I
An elderly man of ample girth was plying a hoe in a very neat and tidy
vegetable garden. His battered, good-natured visage reflected pleasure
in the task and contentment with existence. Blue overalls were hitched
to his shoulders by a pair of straps. A lock of gray hair poked itself
through a hole in his ragged straw hat. His shirt-sleeves were rolled
up to display a pair of ponderous, sunburnt arms upon which were
tattooed an anchor and a pink-eyed mermaid. Ever and anon this bucolic
person turned his attention to a boy who was weeding the onion bed on
his hands and knees, and thundered admonitions at him in a voice that
carried across the pasture and startled the grazing cows.
The youth thus bombarded showed no signs of terror. In fact, he grinned
quite amiably as if hardened to threats of being skinned alive or
triced up by the thumbs. Obviously, he considered his employer’s bark
worse than his bite. At length the latter leaned on his hoe to remark
with heated candor:
“Say, Bub, those weeds grow faster than you pull ’em up. Is there
anything slower than you in this part of the country?”
The boy turned from watching a woodchuck meander toward its hole and
promptly answered with a touch of pride:
“It runs in the family, Mr. Kent. My pa is the slowest man in the
village, an’ my grand-dad was slower than he be, so ma says. Us
Perkinses is all slower’n molasses in January.”
“Well, if I could find another boy, I’d lift you off this farm by the
slack of your pants,” snorted Johnny Kent. “You make me peevish in
spots, and I aim to be the happiest man on earth.”
“You can’t find another boy,” was the unruffled reply. “They’re all off
hayin’. Say, Mr. Kent, it’s a great day to go fishin’. An’ this garden
is jes’ full of fat, juicy angle-worms.”
“Doggone it, Bub, I’ll have to go you,” cried the elderly gardener
with smiling animation. “You dig the bait and we’ll start right after
dinner.”
He forsook the vegetables and moved at a leisurely gait in the
direction of a small white cottage with green blinds, in front of which
blazed a gorgeous profusion of hollyhocks. At the porch he halted to
drop into a canvas hammock, the ropes of which were spliced sailorwise,
and sought his ease for a few minutes while he fondly contemplated
his landed possessions. The green fields, rolling and pleasantly
diversified by patches of woodland, were framed by ancient stone-walls.
In the foreground loomed the capacious barn, flanked by the hen-house
and wood-shed. To the right of the cottage extended an apple orchard
whose gnarled trees were laden with fruit.
It was here that Johnny Kent had cast anchor, in the haven of his
dreams, and he roundly swore that the sea should know him no more.
He was done with nursing crippled engines and hammering drunken
stokers. The hazards of his calling were for younger men. A stroke of
good fortune during his last voyage with Captain Michael O’Shea, in
the liner _Alsatian_, had given him the cash in hand to pay for the
longed-for “farm in the grand old State o’ Maine” and a surplus to stow
in the bank.
“Here I am,” he said to himself as he swung his legs in the hammock,
“and it’s too blamed good to be true, honest it is. Fightin’
potato-bugs is all the excitement I pine for, and when the red cow lets
go her hind foot and capsizes me and the pail and the milkin’-stool,
it’s positively thrilling. No watches to stand and nothing to pester
me, barrin’ that lazy, tow-headed Perkins boy. And I’m going fishin’
with him this afternoon just to show myself how independent I am of
skippers and owners and charters and such foolishness.”
With this the retired chief engineer entered the cottage and passed
into the kitchen. The floors had been scrubbed white with sand and
holy-stone. The brass door-knobs and andirons were polished like gold.
The woodwork glistened with speckless white paint. What furniture
there was consisted of solid, old-fashioned pieces, such as Windsor
chairs, a highboy, a claw-footed table or two, and a desk of bird’s-eye
maple. No bric-a-brac cluttered them. Habit had schooled this nautical
housekeeper to dispense with loose stuff which might go adrift in a
heavy sea-way.
Kicking himself out of his overalls, he tied a white apron about his
waist and bent his attention to the kitchen stove. The green peas were
boiling merrily, the potatoes were almost baked, and it was time to fry
the bacon and eggs. He cooked his own dinner with as hearty good-will
as he had hoed the garden. It was all part of the game which he enjoyed
with such boyish zest.
Stepping to the back door, he blew a blast on a tin horn to summon the
Perkins boy. That lazy urchin sped out of the onion bed as if he had
wings, and Johnny Kent was moved to comment:
“Be careful, Bub, or your family’ll disown you. You came bowlin’ along
to your vittles like you were actually alive! Right after dinner you
wash the dishes and scour them tins, and if you leave a spot on ’em no
bigger than a flea’s whisker, I’ll nail your hide to the barn door.
Then we’ll hitch up the mare and jog along to East Pond with our
fish-poles.”
“Folks in town think it kind o’ queer you don’t hire a woman to keep
house,” said the Perkins offspring as he took the wash-basin down from
its hook.
