was not without humour. "Mr. Jones, Mr. Ladd, you hear that I hope
they won't be able to say as much for themselves this day three
months."
And the crew laughed, as in duty bound. But Hunt and Gawthrop did
not laugh.
"D'ye think there's any truth in what those two men said?" asked
Captain Singleton of his mate.
"Likely enough, sir," replied Ladd. "Aren't we out of San Francisco?"
"I certainly don't seem to remember their faces," said the skipper,
"but they'll have to do. Make what you can of them. If it's any
ways true, it's no good telling them we think so."
"Certainly not, sir," said Ladd. "But what's their remedy?"
He knew perfectly well that there was no practical remedy against the
ship. And Hunt and Gawthrop were well aware they had none against
their friend Shanghai Smith, or against Gardiner.
They had no chance of speaking to each other till the second
dog-watch, and then only in the presence of the whole crowd, who were
very anxious to get to the bottom of the mystery.
"They ain't sailormen, not they," growled the oldest man on board,
who came from Brook Street, Shadwell, and was known as "Shadwell,"
though his real name was Shaw, "and a nice thing for hus. Two less
to take the wheel. I calls it a bally shime."
He looked at Hunt with an air of unutterable contempt, and sniffed
every time the man spoke. Gawthrop, who was younger and more
elastic, sat on the other side of the foc'sle, and presently
addressed Hunt.
"I suppose we must make the best of it, Hunt."
"Don't speak to me, sir," said Hunt, and the crew roared.
"Tell us 'ow it 'appened, do," said Tom. "Oh, ain't your friend
'aughty? Tell us, 'as 'e got that five thousand dollars?"
"Not on him," replied Gawthrop.
"Look 'ere," said Tom, "if you'll tell us the troof, I'll stand you a
drop of rum. I've a nip left. And this is a teetotal ship, this is."
He could not conceive any man refusing such a bribe. And Gawthrop,
in spite of everything, could hardly help laughing at Hunt's face.
He took the rum partly to have an excuse for telling the story. It
was the wisest thing to be friends with every one, and after all, if
he was out of the running for a time, so was Hunt.
"Well," said Gawthrop, "I and my cheerful friend over there are very
great friends indeed. But I wanted him out of San Francisco for a
time, for reasons. And I got Shanghai Smith to arrange it."
"_We_ know him," said the crowd eagerly. "Oh yes, we know him!"
"I stayed in 'is 'ouse."
"So did I."
"Shut up and let him tell us."
And Hunt by now was all alone on the starboard side. Even old
Shadwell came across to hear the yarn.
"Another friend of mine suggested it," said Gawthrop, "and fixed it
up for me."
"That was Gardiner," said Hunt.
"It was," said Gawthrop, "and I paid a thousand dollars to have Mr.
Hunt put here."
"That's what _I_ paid to have you put here," said Hunt. "A friend of
mine put me up to it."
"That was Gardiner," said Gawthrop.
"It was," said Hunt.
"And that's why we're both here," said Gawthrop, and his aspect was
at once so melancholy and so comic that all hands shrieked with
laughter. Old Shadwell creaked like the cheep of a block.
"But what'd this hyer Gardiner to do with the show?" asked the only
American in the crew. "It looks like as if he played the pair of you
for suckers."
"You hear that, Hunt?"
"I hear," said Hunt sulkily. "Wait till I see him."
"You ain't told us hall," said Shadwell, with a gloomy air of
suspicion. "I knows somethin' of life, and somethin' about women;
and there was a woman in this."
"Mr. Shadwell is right," said Gawthrop.
"I was to have taken her for a drive this morning," said Hunt; "and a
pretty sort of a man I shall look, not turning up."
"Never mind," said Gawthrop. "I was to have taken her out this
afternoon."
Old Shadwell nodded gloomily.
"What 'ave I often told you about 'em, boys!" he said. "This proves
it. A woman's like a cat with nine lives, and nine sorts of
dispositions, and if she don't satisfy 'em with nine sort of man fool
she ain't happy. I've know them as nine wouldn't satisfy. And
they're all the same; there's different nations of men, but women is
all one nation. You can bet your boots, you two fellers, that your
girl is out with some one else. This here v'yge will do you good if
it rams that into you."
He turned to the others.
"D'ye believe what this young feller has told you?"
They said they did. Shadwell turned again to Gawthrop.
"It's 'ard lines on men as is sailormen, and ships so short-'anded as
they always is with greedy owners, to 'ave ship-mates as can't do
their work. But you look bright, young feller, and if you skips
quick and does your best, there ain't no reason as you shouldn't be
some kind of use in the world before we're off the Horn. And I say
the same to you over there."
