Steamers flying the flags of many nations were anchored in the Woosung
River off the water-front of Shanghai. High-pooped junks tacked past
them and cargo lighters manned by half-naked coolies drifted with the
muddy tide. In a handsome, solidly fashioned perspective extended the
European quarter of the city, as unlike the real China as London or New
York. Turbanned Sikh policemen, tall and dignified, in soldierly khaki
and puttees, strolled through the clean, well-paved streets. English,
French, and German merchants clad in white were spun around corners
in ’rickshaws pulled by sweating natives muscled like race-horses.
Tourists lounged on the piazzas of the Astor House or explored the
shops filled with things rare and curious. Unseen and unperceived
was the native city of Shanghai, incredibly filthy and overcrowded,
containing a half-million souls within its lantern-hung streets and
paper-walled tenements.
Near the river, at the end of the English quarter farthest removed
from the parks and pretentious hotels, was a row of small, shabby
brick buildings which might have belonged in Wapping or the Ratcliff
Road. There was nothing picturesquely foreign about them or their
environment. Two or three were sailors’ lodging-houses, and another was
the tumultuous tavern ruled over by Paddy Blake. Here seafarers swore
in many tongues and got drunk each in his own fashion, but Paddy Blake
treated them all alike. When their wages were gone he threw them out
or bundled them off to ships that needed men, and took his blood-money
like the thorough-going crimp that he was.
On this night the place was well filled. A versatile cabin steward off
a Pacific liner was lustily thumping the battered tin pan of a piano.
Six couples of hairy seamen, British and Norwegian, were waltzing with
so much earnestness that the floor was cleared as by a hurricane. Cards
and dice engaged the attention of several groups seated about the
tables by the wall. In blurred outline, as discerned through the fog of
tobacco smoke, a score of patrons lined the bar and bought bad rum with
good coin. For the moment peace reigned and never a fist was raised.
Captain Michael O’Shea sauntered in during this calm between storms.
The dingy room and its sordid amusements had a familiar aspect. It
was precisely like the resorts of other seaports as he had known them
during his wild young years before the mast. The bar-tender was a
pasty-faced youth who replied to O’Shea’s interrogation concerning
Paddy Blake:
“The old man has stepped out for a couple of hours. He had a bit of
business aboard a vessel in the stream. Will you wait for him? If
you’re lookin’ for able seamen he can find ’em for you.”
“I have no doubt of it,” said O’Shea, “and he will bring them aboard
feet first. Fetch me a bottle of ginger-ale to the table in the corner
yonder and I will wait awhile.”
The wall of the room was broken by a small alcove which made a nook a
little apart from the playful mariners. Here O’Shea smoked his pipe and
sipped his glass and was diverted by the noisy talk of ships and ports.
At a small table near by sat a man, also alone, who appeared to be in
a most melancholy frame of mind. Discouragement was written on his
stolid, reddened face, in the wrinkles of the worn gray tweed clothes,
in the battered shape of the slouch hat.
O’Shea surmised that he was a beach-comber who had seen better days,
and surveyed him with some curiosity, for the man wiped his eyes with
the back of his hand, his lip quivered, and once he was unable to
suppress an audible sob. To find a sturdily built man of middle-age
weeping alone in a corner of a sailor’s grog-shop led one to conclude
that alcohol had made him maudlin. But he did not look intoxicated,
although dissipation had left its marks on him. O’Shea conjectured that
he might be suffering the aftermath of a spree which had broken his
nerves and left him weak and womanish. In such a pitiable plight, the
contemplation of his own woes had moved him to tears.
Tactfully waiting until the man had recovered his self-control, O’Shea
nodded with a cordial smile and indicated a chair at his own table.
The stranger shifted his place with a certain eagerness, as if he were
anxious to be rid of his own miserable company. His tremulous hands and
the twitching muscles of his face prompted O’Shea to say:
“Will you have something with me? I dislike sitting by meself.”