“You can tell ’em with my compliments that they’re a gabby lot of
gossips and ought to have a stopper put on their jaw-tackle,” returned
Johnny Kent with surprising heat and a perceptible blush. “I can look
after myself without any advice from the village.”
Young Perkins snickered and thought it wise to change the subject.
When they sat down to table, the host was in the best of humor as he
declaimed with tremendous gusto:
“Did you ever taste such peas? Raised ’em myself. Cooked in cream from
my own cow. Early Rose potatoes from my own garden. Eggs from my own
hens. They lay ’em every day.”
“Hens have to lay or bust this time o’ year,” prosaically replied the
youth. “An’ peas is peas.”
“Romance was plumb left out of your system,” sighed the mariner. “All
the years I was wanderin’ over the high seas seem tame and monotonous
alongside this.”
Before the meal was ended there came an interruption. Johnny Kent
dropped knife and fork and suspiciously sniffed the breeze which drew
through the open windows. “Bub” Perkins likewise showed uneasy symptoms
and cocked his freckled snub nose to sniff the air. It was a tableau
evidently of some importance. Presently they both arose without a word
and hastened out of doors to scan the peaceful landscape far and near.
“I smelled wood smoke, sure as guns,” said Johnny Kent.
“So did I. I bet a cooky it’s another fire,” excitedly cried young
Perkins. “I can’t see anything, can you?”
“Not yet. The woods have been afire seven times in the last week, and
it ain’t accidental, Bub. The buildings will begin to go next. My farm
has been spared so far.”
The boy was climbing into an apple-tree, from which perch he was able
to gaze over the hill beyond the pasture. He could see a hazy cloud of
smoke drifting among the pine growth of a neighboring farm and in the
undergrowth glowed little spurts of flame like crimson ribbons. The
fire had gained small headway, but unless speedily checked it might
sweep destructively over a large area.
“No fishin’ trip to-day,” sorrowfully muttered Johnny Kent. “Pick up
the shovels and hoes and some empty grain sacks, Bub, while I put the
mare in the buggy. It’s a case of all hands turnin’ out again.”
The call of duty had never found the stout-hearted mariner indifferent,
and a few minutes later he was driving down the country road under
forced draught, the vehicle bounding over rocks and ruts, and the
Perkins boy hanging on with both hands. Already the alarm had spread,
and farmers were leaving their mowing machines and hay-racks in the
fields to hurry in the direction of the burning woodland. Wagons loaded
with men came rattling out from the village. Two or three of the
recent fires, so mysteriously frequent, had done much damage, and the
neighborhood was alert to respond.
Experience had taught the volunteer force how to operate. They dashed
into the woodland and fought the fire at close range. Some wetted sacks
in a near-by brook and beat out the flying embers and the blazing
grass. Others shovelled sand and earth upon the creeping skirmish-line
of the conflagration. The most agile climbed the trees, which were
just beginning to catch, and chopped off the flaming, sizzling
branches. They toiled like heroes, regardless of the wilting heat and
blinding, choking smoke.
Johnny Kent was not a man to spare himself, and he raged in the
fore-front of the embattled farmers, exerting himself prodigiously,
shouting orders, taking command as a matter of habit. The others obeyed
him, being afraid to do anything else, although they knew more about
fighting forest fires than he. The elderly marine engineer had grown
unaccustomed to such violent endeavor, and he puffed and grunted hugely
and ran rivers of perspiration.
So promptly had the neighbors mustered that the flames were conquered
before they could jump into the thickest part of the woodland and
swirl through the tops of the pines. Leaving a patrol to search the
undergrowth in search of stray sparks, the farmers withdrew from the
blackened area and gathered together to listen to the excited story of
a young man armed with a shot-gun.
“This ain’t the first fire that’s been set on my property,” said he.
“My pasture was touched off in three places last Saturday night, but
a heavy shower of rain come along and put it out. Next mornin’, just
before day, my corn-crib was burnt to the ground. Since then I’ve been
lookin’ around in the woods whenever I could spare the time----”
“It’s spite work or there’s a lunatic firebug roamin’ the country,” put
in the first selectman of the village.
“The spite ain’t aimed at me in particular,” resumed the young man with
the gun. “Mark Wilson’s wood lot has been set, and the Widow Morgan’s
back field, and nobody knows where it will happen next. As I was about
to say, when I fust seen the smoke this afternoon I was on the other
side of the young growth, and I put for it as hard as I could. And I
saw a man sneakin’ away from the fire. I threw up my gun to give him a
dose of buckshot, but he dodged among the trees and was over the hill
and down in the hollow before you could say Jack Robinson. I ain’t very
speedy since I was throwed out of the dingle-cart and broke my leg, and
the strange man got away from me.”
“He’s the crittur that’s been settin’ all the fires,” exclaimed the
first selectman. “What in thunder did he look like, Harry? Give me a
description, and I’ll call a special meeting of the board to-night, and
we’ll offer a reward, mebbe as much as twenty dollars.”
