shake the old fellow's purpose, so forbore urging him further.
The old man waited a moment for Walter to speak, and finding that
he did not, laid his big rough hand on the lad's shoulder and asked
impressively, "Did you send off your chist to your aunt as I told ye
to?"
"I did, an hour ago."
"An' did you kind o' explanify things to the old gal?"
"How could I tell her, Bill? Didn't she always say I would come to no
good end? I wrote her that I was going away--a long way off--and for
a long time. I couldn't say just how long. A year or two perhaps. My
head was all topsy-turvy, anyhow."
"You didn't forgit she took keer on ye when ye war a kid?"
"I sent her the check I got from the store, right away."
"Then I don't see nothin' to--hender us from takin' that 'ar little
cruise we was a-talkin' about."
It was pitch-dark when our two adventurers stepped out of the caboose.
After securing the door with a stout padlock, Bill silently led the
way to the stairs where he kept his wherry. Noiselessly the boat was
rowed out of the dock, toward a light that glimmered in the rigging
of an outward-bound brig that lay out in the stream waiting for the
turning of the tide. Bill did not speak again until they were clear of
the dock. "Yon brig's bound for York. I know the old man first-rate,
'cause I helped load her. He'll give us a berth if we take holt with
the crew. Here we are." As he climbed the brig's side he set the
wherry adrift with a vigorous shove of his foot.
A day or two after the events just described, Mr. Bright and the
marshal met on the street, the former looking sober and downcast, the
latter smiling and elate. "What did I tell you?" cried the marshal,
evidently well pleased with the tenor of the news he had to relate;
"your _protégé_ has gone off with an old wharf rat that I've had my
eye on for some time."
"To tell you the whole truth, marshal, my mind is not quite easy about
that boy," the merchant replied.
"Opportunity makes the thief," the officer observed carelessly.
"I'm afraid we've been too hasty."
"Perhaps so; but it's my opinion that when Ramon is found, the other
won't be far off. I honor your feelings in this matter, sir, but my
experience tells me that every rascal asserts his innocence until his
guilt is proved. I've notified the police of San Francisco to be on
the lookout for that precious clerk of yours. Good-day, sir."
When Mr. Bright returned to the store, on entering the office he
saw an elderly woman, in a faded black bonnet and shawl, sitting
bolt-upright on the edge of a chair facing the door, with two bony
hands tightly clenched in her lap. There was fire in her eye.
"That is Mr. Bright, madam," one of the clerks hastened to say.
"What can I do for you, madam?" the merchant asked.
The woman fixed two keen gray eyes upon the speaker's face, as she
spoke up, quite unabashed by the quiet dignity of the merchant's
manner of speaking.
"Well," she began breathlessly, "I'm real glad to see you if you have
kept me waiting. Here I've sot, an' sot, a good half-hour. 'Pears to
me you Boston folks don't get up none too airly fer yer he'lth. I was
down here before your shop was open this mornin'. Better late than
never, though."
The merchant bent his head politely. His visitor caught her breath and
went on:
"I'm Miss Marthy Seabury. What's all this coil about my nevvy? He's
wrote me that he was goin' away. Where's he gone? What's he done?
That's what I'd like to know, right up an' down." She paused for a
reply, never taking her eyes off the merchant's troubled face for an
instant.
"My good woman," Mr. Bright began in a mollifying tone, when she broke
in upon him abruptly:
"No palaverin', mister. No beatin' the bush, if ye please. Come to the
p'int. I left my dirty dishes in the sink to home, an' must go back in
the afternoon keers."
"Then don't let me detain you," resumed Mr. Bright gravely. "There
has been a defalcation. I'm sorry to say your nephew is suspected of
knowing more than he was willing to tell about it. So we had to let
him go. Where he is now, is more than I can say."
"What's a defalcation?"
"A betrayal of trust, madam."
"Do you mean my boy took anything that didn't belong to him?"
"Not quite that. No, indeed. At least, I hope not. But, you see,
Walter is badly mixed up with the precious rascal who did."
"Well, you'd better not. I'd like to see the man who'd say my boy was
a thief, that's all. Why, I'd trust him long before the President of
the United States!" The woman actually glared at every one in the
office, as if in search of some one willing to take up her challenge.
"If you'll try to listen calmly, madam," interposed the merchant,
"I'll try to tell you what we know." He then went on to relate the
circumstances already known to us.
Aunt Martha gave an indignant sniff when the merchant had finished.
