mine, and proved of utmost usefulness in rigging the great ore-cables
across the river and two hundred feet above its surface.
After that he took charge of the cables and kept them in repair, and
ran them and loved them, and became himself an indispensable fixture of
the Yellow Dream mine. Then he loved pretty Margaret Kelly; but she had
left him and Young Jerry, the latter barely toddling, to take up her
last long sleep in the little graveyard among the great sober pines.
Old Jerry never went back to the sea. He remained by his cables, and
lavished upon them and Young Jerry all the love of his nature. When evil
days came to the Yellow Dream, he still remained in the employ of the
company as watchman over the all but abandoned property.
But this morning he was not visible. Young Jerry only was to be seen,
sitting on the cabin step and singing the ancient chantey. He had cooked
and eaten his breakfast all by himself, and had just come out to take a
look at the world. Twenty feet before him stood the steel drum round
which the endless cable worked. By the drum, snug and fast, was the
ore-car. Following with his eyes the dizzy flight of the cables to the
farther bank, he could see the other drum and the other car.
The contrivance was worked by gravity, the loaded car crossing the river
by virtue of its own weight, and at the same time dragging the empty car
back. The loaded car being emptied, and the empty car being loaded with
more ore, the performance could be repeated--a performance which had
been repeated tens of thousands of times since the day Old Jerry became
the keeper of the cables.
Young Jerry broke off his song at the sound of approaching footsteps. A
tall, blue-shirted man, a rifle across the hollow of his arm, came out
from the gloom of the pine-trees. It was Hall, watchman of the Yellow
Dragon mine, the cables of which spanned the Sacramento a mile farther
up.
"Yello, younker!" was his greeting. "What you doin' here by your
lonesome?"
"Oh, bachin'," Jerry tried to answer unconcernedly, as if it were a very
ordinary sort of thing. "Dad's away, you see."
"Where's he gone?" the man asked.
"San Francisco. Went last night. His brother's dead in the old country,
and he's gone down to see the lawyers. Won't be back till tomorrow
night."
So spoke Jerry, and with pride, because of the responsibility which had
fallen to him of keeping an eye on the property of the Yellow Dream, and
the glorious adventure of living alone on the cliff above the river and
of cooking his own meals.
"Well, take care of yourself," Hall said, "and don't monkey with the
cables. I'm goin' to see if I can pick up a deer in the Cripple Cow
Cañon."
"It's goin' to rain, I think," Jerry said, with mature deliberation.
"And it's little I mind a wettin'," Hall laughed, as he strode away
among the trees.
Jerry's prediction concerning rain was more than fulfilled. By ten
o'clock the pines were swaying and moaning, the cabin windows rattling,
and the rain driving by in fierce squalls. At half past eleven he
kindled a fire, and promptly at the stroke of twelve sat down to his
dinner.
No out-of-doors for him that day, he decided, when he had washed the few
dishes and put them neatly away; and he wondered how wet Hall was and
whether he had succeeded in picking up a deer.
At one o'clock there came a knock at the door, and when he opened it a
man and a woman staggered in on the breast of a great gust of wind. They
were Mr. and Mrs. Spillane, ranchers, who lived in a lonely valley a
dozen miles back from the river.
"Where's Hall?" was Spillane's opening speech, and he spoke sharply and
quickly.
Jerry noted that he was nervous and abrupt in his movements, and that
Mrs. Spillane seemed laboring under some strong anxiety. She was a thin,
washed-out, worked-out woman, whose life of dreary and unending toil had
stamped itself harshly upon her face. It was the same life that had
bowed her husband's shoulders and gnarled his hands and turned his hair
to a dry and dusty gray.
"He's gone hunting up Cripple Cow," Jerry answered. "Did you want to
cross?"
The woman began to weep quietly, while Spillane dropped a troubled
exclamation and strode to the window. Jerry joined him in gazing out to
where the cables lost themselves in the thick downpour.
It was the custom of the backwoods people in that section of country to
cross the Sacramento on the Yellow Dragon cable. For this service a
small toll was charged, which tolls the Yellow Dragon Company applied
to the payment of Hall's wages.
"We've got to get across, Jerry," Spillane said, at the same time
jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his wife. "Her
father's hurt at the Clover Leaf. Powder explosion. Not expected to
live. We just got word."
