sorrowfully. "I'm the line-e-al desceendent o' the Flyin' Dutchman, sir.
And I'll wrack your ship wi'oot meanin' to."
"I've read the Bible," said the captain, calmly. "I know what to do with
Jonahs. I always throw them overboard."
Scotty shoveled and wheeled coal for three months, then his prediction
was fulfilled. Within a day's run to Melbourne, the screw slipped off
the tail-shaft, and as it went to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, the
racing engine went to pieces. This might not have prevented the
steamer's reaching port under sail or tow, but the forward crank-pin
broke, and the piston drove up with nothing to stop it, fetched up with
a mighty jolt against the cylinder head--which held--and disconnected
most of the bolts which bound the cylinder to its bed.
As the steamer fell off in the hollow of the sea, she rolled, and at the
third roll the half-ton of metal toppled over, crashed down through the
bottom of the ship, and sought the company of the screw. She was a
compartmentless steamer, and in half an hour had followed, leaving her
crew afloat in boats and on life-rafts. Scotty found himself in the boat
with the captain, and wisely anticipating rebuke, had brought his
shovel. The captain glared unspeakable things at him.
"It'll do ye no good the noo, cappen," said Scotty, anticipating the
captain's outburst. "And if you, or a man o' your crew, lay the weight
o' your finger upon me, I'll brain ye wi' my staff of office"--he
elevated the shovel. "I warned ye in time; ye should ha' heeded me."
"Put down your shovel, and take an oar," commanded the captain. "I'd
shoot you dead if it wasn't for the law. But you'll get out o' this
boat, onto the first craft we meet--bound in or bound out."
"It'll be bound out, cappen," said Scotty, gravely. "Ha' no fear o'
that."
It was an Italian bark, and as Scotty had predicted, she was bound
out--to Rio Janeiro, as Scotty learned later. When the flotilla of boats
swarmed into her path, she backed her main yards with much chattering
and yelling of her crew, and Scotty's boat approached her side, where a
Jacob's-ladder hung invitingly.
"Get up there, you miserable Sawnee," said the skipper. "I wouldn't put
you aboard a white man's vessel, for you'll wreck her as you did mine."
It is very impolite, and sometimes inexpedient, to call a Scot a Sawnee.
Scotty climbed the ladder with his shovel, and when he stood upon the
rail, turned and let it fly towards the captain in the stern-sheets. Had
it struck edge first it would have cut him in two; as it happened, the
handle merely flattened his nose. The captain sank down, then, rising,
fired a revolver at Scotty, but missed, and forthwith ordered his men to
give way.
And then, amid the excited cries and orders of the Italian captain,
Scotty was pulled down from the rail, mobbed around the deck a
little--though he fought furiously--by the three mates of the bark, and
bundled into a hatch-house. And long after he was locked in he could
hear the excited and puzzled accents of the Italian captain, calling to
the misguided castaways, who would not be rescued; then he heard the
yards braced, and knew that he was homeward bound.
"If the bloody hooker don't sink on the way," he growled. "Howe'er, I'll
no revile the craft that carries me, for it's lang odds she gits the
warst o' it."
Shipboard etiquette is international. Scotty, in throwing the shovel,
had violated the strictest clause in the code, and the Italian captain,
though understanding nothing of the circumstances, had sensed the
enormity of his offense, and punished him. But he was not confined long;
the door was soon opened, and from the jabbering and gestures of the
three mates he understood that he was to go forward. He went, and with a
bucket of salt water and a piece of old canvas so improved his personal
appearance as to partly overrule the prejudice against him.
Seamanship, like nautical etiquette, is international, and though he
understood not one word of what was said to him, and though not a man
aboard understood him, yet he knew what to do without orders, and soon
proved himself superior to any of the officers. The rather impulsive,
but generous, captain noticed this, and made as much of him as was
possible without a common means of communication; but Scotty ascribed it
to the influence of the unblessed, but jealously guarded, leather
pendant often visible on his hairy chest. He made the most of this
influence among the men forward, and even went to the blasphemous extent
of making the sign of the cross on occasions, and repeating certain
words, picked up from his devout shipmates, of the Roman Catholic
ritual. But when he prayed, alone and in the silence of the night, he
prayed for forgiveness, for the removal of the curse, for opportunity to
redeem himself--for the test of a ten-mile swim or a thousand-mile walk,
to the end that he might place that stolen dollar in the hand of Captain
Bolt.