“I can’t say exactly. He was six feet tall, or five, anyhow, and
light-complected, though he might have been dark, and he had on brown
clothes, but I ain’t quite sure about the color. Anyhow, he’s the man
we’ve got to ketch before we can sleep easy in our beds.”
Johnny Kent was too weary to take much interest in a man-hunt, even
with the magnificent largeness of twenty dollars in prospect. Summoning
the Perkins boy, who was heaving rocks at a small turtle on the bank
of the brook, he clambered heavily into the buggy and turned the mare
toward the road. The afternoon had been spoiled and the worthy mariner
was in a disgruntled mood. A serpent had entered his Eden. Likely
enough the scoundrel who was starting conflagrations all over the
landscape would soon give his attention to the beloved farm with the
white cottage and the very neat and tidy vegetable garden.
The owner thereof ambled to the porch with the gait of one utterly
exhausted and dumped himself into the nearest chair. His face was well
blackened with smoke and soot. His raiment had been torn to rags by the
thickets through which he had so gallantly plunged. He looked like an
uncommonly large scarecrow in the last stages of disrepair. Moreover,
his eyes were reddened and smarted acutely, he had a stitch in the
side, and his stomach ached.
While he reposed in this state of ruin, there came briskly walking
through his front gate a ruddy, well-knit figure of a man, young in
years, whose suit of blue serge became him jauntily. Halting to survey
the trimly ordered flower-beds and vine-covered portico, he ceased
whistling a snatch of a sea chantey and nodded approvingly. Following
the path to the side of the cottage, he beheld the disreputable person
seated in a state of collapse upon the porch. Instead of expressing
courteous sympathy, the visitor put his hands on his hips and laughed
uproariously.
Stung by this rude levity, Johnny Kent heaved himself to his feet and
hurled the chair at the head of the heartless young man, who dodged
it nimbly, ducked the swing of a fist big enough to land him in the
middle of next week, if not farther, and shoved the engineer into the
canvas hammock where he floundered helplessly and sputtered:
“Howdy, Cap’n Mike! It’s a low-down Irish trick to laugh at a man
that’s all wore out and tore up the way I am.”
Captain Michael O’Shea strove to check his unseemly mirth and thumped
his old comrade affectionately as he explained:
“So this is the happy, simple life that ye cracked on about for years.
You look it, Johnny. Was it an explosion that wrecked you or have ye
been cleaning boilers? And is every day like this on the dear old
homestead?”
“Not by a darn sight. I had to take a turn of extra duty. I’m the
happiest man in the world, Cap’n Mike. And I’m tickled to death to clap
eyes on you. Wait till I wash up and change my clothes.”
“Sure I’ll wait, Johnny. ’Tis a visit I have come to pay. You are
sensitive about the terrible condition I find ye in, so I will say no
more. But if I was surveyin’ you for Lloyds, I would mark you down as a
total loss. And how are the pigs and chickens?”
The portly farmer brightened instantly and wheeled in the door to
exclaim:
“You just ought to see ’em! Now how did I get along at sea all those
years without ’em? Can you tell me that?”
“’Twas the lack of them that made ye so thin and melancholy,” said
O’Shea with a grin. “Clean yourself up and fill the old pipe with the
wicked brand of cut plug that ye misname tobacco, and we will sit down
and talk it over.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n Mike. And there’s some bottles of beer in the ice-box
in the wood-shed. It’s just abaft the galley. Help yourself.”
The shipmaster enjoyed exploring the cottage while his host repaired
damages and presently reappeared in a white-duck uniform, which he had
worn as chief engineer of the English steamer _Tarlington_.
“There now, you look more like a man and less like a fat coal-heaver
that has blown all his wages for rum,” said Captain O’Shea. “And
will ye rummage in the lockers for a bite to eat? The train that
fetched me had difficulty in finding this cute little town of yours.
I mistrust ’twas not on the chart at all, and we wandered for hours
and hours looking for it and stopping to take soundings at ten million
way-stations. Where is the cook?”
“I’m the whole crew,” replied Johnny Kent as he convoyed his guest
into the kitchen. “You see, Cap’n Mike, I found it wouldn’t do to have
a woman workin’ for me. All the old maids and widows in the township
seemed anxious to get the berth. But a solid man like me, with money
in the bank, has to be careful. Confound it, they pestered me! I don’t
want to talk about it.”
Until sunset the comrades yarned and laughed, sprawling in the shade of
an apple-tree or rambling arm-in-arm over the farm. Then the mariner
had his chores to do, which consisted mostly in bullying the Perkins
boy, while O’Shea chuckled to think of the tempestuous scenes in which
he had beheld Johnny Kent play a dominant part. The shipmaster had a
purpose up his sleeve, but he had artfully delayed disclosing it until
he could discover how firmly the engineer was anchored to his pastoral
existence.
After supper, which O’Shea helped prepare with the handiness of a
sailor, they walked slowly to and fro in the garden, falling into step
by force of habit, for thus they had passed many an hour on bridge and
deck beneath the stars. The tranquillity of the place, the sense of
comfort and repose, soothed the restless temper of O’Shea and turned
his mind to thoughts of a home and fireside of his own. But he was well
aware that this mood would pass.
