the levees, when I was there, but I was there in a fever season, and
many people thought that the fever was spread by the fish; for it seemed
to hang about the water-front. It is difficult to account for the fever
in any other way. We lost seven men of the fever. They went ashore one
night to bring down some scantlings we were in need of, and they all
partook of this Pompano in one of these negro fish-joints, and they all
afterwards sickened and died. I tell you these things, gentlemen,
because you will one day command ship’s companies, and it is right that
you should know to what you may expose them, when you send them on
shore, even upon necessary duty.”
“Yes, sir, indeed,” Sard said, knowing that his turn was now come.
“Since the tug will not be alongside until six, Mr. Harker, I think that
if you have no objection, I will accompany you ashore myself. I
understand that this boxing contest is something more than one of these
low-class fighting-den affairs; it is an affair of two athletes in a
real gymnasium.”
“I shall be very proud, sir, if you will come with me,” Sard said. His
heart had sunk at the thought, for it meant that he would have no chance
whatever of going out to the house as he had hoped; but he was sincere
when he said that he would be proud if the captain would come with him.
Captain Cary was not only famous but most eminent in his profession. He
was
“John Craig Cary of the ship Petrella,
Thunder-ship and Stand-from-under fella.
John Craig Cary when he makes a passage,
Treats his owners just as so much sassage,”
of the song of thirty years before.
“In the old _Petrella_, when I had her,” Captain Cary said, “we had two
athletes forward. I felt that they took an undue position in the
fo’c’sle. When we reached Sydney, I bought some sets of boxing-gloves
and caused them to teach boxing to all hands for a plug of tobacco a
hand. By the time we left China, there were six or seven men in each
watch able to deal with them. I shall be glad to see some boxing again.
I understand that you box, Mr. Harker? I think that I used to see you
box when we went to Auckland that time.”
“Yes, sir, I used to box a little.”
“Steward, will you have the goodness to set out my shore-suit presently?
I shall go ashore after coffee after dinner with Mr. Harker.”
“Very good, Captain Cary.”
“You will explain the different blows to me, Mr. Harker. I have never
boxed, myself, but I have sometimes had to hit men. The principle I have
always gone upon is, to be first.”
“It is a very sound principle, sir.”
After breakfast, Captain Cary had his look-see from the dinghy, and as a
result of it Mr. Hopkins went below with the hands to trim her by the
head. Sard, with the third mate and the best of the boys, got the
main-royal mast down on deck. He himself went to the top-gallant
cross-trees at the beginning of the work. Up there in the wind he had a
good view of Los Xicales. There it was, white, shining and mysterious.
“You are mixed up with my life,” Sard muttered, “and as far as I can
foresee, I shall not find out why even this time.”
While he was aloft, he saw a big barquentine-rigged steam yacht come
smartly in to the steamship anchorage and let go her anchor. She was of
about six hundred tons, and this and the fact that she was flying the
blue ensign, told him that she was the _Yuba_. He pointed her out to
Borleigh, one of the boys there. “There is the _Yuba_, Sir James’s
yacht, that went round the world, and then went back the other way to
take the turn out.”
At dinner Captain Cary was uneasy about the weather.
“I think we’re in for a norther,” he said. “The air’s got that bright
look and the glass is falling.”
“I was thinking that, sir,” Sard said. “It’s a bit plumy and whitish
over El Cobre.”
“Eh? Whitish, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t like the idea of a norther in Las Palomas,” Captain Cary said.
“I’d like to be out of it and clear of the Rip-Raps before it comes on.”
“We ought to be well clear of the Rip-Raps, sir, by eight bells.”
“I shall be glad of it, Mr. Harker,” Captain Cary said, “because I was
here in the big norther of ’74—or was it ’75?—perhaps it was ’75.
Seven ships went ashore: they drove, as we used to say, from Hell to
Hackney. We did not go ashore, but we lost all three topmasts, and the
sea made a clean breach on deck.
“In this shallow Golfe the sea gets up very quick, and is very short and
very dangerous.
“However,” he added, “it seems to be coming on slowly. I dare say we
shall be gone in plenty of time.”
After dinner, Captain Cary took Sard to the boxing-match. He took him in
style, going first to the agents, then to the gymnasium, in a one-horse
caleche hired on the water-front.
The gymnasium lay at a little distance from that part of Las Palomas to
be seen from the ships. It was in the Ciudad Nueva, or New Town, on the
slopes of savannah which led to the mountains, in a garden of palm,
cactus and plumbago. In itself, it was remarkable, being an arena, a
Circo Romano, as the Greek who kept it called it, built of limewashed
adobe. When Sard had entered in with his captain, they both felt that
they were in an arena of old Rome about to watch some gladiators.