"You call yourself smart, eh? Why, an old woman sees through it with
one eye. Walter was just humbugged. So was you, warn't ye? An' goin'
on right under your own nose ever so long, an' ye none the wiser
for't. Well, I declare to goodness, if I was you I sh'ld feel real
downright small potatoes!"
"I think, madam, perhaps we had better bring this interview to a
close. It is a very painful subject, I do assure you."
"Very well, sir. I sh'ld think you'd want to. But mark my words.
You'll be sorry for this some day, as I am now that Walter ever laid
eyes on you or--your darter." With this parting shot she bounced out
of the office, shutting the door with a vicious bang behind her.
But Mr. Bright's worries that day were not to be so easily set at
rest. Upon reaching his home for a late dinner, looking pale and
careworn, it was Dora who met him in the hallway, who put her arms
round her father's neck, and who kissed him lovingly on both cheeks.
"Dear papa, I know all," she said with a little sob.
"Ah!" he ejaculated. "Then you have heard----"
"Yes, papa; our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Pryor, has told me all about
it. Hateful old thing!"
The merchant made a gesture of resignation.
"She said you would have to discharge most of your clerks."
Mr. Bright made a gesture of assent.
"Then I want to do something. I can give music lessons. I'll work my
fingers off to help. I know I shall be a perfect treasure. But why
_did_ you send Mr. Seabury away, papa?"
"Because he was unfaithful."
"I don't believe a word of it."
"Appearances are strongly against him."
"I don't care. I say it's a wicked shame. Why, what has he done?"
"What has he done? Why, he knew Ramon gambled, and wouldn't tell. He
knew Ramon had gone, and never lisped a syllable."
"Yes, but that's what he didn't do."
"He was caught hanging around our house the night that Ramon ran away.
There, child, don't bother me with any more questions. Guilty or not,
both have gone beyond reach."
Dora came near letting slip a little cry of surprise. She knew that
she was blushing furiously, but fortunately the hall was dark. A new
light had flashed upon her. And she thought she could guess why Walter
had been lurking round their house on that, to him, most eventful
night. Although she had never exchanged a dozen words with him, he had
won her gratitude and admiration fairly, and now she began to feel
great pity and sorrow for the friendless clerk.
Hearing Dora crying softly, her father put his arm around her waist
and said soothingly: "There, child, don't cry; we must try to bear up
under misfortune. But 'tis a thousand pities----"
"Well," anxiously.
"Well, if I had known all that in season, the worst might have been
prevented."
"And now?"
"And now, child, your father is a ruined man." So saying, the
merchant hung up his hat and walked gloomily away.
Dora ran upstairs to her own room and locked herself in, leaving the
despondent merchant to eat his dinner solitary and alone.
VIII
OUTWARD BOUND
"Beats Boston, don't it?" said Bill to Walter, as the _Susan J._ was
slowly working her way up the East River past the miles of wharves and
warehouses with which the shores are lined.
"Maybe it's bigger, but I don't believe it's any better," was Walter's
guarded reply.
As soon as the anchor was down, the two friends hailed a passing
boatman, who quickly put them on shore at the Battery, whence
they lost no time in making their way to the steamship company's
office--Bill to see if he could get a chance to ship for the run to
the Isthmus, Walter to get a berth in the steerage just as soon as
Bill's case should be decided. So eager were they to have the matter
settled that they would not stop even to look at the wonders of the
town.
While waiting their turn among the crowd in the office, Bill's roving
eye happened to fall on a big, square-shouldered, thick-set man who
sat comfortably warming his hands over a coal fire in the fireplace,
which he wholly monopolized, apparently absorbed in his own thoughts.
It was now the month of December, and the air was chilly. Bill hailed
him without ceremony. "Mawnin', mister. Fire feels kind o' good this
cold mawnin', don't it?"
The person thus addressed did not even turn his head.
Unabashed by this cool reception, Bill added in a lower tone, "Lookin'
out for a chance to ship, heh, matey?"
At this question, so squarely put, a suppressed titter ran round
the room. The silent man gave Bill a sidelong look, shrugged his
shoulders, and absently asked, "What makes you think so?"
"D'ye think I don't know a sailorman when I see one? Mighty stuck
up, some folks is. Better get that Ingy-ink out o' yer hands ef yer
'shamed on it."
The silent man rose up, buttoned his shaggy buffalo-skin coat up to
his chin, pulled his fur cap down over his bushy eyebrows, and strode
out of the office without looking either to the right or the left.