“’Tis sad I am that I cannot tarry long with you and your intelligent
pigs and hens, Johnny,” said he, “but I have a bit of business in hand.”
“What is it? Does it look good to you, Cap’n Mike?” demanded the other.
“We’ve been so busy livin’ our fights and frolics all over again that
I haven’t had a chance to hurl questions at you. Why don’t you stay
ashore and take it easy for a while? You’ve got money; plenty of it.
Blow it like a gentleman.”
“And what would be the fun of that? I have a charter in mind. Would ye
like to hear of it?”
The contented farmer cocked his head alertly and stood in his tracks.
The light in his eye was not inspired by his neat rows of beets,
carrots, and cabbages. O’Shea perceived that he was curious, and
hastened to add, in the most winning accents:
“’Tis the kind of a game you used to like, Johnny. I have looked over
the steamer, and she would please you. Politics are stewin’ in the
Persian Gulf and intrigues are as thick as huckleberries. The British
and the Russians have locked horns again, do ye mind, and the poor
deluded Persians will be prodded into a revolution, and divil a bit
of good it will do them. When the smoke clears the two benevolent
Powers will try to beat each other to the plunder. Just now they are
manœuvrin’ for position.”
“Pshaw! Cap’n Mike, haven’t you recovered from them delusions about the
Persian Gulf?” growled the engineer.
“’Tis no dream, Johnny. I have met a man in New York. He came from
Europe to find me. The proposition is copper-riveted. I take the
steamer and load her with arms and munitions in a Mediterranean port
and deliver them to certain parties somewheres the other side of Aden.
The British gun-boats are patrollin’ the Gulf to put a crimp in this
industry, so there will be a run for me money.”
Johnny Kent was silent while he meditated and listened to the whisper
of temptation. Then a pig grunted in its straw litter, a chicken
chirped drowsily on its perch, and the breeze rustled among the
luxuriant pole-beans and tomatoes. And O’Shea had come to coax him away
from this enchanted place. He would hear what the blarneying rascal had
to say and convince him of his folly. The shipmaster liked not the
stolid silence of his companion. He knew it of old for a stubbornness
that nothing could budge. However, he went on with the argument:
“I need an engineer, Johnny. And will ye not take one more fling with
me? You are an old rover, and this messing about a farm will not
content you for long. ’Tis no place for a bold man that knows his
trade. Wait a bit and come back here when ye have seen the green seas
tumbling over the bows once more and felt the swing of a good ship
under you, and heard the trade-winds singing in your ears, and watched
the strange faces in ports that are new to ye.”
“I’ve heard you talk before, Cap’n Mike, and your tongue never gets
hung on a dead-centre,” was the deliberate reply. “You’ll have to dish
up something more attractive than the blisterin’ Persian Gulf to drag
me from my moorings. Do I act restless?”
“About as much so as that old barn yonder,” admitted the other.
“See here, Cap’n Mike, the farm next to mine can be bought cheap. It
cuts a hundred tons of hay and pastures forty head of stock. I meant to
write you about it soon. Why don’t you buy it and settle down alongside
of me?”
“You are the hopeless old barnacle,” laughed O’Shea. “’Tis plain that I
waste me words. If my seductive persuasions have missed fire entirely I
must bid ye farewell in the morning and lay a course back to New York.”
“I wish I could hold you longer,” sighed Johnny Kent. “The Grange
picnic comes right after hayin’, and there’s other excitements to keep
you busy.”
“And this is the talk I hear from a man that used to enjoy risking his
neck between the divil and the deep sea. Maybe ye can offer me the mad
intoxication of a husking-bee.”
“They’re out of season just now,” seriously returned the agriculturist.
“Well, we will not quarrel, Johnny. I have taken notice that it made
you fretty to ask why ye were so mussed up and dirty when I strolled in
this afternoon. Have you cooled off by now and do you mind explaining
yourself? You were an awful sight and I was near moved to tears.”
“You laughed at me like a darned hyena,” grumbled Johnny. “It wa’n’t
friendly, Cap’n Mike. I’d been fightin’ a fire till I was wrecked fore
and aft. And for all I know we may have to turn out again to-night and
fight another one.”
“Then I will stand watch and watch with you and keep lookout. And why
have ye turned prophet? Can you predict them, same as you read the
weather signs?”
“Pretty near,” dolefully answered Johnny Kent. “Some miserable
scoundrel has been settin’ the woods afire to burn us all out. He was
sighted to-day, but the lunk-head that caught him in the act wasn’t
quick enough to shoot him. Settin’ fires in a dry season like this is
as bad as murder.”
O’Shea had found something to interest him. There might be a spice of
adventure in this drowsy region. And his friend seemed so genuinely
worried that he was eager to help him. With a thrill of gratitude he
recalled a certain night off a tropic coast when Johnny Kent had led
the gang that descended into a blazing hold and saved a ship from being
blown to atoms.