"Go to the devil," replied Hunt sulkily.
"Sailormen don't go there. _They_ goes to Fidler's Green," said
Shadwell. "And mark me! Put the girl out of your minds. This was a
put-up job, and _she_ was in it. She'll marry this here Gardiner!"
"He hasn't a cent," said Gawthrop contemptuously.
"It don't follow," said Shadwell stubbornly, "that because woman is
wicked by nature they ain't silly by choice. I tell you Gardiner 'as
gone to wind'ard of you! He's laughin' this very minute!"
And so he was. But Edith Atherton was by no means amused at the
sudden disappearance of the two men who were supposed to stand
highest in her favour. Whether she cared much or little for either
of them, or not, it was unpleasant to have them fail to keep their
appointments, and to leave San Francisco without a word of
explanation. Her first and very natural impulse was to let every one
infer that she had rejected both of them. But when old Mr. Gawthrop
called on her during the second day she had to own that she
understood the mystery as little as the newspapers did. And all the
papers were very keen on any scent.
"But, Mr. Gawthrop, they both said something that I could not
understand. Mr. Hunt said that he was sure that your son would soon
go to Europe, and not ten minutes after Sibley said the same of Mr.
Hunt."
The explanation seemed easy to the old man. Both of them imagined
that his rejected rival would travel. The rest must be a
coincidence. He went away to the police, and the police invented
many hypotheses. They were learned in the matter of disappearances
in San Francisco. But none of the hypotheses seemed to fit. Both
the young men were wealthy, and it seemed certain that one or the
other of them was bound to succeed with the lady in question.
Nevertheless, old Gawthrop learnt some things about his son which
surprised him.
There was one newspaper which suggested that they might have been
shanghaied. It was the _Chronicle_, on which Gardiner worked. For
though he had made up his mind to do very little more work on any
paper, he was loyal to his flag so long as he hoisted it, and meant
that the _Chronicle_ should be able to sail in at the last and say,
"We told you so." And when every one else on the paper failed in
getting an interview with Miss Atherton, he volunteered to try.
"You must understand, however," he said to his editor, "that even if
I see her I don't promise to write anything about it. You see, I
knew her a little when she was in New York two years ago, and though
I'm not in the gilt-edged crowd she adorns here, I owe her something."
And Edith Atherton saw him, although she did consider a man on a
newspaper little, if anything, higher than a deck-hand in a Bay
ferry-boat. She had never understood what he was doing in California
at all. He went to interview her, and she interviewed him.
"I'm here as a man from the _Chronicle_, Miss Atherton," said
Gardiner. He spoke almost timidly. It was the first time he had
ever been alone with her.
"You are not here as a man from the _Chronicle_" said Edith.
"You mean----?" said Gardiner eagerly.
"I mean that," said Edith--"just that. You are here as the Mr.
Gardiner I met in New York."
Gardiner's eyes sparkled. He looked at her, smiled, and then laughed.
"But mayn't I ask you anything about the--mystery?" he asked.
"I don't see what it has to do with me," replied Edith. "But I see
your paper says they have been shanghaied? Tell me what that means."
He explained: no man knew better.
"You mean they have gone to sea as common sailors?" she exclaimed.
"That is the theory of the _Chronicle_" said Gardiner drily. "If we
are right, it will do them both good."
"I'm rather sorry for Sibley Gawthrop," she said; but Gardiner was
not so young as to be discouraged by her sympathy for Sibley.
"May I be sorry for him too?" asked Gardiner, boldly.
Edith Atherton stared at him and dropped her eyes.
"How is your father?" she asked irrelevantly. "He was a very nice
old man."
"So he is," replied Gardiner, "the only trouble was that he believed
he owned me. He came from the South, and was one of the few
Southerners, who, on losing their slaves, played their own game on
the men from the North. He and I quarrelled about a subject in which
I considered he had no right to interfere."
There were no obvious implications in the way he spoke, and Edith
Atherton saw none.
"What was that?" she asked, innocently enough.
"His view was that I shouldn't marry until he let me. I wanted to
marry you."
Edith gasped a little and took hold of her chair as she bent forward.
"Indeed, Mr. Gardiner."
"And I still want to, Miss Atherton. And as the lady whom he wished
me to marry was married a month ago, I think he will forgive me, if I
ask him. It was always understood, even when we parted, that he
would reinstate me as his partner if I succeeded for myself."