But his prayers availed not. He became a man without a country. The
Italian bark caught fire in the South Atlantic, and in the confusion of
abandoning the charred and sinking hulk, Scotty found himself alone in a
small quarter-boat, which, like himself, had been left behind, and which
he had lowered and unhooked unaided. But he had been unable to find the
oars, and the other boats were far away; so he spent seven days and
nights in the cockle-shell, freezing by night, roasting by day, with the
horrors of hunger and thirst for company, and was then rescued in a
delirious state of mind by a Norwegian barkentine, bound for Cape Town.
There is no need of recounting his further adventures in detail. He had
now been a year without touching land, and he spent four more at sea
before there came to him even a gleam of hope. No matter what the craft,
or what the port bound for, something occurred to destroy the ship or
prevent him finishing the passage. At times, when an alleged advance of
pay was worked off, he drew clothing from the ship's slop chest, and
always left it behind when the curse closed down upon him and removed
him from that ship. Once he was abandoned with a boy, third mate, and
three others on a derelict which they had been sent to inspect, and from
the neighborhood of which a furious gale drove their own vessel. They
were rescued just before the derelict sank. Again, in Manila Bay, he
swam to a near-by ship which he had heard was bound to New York, and
secreted himself, only to find when at sea that she was bound for
Liverpool. He made the stormy passage of the Horn in midwinter with the
clothing he stood in.
Too eager to touch dry land at Liverpool, he quit the ship in a runner's
boat before docking, and the boat getting in the way of an outbound
ocean-tug, he went to sea on the tug, and was again put aboard the first
craft met, an English four-master, bound for Calcutta. And it was in
this ship that there came to him the gleam of hope mentioned. In her
forecastle he found the quondam third mate of the big skysail-yarder,
the Mr. Smart who, backed by the law, had thrashed him on the
forecastle deck and later arranged his transfer to the tramp.
Scotty had long since forgiven him, regarding him as but an instrument
of the Lord. But the instrument, down on his luck and 'fore-the-mast in
a "lime-juicer," must needs refer to it, again and again, until the
sorely tried man gave way. Then occurred one of the shortest and
fiercest fights that ever delighted the souls of English sailors. Scotty
did the fighting, and he struck out twice; but each blow was like the
kick of a mule, and Smart was carried aft to have his broken ribs and
jawbone reset, while Scotty went in irons for murderous assault; but the
captain released him on learning that the war began in an American ship.
There was no further trouble between these two, but Scotty drew comfort
and hope from the incident because it seemed his first victory over the
forces that opposed him.
Cholera was rampant in Calcutta, and not a man but the skipper left the
ship while there; then she sailed for New York, and Scotty's hope
increased. He carefully guarded the black and grimy talisman of evil
that hung to his neck, and prayed fervently for the final test that
would redeem him; and he prayed, too--for his great trouble had softened
and spiritualized him--that this big ship and large company should not
suffer disaster on his account.
But as the ship reached soundings it seemed that the prayer was to be
unanswered; for she came driving up to the light-ship before a
southerly gale and sea that prevented any sail holding but the foresail
and three lower topsails. All lighter canvas was blown away--and lower
topsails and a lee shore are a bad combination.
The captain could not conceal his anxiety; there had been no sign of a
pilot, and though the holding ground was good, his anchors were
small--too small for his big ship. To add to the danger, the spume and
spin-drift from the combers were thickened by a mist that seemed to
descend from above, blotting out the distant light-ship. But this mist
was ahead; astern, the horizon was visible, and far this side of the
horizon--not half a mile on the port quarter--was a sight that sent the
blood coursing through poor Scotty's veins, and a prayer of thanksgiving
to his lips.
Coming along before the storm, but on a convergent course which would
soon bring her in the big ship's wake, was the steamer _Proserpine_
towing her barges. Scotty knew them; every detail was pictured on his
brain. He knew that big funnel, and big nigger-head in the bow; he knew
the stump bowsprit of the _Champion_, with its one-chain bobstay; and he
knew the _Anita_ behind her, straight-stemmed, black and dingy.
And as he looked there came to him the conviction that here was the test
required of him--that if he, the Jonah of many ships, should remain
where he was, there would be one more catastrophe on the list, while
some maneuvering of fate would again send him to sea; but that if he rid
the ship of his presence, there was a chance, not only for the ship, but
for himself.