Jerry felt himself fluttering inwardly. He knew that Spillane wanted to
cross on the Yellow Dream cable, and in the absence of his father he
felt that he dared not assume such a responsibility, for the cable had
never been used for passengers; in fact, had not been used at all for a
long time.
"Maybe Hall will be back soon," he said.
Spillane shook his head, and demanded, "Where's your father?"
"San Francisco," Jerry answered, briefly.
Spillane groaned, and fiercely drove his clenched fist into the palm of
the other hand. His wife was crying more audibly, and Jerry could hear
her murmuring, "And daddy's dyin', dyin'!"
The tears welled up in his own eyes, and he stood irresolute, not
knowing what he should do. But the man decided for him.
"Look here, kid," he said, with determination, "the wife and me are
goin' over on this here cable of yours! Will you run it for us?"
Jerry backed slightly away. He did it unconsciously, as if recoiling
instinctively from something unwelcome.
"Better see if Hall's back," he suggested.
"And if he ain't?"
Again Jerry hesitated.
"I'll stand for the risk," Spillane added. "Don't you see, kid, we've
simply got to cross!"
Jerry nodded his head reluctantly.
"And there ain't no use waitin' for Hall," Spillane went on. "You know
as well as me he ain't back from Cripple Cow this time of day! So come
along and let's get started."
No wonder that Mrs. Spillane seemed terrified as they helped her into
the ore-car--so Jerry thought, as he gazed into the apparently
fathomless gulf beneath her. For it was so filled with rain and cloud,
hurtling and curling in the fierce blast, that the other shore, seven
hundred feet away, was invisible, while the cliff at their feet dropped
sheer down and lost itself in the swirling vapor. By all appearances it
might be a mile to bottom instead of two hundred feet.
"All ready?" he asked.
"Let her go!" Spillane shouted, to make himself heard above the roar of
the wind.
He had clambered in beside his wife, and was holding one of her hands in
his.
Jerry looked upon this with disapproval. "You'll need all your hands for
holdin' on, the way the wind's yowlin'."
The man and the woman shifted their hands accordingly, tightly gripping
the sides of the car, and Jerry slowly and carefully released the brake.
The drum began to revolve as the endless cable passed round it, and the
car slid slowly out into the chasm, its trolley wheels rolling on the
stationary cable overhead, to which it was suspended.
It was not the first time Jerry had worked the cable, but it was the
first time he had done so away from the supervising eye of his father.
By means of the brake he regulated the speed of the car. It needed
regulating, for at times, caught by the stronger gusts of wind, it
swayed violently back and forth; and once, just before it was swallowed
up in a rain squall, it seemed about to spill out its human contents.
After that Jerry had no way of knowing where the car was except by means
of the cable. This he watched keenly as it glided around the drum.
"Three hundred feet," he breathed to himself, as the cable markings went
by, "three hundred and fifty, four hundred; four hundred and----"
The cable had stopped. Jerry threw off the brake, but it did not move.
He caught the cable with his hands and tried to start it by tugging
smartly. Something had gone wrong. What? He could not guess; he could
not see. Looking up, he could vaguely make out the empty car, which had
been crossing from the opposite cliff at a speed equal to that of the
loaded car. It was about two hundred and fifty feet away. That meant, he
knew, that somewhere in the gray obscurity, two hundred feet above the
river and two hundred and fifty feet from the other bank, Spillane and
his wife were suspended and stationary.
Three times Jerry shouted with all the shrill force of his lungs, but no
answering cry came out of the storm. It was impossible for him to hear
them or to make himself heard. As he stood for a moment, thinking
rapidly, the flying clouds seemed to thin and lift. He caught a brief
glimpse of the swollen Sacramento beneath, and a briefer glimpse of the
car and the man and woman. Then the clouds descended thicker than ever.
The boy examined the drum closely, and found nothing the matter with it.
Evidently it was the drum on the other side that had gone wrong. He was
appalled at the thought of the man and woman out there in the midst of
the storm, hanging over the abyss, rocking back and forth in the frail
car and ignorant of what was taking place on shore. And he did not like
to think of their hanging there while he went round by the Yellow Dragon
cable to the other drum.