“Maybe my business in New York can wait a day or so longer,” said he.
“’Tis unmannerly of me to leave you accumulating more white hairs in
that frosty old thatch of yours.”
“You’d sooner hunt trouble than a square meal,” gratefully exclaimed
Johnny. “I ain’t so spry on my feet as I was, and my wind is short, or
I’d go after this firebug and scupper him by myself. I haven’t felt
real worried over it till to-day, but he’s worked nearer and nearer my
place, and I’m blamed if I can set up all night watchin’ for him.”
“’Tis a tired man I know you are to-night, so I will tuck ye in, and
then I will wander a bit and keep an eye lifted. It would please me to
run afoul of this unpleasant gentleman with the bonfire habit.”
“The fires have been coming in couples, Cap’n Mike. If there’s one in
the daytime, it’s a good bet that another one will break loose the next
night.”
The engineer yawned and confessed with an air of apology: “I’m tuckered
and no mistake. Suppose I turn in now and you rouse me out at eight
bells of the first watch.”
“Right enough. Where’s your old pair of night-glasses; and have ye a
gun? If I find the disturber I may want to bend it over his head. I
would sooner catch him than kill him.”
“It ain’t a mite hospitable to treat you this way, Cap’n Mike.”
“Pooh, man. Ye do me a favor. ’Twould reconcile me to buying the next
farm if there was a chance of a ruction now and then.”
An hour later Captain Michael O’Shea was climbing the long, easy slope
of the barn roof. One end of it supported a water-tank built upon a
platform of stout timbers. Here the enterprising lookout found room
to sit and scrutinize the surrounding woods and fields. The sky was
starlit but the darkness had a duskier, more impenetrable quality than
on a clear night at sea. O’Shea’s keen vision, accustomed to sweep
large and lonely horizons, was rather baffled, but the powerful glasses
enabled him to distinguish the vague outlines of the woodland and
meadow and pasture boundaries.
In a blithe humor he smiled at the odd situation in which he found
himself. Good old Johnny Kent had actually achieved a farm, and here
was his commander perched on top of the barn like a weather-cock, and
enjoying it, forsooth. His nimble wits had framed the most effective
strategy possible. It would be futile to go blundering through the
woods on a blind trail. From his elevated station he could see the
first spark of fire to glow in any direction. The incendiary would
linger to make sure that the fire had fairly caught, and O’Shea hoped
to catch him unawares and overpower him.
The silent hours wore on and drew near to midnight when he had
promised to arouse Johnny Kent. Nothing suspicious had been descried.
A whippoorwill sounded its call with such breathless, unflagging
persistence that the sentinel amused himself counting the sweet,
monotonous notes and concluded that a vast deal of energy was going to
waste.
“That bird is over-engined for its tonnage,” he reflected. “Well, I
have stood me watch in worse places than this. ’Tis a shame to turn
poor old Johnny out of his bunk. I will stay up here awhile and listen
to the long-winded bird and enjoy the pleasure of me own company.”
His back against the water-tank, he could not walk to ward off the
drowsiness that was borne on the wings of the soft night wind all
laden with the smells of trees and earth and hay-fields. His vigilance
relaxed and his thoughts drifted away to other climes and places.
He came out of his revery with a sudden start, convinced that he had
been caught napping, for his eyes had failed to detect anything moving
in the direction of the barn. But he could hear some one groping about
close to the side of the building. A stick snapped, the bushes rustled,
and there were other sounds very small yet significant. Captain Michael
O’Shea gingerly forsook the little platform and began to slide down the
roof, fairly digging his fingers and toes into the shingles with the
tenacity of a cat.
The overhanging eaves made it difficult to observe what was going
on below. In order to peep over the edge of the roof, the shipmaster
was compelled to sprawl upon his stomach with his heels higher than
his head and with no purchase by which to maintain his grip. It was
a wide-angled roof or he would have tobogganed off into space before
his laborious descent carried him as far as the eaves. However, in his
trade a man who could not hang on by his eyelids was a lubber of a
sailor, and the bold O’Shea wriggled into position an inch at a time.
The mysterious noises might have been made by Johnny Kent prowling in
search of him, but O’Shea was afraid to call out lest he might frighten
away the object of his vigil. His trousers catching on a nail and
holding him fast for a moment, he ceased his precarious exertions long
enough to listen. This time his ear caught the crackle of crumpling
paper and a succession of sharper noises as if some one were breaking
dry wood over his knee. He smelt the unmistakable odor of kerosene.
Almost directly beneath him, and not more than a dozen feet distant, an
attempt was well under way to set fire to Johnny Kent’s barn.
With more speed and less caution O’Shea managed to poke his head over
the edge of the roof, intending to get his bearings before launching
the attack. He found himself directly above a shadowy figure which
flitted to the wood-pile and back again with quick, furtive movements.