There was, of course, no roof to it. It looked like a small circus ring
surrounded by tiers of wooden seats. Inside the circus ring was a square
platform on which a boxing-ring was pitched. The two sailors were shown
to seats near the ring, but with one row of vacant seats between them
and it. Their seats, being White Men’s Seats, were screened from the sun
by an old green-and-white striped awning. From under this awning they
could see the sky, intensely blue, the Coloured Men in the opposite
seats, some palms rattling the metal of their leaves, and grasses,
sprouted in the tiles on the adobe top, being hovered over by black and
scarlet butterflies.
“Now, Mr. Harker,” Captain Cary said, “we seem to be in plenty of time.
Since you know Spanish so well, here’s one of their programmes or bills
of fare. You might read it over and let me know what it is that we are
to expect.”
Sard took the sheet of coarse yellowish paper printed in blunt old type
which had once printed praise of Maximilian. He read from it as follows:
“Feast of Pugilism.
At three o’clock punctually.
Grand display of the Antique Athletic.
Contests with the gloves for the decisions.
The Light-Weights, the Middle-Weights,
The World Famous Heavy-Weights.
At three o’clock, punctually.
At three o’clock, punctually.
Six contests of the three rounds for the Champions
Of Las Palomas
For the Belt of the Victor.
To be followed by a Contest Supreme.
Twenty Rounds. Twenty Rounds.
Twenty Three-Minute Rounds.
Between
El Chico, Champion Caribe de la Tierra Firme,
And
Ben Hordano, Champion, of Mexico City.
Grand Feast of Pugilism.
At three o’clock punctually.”
“H’m!” Captain Cary said, “it’s nearly three now. They evidently won’t
begin very punctually, for we are almost the only white people here. We
might have had time to go down the south end of the water-front to see
that new floating dock they’ve got there.”
“Shall we go, then, sir?”
“No. It’s too late now. We’re here now. We may as well stay here now we
are here. It’s a dock badly needed in Las Palomas and I wanted to see
it. It’s like the one they have at San Agostino.”
They sat talking while they waited, but there was always a professional
restraint about their talk. Captain Cary ashore was still “the old man,”
Sard Harker, the mate, was still, in the captain’s eyes, the boy whom he
had taught to steer. Both found themselves staring ahead over the
further wall of the arena, at the old Spanish fortifications as white as
spray beyond.
There came a pounce and squeal in the air just over the open ring. There
were excited cries from the negroes, the wail died out and a few
feathers drifted down into the ring.
“What is it?” Captain Cary asked.
“A hawk, sir; it came down and struck and carried away a little bird
just over the ring.”
“That is what they call an omen of something.”
“An omen that the better fighter is going to win, sir.”
They were still almost the only whites in the arena. They chatted or
were silent while the other side of the arena filled up with negroes and
half-breeds who had come to cheer the Carib. Many of these, being young
men, were dressed in what was then the extreme fashion among the
coloured peoples. This fashion was based on the belief that youth is
irresistible: it dressed men to look young. That there might be no doubt
about it, the costumes chosen were those of little boys of six or seven
years of age. About a hundred of the young bloods of Las Palomas were
wearing little round straw sailor hats, with ribbons hanging from the
bands over their faces. On their bodies they wore little sailor suits,
with flopping collars and very short knickerbockers. Their legs were
mostly bare from above the knee to the ankle. Little white socks and
tennis shoes covered their feet. Had they carried little spades and
buckets, they would have looked like little boys dressed for the
seashore. As it was, they carried little parasols of red and blue stuff:
many of them had opened these and sat beneath them in their places: the
rest carried fans or handkerchiefs of bright colours. They were
exceedingly noisy and merry: they seemed to make the arena-side to flash
with their teeth. Until about twenty minutes past three, many of them
shouted insults at the two whites, who sat unmoved, not knowing the
debased dialect of the Occidental. After twenty minutes past three, many
white men entered: the insults stopped, a drummer, a zither-player and a
bone-rattler struck up a jig to which the negroes kept time with Hues
and stamping.
“Very late in beginning,” Captain Cary complained. “It is half-past
three now. If they mention a time, they ought to keep to it. They used
not to be like this in the Occidental. They used to be people of their
words, like the Chinese. But they have lost their religion since they
began to make their fortunes, and now they are regular hasta mañana
people.”
“They will not be long now, Captain Cary.”