"I say, you!" a clerk called out to Bill. "Do you know who you were
talking to? That's the old man."
"I don't keer ef it's the old boy. Ef that chap ha'n't hauled on a
tarred rope afore now, I'm a nigger; that's all."
"That was Commodore Vanderbilt, the owner of this line," the clerk
retorted very pompously, quite as if he expected Bill to drop.
The general laugh now went against Bill. "Whew! was it, though? Then I
s'pose my cake's all dough," he grumbled to himself, but was greatly
relieved when the shipping clerk, after a few questions, told him to
sign the articles. Walter was duly engaged, in his turn, as a cabin
waiter. This being settled, the two friends sallied forth in high
spirits to report on board the _Prometheus_, bound for San Juan del
Norte.
Nowhere, probably, since the days of Noah was there ever seen such
utter and seemingly helpless confusion as on one of those great
floating arks engaged in the California trade by way of the Isthmus,
in the early fifties, just before sailing. Bullocks were dismally
lowing, sheep plaintively bleating, hogs squealing. Men were wildly
running to and fro, shouting, pushing, and elbowing each other
about, as if they had only a few minutes longer to live and must
therefore make the most of their time. Women were quietly crying, or
laughing hysterically, by turns, as the fit happened to take them.
Of human beings, upwards of a thousand were thus occupied on board
the _Prometheus_; while on the already crowded slip the shouting
of belated hack drivers, who stormed and swore, the loud cries of
peddlers and newsboys, who darted hither and thither among the surging
throng, served to keep up an indescribable uproar. Add to this, that
the sky was dark and lowering, the black river swimming with floating
ice, crushing and grinding against the slip, as it moved out to sea
with the ebb; and possibly some idea may be formed of what was taking
place on that bleak December afternoon.
But all things must come to an end. All this confusion was hushed
when the word was passed to cast off, the paddle wheels began slowly
to turn, and the big ship, careening heavily to port under its human
freight, who swarmed like bees upon her decks, forged slowly out into
the stream, carrying with her, if the truth must be told, many a sorry
and homesick one already.
Walter, however, drew a long breath of relief as the ship moved away
from the shores. It was the first moment in which he had been able to
shake off the fear of being followed. He therefore went about his
duties cheerfully, if not very skillfully.
Oh, the unspeakable misery of that first night at sea! A stiff
southeaster was blowing when the steamer thrust her black nose outside
of Sandy Hook. And as the hours wore on, and the gale rose higher and
higher, with every lurch the straining ship would moan and tremble
like a human being in distress. Now and then a big sea would strike
the ship fairly, sending crockery and glassware flying about the
cabin with a crash, then as she settled down into the trough, for one
breathless moment it would seem as if she would never come up again.
Twenty times that night the affrighted passengers gave themselves
up for lost. Most of them lay in their berths prostrated by fear or
seasickness. A few even put on life preservers. Perhaps a score or
more, too much terrified even to seek their berths, crouched with
pallid faces on the cabin stairs, foolishly imagining that if the
ship did go down they would thus have the better chance of saving
themselves. Some half-crazed women had even put on their bonnets, in
order, as they sobbed out, to die decently.
It was hardly light, if a blurred gray streak in the east could be
called light, when Walter crept up the slippery companionway. His head
felt like a balloon, his eyes like two lumps of lead, his legs like
mismatched legs. The ship was working her engines just enough to keep
her head to the sea. The deck was all awash, and littered with the
rubbish of a row of temporary, or "standee," bunks abandoned by their
occupants, and broken up by the force of the gale. The paddle-boxes
were stove, and tons of water were pouring in upon the decks with
every revolution of the wheels. By watching his chance, when the ship
steadied herself for another plunge, Walter managed to work his way
out to the forepart of the vessel. Here he found Bill, with half a
dozen more, all wringing-wet, hastily swallowing, between lurches of
the ship, a cupful of hot coffee, which the cook was passing out to
them from the galley. If ever men looked completely worn out, then
those men did.
Bill no sooner caught sight of Walter, than he offered him his dipper.
Walter put it away from him with a grimace of disgust.
"Dirty night," said Bill, cooling his coffee between swallows; "blowed
fresh; nary watch below sence we left the dock; no life in her;
steered like a wild bull broke loose in Broadway. She's some easier
now. Better have some [again holding out his cup]; 't will do you
good. No? Well, here goes," tilting his head back and draining the cup
to the last drop.
