“It shouldn't surprise YOU,” complained the captain. “You know the
country. Every man in it is out for something that isn't his. The pilot
wants his bit, the health doctor must get his, the customs take all your
cigars, and if you don't put up gold for the captain of the port and the
alcalde and the commandant and the harbor police and the foreman of the
cargadores, they won't move a lighter, and they'll hold up the ship's
papers. Well, an American comes down here, honest and straight and
willing to work for his wages. But pretty quick he finds every one
is getting his squeeze but him, so he tries to get some of it back by
robbing the natives that robbed him. Then he robs the other foreigners,
and it ain't long before he's cheating the people at home who sent him
here. There isn't a man in this nitrate row that isn't robbing the crowd
he's with, and that wouldn't change sides for money. Schnitzel's no
worse than the president nor the canteen contractor.”
He waved his hand at the glaring coast-line, at the steaming swamps and
the hot, naked mountains.
“It's the country that does it,” he said. “It's in the air. You can
smell it as soon as you drop anchor, like you smell the slaughter-house
at Punta-Arenas.”
“How do YOU manage to keep honest,” I asked, smiling.
“I don't take any chances,” exclaimed the captain seriously. “When I'm
in their damned port I don't go ashore.”
I did not again see Schnitzel until, with haggard eyes and suspiciously
wet hair, he joined the captain, doctor, purser, and myself at
breakfast. In the phrases of the Tenderloin, he told us cheerfully that
he had been grandly intoxicated, and to recover drank mixtures of
raw egg, vinegar, and red pepper, the sight of which took away every
appetite save his own. When to this he had added a bottle of beer, he
declared himself a new man. The new man followed me to the deck, and
with the truculent bearing of one who expects to be repelled, he asked
if, the day before, he had not made a fool of himself.
I suggested he had been somewhat confidential. At once he recovered his
pose and patronized me.
“Don't you believe it,” he said. “That's all part of my game.
'Confidence for confidence' is the way I work it. That's how I learn
things. I tell a man something on the inside, and he says: 'Here's
a nice young fellow. Nothing standoffish about him,' and he tells me
something he shouldn't. Like as not what I told him wasn't true. See?”