisal hemp, to begin
with, and now about pineapples and sponges. And maybe a little about
people, too, for I’ve seen some queer ones.”
In the two weeks more that the _North Cape_ lay at Nassau, waiting
for a cargo that was made ready for her very slowly, Kit managed the
steward’s work in such a way that no complaints were made; and that he
reasonably considered a sure sign that he gave satisfaction, for the
officers of a freight ship are not slow to find fault when anything
goes wrong. While the loading was still in progress the mail steamer
returned from her visit to the south side of Cuba, and after touching
at Nassau went on to New York, carrying northward for trial and
punishment the man of many names and crimes, MacNish, the steward, who
had been lying in the Nassau prison. And when the _North Cape_
once more lay in front of Martin’s Stores, the newspapers were printing
long accounts of his attempted escape as steward of a freight steamer,
and his arrest in the West Indies.