Just then the first officer came bustling along in oilskins and
sou'wester. "Here, you!" he called out, "lay for'ard there, and get
the jib on her; come, bear a hand!" Walter went forward with the men.
Hoisting the sail was no easy matter, with the ship plunging bows
under every minute, but no sooner did the gale fill It fairly, than
away it went with a report like a cannon, blown clean out of the
bolt-rope, as if it had been a boy's kite held by a string. While the
men were watching it disappear in the mist, crash came a ton or more
of salt water pouring over the bow, throwing them violently against
the deck-house. Shaking himself like a spaniel, the mate darted off to
give the steersman a dressing-down for letting the ship "broach to."
Two sailors had been lost overboard during the night. On a hint
dropped by Bill, Walter was taken from the cabin, where there was
little to do, and put to work with the carpenter's gang, repairing
damages. The change being much to his liking, Walter applied himself
to his new duties with a zeal that soon won for him the good will of
his mates. And when it came to doing a job on the rigging, though
out of practice, Walter was always the one called upon to do it.
The captain, a quiet, gentlemanly man, who looked more like a
schoolmaster than a shipmaster, told the purser to put Walter in the
ship's books.
Thoroughly tired out with his day's work, Walter was going below
when the mate called out to him: "I say, youngster, you're not going
down into that dog-hole again. There's a spare bunk in my stateroom.
Get your traps and sail in. You can h'ist in as much sleep as you've
storage room for."
By noon of the second day out, the _Prometheus_ had run into the Gulf
Stream. The gale had sensibly abated, though it still blew hard. When
the captain came on deck, after taking a long look at the clouds, he
said to the mate, "Mr. Gray, I think you may give her the jib and
mainsail, to steady her a bit."
At break of day on the morning of the fourth day out, as Walter was
leaning over the weather rail, his eye caught sight of a dark spot
rising out of the water nearly abeam. The mate was taking a long
look at it through his glass. In reply to Walter's inquiring look,
the mate told him it was a low-lying reef called Mariguana, one of
the easternmost of the Bahamas. It was not long before most of the
passengers were crowding up to get sight of that little speck of dry
land, the first they had laid eyes on since the voyage began. "Now,
my lad, you can judge something of how Columbus felt when he made his
first landfall hereabouts so long ago!" exclaimed the mate. "Good for
sore eyes, ain't it? We never try to pass it except in the daytime,"
he added; "if we did, ten to one we'd fetch up all standing."
"San Domingo to-morrow!" cried the mate, rubbing his hands as he came
out of the chart room on the fifth day. As the word passed through the
ship it produced a magical effect among the passengers, whose chief
desire was once more to set foot on dry land, and next to see it.
Sure enough, when the sun rose out of the ocean next morning there
was the lovely tropic island looming up, darkly blue, before them.
There, too, were the hazy mountain peaks of Cuba rising in the west.
All day long the ship was sailing between these islands, on a sea as
smooth as a millpond. Every day she was getting in better trim, and
going faster; and the spirits of all on board rose accordingly at the
prospect of an early ending of the voyage.
"This beats all!" was Walter's delighted comment to Bill, who was
swabbing down the decks in his bare feet.
"'Tis kind o' pooty," Bill assented, wiping his sweaty face with his
bare arm. "That un," nodding toward Cuba, "Uncle Sam ought to hev,
by good rights; but this 'ere," turning on San Domingo a look of
contempt, "'z nothin' but niggers, airthquakes, an' harricanes. Let
'em keep it, says Bill;" then continuing, after a short pause, "Porter
Prince is up in the bight of yon deep bay. I seen the old king-pin
himself onct. Coal-tar ain't a patchin' to him; no, nor Day & Martin
nuther. Hot? If you was ashore there, you'd think it was hot. Why,
they cook eggs without fire right out in the sun."
A two-days' run across the Caribbean Sea brought the _Prometheus_ on
soundings, and a few hours more to her destined port. Every one was
now making hurried preparations to leave the ship, bag and baggage;
every eye beamed with delight at the prospect of escaping from the
confinement of what had seemed more like a prison than anything else.
While the _Prometheus_ was heading toward her anchorage there was time
allowed for a brief survey of the town and harbor of San Juan del
Norte, or, as it was then commonly called, Greytown.