But he remembered a block and tackle in the tool-house, and ran and
brought it. They were double blocks, and he murmured aloud, "A purchase
of four," as he made the tackle fast to the endless cable. Then he
heaved upon it, heaved until it seemed that his arms were being drawn
out from their sockets and that his shoulder muscles would be ripped
asunder. Yet the cable did not budge. Nothing remained but to cross over
to the other side.
He was already soaking wet, so he did not mind the rain as he ran over
the trail to the Yellow Dragon. The storm was with him, and it was easy
going, although there was no Hall at the other end of it to man the
brake for him and regulate the speed of the car. This he did for
himself, however, by means of a stout rope, which he passed, with a
turn, round the stationary cable.
As the full force of the wind struck him in mid-air, swaying the cable
and whistling and roaring past it, and rocking and careening the car, he
appreciated more fully what must be the condition of mind of Spillane
and his wife. And this appreciation gave strength to him, as, safely
across, he fought his way up the other bank, in the teeth of the gale,
to the Yellow Dream cable.
To his consternation, he found the drum in thorough working order.
Everything was running smoothly at both ends. Where was the hitch? In
the middle, without a doubt.
From this side, the car containing Spillane was only two hundred and
fifty feet away. He could make out the man and woman through the
whirling vapor, crouching in the bottom of the car and exposed to the
pelting rain and the full fury of the wind. In a lull between the
squalls he shouted to Spillane to examine the trolley of the car.
Spillane heard, for he saw him rise up cautiously on his knees, and with
his hands go over both trolley-wheels. Then he turned his face toward
the bank.
"She's all right, kid!"
Jerry heard the words, faint and far, as from a remote distance. Then
what was the matter? Nothing remained but the other and empty car, which
he could not see, but which he knew to be there, somewhere in that
terrible gulf two hundred feet beyond Spillane's car.
His mind was made up on the instant. He was only fourteen years old,
slightly and wirily built; but his life had been lived among the
mountains, his father had taught him no small measure of "sailoring,"
and he was not particularly afraid of heights.
In the tool-box by the drum he found an old monkey-wrench and a short
bar of iron, also a coil of fairly new Manila rope. He looked in vain
for a piece of board with which to rig a "boatswain's chair." There was
nothing at hand but large planks, which he had no means of sawing, so he
was compelled to do without the more comfortable form of saddle.
The saddle he rigged was very simple. With the rope he made merely a
large loop round the stationary cable, to which hung the empty car. When
he sat in the loop his hands could just reach the cable conveniently,
and where the rope was likely to fray against the cable he lashed his
coat, in lieu of the old sack he would have used had he been able to
find one.
These preparations swiftly completed, he swung out over the chasm,
sitting in the rope saddle and pulling himself along the cable by his
hands. With him he carried the monkey-wrench and short iron bar and a
few spare feet of rope. It was a slightly up-hill pull, but this he did
not mind so much as the wind. When the furious gusts hurled him back and
forth, sometimes half twisting him about, and he gazed down into the
gray depths, he was aware that he was afraid. It was an old cable. What
if it should break under his weight and the pressure of the wind?
It was fear he was experiencing, honest fear, and he knew that there was
a "gone" feeling in the pit of his stomach, and a trembling of the knees
which he could not quell.
But he held himself bravely to the task. The cable was old and worn,
sharp pieces of wire projected from it, and his hands were cut and
bleeding by the time he took his first rest, and held a shouted
conversation with Spillane. The car was directly beneath him and only a
few feet away, so he was able to explain the condition of affairs and
his errand.
"Wish I could help you," Spillane shouted at him as he started on, "but
the wife's gone all to pieces! Anyway, kid, take care of yourself! I got
myself in this fix, but it's up to you to get me out!"
"Oh, I'll do it!" Jerry shouted back. "Tell Mrs. Spillane that she'll be
ashore now in a jiffy!"
In the midst of pelting rain, which half-blinded him, swinging from side
to side like a rapid and erratic pendulum, his torn hands paining him
severely and his lungs panting from his exertions and panting from the
very air which the wind sometimes blew into his mouth with strangling
force, he finally arrived at the empty car.
A single glance showed him that he had not made the dangerous journey in
vain. The front trolley-wheel, loose from long wear, had jumped the
cable, and the cable was now jammed tightly between the wheel and the
sheave-block.