Mounting the forecastle deck--where he had a right to be--he watched and
waited until the three crafts astern were as one in the wake; then,
shedding his oilskins and boots, he sprang overboard. He heard the
shouts of a shipmate, and as he came to the surface, saw men on the
rail, looking and waving. He saw the second mate heave over a life-buoy,
but it fell short, and he did not swim for it. The ship went on, for a
square-rigged craft may not round to in a gale.
Scotty swam shoreward at first, for he knew that the steamer and tow
would make leeway. On the tops of the seas he took his bearings, and
then swam, or paddled, according to the inclination of the steamer's
bow. In the hollows he swam towards her. Nearer and nearer she came, and
at last he began hailing; but not a man could be seen on her deck, and
the bridge was empty; the captain or mate on duty was in the warm
pilot-house, no doubt--after the manner of tug-men. Hailing frantically,
he met the wash of her bow wave and went under; when he came up she was
past him, with her white-painted name staring at him. No one had seen or
heard him.
The _Champion_ was coming, and he swam into her path, barely missing a
clutch at the steel towline whizzing past him. He hailed her, but there
was no response. How could they hear, in the teeth of that furious
wind? Realizing this, he saved his breath.
The barge, rolling along before the sea, was making good weather of it,
yet she lifted and plunged heavily as the big billows passed beneath
her--the chain bobstay often rising six feet out of water, and again
sinking as far below. To catch this chain was all that he could hope
for; to miss it meant death; for even should he be seen or heard as he
passed astern, no power on earth could bring that tug back to windward
in such a sea.
When but twenty feet away from him the bow lifted, dripping water from
the hawse-pipes--and to the agonized man beneath it this bow and
dripping hawse-pipes bore a harrowing resemblance to a large,
implacable, yet weeping face, a face that expressed sorrow and
condemnation--then it fell upon him, and the heavy iron chain struck his
head, then glanced to his shoulder and bore him under. But the downward
blow gave him his grip upon it; had it struck him while lifting, he
might not have held.
Clinging for dear life, unable to move himself an inch against the rush
of water, with head swimming from the impact of the chain, and lungs
bursting from lack of air, he waited for the rise, and when it came,
moved upward a foot. Then he was borne under again, this time with his
lungs full of air, and he suffered less; and when he was lifted out, he
gained another foot.
Four times he was plunged under before he had climbed high enough to
avoid it, and then he rested, until his head cleared and the awful pain
of fatigue left his arms. When strength came back he mounted to the
bowsprit, crept in to the topgallant forecastle, and sprang down on the
main-deck, to the consternation of two men at the weather fore-rigging.
These were foremast hands, and Scotty had no present use for them. He
ran past them in his stocking-feet--and they gave room to the wild-eyed
apparition--and aft to the poop, where, besides the helmsman, was a man
who might be captain or mate, but who could certainly inform him.
"Is Cappen Bolt in charge o' the _Anita_ the neo?" he asked, hoarsely,
as he halted before him.
"Yes. Who are you?" asked the astounded man.
"God be thankit!" exclaimed Scotty, and he mounted the taffrail--not for
a swim this time, there was no need of it. Stretching back to the
_Anita_ was a steel trolley, which was all he wanted. Before the man
could do more than yell at him, Scotty had hitched himself out on the
towline beyond reach; then, for faster progress, he swung beneath it,
head aft and downward, and in this position, hand over hand and leg over
leg, he made his way along until the water took him. Filling his lungs
with air and locking arms and legs around the rope, he let himself go;
and he slid at the speed of the tug down the trolley and up again,
traversing half of the length of the towline beneath the surface.
He was nearly dead and fully blind when he felt air on his face, and had
only time to take a breath when a following sea immersed him again. But
with another breath, he began to climb.
Captain Bolt, aft on the poop, saw men on the _Champion_ waving arms and
pointing a megaphone his way. He could not hear, nor could he hope to
from the bow, yet he ran forward. As he reached the forecastle steps, an
unkempt figure came in over the bow--a big, rawboned man in dripping
rags, with blood streaming from arms and legs, with a red, round, and
sorrowful face bordered by long, matted, gray hair-with the gleam of
incipient insanity in the eyes. He sprang off the forecastle and faced
the captain.