“I ought to have known that they would be thoroughly late. We could have
gone to the dock and then we could have gone to the cutting and seen the
new steam-shovel that they talk about. That would have done us more good
than sitting here all this time.”
“Things seem to be beginning to move now, sir.”
Indeed, things were beginning to move, for the bone-rattler had roused
two negroes to leap into the ring to step-dance. This they did with
extraordinary skill and invention against each other, among Hues and
laughter. All the negroes present kept time with their feet to the slap
and rattle of the dancers’ feet. The little boy bloods sang songs.
Lemonade-sellers came round with drinks; cake-and-sweetmeat men, each in
a cloud of flies, sold sticky messes for pennies. Then two men standing
at the ringside with guitars, began to sing in falsetto about the
cruelty of love; and a littleish skilly-faced man, whose head, having
been clipped for ringworm, had a look of prison, offered to reveal the
result of the big fight for a half peseta down. The Angel Gabriel had
revealed the matter to him in a vision, so he said.
Captain Cary became silent as was his way when vexed. Sard was left with
his own thoughts, which were of “her” and of his chances of getting to
the house, as he meant, before he left the shore. His mind went over
various schemes for getting rid of Captain Cary, but none seemed very
hopeful. “He will have to come along,” he thought, “and at half-past
four at the latest, I shall go from here.”
Then the hope of meeting her merged in his mind into an expectation of
meeting her, in perhaps less than two hours. All his life, since he had
met her as a boy, when sex was beginning to be powerful in him, had been
a hope of meeting her again by some divine appointment. He was weary of
waiting and waiting.
He was also weary of loneliness, for he was as lonely as a captain,
although he had not yet come into command. He was the most hated,
feared, and respected man he knew: men were afraid and boys terrified of
him. He knew what was said of him: “He is not a companion ashore and
sets too high a standard afloat.” “He’s a damned sardonic devil with a
damned sardonic way.” “He may be a good sailor, but he’s an ass with it,
staying on in sail, and he hasn’t a friend between Hull and Hades.”
He had, however, two friends, an Australian surgeon, whom he had met in
Sydney, and a friar whom he had met in the Church of Saint John Lateran
in Rome, during his one real holiday. That gaunt and burning soul, the
friar, was the likest to himself in all the world.
Women he hardly spoke with from year’s end to year’s end. He had not
been six months ashore in eleven years. His mother was alive, but they
had not been good friends since her second marriage; he disliked his
stepfather. The second marriage had been much of a shock to him in many
ways. His only woman friend was an austere old lady with a gaunt and
glittering mind, of whom he had been fond ever since his childhood. This
was Agatha, Lady Crowmarsh, who lived in Berkshire. She was very proud
of Sard and was ambitious for him in her own way and world, which were
not his. They used to spar when they met, because he would not give up
his power for her advantages. She wished him to be a part of her world
of ruling families and permanent officials. He wanted to be himself,
pitted against the forces which he understood, in a world of elements.
Sitting in the arena waiting for these boxers, he asked himself what his
future held for him. How long was he going to be “an ass with it,
staying on in sail?” He had indeed “passed in steam,” but there was
something hateful to him in the thought of steam. It meant being subject
to an engine-room: it came down to that: which seemed a fall after being
a master of two elements on the deck of a clipper-ship. He knew very
well that the sailing ship was doomed. He had watched the struggle for
ten years, and had seen line after line give up the fight and “go into
steam.” The tea-clippers had gone before he came to sea: the
wool-clippers and big four-masters were being squeezed out: they were
starved and pinched and sent to sea hungry, but even so they did not
pay. “They can’t pay,” he said to himself, “they ought not to pay: they
are anachronisms. The steamship is cheaper, bigger, safer, surer,
pleasanter, and wiser. The sailing ship is doomed and has to go.”
He knew that his own owners, Wrattson and Willis, were feeling the pinch
acutely, and that they were both too old to change the habits of a
lifetime in time to avail. He had watched their struggle at close
quarters, for their struggle was passed on to their ships without delay.
They had been pinching their ships for some years; cutting down the
crews to danger-point; cutting their officers’ wages; making old gear
serve till it was junk, and grudging even a pint of oil for the decks.