Captain O’Shea had never found himself in a more embarrassing
situation. He disliked the idea of letting go and diving head first,
which was the quickest method of coming to close quarters. And even if
he should try to turn about and launch himself right end to, he was
likely to hit the earth with the deuce and all of a thump and perhaps
break his leg on a stick of cord-wood. The ladder by which he had
climbed to the roof was on the other side of the building and he had no
time to scramble in search of it.
While he hesitated the man beneath him scratched a match. Startled and
flurried at sight of this imminent danger, O’Shea let his grip loosen
for an instant and the law of gravity solved the problem for him. With
a blood-curdling yell he slid over the brink, his fingers clawing
wildly at the shingles and the wooden gutter. Head downward he plunged
and by rights should have broken his neck. His own theory to explain
his survival was that an Irishman always alights on his feet. The fact
was that the incendiary stranger happened to be in a stooping posture
and O’Shea’s head smote him squarely between the shoulders.
Both men rolled over and over like shot rabbits. There followed an
interval during which the one took no thought of hostilities, and the
other had no interest in flight. O’Shea sat up at length, grunted once
or twice, and rubbed his head in a dazed manner. The pile of kindling
had been scattered, but a fragment of newspaper was burning and he
brought his heel down on it. His quarry now began to realize that his
back was not broken and he showed signs of life. The pair sat glaring
at each other, speechless, endeavoring to regain the wind that had been
knocked out of them.
As tough as sole-leather was Captain O’Shea, and not to be put out
of commission by so trifling a mishap as this. His head was spinning
like a top and he felt sick and weak, but he had a job on hand and he
meant to finish it. The revolver was missing from his pocket. It had
been dislodged by his tumble and it was useless to grope for it in
the darkness. By now the other man had found his feet and was moving
unsteadily toward the end of the barn. O’Shea made for him and they
clinched in a clump of burdocks.
Neither was in the best of condition to make a Homeric combat of
it. To O’Shea’s dismay he discovered that he had caught a Tartar as
collision-proof as himself. He tried to grip the fellow by the throat
and to throw him with a heave and a twist, but a pair of arms as
muscular as his own flailed him in the face and hammered his ribs.
Then the brawny young shipmaster let fly with his fists and broke his
knuckles against a jaw which seemed to be made of oak.
“If the both of us was ship-shape we would make a grand fight of it,”
panted O’Shea with the shadow of a grin. “’Tis no time for etiquette
and I will stretch him before he does the same for me.”
“Wait till I set my teeth in you,” growled his adversary, finding
speech for the first time. “I’ll tear your windpipe out,” and he
followed the horrid threat with a string of oaths that chilled
O’Shea’s blood, although he had heard profanity over all the seven
seas. The accents were so hoarse and savage as to be even more alarming
than the words. The shipmaster ceased to regard the fight in the light
of a diversion. He was convinced that he had a madman to deal with.
Keeping clear, he turned and made for the wood-pile, a few yards
distant. Groping for a moment, he was fortunate enough to catch up a
four-foot length of hickory sapling, as handy a bludgeon as he could
desire.
As if at bay, the other man made no effort to escape during this
respite, but lunged after O’Shea, who wheeled in the nick of time and
found room to swing his hickory club. It rose and fell only once. The
madman toppled over and collapsed among the burdocks.
“He will stay there for a while,” said the weary O’Shea. “I caught him
fair over the ear, and ’tis a safe bet that I put a dent in him.”
Thereupon he turned his lagging footsteps in the direction of the
cottage. A lantern came bobbing out of the wood-shed door, and its
light revealed the large presence of Johnny Kent simply clad in a
flowing night-shirt and a pair of slippers. At discerning O’Shea
advancing through the gloom, he shouted:
“Why didn’t you wake me up at eight bells? I just come to and turned
out to look for you, Cap’n Mike. All quiet, I suppose?”
“Yes. I made it quiet, you sleepy old terrapin,” returned O’Shea with a
laugh before they had come together. “Didn’t you hear me yell when I
fell off the barn roof?”
“Nary a yell. I do sleep sounder than when I was at sea,” and Johnny
Kent waddled nearer and held the lantern higher. “Gracious saints, what
have you been doin’ to yourself? Your nose is all bloodied up and one
eye is bunged. What do you mean by falling off my barn roof? You must
have tapped that barrel of hard cider in the cellar.”
“I tapped a harder customer than that, Johnny. It was a gorgeous shindy
while it lasted, but I had to wind it up. I caught your firebug and I
laid him out in the barn-yard. Ye can hold a wake over him or send for
the police.”
The engineer swung his lantern in excited circles as he pranced toward
the barn, unmindful of the chilly breeze that played about his bare
shanks.
“You’re not jokin’, are you, Cap’n Mike? The situation is too blamed
serious for that. You landed him, honest? You’re the man to turn the
trick. Where did you ketch him?”
“I got the drop on him, as ye might say, and it was a divil of a drop.
My neck is an inch shorter than it was, but me collision bulkhead held
fast. He is a broth of a boy, and he will be hard to hold when he comes
out of the trance I put him in.”