"Cappen Bolt," he stammered, as he tore at a small leather bag with
fingers and teeth. "Cappen--cappen--here it is. I've fetched it t' ye. I
never spent it." From the bag came a stained and oxidized coin, which he
forced into the amazed captain's hand. Then, sinking to his knees, he
lifted his eyes to heaven, muttered a few inarticulate words, and fell
over in a swoon.
"Here!" called the captain, sharply, to two of his men who had drawn
near. "Take him below and strip him. Put him to bed, and I'll get some
brandy. Lord knows who he is, or where he came from, but he's in a bad
way."
Scotty was carried down the forecastle stairs and cared for; but he did
not waken to drink the captain's brandy; the swoon took on the form of
child-like sleep, and the sleep continued until the barges had made port
and moored to the dock. Here, amid the confusion of making fast, opening
hatches, and rigging cargo gear, Captain Bolt had about forgotten the
mysterious stranger in his forecastle, and was only reminded of him when
the captain of the _Champion_ came aboard to inquire.
"He climbed up my bobstays, no doubt; he must have fallen overboard from
that big Englishman that anchored in the Horseshoe. Went crazy in the
water, I suppose. He went out on your towline like a monkey. I wouldn't
ha' believed a man could stand it. He was three minutes under water."
"I can't make it out," said Captain Bolt. "He put this in my hand"--he
held out the blackened dollar--"and then went daffy. He's down below
now. No, here he comes."
Scotty had climbed to the deck. He stood near the hatch, looking about
with a doubtful, bewildered air at the docks and shipping. Then his face
cleared a little, and like a cat in a strange street he moved slowly and
hesitatingly along the rail towards the fore rigging. Then with one
bound he swung himself to the top of the rail, and a mighty upward jump
landed him on the string-piece of the dock. Here he paused long enough
to sink to his knees and elevate his clasped hands; then he rose,
walked hurriedly, and, breaking into a run, disappeared from sight
behind the crowd of horses and trucks on the dock.
"By the Lord," exclaimed Captain Bolt, "I know him! It's Scotty. I lost
him overboard off the Delaware capes five years ago. How'd he get picked
up, I wonder? Where's he been? And this----" he produced the dollar. "I
wonder if--why, very likely--a Scotchman has a conscience. Say, cappen,
this seems funny. I put up a job on Scotty. I pretended to lose a dollar
to see if he'd keep it, and he did. And I'll bet this is the one." He
opened his knife and cut into the dingy coin. "Yes, it was a
counterfeit."
FOOTNOTE:
[M] Reprinted by special permission from "Land Ho." Copyright, 1890, by
Harper and Brothers.
[Illustration]
XV.--The Mascot of "Troop 1"[N]
_By Stephen Chalmers_
THE troop was just about scared to death when the Scoutmaster announced
at the close of the meeting that the visitor would remain for an
informal talk with the boys.
The visitor was a big man in more than height. He was a State
Commissioner--the kind you spell with a big C--a Commissioner of
Forests, or Weights, or something like that; and he happened, too, to
have an official position with Boy Scout Headquarters. He was, so to
speak, a heap big Scout, and Troop 1, Saranac Lake, which is away back
in the Adirondacks, felt uneasy.
"There aren't many of you," said the Commissioner to the group of Scouts
gathered about him, "but you're all good stuff. You have a chance most
Boy Scouts don't get. You were all born in the big North Woods. You
have inherited instincts that can't be driven into a boy with teaching.
You don't have to be taught trailing, or woodcraft, except maybe for an
organized way of handling them. You can open old trails as a good turn
to the public. You can patrol the woods, report forest fires, and you
can fight forest fires, too, as I hear you have been doing. I hear, too,
that the Municipal Board picked this troop to select a Christmas tree;
that you felled that tree in a neat way and brought it to the village,
helped set it up, and then patrolled the crowd with your staffs, so the
little kids crowding around Santa Claus's municipal wagon wouldn't get
hurt in the crush."
This made the Scouts breathe a little easier.
"But there is more than that to this Scout game----"
The Scouts began to fidget again. They knew they were not going to be
let down as easy as all that, especially by a big Scout like this who
knew conditions all over the country.
"The thing that comes easy for you to do is good. But, like bravery, the
best form of it is doing what you are afraid to do, or doing what isn't
second nature for you to do. You belong to the second generation of the
wilderness. There are towns now and you live in them, and it is in the
towns----"
The big man suddenly hesitated. He was looking at a small black face
that emerged from a khaki collar between two first class Scouts in the
front row. The Commissioner pointed at him and said, abruptly, breaking
off his remarks:
"By the way, what's _your_ name?"