"And have you succeeded?" asked Edith with bent head.
Gardiner rose from his chair and went towards her.
"That is for you to say," he cried.
And when he returned to the office he handed in no more than a
paragraph. It was considered in some quarters an adequate
explanation of the disappearance of Hunt and Gawthrop. Yet it was
not adequate for Edith. It was only when she became Mrs. Gardiner,
and they were on their way East, that her husband told her the truth.
"I'm really very sorry now," said Gardiner. "Nevertheless, it will
do them lots of good. They required it. You never really liked
either of them, Edith?"
"No-o, not that way," said his wife. But she said to herself, "Next
day I should have accepted Mr. Gawthrop!"
They ran into Laramie Junction, that horrible centre of sage-brush
and alkali. A bitter wind drove dust against the windows of their
car.
"It's a ghastly prospect," said Gardiner, as he looked out on the
prairie.
"It would have been," replied his wife absently.
"It would have been?" asked her husband in surprise.
"I mean it is, of course," said Edith hastily.
THE MAN FROM ABO
William, or, as he was usually called, Bill, Noyes, was a citizen of
the United States, and, like most citizens of that part of the
Western Continent, he was accustomed to do as he "darned pleased."
But besides being an American citizen, he was an American shipmaster,
and such are accustomed to having their own way and giving no one
else a chance. He explained this to the crowd in the _State of
Oregon_, bound from San Francisco to Bordeaux, with wine which was
going to be converted into claret. For this was some time ago,
before the wine-growers there had it all their own way in the French
Republic.
"You're dogs, and I'm the man with the whip. You're hogs, and I'm
your driver. I'm boss, and captain, and governor, and congress, and
the senate, and the president, and don't any of you forget it! If I
hadn't been brought up religious I'd go a step farther still. Let me
hear a growl out of you, and I'll make you wish you were in hell. Do
your duty, and I'll make this ship paradise. It shall be as sweet to
you as a full roost of chickens to a buck nigger on a dark night.
I'm a good man, I am, and I know it. You'll know it, too. I'll see
to that. Now then, Mr. Bragg, start them to. D'ye see that damned
Dutchman? He looks as if he didn't understand 'United States.' Jolt
him on the jaw for me!"
And the unfortunate Dutchman, who was really a Finn from Abo, got a
crack with a closed fist that made him see more stars than even the
American flag of liberty can boast.
"What for? I done nuttin'," he yelled, as he put his hand to his
head; but never another man opened his mouth.
"Say another word," said Bragg, "and I'll ram a belaying-pin
crossways down your throat," and this was the beginning.
"Very good indeed," said Noyes. "Now every one understands, Mr.
Bragg, and no one can say everything warn't explained to them
clearly. Work the drink out of 'em. I'm for a holy, healthy, happy
crew."
And Noyes went below for a drink. He was, as he often said, a sober
man.
"One tot every time the bell strikes, and two at eight-bells, and as
a man can't sleep and drink, I take what I should take before I turn
in."
But none of the men for'ard got as much as a teaspoonful even after
shortening sail, or on Saturday nights.
"We've struck it rich," said the crowd, when they got together in the
second dog-watch. "We've struck it rich. There's no fatal error
about that. You can see it with half an eye a mile off. The
skipper's a holy terror!"
"Ya! ya! we've got to yoomp!" said a real Dutchman, and he was put in
the place proper to a Dutchman at once.
"Speak when you are spoken to," said the English and American seamen
all at once. "These Dutchmen are getting past a joke, bullies."
"So they are," said old Mackenzie, a shellback of the briniest
description. "When I was a boy, if one of them opened his mouth too
wide we used to put something in it."
"What did you put in?" asked the eager Anglo-Saxons.
"Oh, anything as he couldn't eat," said Mac. "A ball o' twine or a
swab. I remember one Dutchy as _would_ talk----"
But just then the man from Abo came in, and though the crowd was not
really sympathetic, they asked him how his jaw felt. It appeared
after all that he understood "United States" sufficiently well when
it was to the point: that is, when it concerned his duty or the talk
that goes on in a foc'sle. A word beyond these limits opened his
eyes and shut his mouth. He was then like a waiter fresh from the
Continent, who can talk in English about food, and food only.
"Never you mind, Dutchy," said one of his own watch. "Mebbe, after
all, it'll do you good. If Bragg hammers you, we won't."