“A small drink of brandy, if you please. I am trying to taper off. God
knows I welcome the chance to talk to somebody that is clean and sober.”
The man’s heavy, morose eyes regarded the shipmaster approvingly.
Presently he began to talk with fluent coherence, in a kind of headlong
manner. He felt that he had found a kindly listener and seemed afraid
that O’Shea might desert him before the tale was done.
“I am on the beach and all to pieces again, as you may have guessed,”
said he. “My name is McDougal, late of the American Trading Company,
but I couldn’t hold the job. This time I went to smash in Tientsin.
It was queer how it happened. I had been sober and making good for
nearly six months. Ever see a Chinese execution? Well, this was
an extraordinary affair. A high official of the province had been
condemned for treason, and the government decided to make a spectacle
of him as a sort of public warning. The place was the big yard of the
governor’s yamen. I joined the crowd that looked on. First came a
covered cart with black curtains. A strapping big Manchu crawled out
of it. He was the executioner, and a dingy apron covered with dark-red
blotches hung from his chin to his toes.
“Then came a second cart, and in it rode an old gentleman who climbed
out and walked alone to the cleared space in the middle of the yard. He
was bent and feeble, but he never flinched, and his dignity and rank
stood out as plain as print. A guard said something to him, and he took
off his long, fur-trimmed coat and knelt on the filthy flagging and the
wind whirled the dust in his face. He knelt there, waiting, for a long
time, motionless except when he put his hand to his throat and pulled
his collar around it to keep off the wind.
“A pompous official read the death sentence, but that wrinkled old
face showed never a trace of emotion. Then a pair of the executioner’s
understrappers leaped on the old gentleman like wild-cats. One jumped
on his back and drove his knees into him, while the other tied a bit
of cord to the end of the trailing queue and yanked forward with all
his might. It stretched the old man’s neck like a turtle’s. Then the
big Manchu with the bloody apron raised his straight-edged sword and it
fell like a flash of light. The head flew off and bounced into the lap
of the fellow that was tugging at the queue.”
McDougal paused for a gulp of brandy. His voice was unsteady as he
resumed:
“I guess my nerves were none too good. A man can’t go boozing up and
down the coast of the Orient for a dozen years without paying the
price. That sight was too much for me. I had to take a drink, and then
some more, to forget it. The old man was so patient and helpless, his
head bounced off like an apple; and what broke me up worst of all was
seeing him pull that coat up around his throat so he wouldn’t catch
cold--up around his throat, mind you. It was a little thing, but, my
God, what did it matter if he caught cold? And the way they hauled and
yanked him about before his neck was--well, I wish I hadn’t seen it.
“Once started, the old thirst took hold of me and I wandered down the
coast until I came to, sick and broke, in a dirty Chinese tea-house
in Che-Foo. There I lay until one day there came from the street a
long, booming cry that crashed through the high-pitched clatter of
the crowd like surf on a granite shore. By Jove! it stirred me like a
battle-chant. It sounded again and again. I knew it must be a pedler
shouting his wares, you understand, but it surged into my poor sick
brain as if it was meant for me. It was buoyant, big, telling me to
take heart in the last ditch. The words were Chinese, of course, but
the odd thing about it was that they came to me precisely as though
this great, deep voice was booming in English: ‘_Throw-w all-l regrets
away-y._’
“I presume I was a bit delirious at times, but this was what I heard
very clearly, and it helped me wonderfully. As soon as I got on my legs
I looked for the pedler until I found him, and followed him through the
streets. Even at close range his call seemed to be telling me to throw
all regrets away. It was summoning me to make a new start, do you see?
He was a giant of a fellow in ragged blue clothes, a yoke across his
broad shoulders with many dangling flat baskets. When he swelled his
chest and opened his mouth the air trembled with that tremendous call
of his. I trailed him to his tiny mud-walled house, and we got quite
chummy. I could speak his dialect fairly well. He earned ten or fifteen
cents a day and supported a family of nine people by selling roasted
watermelon seeds. He sang loud because he had a big voice, he said, and
because his heart was honest and he owed no man anything. He did a lot
to help me get a grip on myself, and some day I mean to do something
for him.
