OVERBOARD IN THE PITCH LAKE.
The difference between a modern mail and passenger steamer and a vessel
built solely for carrying freight is so great that Kit could hardly
help liking his new surroundings, much as he regretted leaving his
old friend the _North Cape_. On the _Trinidad_ there was a
beautiful little office for the purser, in which Mr. Clark had one
desk and his assistant another; and although the work was ten times as
great as on the freighter, the facilities for doing it were ten times
better. It was vastly more labor to make up the manifest where there
were thousands of miscellaneous packages for different consignees at
different ports; but it had to be written only once, for there was the
copying-press ready to make as many duplicates as might be needed. Kit
had never seen so many facilities before for doing good and rapid work.
And there was not more change in the office work than there was in
everything else. No more “sea clothes” to be worn now, with forty or
fifty passengers in the cabin, and the necessity of going into the
grand saloon for every meal. It was a finer saloon than Kit had seen
anywhere before, fitted up in marbles and hard woods and shining glass;
and certainly the meals were far beyond anything he had dreamed of.
Mr. Clark’s seat was at the head of one of the tables, and Kit’s at
the foot; and he soon found that being agreeable to the passengers is
an important part of the purser’s work on a large steamer. That part
of the work Mr. Clark was quite willing to do himself, leaving his
assistant to attend to the clerical-business; and Kit was more than
willing to have it so, for he did not feel quite at home yet with so
many passengers on board ship.
The voyage was no novelty to him, as he had been over precisely the
same route before as far as Barbadoes. But this trip bade fair to give
him a much better knowledge of the intermediate islands, for the purser
told him that he was to do all the “shore work.”
“There’s no use of my roasting myself on those islands,” Mr. Clark
said, “when I have a young fellow to do it for me. You are accustomed
to that kind of work; you will find this almost the same as the work
you have been doing. You must never let a package get away from you
till somebody else becomes responsible for it and you have his receipt
for it. These fellows down here would steal the tan off your face,
if they didn’t have so much of their own. I have read in books that
there’s a great deal of honesty in the world, but somehow it doesn’t
seem to thrive around the seaports. Maybe you had a little experience
of that in Marseilles.”
“I rather think I did!” Kit laughed. “But I have learned pretty well
how to hold on to my goods. I don’t think they’re going to rob me much
down here.”
One of the pleasures of the evening was to have Captain Fraser come
into the office for a chat. In the long run between New York and St.
Kitts, the first island, with fair weather and no land for hundreds of
miles, the Captain had very little to do, and hardly an evening passed
without a visit from him. He was a big, jolly, hearty Nova Scotian, in
manner very much like Mr. Clark, Kit thought, at least in his habit of
saying things with a sober face that he neither believed himself nor
expected others to believe. The speed of the _Trinidad_ was one of
the things that Captain Fraser never tired of joking about. One evening
Kit made some remark about the good day’s run.
“Oh, I have to hold her back,” the Captain answered. “She’s a very fast
ship when we let her out, but the owners won’t stand it. Coming up
about three months ago we left St. Kitts a day late, and as we had fine
weather the chief engineer kept bothering me to let him make it up. So
at last I got tired hearing about it and told him to let her go. Go!
Well, sir, you never saw anything like it. You’ve been in a fast train
on shore and seen the telegraph poles fly past? That was exactly the
way the light-houses flew past all the way up the coast. We got into
port two days ahead of time; but when the port captain came aboard, the
first thing he said was:--
“‘Hello, here! what you been changing her color for? Don’t you know
black’s the color of this line?’
“‘Haven’t changed her color,’ said I.
“‘Look at her,’ said he.
“Well, sir, I looked over the side, and bless my weather binnacles
if the ship wasn’t a bright lead color. That was strange, you know,
considering that we’d left port black. I jumped ashore and rubbed my
hand over her, and she was smooth as--well, smooth as Clark’s bald head
there. There wasn’t a particle of paint on her; she’d come so fast it
was all stripped off, and the water had polished her steel plates till
they shone like a new quarter.
“That made her very handsome, but the owners didn’t like it because
they had to dock her to be painted.”
“She must have made a record that voyage, sir,” Kit suggested.
“Oh, that was only the beginning of it,” the Captain went on, with
a wink at the purser. “When we started out again and got down off
Hatteras we met a Dutch bark towing the biggest sea-serpent you ever
saw. Whether it was a sea-serpent or a whale they couldn’t quite make
out; but it was about 375 feet long and 35 or 40 feet through. They’d
had it two or three days, and they declared it bellowed all night
long, though that part I wouldn’t ask anybody to believe.