Even such consolation was better than none, and Dutchy was truly
grateful. The lot of a "Dutchman" at sea is not always beer and
skittles. But even an Anglo-American crowd can have sympathy when
they are like to want it themselves. They certainly found that Billy
Noyes's notion of a paradise made Tophet look cool, even as depicted
to a sad and sober sailor in a waterside Bethel. They wanted
Bordeaux badly, and under the influence of that desire and the
stimulation supplied by the officers they lost no time in getting
there. And as they were a fine lot as men go, few of them came in
for actual hammering. The slowest got that always, and the man from
Abo was the man to get it.
It was marvellous to observe how much he got and how little it seemed
to hurt him. He was knocked down once a day and twice on Sundays.
Even when he got a chance to be first up aloft he never seemed to
know it. The only way he had of getting down first was to fall. And
once when he did so without seriously damaging himself Bragg hammered
him for doing it.
"What you're after is to be laid up; I see that," said Bragg. "But
let me catch you at it."
And Hans shook his head under Bragg's heavy hand till he forgot he
had bruises on him the size of a soup-plate.
"Dutchy's a fair wonder," said the crowd, rejoicing in their own
freedom; "he's taking the whack of all us and never turns a hair.
We'll have to get up a subscription for him. Ain't he just tough?
Say, Dutchy, suppose you and Bragg or you and the old man was to have
a fair set-to, d'ye think you could down either of 'em?"
"Ya," said Hans from Abo very soberly, "neider of 'em can't hurt me
mooch."
"He's made of teak," said the admiring crowd. "Now, there ain't one
of us wouldn't be bunged up if we'd been hit about like him, and he
ain't got a mark."
"It reminds me of a Chinky I fo't once," said one of the men. "I
knocked him down seven times, and then two other chaps chucked him
out. And next morning he was as cheerful as you please and never
fazed; not a mark to him. I give him ten cents for a drink to let me
look at him close. Dutchy's just such another, he's a real tough, so
he is."
Hans's marvellous capacity for being hammered was soon noted aft.
"Why don't you take a pillow to him?" said Noyes, with a sneer. "To
see you hit him, Bragg, makes me tired, and you used to be a hard
man, too."
The mate was injured in his tenderest point.
"I done my best," he said suddenly. "I carn't help it if the swine
is made of injy-rubber. I pretty near skinned my knuckles on him
yesterday, and he's as fresh as paint to-day. Try him yourself, sir."
"I hired you," retorted Noyes; "but if I do get at him you'll see
something fly."
They were well to the nor'ard and eastward of the Horn before Noyes
happened to try, and it was blowing a snorter from the south-west.
As the men came down on the poop after stowing the lower
mizzen-topsail, Hans, having gum-boots on, slipped and fell against
the skipper. The next moment Hans was on his back and Noyes had his
knuckles to his own mouth.
"Great Scott!" said Noyes, with a face like a comic door-knocker or a
Japanese grotesque, and he turned about and went below.
"It serves him right," said Hans. "Oh, no, I ain't hurt. It is
nuttin'."
And though he showed nothing, not even a slight puffiness on his high
cheek-bone, the skipper wore a mitten on his right hand for days.
Noyes even conceived a certain respect for the Finn.
"I thought I'd hit a bollard," he said. "I ought to have hit him on
the jaw, or where he keeps his wind."
By dint of these object-lessons Hans gradually got an easier time.
If Bragg ever went for him he kicked him, and the marks he made, if
he made any, did not show, for Hans came on board clothed, and never
undressed till they reached the Line in the Atlantic. There he took
a bath. As he said, he always made a point of having some buckets of
water thrown over him every time he crossed the equator homeward
bound; perhaps he thought it kept him fresh. But by then Bragg was
even tired of kicking him. Nothing made him go slower or faster. He
went at the pace he had been born to, and he never learnt anything
more than he had known at seventeen. If there is any truth in the
transmigration of souls, Hans must have been a tortoise and was
destined to "jump up" again as a sloth. But once, after a long slow
month of provocation, he hit the real Dutchman from Amsterdam, and
that native of Holland "went to sleep" for two hours.
"He's the on'y Dutchman I ever had any real respect for," said the
crowd each for himself. But of course he was a Finn, and, as every
one knows, a Finn triumphs over his disabilities as a Dutchman by
virtue of strange gifts.
"No, I don't believe none of that jaw about Finns and witchcraft,"
said old Mackenzie, "but I own there's always somethin' strange about
a Finn. Now, all Hans's nature seems to 'ave run to 'ardness. What
a saddle 'is skin would make!" For Mac had spent two years in the
Australian bush, and was never tired of relating his strange
experiences on horseback.