One thing was clear--the wheel must be removed from the block. A second
thing was equally clear--while the wheel was being removed the car would
have to be fastened to the cable by the rope he had brought.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, beyond making the car secure, he had
accomplished nothing. The key which bound the wheel on its axle was
rusted and jammed. He hammered at it with one hand and held on the best
he could with the other, but the wind persisted in swinging and twisting
his body, and made his blows miss more often than not. Nine-tenths of
the strength he expended was in trying to hold himself steady. For fear
that he might drop the monkey-wrench he made it fast to his wrist with
his handkerchief.
At the end of half an hour Jerry had hammered the key clear, but he
could not draw it out. A dozen times it seemed that he must give up in
despair, that all the danger and toil he had gone through were for
nothing. Then an idea came to him, and he went through his pockets with
feverish haste, and found what he sought--a ten-penny nail.
But for that nail, put in his pocket he knew not when or why, he would
have had to make another trip over the cable and back. Thrusting the
nail through the looped head of the key, he at last had a grip, and in
no time the key was out.
Then came punching and prying with the iron bar to get the wheel itself
free from where it was jammed by the cable against the side of the
block. After that Jerry replaced the wheel, and by means of the rope,
heaved up on the car till the trolley once more rested properly on the
cable.
All this took time. More than an hour and a half had elapsed since his
arrival at the empty car. And now, for the first time, he dropped out of
his saddle and down into the car. He removed the detaining ropes, and
the trolley-wheel began slowly to revolve. The car was moving, and he
knew that somewhere beyond, although he could not see, the car of
Spillane was likewise moving, and in the opposite direction.
There was no need for a brake, for his weight sufficiently
counterbalanced the weight in the other car; and soon he saw the cliff
rising out of the cloud depths and the old familiar drum going round and
round.
Jerry climbed out and made the car securely fast. He did it deliberately
and carefully, and then, quite unhero-like, he sank down by the drum,
regardless of the pelting storm, and burst out sobbing.
There were many reasons why he sobbed--partly from the pain of his hand,
which was excruciating; partly from exhaustion; partly from relief and
release from the nerve-tension he had been under for so long; and in a
large measure for thankfulness that the man and woman were saved.
They were not there to thank him; but somewhere beyond that howling,
storm-driven gulf he knew they were hurrying over the trail toward the
Clover Leaf.
Jerry staggered to the cabin, and his hand left the white knob red with
blood as he opened the door, but he took no notice of it.
He was too proudly contented with himself, for he was certain that he
had done well, and he was honest enough to admit to himself that he had
done well. But a small regret arose and persisted in his thoughts--if
his father had only been there to see!
IN YEDDO BAY
Somewhere along Theater Street he had lost it. He remembered being
hustled somewhat roughly on the bridge over one of the canals that cross
that busy thoroughfare. Possibly some slant-eyed, light-fingered
pickpocket was even then enjoying the fifty-odd yen his purse had
contained. And then again, he thought, he might have lost it himself,
just lost it carelessly.
Hopelessly, and for the twentieth time, he searched in all his pockets
for the missing purse. It was not there. His hand lingered in his empty
hip-pocket, and he woefully regarded the voluble and vociferous
restaurant-keeper, who insanely clamored: "Twenty-five sen! You pay now!
Twenty-five sen!"
"But my purse!" the boy said. "I tell you I've lost it somewhere."
Whereupon the restaurant-keeper lifted his arms indignantly and
shrieked: "Twenty-five sen! Twenty-five sen! You pay now!"
Quite a crowd had collected, and it was growing embarrassing for Alf
Davis.
It was so ridiculous and petty, Alf thought. Such a disturbance about
nothing! And, decidedly, he must be doing something. Thoughts of diving
wildly through that forest of legs, and of striking out at whomsoever
opposed him, flashed through his mind; but, as though divining his
purpose, one of the waiters, a short and chunky chap with an
evil-looking cast in one eye, seized him by the arm.
"You pay now! You pay now! Twenty-five sen!" yelled the proprietor,
hoarse with rage.