He had seen them become mean. When he first went to sea, the
_Pathfinder_ had carried four boys in the half deck: now she carried
eleven. Each paid twenty or thirty pounds for their three or four years’
service; each did the work of an ordinary seaman, and the better trained
of them worked with the sailmaker and made every sail they set. Yet all
this would not serve. The steamship was beating them in spite of it all,
and Wrattson and Willis were being squeezed out. There was no doubt of
it; the fleet was going. The _Venturer_ had been wrecked; the _Voyager_
was being broken up; the _Wayfarer_ had been sold to the Norwegians; the
_Loiterer_ had been sold to the Italians; the _Intruder_ had been sold
to the Portuguese; the _Scatterer_ was up for sale; the _Messenger_ and
the _Roysterer_ had been barque-rigged and sent to the West Coast; the
_Endeavourer_ and _Discoverer_ were said to be going the same road; the
_Pathfinder_, the glory of the fleet, would surely follow before long:
the line would “go into steam,” or into liquidation.
Captain Cary spoke suddenly from the depths of his silence, as though he
had followed the same lines of thought to another conclusion.
“Did you ever see the _Petrella_, Mr. Harker?”
“Yes, sir, I did; when she was lying for sale in the George’s Dock, in
1885. I went all over her and over her masthead.”
“Yes, yes. I think you have told me that. What did you think of her, Mr.
Harker?”
“She was a very sweet little ship, sir.”
“We did not think her little, in the sixties, Mr. Harker. She was 891
tons. We carried a crew of 43 men and boys: sixteen hands to a watch: we
could shorten her down to her lower topsails, which we were the first to
set, or among the first, with the watch alone; or, if we had all the
stunsails set, and it happened to be daylight, with the watch and the
idlers. That is different from the _Pathfinder_, Mr. Harker.”
“Well, sir, we have a harder time to compete with.”
“A harder time,” Captain Cary said. “There is no such thing as an easy
time; but in life you are wanted or not wanted; and the _Pathfinder_ is
not wanted.”
“Don’t say that, Captain Cary, a crack ship and captain will always be
wanted.”
“Don’t you believe it, boy”; Captain Cary always called him a boy when
he wished to silence all opposition. “Don’t you believe it. What is
passing out of this world is the business of personal relations. Captain
Wrattson is a master mariner, Mr. Willis is a ship-designer with a
second mate’s ticket. When you go into their office you see that they
know you and the worth of your efforts for them, and the difficulties
you have faced for them. It is all friend to friend, man to man, sailor
to sailor, if you understand what I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So it was when I had the _Petrella_. Pennington and Foster were like
that: Fremantle and Henry: Waltham and Binfields’, Shurlock Brothers,
Richard Oakleys’, all the old firms were like that: the Green Sleeves
Line: they were family affairs; an officer was a friend of the firm and
could marry the employer’s daughter. But that is gone, or going: ships
have become too big: they are not owned by “firms” now: nothing’s firm
in the business: they are owned by companies; who don’t know one hand on
their paysheets. A company, as we say, has neither a stern to be kicked
nor a soul to be saved. It is a damned abstraction, Mr. Harker, without
either a mind to understand or an eye to see: it has neither guts to
scare nor hands to shake.”
“Yes, but, Captain Cary . . .”
“Don’t answer me, boy: it is as I say.”
The bearings were plainly running hot, but luckily at this instant there
came wild Hues as the whole negro audience rose to welcome the beginning
of the boxing. The old negro boxers, who were seconding the early bouts,
came to the ringside, pitched some much tattered gloves into the ring
and hoisted two backless chairs into opposite corners. A couple of lanky
lads, shivering in serapes, climbed through the ropes to the chairs,
were gloved and introduced; then the gong struck and the bouts began.
The boxing, when it did begin, was fast and very skilful: it roused the
partisans in the coloured men’s benches to fight with banana skins and
half-sucked oranges. There were five, not six “contests of the three
rounds,” and only one of the six went to the end of the third round.
“These lads are good at their business,” Captain Cary said.
“Yes, sir; there are two or three fine clever lads among those. That
whitish-looking lad who beat the merry one, would be a dangerous boxer
if he were fit.”
“Well, I enjoyed that. It was like an English summer; good when it came;
but a long time on the road. Now I suppose we shall have to wait again,
for the big fight.”
After the bouts of the boys, in the pause before the coming of the
heavy-weights, the better seats, which had not been crowded, filled up
with whites. Two men came down the gangway and sidled into the vacant
ring seats just in front of the two sailors. One of them, who was
powerfully built, Sard judged (from his back) to be a likely man, but
when he saw his face he changed his mind: it was a rotten face: the
muscle had all gone to brothel with the man’s soul.