The small black face went into strange contortions of embarrassment. It
tried to hide like the ostrich, but the Scouts in front parted and
revealed a little negro boy in Scout uniform with a tenderfoot badge
pinned where it should be.
"I'm Smokey," said a faint voice. Then, remembering, he stiffened up,
saluted the big man, and amplified:
"Dey calls me Smokey, sir. Dat's all de name I ever has. I'se just a
li'l nigger, sir, but dey all's a moughty good bunch and dey don't mek
no difference 'cause I ain't white."
There was a little applause and much grinning. The Commissioner of
Forests, or Weights--I forget just what he was--stared in a queer way,
then went on with his address from where he had left off.
I remember he laid particular stress on the fact that doing one's simple
everyday duty was all right, but not just what was called a "Good Turn."
But all the time he was watching Smokey, who stood there drinking in
every word and nudging his neighbor, a thin, pallid boy, who also wore a
tenderfoot badge.
"What's _your_ name?" the speaker broke off again to ask, pointing at
Smokey's neighbor.
"I'm Jimmy," said he. "Smokey's me pal," he added, scrambling to his
feet with a belated salute. "We--we likes bein' Scouts, sir."
Smokey wriggled in absolute approval of Jimmy's loyalty and comment.
Again the Commissioner looked puzzled. He went on with his talk,
however, and when he had finished and the Scouts had left, he went into
the Scoutmaster's office to compare notes with him. But he dismissed the
notes pretty swiftly and suddenly said to the Scoutmaster:
"Where did you pick up those two kids, Smokey, and his--his pal, Jimmy?"
"Oh, that's quite a yarn," said the Scoutmaster. "Both of them were New
York newsboys. They got sick down there--ill-feeding, lack of care and
so on, and drifted up here. We have a lot of invalids who come here for
their health--rich mostly. But Jimmy and Smokey weren't rich. In fact,
if a couple of our boys hadn't heard about them and done one of the best
turns ever pulled off, I----"
The Commissioner leaned forward and tapped the Scoutmaster on the knee.
"Tell me the whole story," said he, his eyes sparkling. And the
Scoutmaster did.
THE STORY THE SCOUTMASTER TOLD
Smokey and Jimmy were newsboys in the big city. Smokey was much littler,
I expect, when he invested his first pennies in papers and tried to hold
his own with the newsboy gang at the Grand Central Station. Jimmy was
cock of the walk and had licked every newsboy on the stand. He looked
little Smokey over. He resented the smokiness, but hated to wallop him;
there was so little to wallop. And because the other newsboys tried to,
Jimmy walloped the whole lot of them all over again. After that he felt
sort of responsible for Smokey's welfare.
By and by Jimmy found out that Smokey never had had any parents. He came
out of a colored orphan asylum--ran away, I expect. Jimmy didn't know
anything about his parents, either. He came out of a foundling
hospital--ran away, too, perhaps. Anyway, Jimmy says he felt he didn't
have much on Smokey. They became close friends. Smokey thought Jimmy was
God's little brother, and Jimmy proved it by taking absolute charge of
Smokey's destiny.
They saved their pennies. Their living didn't cost much. They fed mostly
at the back door of an east side quick-lunch place. For domicile they
shared a basement with a drunken janitor, an Italian organ-grinder, and
a monkey. The monkey got shoved off a second-story window ledge by some
Christian person who probably resented the Darwin theory and died
several days later of internal injuries. Smokey nursed him, while Jimmy
and the organ-grinder worked harder and raised enough money to get a
doctor. The doctor was indignant when he found that his patient was of
the Simian persuasion. But that's a story by itself. You ought to hear
Jimmy tell it. You'd find yourself laughing on only one side of your
face.
About a week after the monkey died, Smokey fell ill. He hated to get up
in the morning. He was just as dead-tired in the morning as when he lay
down. His smokiness turned from a soft coal to an anthracite hue, and he
went off his feed. Jimmy thought maybe Smokey needed a little Christian
Science and walloped him as an experiment. Smokey took it as he would
have taken anything from Jimmy, but he said--and his eyes were probably
as big and solemn as an owl's:
"Jimmy," said he, "dey ain't no use'n you-all wallopin' me. Hones',
Jimmy, Ah tinks Ah's a moughty sick li'l nigger."