“And I missed the fun,” mourned Johnny. “I’m surely getting old, Cap’n
Mike. But I guess we can handle him without sending for the village
constable to-night.”
“I have seen you tame some pretty tough tarriers. This is a bad one
and no mistake. Fetch the lantern closer and we will look him over.”
They ploughed through the burdocks, the prickly burrs causing Johnny
Kent to stride high and wide. The stranger lay as he had fallen. The
light revealed him as a powerfully built man of middle age with reddish
hair and a stubbled growth of beard. The dilapidated shirt and trousers
were stained with earth and grass, and held together by a leather belt.
His captors were about to scrutinize him more closely when he opened
his eyes, groaned, and raised himself upon his elbow with an unexpected
display of vitality. Bidding Johnny Kent stand by with the lantern,
O’Shea caught up the hickory club and flourished it as a hint that
unconditional surrender was advisable.
The prisoner blinked stupidly at the lantern and made no effort to
rise. His aspect was not in the least ferocious. O’Shea could scarcely
believe that this was the madman who had threatened to sink his teeth
in him and discommode his windpipe. Rough-featured he was and unkempt
beyond words, but he conveyed a most incongruous impression of kindly
and harmless simplicity, and O’Shea was the more amazed to hear him
mutter in his hoarse, curiously thickened accents:
“Can you spare a chew of tobacco, shipmate?”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” exclaimed Johnny Kent, absently feeling for
his trousers’ pockets which were not there. “You certainly did tame him
a whole lot, Cap’n Mike.”
“’Tis a riddle I cannot fathom at all,” was the reply.
Indignation got the upper hand of the engineer’s generous impulse and
he explosively demanded of the stranger:
“What do you mean by tryin’ to set fire to my barn, you addle-headed,
misbegotten, murderous son of a sculpin? I wish Cap’n Mike had knocked
the block clean off you.”
The queer visitor showed no resentment, but smiled in an amiable sort
of fashion and rubbed a large, red welt just above his right ear. Never
a word did he say, although the twain plied him with questions. His
demeanor was as friendly as if they had done him some signal service.
“If you can’t talk, maybe ye can walk,” gustily shouted O’Shea. “We
will clap ye under hatches for to-night and investigate by daylight. We
have caught an odd fish this time, Johnny.”
“Prod him into the wood-shed and lock him up,” grumbled the other.
“He’s plumb twistified in his mental works, and I can’t make head or
tail of him.”
At a beckoning gesture the prisoner meekly tried to get on his feet,
but he had been shorn of his strength and he fell twice before O’Shea
and Johnny Kent grasped him by the arms and steered him in the path
that led to the cottage. He stumbled along like a drunken man and had
to be half-dragged over the low step at the wood-shed door. Calling
himself a soft-hearted old fool, the engineer bustled into the house
and dragged forth a spare mattress. O’Shea obtained a lamp in the
kitchen, also cold water and a towel to bathe the hurt that his hickory
weapon had inflicted.
The red-haired man sat forlornly upon the mattress, leaning against the
coal-bin, his hands clasped over his knees. He had the dumb, wistful
look of a beaten dog, and his eyes, remarkably blue of color, followed
Captain O’Shea with no ill-will, but like one who recognized his
master. It was clear enough that he was to be dealt with as a man with
a disordered mind, and it was unmanly to hold him accountable for his
arson and violence. Attacked unawares in the darkness, there had been
provocation for his bestial outbreak, and it was to be concluded that
his usual mood was harmless, excepting a fatal fondness for playing
with fire.
“I have a strong notion that he is a seafarin’ man,” said O’Shea, as he
gave the captive a stiff drink of whiskey from the bottle kept in the
hall cupboard. “Maybe this will buck him up and set his tongue going.
That’s a sailor’s belt he has on, Johnny. And he has the look of it.”
The engineer had put his spectacles on his nose and was examining the
litter of small objects he had fished out of the man’s pockets. One of
them was like a leather thong thickened in the middle, and he cried
excitedly:
“You’re right, Cap’n Mike. Here’s a sailor’s palm--a sea thimble, and
the cuss has mended his clothes with it. See the patch on his shirt,
and he has stitched the holes in his shoes with bits of tarred twine.”
“He called me shipmate when he asked for a chew, but many a landlubber
uses the word and I did not lay much store by it.”
“It’s only twenty miles to the Maine coast,” said Johnny Kent, “and he
may have wandered inland from one of the ports.”
“I have a hunch that he didn’t come out of a coasting schooner. The
beggar has sailed deep water in his time. I wonder if he is hungry.
Better introduce him to some grub. He is rounding to, but he has about
as much conversation in him as an oyster.”
The engineer rummaged in the kitchen and brought out a plate of
biscuits, cold bacon, potatoes, and pickles, which the red-haired man
ate with an avidity that betokened starvation. The sight moved Johnny
Kent almost to tears. The last spark of his animosity was quenched.
There was no more awful fate than to be separated from three square
meals per day.