“I suspected something the minute I saw it, so I went aboard the bark
and said, said I:--
“‘I think that’s my property you’ve got there.’
“‘Guess not,’ said the skipper.
“‘I guess yes,’ said I, for I was sure of it now. ‘If you cut into the
beast somewhere abaft the mainmast I think you’ll find my trademark in
him.’
“Well, sir, they lowered a boat and sent a man to chop into the critter
with an axe, and with the first blow the whole thing flummixed--just
collapsed, for there was nothing in it but wind. But the man gave two
or three more cuts and laid over the flap, and right across it, in big
gold letters, was, ‘The Trinidad, New York.’ It was nothing in the
world but the paint off our ship, stripped off just like you’d skin an
eel. We sold it to the darkies in Dominica afterwards for waterproof
coats and galoshes; but I’m not going to put her at that speed again.”
The Captain never repeated his stories, because he always made them up
as he went along; and he was so companionable and full of fun that in
a short time Kit felt well enough acquainted with him to give him an
account of his father’s disappearance and tell him about the man in
the New Zealand hospital. The Captain listened with great interest;
but even in a matter of such importance he could not quite resist the
temptation to crack a joke.
“Didn’t he have a mark on his arm?” he asked. “In all such stories
that I’ve read, the missing man had a mark on his arm that he could
be identified by. I’ve often thought what an advantage one-legged or
one-armed or one-eyed men have. If one of them goes off missing, it’s
the easiest matter in the world to identify him.
“But seriously, Silburn,” he went on, “it does look a little as if that
man might be your father. It’s nothing against it that he was picked
up on an island in the Pacific Ocean. When a man is floating about on
a spar, say, or an oar, or anything else that keeps him up, and a ship
comes along, he don’t stop to ask whether she’s bound for China or New
York. Any port in a storm, and a ship’s as likely to be going one way
as another. Then the second ship may be lost, and there you are. If he
was the kind of father you want to bring back, I think you can find out
whether this is the right man or not. I’ve known some fathers who’d
be just as well left at a safe distance of twelve or fifteen thousand
miles.”
“Oh, mine isn’t that kind of a father, sir,” Kit answered, not quite
knowing whether to laugh or not. “We would do anything in the world to
get him back.”
“Then why don’t you go out to New Zealand and see for yourself?” the
Captain asked. “You could identify him better than any stranger; and
you can’t get anything done for you as well as you can do it yourself.”
This was precisely the point that Kit was trying to get the Captain’s
opinion upon.
“But don’t you think, sir,” he asked, “that it is as well to wait till
we hear something more definite from the consul out there, and till he
sends the photograph?”
“Yes, I think it is,” the Captain replied. “But let me tell you
something about consuls, young man. I suppose I’ve seen more of them
than you have, for I’ve had business with them nearly all my life.
There are some good men in the business--very good--who will put
themselves out of their way to do you a service. I don’t mean to deny
that. But in general a consul is a man who draws his salary for putting
his heels on the mantel and smoking cigars. They get their appointments
generally not because they are good men for the place, but on account
of some trifling political service. Under that beautiful system we get
consuls in important places who ought to be raising turnips out in
the southwest corner of New Mexico. I don’t know anything about the
consul in Wellington; but as a general rule, don’t you put your trust
in consuls, my boy. When you have important business to be done, go
and do it yourself. It’s the only safe way. If that was my case out in
New Zealand, I’d wait a reasonable time for the photograph, and if it
looked anything like my father, I’d be out there so quick I’d strip all
the paint off myself.”
“Do you think I would have any chance of getting something to do on
a steamer going to New Zealand and back, sir?” Kit asked. “Say as
supercargo, or purser, or something of that kind?”
“Not the least in the world!” the Captain answered emphatically; “not
from New York. All of our American trade with New Zealand you might put
in your vest pocket, and you wouldn’t find a steamer going there in
six months. But if you were to say Australia, now, that would be easy
enough. There are plenty of steamers going from New York to Australia,
and when you get there you are not far from New Zealand; you know you
could do that part of the journey on your own hook. Indeed, I know two
or three masters myself engaged in that trade; and if you make up your
mind to go, you let me know and I’ll help you along. Clark here tells
me he’s got the best young assistant in the country, though I suppose
he’s mistaken about that, for all the good pursers die very young. But
this is a case that would be easy to manage, because your father was a
sea-faring man and you’re a sea-faring man yourself going after him,
and most any good-hearted master would lend a hand. It’s all in the
family, you know; we help one another.”