These were really nothing more than an open roadstead, bounded by
a low, curving, and sandy shore, along which half a hundred poor
cabins lay half hid among tall cocoanut palms. From the one two-story
building in sight the British flag was flying. The harbor, however,
presented a very animated and warlike appearance, in consequence of
the warm dispute then in progress between England and the United
States as to who should control the transit from ocean to ocean. Two
American and two British warships lay within easy gunshot of each
other, flying the flags of their respective nations, and no sooner
were the colors of the starry banner caught sight of than a tremendous
cheer burst from the thousand throats on board the _Prometheus_. Her
anchor had hardly touched bottom when a boat from the _Saranac_ came
alongside, the officer in charge eagerly hailing the deck for the
latest news from the States. As for the jackies, to judge from their
looks they seemed literally spoiling for a fight.
Walter had no very clear idea upon the subject of this international
dispute, still less of the importance it might assume in the future,
but the evident anxiety shown on the faces around him led him to
suppose that the matter was serious. He stood holding onto the lee
rigging, watching the American tars in the boat alongside, and
thinking what fine, manly fellows they looked, when two passengers
near him began an animated discussion which set him to thinking.
"Sare," said one, with a strong French accent, "it was, _ma foi_, I
shall recollect--_ah oui_--it was my countryman, one Samuel Champlain,
who first gave ze idea of cutting--what you call him?--one sheep canal
across ze Eesmus. I shall not be wrong to-day."
"Excuse me, monsieur," the other returned, "I think Cortez did that
very thing long before him."
"Nevair mind, _mon ami_. I _gage_ you 'ave ze _histoire_ correct. Eet
only prove zat great minds 'ave always sometime ze same ideas. _Mais_,
your Oncle Sam, wiz hees sillee Monroe Doctreen, he eez like ze dog
wiz his paw on ze bone: he not eat himself; he not let any oder dog:
he just growl, growl, growl."
"But, monsieur, wouldn't Uncle Sam, as you call him, be a big fool to
let any foreign nation get control of his road to California?"
The Frenchman only replied by a shrug.
Even before the _Prometheus_ dropped anchor she was surrounded by a
swarm of native boatmen, of all shades of color from sour cream to
jet-black, some holding up bunches of bananas, some screaming out
praises of their boats to such as were disposed to go ashore, others
begging the passengers to throw a dime into the water, for which they
instantly plunged, head first, regardless of the sharks which could be
seen lazily swimming about the harbor, attracted by the offal thrown
over from the ships.
"I don't know how 'tis," said Bill in Walter's ear, "but them
sharks'll never tech a nigger. But come, time to wake up! Anchor's
down. All's snug aboard. Now keep your weather eye peeled for a long
pull across the Isthmus."
"Good luck to ye," said the jolly mate, shaking Walter heartily by the
hand as he was about leaving the ship. "I'm right glad to see you've
been trying to improve your mind a bit, instead of moonin' about like
a catfish in a mudhole, as most of 'em do on board here. Use your
eyes. Keep your ears open and don't be afraid to ask questions. That's
the way to travel, my hearty!" And with a parting wave of the hand he
strode forward.
IX
ACROSS NICARAGUA
In the course of an hour or so three light-draught stern-wheel
steamboats ("wheelbarrows," Bill derisively called them) came puffing
up alongside. Into them the passengers were now unceremoniously
bundled, like so many sheep, and in such numbers as hardly to allow
room to move about, yet all in high glee at escaping from the
confinement of the ship, at which many angrily shook their fists as
the fasts were cast off. In another quarter of an hour the boats were
steaming slowly up the San Juan River, thus commencing the second
stage of the long journey.
For the first hour or two the travelers were fully occupied in looking
about them with charmed eyes, as with mile after mile, and turn after
turn, the wonders of a tropical forest, all hung about with rare and
beautiful flowers, and all as still as death, passed before them. But
Bill, to whom the sight was not new or strange, declared that for his
part he would rather have a sniff of good old Boston's east wind than
all the cloying perfumes of that wilderness of woods and blossoms.
It was not long, however, before attention was drawn to the living
inhabitants of this fairyland.
First a strange object, something between a huge lizard and a bloated
bullfrog, was spied clinging to a bush on the bank. No sooner seen
than crack! crack! went a dozen pistol shots, and down dropped the
dirty green-and-yellow creature with a loud splash into the river.
"There's a tidbit gone," observed Bill, in Walter's ear.
"What! eat that thing?" demanded Walter with a disgusted look.