“I had somehow hung on to my watch, and I sold it and beat my way to
Shanghai in a trading steamer, and here I am, shaky and no good to
anybody, but I still hear that cheerful pedler thundering at me to
throw all regrets away. One has some curious experiences on this coast,
and I have had many of them----”
A hand gripped McDougal’s shoulder, and he turned, with a nervous
start, to confront a hale, well-dressed mariner with a yellow beard,
whose eyes twinkled merrily as he loudly exclaimed:
“It vas mein old pal what I haf last met at Port Arthur. Ho, ho,
McDougal, how goes it mit you?”
The speaker drew up a chair, pounded on the table to summon a waiter,
and told him:
“A bundle of trinks, _schnell_, or I bite you in two.”
“I’m delighted to see you again, Captain Spreckels,” stammered
McDougal, at which O’Shea introduced himself, and the mariner explained
with a jolly laugh:
“McDougal vas a king among men. We haf met only one hour in Port Arthur
when I haf told him things what was locked so deep in my bosom dot they
haf never before come up. Perhaps we vas not so sober as now, so? What
you do with yourself, McDougal? American Trading Company yet already?”
“I am on the beach, Captain Spreckels, and not fit to work at anything
for a while.”
The skipper appeared vastly disturbed. Stroking his beard, he reflected
for a moment and then shouted:
“My bark, _Wilhelmina Augusta_, sails for Hamburg to-morrow morning
early. She is now at the mouth of the river. I vas come up in a tug to
find if Paddy Blake haf three more men for me. McDougal, you comes mit
me. It vas the great idea, eh? The sea-voyage will do you so much good
you will not know yourself. I vish to haf your good company. My cabin
is as big as a house. It will cost you noddings. If you want to come
out East again, I can bring you back next voyage. Listen! Give me no
arguments. You vas seedy and down on your luck.”
McDougal lacked the will power to resist this masterful mandate. And
perhaps here was a fighting chance providentially offered. On the
sweet, clean sea, far from the dissolute ports which had wrecked his
manhood, he might build up health and strength and throw all regrets
away. A fit of nervous weakness made the tears spring to his eyes, and
he faltered unevenly:
“You quite bowl me off my feet, Captain Spreckels. I haven’t thought
of leaving the East. But I will go with you and I can never thank you
enough. About clothes and an outfit, I----”
“I haf more clothes than a plenty for two of us, McDougal. There is
beer but no whiskey in my vessel. I do not trink liquor at sea. Come.
Paddy Blake haf left word mit his man here dot my sailors vas already
sent to the landing mit a boarding-house runner. We will go aboard the
tug.”
With this, the energetic master mariner tossed down a gin rickey, said
adieu to Captain O’Shea, and whisked McDougal out of the place with
an arm across his shoulders. The episode made O’Shea feel slightly
bewildered. The unfortunate McDougal had appeared and vanished with an
abruptness that savored of unreality. His confession was the sort of
thing that might come to a man in a nightmare. McDougal had painted
the scenes with a few broad strokes, and yet as O’Shea sat musing,
they seemed astonishingly vivid: the aged Chinese official pulling his
coat about his neck just before his head bounced off like a bloody
ball--the ragged colossus of a street pedler flinging afar his resonant
call--McDougal, wretched and forlorn, huddled in the tea-house and
fighting off the horrors. He had opened the book of his life and let
O’Shea read a page of it, but there must have been many more worth
knowing.
These reflections were interrupted by a violent dissension in the
vicinity of the bar. A British tar smote a Scandinavian over the head
with a bottle and stretched him on the floor. Somebody plucked the
piano stool from under the musical cabin steward and hurled it at the
aggressor. The missile flew high and swept the bar-tender into his
glassware with a most splendid crash. Then hostilities became general.