“We’ll swab the dirt off him and shuck those ragged, rotten clothes
before we batten him down for the night,” said Johnny. “I can’t leave a
sailor in this fix, even if he is flighty in the main-top and has tried
to smoke out the whole darn neighborhood.”
While he departed in search of a shift of raiment, Captain O’Shea
removed the man’s shirt. At the first tug it tore and came away in his
hands. The prisoner had remained sitting in the same posture, but now
he moved and lazily stretched his length upon the mattress, lying on
his stomach, his face pillowed against his arm. His hunger satisfied,
the desire of sleep had overtaken him, and his heavy breathing told
O’Shea that the extraordinary guest had carried his riddle to dreamland.
Johnny Kent had taken the lamp into the house, and the lantern which
had been left standing on the floor cast a long, dusky shadow athwart
the recumbent figure. The shipmaster stood looking down at the massive
shoulders and knotted, hairy arms of the stranger when his attention
was fixed by something which caused him to stare as though startled
and fascinated and perplexed. The man’s broad back bore some kind of a
design, an uncouth, sprawling pattern such as no artist in tattooing
could ever have traced to please a sailor’s fancy.
It was a huge disfigurement composed of bold lines and angles which
stood out in black projection against the white skin. Even in the dim
light, Captain O’Shea could discern that these rude markings had been
done with a purpose, that they composed themselves into a symbol of
some sort. They looked as if they had been laid on with a brush, in
broad, sweeping strokes which ran the width of the back, and all the
way down to the waist. The man could not have made them himself. They
were mysterious, sinister.
O’Shea was neither timid nor apt to be caught off his guard, but
his pulse fluttered and his mouth felt dry. He was in the presence
of something wholly beyond his ken, baffling his experience. This
red-haired derelict, whose wits had forsaken him, brought a message
hostile, alien, and remote. Presently O’Shea bethought himself of
the lantern and made for it with nervous haste. Holding it close to
the back of the sleeping man, he stared with horrified attention and
pitying wrath that a human being should have been so maltreated.
The great symbol or design had been slashed in the flesh with strokes
of a sword or knife. The edges of the scars stood out in rough ridges.
Into the wounds had been rubbed India-ink or some like substance which
the process of healing held indelibly fixed. The pattern thus made
permanent and conspicuous was that of a character of the Chinese or
Japanese language.
Johnny Kent came out of the kitchen and beckoned him. The engineer
stood open-mouthed and gazed down at the tremendous ideograph that had
been so brutally hacked in human flesh. O’Shea had nothing to say.
What was there to say? The thing was there. It spoke for itself. What
it meant was an enigma which neither man could in the smallest degree
attempt to unravel. When Johnny Kent spoke it was only to voice the
obvious fact or two that required no explanation.
“He was chopped and branded proper, wasn’t he, Cap’n Mike? And it was
done for some devilish purpose. I’ve knocked about most of the ports in
the Orient, but I never heard of anything like this.”
“They made a document of him, Johnny. ’Tis Chinese workmanship, I’m
thinking. How could a man live through a thing like that? For the love
of heaven, look at those scars! They are as wide as me thumb, and some
of them are better than a foot long. And they stand out so black and
wicked that it gives me the creeps.”
“It means something, Cap’n Mike. And it’s up to us to find the answer.
One of them Chinese characters may tell a whole lot. Their heathen
fashion of slingin’ a pen is more like drawin’ pictures. A few lines
and a couple of wriggles all bunched up together and it tells the
story.”
“And what is this story, Johnny? Answer me that.”
“You can search me. It’s almighty queer business to happen on my
peaceful farm in the State o’ Maine.”
“Let the poor beggar rest here till morning and then we will consider
him some more. I guess we don’t want to turn him over to the constable,
Johnny.”
“Not till we try our hand at translatin’ him. I wish I had a Chinese
dictionary. Say, Cap’n Mike, you’re as welcome as the flowers in
spring, but as soon as you set foot on my farm things begin to happen.
Trouble is a step-brother of yours. It’s like harborin’ a stormy
petrel.”
“’Tis not fair to blackguard me,” laughed O’Shea. “You and your
neighbors can sleep easy in your beds for I have caught the bogie-man.”
“I wish I knew what it is you’ve caught,” sighed the engineer.
O’Shea bent over the sleeping man in order to raise his head and slip
underneath it a rolled blanket to serve as a pillow. His fingers
chanced to detect on the top of the skull a curious depression or
groove over which the red hair was rumpled in a sort of cow-lick.
Examination convinced him that this was the result of some violent blow
which had fairly dented the bony structure and pressed it down upon the
brain.
“That is where he got it,” said O’Shea. “And ’tis what made a lunatic
of him.”
“It looks like they tried to kill him with an axe but he was too tough
for ’em, Cap’n Mike. No wonder that crack you gave him over the ear
didn’t bother him much.”
“And whoever it was that put their mark on his back was the same party
who caved in his lid or I’m a liar,” was the conclusion of Michael
O’Shea.