His companion was a little, grey-bearded man, whose neck was swathed
with a rag which partly hid a boil. The boil made him keep his head
forward as he spoke. Both men spoke English as they entered. They looked
hard at the two sailors for an instant before they sat down; then,
having made up their minds that they were just a couple of English
sailors, they sat and began to talk in Spanish, which Sard knew very
well. The little man talked rapidly and much, using slang. Some of his
front teeth were gone. He had a way of drawing his breath sharply
through the gaps with a noise of relish. Sard reckoned that the bigger
man was a flash townee, the other, probably, a fence. The little man was
a spiteful little devil (perhaps the boil was touching him up) with a
way of rising in his excitement to a kind of song. Sard thought him a
horrid little man, but likely to be clever in his own rather dirty
little way.
“Yes, these negroes,” the little man said, in Spanish, “they need to be
fed into the hopper and be taught the way again. They are getting too
uppish to my liking. I love my black brother, but I love him best with
the toe of a boot, to show him he’s got to go. Yes, sir, he’s got to go.
This is God’s country: it ain’t going to be any black man’s not while
little ’Arry Wiskey is on the tapis.
O yes, it is God’s country,
For no black man’s effrontery.
How long are these Dagoes going to keep us waiting? We’re twenty minutes
late as it is. Hasta mañana; that’s always the way with these Dagoes.
They got no sense of the value of time, even the good ones. That’s
singing to their guitars instead of sound commercial competition. We
shall be late, setting out.”
“Here’s El Chico, anyway,” the other said. “And even if it goes the
twenty rounds, we shall have time enough for Mr. Bloody Kingsborough.”
The little man seemed scared at the mention of the name, and glanced
back, over his shoulder, to see whether either Sard or Captain Cary had
noticed.
“Hush, Sumecta,” he said. “No names.”
“He doesn’t understand Spanish,” Sumecta replied, meaning Sard. “And if
he does, what odds?” He glanced back at Sard, whose face seemed intent
upon the Carib, then just entering the ring. Sumecta’s eyes followed
Sard’s to the Carib: he spat, turned to Mr. Wiskey and said, in a low
voice:
“He won’t have much show.”
“Who, El Chico or Mr. K.?”
“I meant El Chico; but Mr. K. won’t have much.”
“Have much!” Mr. Wiskey answered; “he’ll have about as much show as a
cat in hell without claws. When it’s peace, he has a show, but when it’s
war, he’s got to go.”
The Carib pitched off his green wrapping, sat down upon his chair and
stretched out his legs for his seconds to massage them. His
reddish-brown skin moved with the play of healthy muscle: he shone with
health and oil.
“Yes,” Mr. Wiskey muttered, staring at the Carib, “you may listen and
you may glisten, but you’ll go where the nightshade twineth if you put
the cross on little ’Arry Wiskey.”
“So this is Chico,” the Captain said. “Well, Mr. Harker, he looks to me
liker a panther than a human being. I must say that I do not like to see
these cannibals pitted against Christians. I am in two minds about
staying.”
“Sir, I expect he is as good a Christian as the other. And he may not be
nearly so good a fighter.”
“True,” the Captain said. “The Church has lost its hold here, as I was
saying, but still I don’t think that even these modern Occidentales
would let a Carib fight a Christian, if they thought that he stood a
chance of winning. Where is this other, the Christian? I think, Mr.
Harker, I will go get a cigar at the office, while this other man is
being made ready, if you will keep my seat.”
“I will keep your seat, Captain Cary.”
After Captain Cary had edged away to buy a cigar, Sard waited for the
two men in front to go on with their talk, for what they had said had
interested him. He had not liked to be ranked with any other mate who
knew no Spanish, and he wondered why Mr. Bloody Kingsborough was to have
no show. Who was Mr. Bloody Kingsborough? He did not know the name. The
tone in which the name was pronounced suggested that Mr. Kingsborough
was judged to give himself airs. Sard judged that if Mr. Kingsborough
did not take good heed, he would be a bloodier Mr. Kingsborough before
dawn. Chico was not to have much show in any case, but to have none if
he disappointed Mr. Wiskey. Sard hoped that the talk would go on, but it
did not. Mr. Wiskey began to eat a pomegranate by tearing off the skin
with his teeth and spitting it out into the ring.
“He’s a dirty shining yellow snake,” he said at last in English, meaning
Chico; “Palm-oil all over him. It’s that that gives them leprosy in
their old age. Yah, you dirty Carib,
Knocky, knocky neethy
On your big front teethy.
That’s what’s coming to you in one dollar’s worth. The royal order of
the K.O., or else a boot you’ll feel for as long as you can sit. Yet he
looks a treat. If he could have the yellow bleached out of him, he’d
make a bit for a manager, sparring exhibition bouts up West.”
“He would that,” Sumecta said, also in English.