The combatants were too busy to observe the entrance of a wizened,
clerical-looking little man in a black frock-coat and a rusty tall hat.
With a shrill whoop, he pulled a slung-shot from his pocket and pranced
into the thick of the scrimmage. He was as agile as a jumping-jack, his
coat-tails seemed to be flying in a dozen places at once, and whenever
his weapon landed a seaman promptly lost all interest in the row and
made for the street with his head tenderly held in his hands. In the
wake of the active little man peace hovered like a dove.
With magical celerity the floor was cleared of disorder, and the
promoter of harmony calmly assisted the damaged bar-tender to clear
away the wreckage. Captain O’Shea accosted him when the task was
finished.
“Paddy Blake is me name,” the little man replied in a jerky, rasping
voice, cocking his head to one side. “The boys will have their fun and
I hope they didn’t annoy ye. The place will be quiet for a bit. What
can I do for ye?”
“’Tis a matter of private business,” answered O’Shea.
“Then come into the back room, where we can be sociable. I take ye for
a shipmaster.”
“Right you are; but I have no ship at present. You might call me a
tourist.”
Paddy Blake briskly led the way to a cubby-hole of a room with a
very strong door, which he made fast with a bolt. There was a window
whose shutters were of iron. O’Shea suspected that fuddled seamen
might be tucked in here for safe-keeping when the occasion required.
The two Irishmen studied each other with a kind of cheerful, candid
appraisement. Each recognized in the other certain qualities to
be admired. Paddy Blake was a hardened old ruffian, but he was a
two-fisted little man with the courage of a terrier.
“I have come a long way to find you,” said O’Shea. “And it was imparted
to me that the business that has brought me to China had best be
discussed in whispers. ’Tis a mighty queer yarn----”
“Ye need not fill and back. Steam ahead. I like your looks,” broke in
Paddy Blake. “Whatever passes bechune us stays inside the door. Are ye
in throuble?”
“Not me. This is about a friend of mine. Tell me, Paddy Blake, and
think hard. Do ye recall a strappin’ big man with red hair and blue
eyes and a deep voice that used to roll the dice in your place? Hold
a minute; I have not done with him. One front tooth was broken so you
would notice it when he talked. And he had a crooked little finger that
must have stuck out when he held a glass or waved his hand about.”
Paddy Blake puckered his brows and pinched his long upper lip between a
grimy thumb and forefinger.
“What was he--a Yankee?” he asked, sitting straighter in his chair and
gazing at the shipmaster with puzzled, groping interest.
“He was an American seafarin’ man--a mate most likely. You could not
forget him if you cast eyes on him only once. Yankee sailors are scarce
in deep-water ports. This one should stick out in your recollection
like a light-house in a fog.”
“A whale of a man with a red head and an eye as blue as a bit of the
Inland Sea!” vehemently exclaimed Paddy Blake. “And when was he in me
place? How long ago was it?”
“’Tis yourself that must answer that question. At a guess, it was more
than a year ago.”
The spry little man bounded to his feet and clutched the tails of his
coat with both hands as he bent forward with his face close to O’Shea’s
and rasped out:
“He has popped into me head like a flash. And a mushy-brained dunce I
was not to know him at once. Eldridge ye mean--Jim Eldridge, that was
mate in the China Navigation Company’s steamer _Tai Yan_, chartered
to run coastwise. A whoppin’ big beggar he was, but mild-mannered and
good-hearted, the quietest red-headed man that iver I saw in me life.”
“Are you sure of that?” demanded O’Shea. “Could you swear to it?”
“I remimber him as plain as I see you,” testily returned Paddy Blake.
“He was not in me place often. ’Twas too rough for him.”
“And did you ever chance to hear what had become of him?”