And presently the _State of Oregon_ began, as the men said, to smell
land. It was off Finisterre that Noyes proved the man from Abo could
bleed; for the skipper never forgot that he had been knocked out in
one round by knocking down a 'Dutchman.' The thought rankled, and
when Hans was at the wheel when the wind was light out of the
north-east the skipper's temper, ragged at a contrary wind when he
had made a record passage so far, led him a little astray. For, as
he often said, "It's all right marking men when one's bound home and
when they've time to get well bound to Yewrope, but I like to leave
'em without no visible sign to say you've larrupped 'em when I'm
bound East."
In the United States there is very little respect for a man who can't
take care of himself, but some Europeans have silly notions. It's
not uncommon even to find a consul who doesn't understand that
sailors are no good unless they are in a state of mutiny or near it.
There is no end to the foolishness of some consuls, as Captain Noyes
often complained with natural bitterness. So when, after he had
cursed Hans twice for his steering, he jammed the brass end of his
telescope right between the man's eyes and cut him badly, he was
quite sorry for it. You see, he had almost got to believe that the
man from Abo couldn't be hurt. But a brass telescope properly
applied makes four neat little cuts, one on the forehead, one on the
bridge of the nose, and one on each eyebrow, as a little
consideration of the human race and the nature of a circle will show.
The blood ran down into Hans's eyes, and Bragg had to walk to the
break of the poop and bellow:
"Relieve the wheel!"
And two days afterwards the _State of Oregon_, owing to a favourable
change of wind, lay at Bordeaux. As soon as she did, the entire crew
got too much to drink, and not even Noyes and Bragg could handle
them, though the skipper was, as he had averred at the beginning of
the passage, captain and congress and president all rolled in one.
The only people who could handle them were the French police, and
they had their work cut out. The next day, as it is the habit of
Frenchmen and Spaniards and the like to let the consuls fix up all
difficulties with foreign crews if they can, the American Consul was
called on to arbitrate in the matter. And for the nonce the American
Consul was the English one, for Mr. Schuyler had gone to Paris on
what he described as business, but what no Puritan would have called
such. And this is where the man from Abo came home, as one may say.
Mr. Johnson, then British Consul at Bordeaux, was a fine man with a
clear skin, a merry eye, a knowledge of the world, and a hard fist.
As a young man he had been amateur champion of the middle-weights in
England, and though he was now a heavy-weight, he was almost as quick
as he had been at twenty-two. He had a sense of fair play which was
almost disgusting to masters of merchantmen, and a sense of humour
which sometimes got him into trouble with the Foreign Office. For it
may have been noticed that among the English Civil Service the only
humour, which is, one has to own, rather sardonic, is to be found in
that part of it which deals with the Income Tax. The very moment the
consul had the shamefaced crew before him, and saw the officers, he
knew where the trouble lay, and he thought of the boxing gloves with
which he often whiled away an idle hour when the vice-consul felt
"good."
"Well, now, well, what's the trouble?" asked the consul.
And Noyes told him where he thought it lay. Noyes was as smooth as
bad butter, and had a heartiness about him which would have made a
child cry for its mother. All the time he was talking, and the men
were muttering that he was a liar, the consul was taking the crowd
in. He spotted many marks and bruises on them, all come by honestly
among themselves or given them without malice by the gensd'armes; but
when his eye lighted on the man from Abo it stayed there.
"A comfortable ship, yes, yes," said the consul, "of course, of
course! And a tough crowd to be sure. Here you, come here!"
And as the others saw that he meant Hans, they shoved him forward.
"That's a nice face you've got," said Mr. Johnson. "God bless my
soul you've been running against something. Now I should say--I
should say--yes, by Jove, you've been running against a telescope?"
And Hans nodded.
"Who gave you that?"
Noyes looked as black as his coat, but the Finn pointed at him with
his finger.
"The cap'en, sir."
The consul looked at them both. He noted that they were both of a
size, both probably of the same weight, and both looked as hard as
nickel steel. His eye sparkled with a certain joy.
"Did you, Mr. Noyes?"
It enraged Noyes to be given his proper handle.
"And he deserved it," he said angrily.
"If you wanted to hit him you should have done it with your hand.
But perhaps he would have been too much for you without a weapon,"
suggested the consul suavely.
"Not he," retorted Noyes incautiously.
Mr. Johnson looked at them both, and shrugged his shoulders.
"I believe he would lick you in a fair fight," he said with a slight
sniff, and Noyes exploded.
"I could pound him to almighty smash in two minutes," he roared.