Alf was red in the face, too, from mortification; but he resolutely set
out on another exploration. He had given up the purse, pinning his last
hope on stray coins. In the little change-pocket of his coat he found a
ten-sen piece and five-copper sen; and remembering having recently
missed a ten-sen piece, he cut the seam of the pocket and resurrected
the coin from the depths of the lining. Twenty-five sen he held in his
hand, the sum required to pay for the supper he had eaten. He turned
them over to the proprietor, who counted them, grew suddenly calm, and
bowed obsequiously--in fact, the whole crowd bowed obsequiously and
melted away.
Alf Davis was a young sailor, just turned sixteen, on board the _Annie
Mine_, an American sailing-schooner, which had run into Yokohama to ship
its season's catch of skins to London. And in this, his second trip
ashore, he was beginning to snatch his first puzzling glimpses of the
Oriental mind. He laughed when the bowing and kotowing was over, and
turned on his heel to confront another problem. How was he to get aboard
ship? It was eleven o'clock at night, and there would be no ship's boats
ashore, while the outlook for hiring a native boatman, with nothing but
empty pockets to draw upon, was not particularly inviting.
Keeping a sharp lookout for shipmates, he went down to the pier. At
Yokohama there are no long lines of wharves. The shipping lies out at
anchor, enabling a few hundred of the short-legged people to make a
livelihood by carrying passengers to and from the shore.
A dozen sampan men and boys hailed Alf and offered their services. He
selected the most favorable-looking one, an old and beneficent-appearing
man with a withered leg. Alf stepped into his sampan and sat down. It
was quite dark and he could not see what the old fellow was doing,
though he evidently was doing nothing about shoving off and getting
under way. At last he limped over and peered into Alf's face.
"Ten sen," he said.
"Yes, I know, ten sen," Alf answered carelessly. "But hurry up. American
schooner."
"Ten sen. You pay now," the old fellow insisted.
Alf felt himself grow hot all over at the hateful words "pay now." "You
take me to American schooner; then I pay," he said.
But the man stood up patiently before him, held out his hand, and said,
"Ten sen. You pay now."
Alf tried to explain. He had no money. He had lost his purse. But he
would pay. As soon as he got aboard the American schooner, then he would
pay. No; he would not even go aboard the American schooner. He would
call to his shipmates, and they would give the sampan man the ten sen
first. After that he would go aboard. So it was all right, of course.
To all of which the beneficent-appearing old man replied: "You pay now.
Ten sen." And, to make matters worse, the other sampan men squatted on
the pier steps, listening.
Alf, chagrined and angry, stood up to step ashore. But the old fellow
laid a detaining hand on his sleeve. "You give shirt now. I take you
'Merican schooner," he proposed.
Then it was that all of Alf's American independence flamed up in his
breast. The Anglo-Saxon has a born dislike of being imposed upon, and to
Alf this was sheer robbery! Ten sen was equivalent to six American
cents, while his shirt, which was of good quality and was new, had cost
him two dollars.
He turned his back on the man without a word, and went out to the end of
the pier, the crowd, laughing with great gusto, following at his heels.
The majority of them were heavy-set, muscular fellows, and the July
night being one of sweltering heat, they were clad in the least possible
raiment. The water-people of any race are rough and turbulent, and it
struck Alf that to be out at midnight on a pier-end with such a crowd of
wharfmen, in a big Japanese city, was not as safe as it might be.
One burly fellow, with a shock of black hair and ferocious eyes, came
up. The rest shoved in after him to take part in the discussion.
"Give me shoes," the man said. "Give me shoes now. I take you 'Merican
schooner."
Alf shook his head, whereat the crowd clamored that he accept the
proposal. Now the Anglo-Saxon is so constituted that to browbeat or
bully him is the last way under the sun of getting him to do any certain
thing. He will dare willingly, but he will not permit himself to be
driven. So this attempt of the boatmen to force Alf only aroused all the
dogged stubbornness of his race. The same qualities were in him that are
in men who lead forlorn hopes; and there, under the stars, on the lonely
pier, encircled by the jostling and shouldering gang, he resolved that
he would die rather than submit to the indignity of being robbed of a
single stitch of clothing. Not value, but principle, was at stake.
Then somebody thrust roughly against him from behind. He whirled about
with flashing eyes, and the circle involuntarily gave ground. But the
crowd was growing more boisterous. Each and every article of clothing he
had on was demanded by one or another, and these demands were shouted
simultaneously at the tops of very healthy lungs.