The little man tapped O’Shea’s arm with an eloquent finger and replied
in lower tones:
“It comes back to me that there was a yarn about him. ’Twas gossip,
ye understand, nawthin’ that ye could put your finger on. Shanghai is
a great place for wild stories. The Shanghai liar is a special breed,
and he is famous all over the world. Annyhow, there was a voyage of the
_Tai Yan_ steamer when he didn’t come to port in her. Shortly after
that she broke her back on a reef in the Formosa Channel and all hands
was lost, so I never heard anny news from her people about this Jim
Eldridge.”
“That was most unfortunate,” said O’Shea; “but I am in great luck to
get track of the man at all. And have you anybody in mind that might
have known Eldridge when he was sailing on this coast?”
The volatile Paddy Blake who saw so many mariners pass through his
place during the year was mentally sifting his recollections which were
many and confusing. The big red-headed man had steered clear of rum and
riot and was no steady frequenter of this unholy resort. Obviously he
had made no more than a passing impression on Paddy Blake, but the old
man was honestly anxious to splice the broken ends of the story, and
after painful cogitation he broke out again:
“There is one man that ye should find by all means. He may be dead by
now, for the liquor had harrd hold of him. I have not seen or heard
of him in a long while, but he wint north from here. I mind the last
time he come in me place. Pretty well pickled he was, and some o’ the
lads were yarnin’ with him, and there was talk of this Jim Eldridge.
Be gob! ’twas then I heard the queer gossip, in bits, d’ ye see? There
had been a ruction somewheres up beyant”--and Paddy Blake waved a hand
to the northward--“and this man I mintion had been mixed in it with Jim
Eldridge. But when they would urge him to unwind the story he would
turn ugly and shut up like an oyster, half-seas-over though he was. He
was a great one for messin’ about among the Chinese, and could patter
two or three dialects. A scholar and gentleman was McDougal.”
“McDougal!” roared O’Shea, taken all aback by the coincidence. “Why,
man alive, this same McDougal was in your place to-night and left
not an hour ago. He has just come down the coast, from Tientsin and
Che-Foo.”
“’Tis a pity ye let him get away. If he wanders into the Chinese city
amongst some of thim native friends of his ’twill be the divil and all
to find him again. So he’s still alive!”
“I sat and talked with him and he discoursed nightmares.”
“He has lived thim,” said Paddy Blake.
“I had him and I lost him,” was O’Shea’s melancholy exclamation. “An
oakum-whiskered Dutchman by the name of Spreckels breezed in under full
sail and welcomed this McDougal like a long-lost brother, and carried
him off to sea before ye could blink. It was comical. And I sat there
like a wooden figure-head and let him go.”
“In the _Wilhelmina Augusta_--four-masted steel bark bound out to
Hamburg. It was a lucky stroke for McDougal.”
“And most unlucky for me,” sighed O’Shea. Then he pulled himself
together, and spoke in his hearty, masterful way. “Come along, Paddy
Blake, and find me a tug. We will chase McDougal down river for the
sake of a conversation with him.”
“Captain Spreckels had the _Arrow_, and she’s fast,” said Paddy Blake.
“He has a good start of ye, and his bark will be ready to sail as soon
as he boards her.”
“Then we’ll chase him out to sea. I have come too far to lose McDougal
by letting him slip through me fingers,” and the demeanor of Captain
Michael O’Shea discouraged further argument.
Paddy Blake jammed the tall hat on the back of his head, unbolted
the door, and whisked through the bar-room with such speed that the
shipmaster’s long strides could hardly keep up with him. They turned
into the street that led to the water-front and hastened to a lighted
corner of the bund where stood several ’rickshaws. Paddy darted at the
drowsy coolies who were squatted on the pavement, cuffed a couple of
them, and gave an order in pidgin English. They jumped into the shafts,
the passengers climbed aboard, and the vehicles went spinning along the
thoroughfare.