This conversation seemed to Kit to make things look a little brighter.
If he could get to New Zealand and back without the great expense
of paying his passage, half the difficulties would be removed--yes,
nine-tenths of them.
“What are you doing so much with that sailor I see you talking to on
deck when you’re off duty, Silburn?” Mr. Clark asked him one day before
the first land was sighted. “You and he are not hatching a plot to
wreck the ship, are you?”
“No, sir,” Kit laughed; “though we say some very mysterious things. The
last thing I said to him yesterday was ‘my aunt has two apples, and my
uncle has two pears.’ It does sound a little like a plot, doesn’t it?
But the fact is the man is a Frenchman, Mr. Clark, and I have employed
him to teach me a little French in my spare moments. I made up my mind
in Marseilles that a sea-going man ought to know some languages beside
his own, so I bought two primary French books in New York; and this
man, who is quite an intelligent fellow, teaches me the pronunciation.
It may come of use in Martinique when I am able to speak a little, for
I have heard you say they speak nothing but French there.”
“It’s a capital idea,” the purser agreed. “I’ve always had hard sailing
in Martinique because I couldn’t jabber their miserable language. I’m
glad you’ve taken it up. And you’ll be remarkably glad yourself, some
day, if you stick to it.”
Kit was not destined to use any of his newly acquired French in
Martinique on that first outward voyage, however; for when they reached
the roadstead in front of St. Pierre, the chief city, where they were
to land both passengers and freight, they found danger signals flying
from the top of the light-house, and all the lighters and smaller
boats drawn far up on the beach. There had been enough of a storm in
those waters to stir up a heavy sea, and more wind was threatened, so
the cautious Frenchmen would allow no boats to go out. The passengers
for Martinique could look right up the hilly streets of their chief
city, almost into some of the windows, but there was no possible way
for them to get ashore.
“It is all small freight we have for here, Mr. Clark. Couldn’t we land
it and the passengers in our own boats?” Kit asked.
“Ah, my boy, the authorities on shore would fine us if we tried it
while they have the danger signals set,” the purser answered. “Besides,
we should lose the insurance if anything happened to the cargo. There’s
nothing for it but to wait till the signals come down.”
Captain Fraser evidently thought differently, however. After trying for
five or six hours in the roadstead he gave the order to go ahead.
“Why, we are going on!” Kit exclaimed. “What will become of our
passengers and freight for St. Pierre?”
“Well, they’ll have to go on to Trinidad and come back with us,” the
purser answered. “You know we touch here on the way back. That happens
sometimes, and people who live in this part of the world have to get
used to it. If they _will_ build their cities where there is no
harbor, only an open roadstead, they must take the consequences. We
can’t keep a mail steamer waiting for a storm that is supposed to be
coming.”
When they reached Barbadoes, Kit felt quite at home again. It was not
worth while, he knew, for him to have any hopes of getting out to the
Sea View plantation to see his friends the Outerbridges, for nearly
half of all their freight was for Barbadoes, and in the few hours that
they lay in the roadstead he was busy every minute, even at night. He
found time, however, to write a hurried note to Mr. Outerbridge, saying
that he was now assistant purser of the _Trinidad_, that they were
on their way to Port of Spain, and that when they returned in a few
days it would be a great pleasure to him if any of them happened to be
in the town.
Leaving Barbadoes late in the evening, the _Trinidad_ steamed very
slowly across toward the island of Trinidad, as Captain Fraser did not
care to go through the narrow passage before daylight.
“You’ll have to be out early in the morning if you want to see the
ship run into the muddy water of the Orinoco,” Mr. Clark told Kit that
evening while they were preparing their papers for the last port.
“It’s a curious sight, that you can’t see anywhere else, that I know
of. You know the numerous mouths of the river Orinoco all empty about
here--some into the Gulf of Paria, where we are going, and some below
it. The immense body of muddy water runs along shore with a rush, and
makes--well, I’m not going to tell you what it makes. If you turn out
by daylight you will see for yourself.”
With this hint Kit was sure to be out early; and he found that he was
not the only watcher, for some of the crew who had seen the curious
thing scores of times were out to see it again. When they were a
short distance above the very narrow entrance to the Gulf of Paria,
a dangerous channel that is called the Dragon’s Mouth, he saw ahead
a distinct line drawn across the water--a wall of water, it looked
like--a wall of muddy water two or three feet higher than the clear
water of the ocean.
“That’s just what it is, sir,” one of the sailors told him when he
asked a question. “You see that big body of fresh muddy water runs down
out of the Orinoco. When you see the line, that’s where the river water
running north meets the sea water running south. But the ocean’s the
stronger, sir, and it backs the river water up into that ridge you see.
Oh, yes, sir; we’ll run through that and you’ll never know it.”
So they did, the ship being too large and heavy to be visibly affected
by the slight difference in water levels; and in a few moments more
they were in the Dragon’s Mouth, with the high rocks of Trinidad on one
side and the equally high hills of Venezuela on the other, and both
so close that Kit could easily have thrown a stone against Trinidad
or against the coast of South America. Then in a short time they were
through the dangerous channel and in the broad Gulf of Paria; and by
eleven o’clock they were at anchor in smooth and shallow water about a
mile away from the wharves of the city of Port of Spain, the capital of
Trinidad.
Kit thought himself pretty well accustomed to the heat of the tropics
after his experiences at Sisal and Barbadoes; but he had never found
anything before that was quite equal to the stifling heat of Port of
Spain.
“We are on the line of greatest heat here,” Mr. Clark explained
when he went into the city with him to introduce him to the agents.
“It is hotter here than right on the equator. You understand about
the isothermal lines, I suppose! This place is ten degrees north of
the equator, but the ‘line of greatest heat,’ as they call it, runs
directly through here.”
For two days the assistant purser was continually bathed in
perspiration from his necessary walks into the city and looking after
his goods on the wharf. But by that time the cargo was out and his work
in the port was practically over, for there is very little freight to
carry from Trinidad to New York.
“I have to go out to La Brea this afternoon to see the superintendent
of the pitch lake,” Mr. Clark said on the third day. “It’s a nuisance,
in this heat, and I wish I could leave it to you. But I have had some
dealings with him, and the company charged me particularly to close a
contract with him this trip if I can. So I suppose I must go myself.”
“The superintendent of the pitch lake!” Kit exclaimed. “I have read
something about the great pitch lake in Trinidad; but what does it have
a superintendent for?”
“Because it is a very valuable piece of property,” the purser
answered. “It belongs to the government, you know, and they keep a
superintendent to look after it and sell the pitch. It goes all over
the world; a great many of the streets in New York and other American
cities are paved with it. They call it pitch here, but when it is
boiled down and ready for use we call it asphalt. We are negotiating
with the superintendent to send a freight ship down to carry away two
or three cargoes, and it will be a profitable job if I can close the
contract with him.”
“It must be a very curious sight--a lake of pitch,” Kit suggested.
“I believe it is hard enough on the surface to walk over,” the purser
replied; “but I have never seen it. You can go along with me if you
like. It is only twenty or thirty miles down the coast. The train
leaves at three o’clock, and we can be back by a little after dark.”
Kit was glad to avail himself of this permission, and at three o’clock
they took the train for La Brea. The railway ran through a country
that was given up largely to the cultivation of sugarcane; and at the
stations they passed they saw a great many men who were neither whites
nor negroes, in a curious costume of white stuff so arranged that it
covered one leg to below the knee, but left the other leg almost bare.
“They are coolies,” Mr. Clark said, seeing that Kit was interested in
these brown, slender people. “They bring a great many of them here
from India to work on the plantations. They have to work so many years
to pay for their passage, and after that they are free. But they’re
a queer lot. When a man is badly treated by his master he doesn’t
complain, but goes out and sticks a knife into himself, and they find
his body lying in the cane-fields.”
In a little over an hour the train set them down at La Brea, and they
found the pitch works not far from the station, on the edge of the
wonderful black lake. But the superintendent’s house, they learned,
was across one corner of the lake, about half a mile away; and they
immediately set out for it.
They were both a little cautious about walking over the pitch at first,
particularly where the path led over breaks between the beds of pitch,
and they had to feel their way across narrow planks for bridges. The
moving of the pitch beneath their feet did not tend, either, to give
them confidence.
“This is a very queer sort of a lake!” Kit declared, stopping at the
edge of one of the round beds to examine it. “I think I can see how
it is made. First there is a lake of water here, with a great bed of
molten pitch somewhere beneath. A column of the pitch shoots up, like
a waterspout, and when it reaches the surface, the top of it flattens
out, like an immense mushroom, held up by the narrow column that
reaches down dear knows how far. This water between the black mushrooms
looks very deep and black; bah! I shouldn’t care to fall in there.”
“That’s about the way the thing grows,” Mr. Clark agreed. “Some of the
‘mushrooms,’ as you call them, are only a yard or so in diameter, and
some are twelve or fifteen feet. Gradually enough of them have come up
to cover the entire surface of the lake, which must be two or three
thousand acres. What a desolate-looking place, isn’t it? And they tell
me that no matter how much is cut out, a fresh column of pitch shoots
up and fills the hole. I shouldn’t care to wander around here much
after dark.”
It was not a very safe path even by daylight. In some places the
“mushrooms” not only touched, but crowded and indented each other; but
in other places there were gaps two, three, sometimes even six feet
wide, that had to be crossed on the planks. When they stood in the
middle of one of the big “mushrooms,” it was firm enough; but when they
stood upon its edge, their weight bent it down until the water ran over
its surface.
They made the passage in safety, however, and Mr. Clark had a long talk
with the superintendent while Kit remained on the lake. It was a very
satisfactory talk, the purser said when he came out, for everything
had been arranged and the contract signed. But Kit had been watching
the sky for some time with uneasiness. Engrossed with his business,
Mr. Clark had given no attention to the passing of time, and it was
with some alarm that Kit had seen the sun set behind the mountains and
darkness begin to gather.
Mr. Clark was a little uneasy about it, too, when he saw how long he
had stayed. He was not particularly fond of walking, even on a good
pavement; and the prospect of crossing the end of the lake in the
dusk, sometimes on narrow planks across the openings, sometimes on the
yielding pitch beds, did not please him.
“We’ll have to hurry up, Silburn,” he called to Kit when he reached the
edge of the lake. “You know there’s precious little twilight in this
part of the world; it’s either daylight or it’s dark. One of those old
rattletrap cabs in Bridgetown would be better than walking over these
tarry islands. But come on, youngster! You may think I’m no walker, but
I’ll show you!”
He started out at a great pace, with Kit following. But Mr. Clark’s
physique was not adapted to severe exercise. After the first hundred
yards he began to breathe hard, and soon he stopped entirely.
“I’ve got to--to--(hech!) to stop and get my (hech! hech!)--my second
wind!” he panted. “Hang their old (phew! phew!) old pitch lakes! If
they make--make (hech!) streets out of ’em, I wish they’d (phew! phew!)
make some here. It’s getting darker every--every minute, too!”
“We started out too fast, sir,” Kit answered; “if we take it slower,
I think we’ll get along all right. It’s going to be dark before we get
across, anyhow, so we may as well take our time to it.”
Mr. Clark was compelled to take his time to it, for he had no more wind
for fast walking. It was not fairly dark yet, but “pretty thick dusk,”
as Kit called it, and they had to feel their way along. The purser
remained in the lead when they set out again, for Kit hesitated to go
ahead, for fear of going too fast for him.
They were about to cross one of the widest crevices, and Mr. Clark was
half way over on the plank, when Kit heard a startled cry.
“Silburn!”
And plank and purser went down together, Mr. Clark disappearing beneath
the black water.
Kit saw in an instant what had happened. The end of the plank had
slipped from the edge of the opposite bed of pitch.
Mr. Clark, he knew, could not swim; and besides he might come up
beneath one of those horrible “mushrooms,” and so almost inevitably
be drowned. But Kit was not long in making up his mind what to do. He
instantly threw off his coat and knelt on the edge of the “mushroom”
he was on, with his head close to the water, ready to dive for his
companion as soon as he could get a glimpse of him.
He had no chance to dive, however. As soon as the impetus of his
fall was over, the purser shot to the surface again like a cork; and
catching a momentary glance at Kit’s head he grabbed at it with all
the energy of a drowning man, and got his arm around the neck before
Kit had time to draw back.
As he started to go down again, which he did at almost the same
instant, only one result was possible. Kit was overbalanced and dragged
into the water, and they went down together into the black depths, both
in deadly peril from drowning, and Kit with the additional danger of
the arm wound around his throat like a vise.