As they drew abreast of the lights of the anchored shipping, Paddy
Blake looked along the landing-berths of the smaller steamers and
exclaimed with an explosion of profane surprise:
“There’s a tug in the pocket where the _Arrow_ ties up. I can’t see to
make her out in the dark, but we will stop and take a look. Something
or other may have delayed Captain Spreckels. I hope to blazes thim
seamen I sint him has not hooked it before he got ’em safe aboard the
bark.”
Leaving the ’rickshaws to wait orders, they footed it down to the wharf
and were convinced that they had found the _Arrow_ even before she
could be clearly made out. The darkness was shattered by the troubled
accents of Captain Spreckels, who was proclaiming to the skipper of the
tug:
“By Gott, I cannot wait for McDougal no longer. The tide ist turned
already. My wessel must go to sea mit the morning flood. It gives me
sadness to lose dot scalawag, but he has runned away mit himself.”
O’Shea climbed over the guard-rail and cried:
“How are you again, Captain Spreckels? What’s this I hear about
McDougal? I am after finding him meself.”
The master of the _Wilhelmina Augusta_ swung his arms and made answer:
“McDougal was a slippery customer, so? I haf a immense fondness for
him. By the landing here he left me to go in a ’rickshaw, _sehr
schnell_, to a room what he haf hired for to-night und fetch some
little t’ings what belonged to him, mostly books und some papers mit
writings on ’em. He haf come to Shanghai, he tells me, mit a small
bundle which he never loses, drunk or sober. While the tug is makin’
steam und haulin’ her lines aboard he will do his errand. It vas an
hour ago. I do not understand, but I must not wait.”
“Changed his mind,” suggested Paddy Blake. “Sorry ye are shy a
shipmate, but the news will please me friend Captain O’Shea here. You
lose. He wins.”
The hull of the _Arrow_ was trembling to the thresh of the screw,
and her skipper was bawling the order to cast off. Captain Spreckels
shouted farewell as the two visitors jumped ashore, and the tug moved
astern into the fair-way. As they walked toward the ’rickshaws O’Shea
remarked:
“’Tis no use to go rummagin’ around to-night in search of McDougal, I
suppose.”
“No, but I will find him for ye to-morrow,” replied Paddy Blake. “If he
has a room in the English quarter ye can gamble he will drop into my
place. If he don’t I will sind a bright lad to round him up. ’Tis easy
findin’ him as long as he is not livin’ in the native city. What do ye
suppose become of him, annyhow?”
“Maybe he flinched from the notion of quitting the East. When it gets
in the blood of these tropical tramps, the grip of it is not easy to
break.”
“And he lost his nerve at the last minute,” said Paddy Blake. “I’ve
seen cases like it. I’m that way meself.”
Declining a cordial invitation to have a “nightcap,” O’Shea told his
’rickshaw cooly to take him to the Astor House. It seemed extraordinary
that his quixotic pilgrimage should have so soon disclosed the identity
of the derelict who had drifted into the comfortable haven of Johnny
Kent’s farm. This, however, did not greatly astonish O’Shea, who knew
that the steps of sailormen in alien ports are not apt to stray far
from the water-side. The singular feature of the business was that he
should run across the sodden beach-comber, McDougal, who was the needle
in a hay-stack of prodigious size. The hand of destiny was in it.
At breakfast next morning Captain O’Shea enjoyed overhearing the talk
of a party of American tourists at a near-by table. In their turn the
younger women did not fail to observe with interest the clean-cut,
resolute shipmaster smartly turned out in fresh white clothes. After
they had left the dining-room he picked up a copy of _The Shanghai
Mercury_ and carelessly turned to the shipping news where these lines
caught his eye:
Bark _Wilhelmina Augusta_, Spreckels master, cleared for Hamburg
with general cargo. Sailed Woosung this A. M.
This turned his thoughts to McDougal and he was impatient to find Paddy
Blake and begin the search. He was about to toss the newspaper aside
when a paragraph seemed to jump from the page and hit him between the
eyes. He read it slowly, his lips moving as if he were spelling out the
words: