“We’re all shot to pieces to-night, Duke_Down among men

“We are alive, John. Lowenkampf is alive. But he who spoke to me this

day, who came forth so blithely to die in my arms (his woman sleeps ill

to-night in the midst of her babes), and he is lying out in the rain,

his face turned up to the rain. God damn the fat reptile that calls

itself Fatherland!... But, I say to you, that we’re come nearly to the

end of the prince and pauper business on this planet. The soul of the

Ploughman was heard to-day--as long ago they heard the Soul of the

Carpenter.... He is lying out there in the millet--his face turned up

to the rain. Yet I say to you, John, there’s more life in him this hour

than in his Tsar and all the princes of the blood.”

Fallows covered his face with his hands.

“You’re tired and thick to-night, John, but you are one who must see!”

he finished passionately. “You must help me tell the story to the

cellar gatherings in Petersburg, to the secret meetings in all the

centers of misery, wherever a few are gathered together in the name of

Brotherhood--in New York, London, Paris, and Berlin.... You must help

me to make other men see--help me to tell this thing so that the world

will hear it, and with such power that the world will be unable longer

to lie to itself.

“I can see it now--how Jesus, the Christ, tried to make men see....

That was His Gethsemane--that He could not make men see. I tell you it

is a God’s work--and it came to Jesus, the Christ, at last--‘If they

crucify me, perhaps, a few will see!’... I’m going over to Russia,

John, to learn how to tell them better.”

THE night of the third of September, and John Morning is off

for the big adventure. Between the hills, the roads are a-stream....

All day he had watched different phases of the retreat. Fighting back

in the city; fighting here and there along the staggering, burdened,

cruelly-punished line; a sudden breaking-out of fighting in a dozen

places like hidden fires; rain and wounded and seas of mud; the gray

intolerable misery of it all; the sick and the dead--Morning was

glutted with the colossal derangement. And they called it an orderly

retreat.

He was riding the sorrel Eve out of the zone of war. The battle was

behind him now, and he breathed the world again. He had something to

tell. Liaoyang was in his brain. He was off for the ships that sail.

A month--America--the great story.... He felt the manuscript against

him. It was in a Chinese belt, with money for the passage home, tight

against his body, a hundred thousand words done on Chinese parchment

and wrapped in oil-skin. The book of Liaoyang--he had earned it. He had

written it against the warping cynicism of Duke Fallows. On the ship he

could reshape and renew it all into a master-picture.

It had been easier than he thought to break away from Fallows, his

friend. The latter was whelmed in the soul of the Ploughman. A big

story, of course, as Fallows saw it--but there were scores of big

stories. It would ruin it to let an anarchist tell it. Suppose officers

in general did stop to listen to troops sneaking off the field?

Duke had given him a letter, and a story for the _Western States_.

The first was not to be read until he was at sea out from Japan. When

Morning spoke of the money he owed, the other had put the thought

away. Sometime he would call for it if he needed it; it was a trifle

anyway.... It hadn’t been a trifle. It had meant everything.

Morning was glad to breathe himself again. Yet there was an ache in

his heart for Duke Fallows, now off for Europe the western way. He,

Morning, had not done his part. He hadn’t given as he had taken; had

not kept close to Duke Fallows at the last. There was a big score that

money could never settle. Soundly glad to be alone, but in the very

gladness the picture of Duke Fallows returned--lying on his back, in

bunks and berths and beds, staring up at the ceiling, accentuating

his own failures to bring out the hopeful and valorous parts of his

friend. It was always such a picture to Morning, when Fallows came

to mind--staring, dreaming, looking up from his back. It had seemed

sometimes as if he were trying to make of his friend all that he had

failed to be.... Yet the Duke Fallows of the last twenty-four hours,

wild, dithyrambic--had been too much.... Again and again, irked and

heavy with his own limitations, Morning’s brain had seized upon the

weakness of the other, to condone his own slowness of understanding....

It may have been Eve, and her relation to the Fallows revelation, or

it may have been putting hideous militarism behind, that made John

Morning think of Women now as he rode, and a little differently from

ever before.... Certain laughing sentences of Duke Fallows came back to

him presently, with a point he seemed to have missed when they were

uttered:

“We have our devils, John. You have ambition; Lowenkampf has drink;

Mergenthaler has slaughter.... You will love a woman; you already

drink too readily, but Ambition will stand in your house and fight

from room to room at the last--and over the premises to the last

ditch. He’s a grand devil--is Ambition.... My devil, John? Well, it

isn’t the big-jawed male who loves a woman as she dreams to be loved.

It’s the man with a touch of women in him--just enough to begin upon

her mystery.... When I hear a certain woman’s voice, or see a certain

passing figure--something old, very old and wise, stirs within, seems

to stir and thrill with eternal life. And, John, it isn’t low--the

thought. I’d tell you if it were. It isn’t low. It’s as regal as Mother

Nature in a valley, on a long afternoon. It isn’t that I want to hurt

her; it isn’t that I want something she has. Rather, I want all she

has! I want her mind; I want her soul; I want her full animations.

I want to make her yield and give; I want to feel her battle with

herself, not to yield and give.... Oh, the flesh is nothing. It is the

cheapest thing in the world--but her giving, her yielding--it’s like

an ocean tide. It breaks every bond; it laughs at every law. Power

seems to rush into a woman when she yields! That’s the conquest of my

heart--to feel that power.... All devils are young compared to that in

a man’s heart--all but one, and that is the passion to hold spiritual

dominion over other men.”

Morning’s mind had fallen into the habit of allowing much for the

other’s sayings--of accepting much as mere facility.... Thus he thought

as he traveled in the rain, Eve’s swift, springy trot a stimulus to

deep thinking; and always there was a bigger and finer John Morning

shadowing him, fathoming his smallnesses, wondering at his puny

rebellions and vain desires. It was in this fairer John Morning,

so tragically unexpressed during the past few months, that the pang

lived--the pang of parting from his friend.

Morning was terrific physically. The thing he was now doing was as

spectacular a bit of newspaper service as ever correspondent undertook

in Asia; and yet, to John Morning the high light of achievement

fell upon the manuscript, not upon the action. It had not occurred

to him to be afraid. If he could get across the ninety miles to

Koupangtse--through the _Hun huises_, through the Japanese

scouting cavalry, across two large and many smaller yellow rivers--and

reach the railroad, he would quickly get a ship for Japan from

Tientsin or Tongu--and from Japan--_home_.... He was doing it for

himself--passionately and with no sense of splendor.

Fallows had been so sure of his friend’s physical courage, that he made

no point of it, in the expression of attachment.... He had called it

vision at first, this thing that had drawn him to John Morning--a touch

of the poet, a touch of the feminine--others might have called it. No

matter the name, he had seen it, as all artists of the expression of

the inner life recognize it in one another; and Fallows knew well that

where the courage of the soldier ends, the courage of the visionary

begins.

Morning was a trifle peculiar, however. Unless it sank utterly, he

stuck to a ship, until the horizon revealed another sail.

He had come up through the dark. The world had grounded him deeply in

illusion. Most brilliant of promises--even Fallows had not seen him

that first day in too bright a dawn--but he learned hard. And his had

been close fighting--such desperate fighting that one does not hear

voices, and one is too deep in the ruck to see the open distance....

Much as he had been alone--the world had invariably shattered his

silences. Always he had worked--worked, worked furiously, angrily, for

himself.... He was taught so. The world had caught him as a child in

his brief, pitiful tenderness. The world was his Eli. As from sleep, he

had heard Reality calling. He had risen to answer, but the false Eli

had spoken--an Eli that did not teach him truly to listen, nor to say,

when he heard the Voice another time--“Speak, Lord, for thy servant

heareth.”

THE Taitse, of large and ancient establishment, runs westward

from Liaoyang for twenty-five miles, and in a well-earned bed, portions

of which are worn in the rock. Morning rode along the north bank,

thus avoiding altogether a crossing of the Taitse, since his journey

continued westward from the point where the river took its southward

bend. From thence it paralleled the Hun in a race to join the Liao. The

main stem of the latter was beyond the Hun, and these two arteries of

Asia broke Morning’s trail. Fording streams of such magnitude was out

of the question, and there was a strong chance of an encounter with the

_Hun huises_ at the ferries....

Rain, and the sorrel’s round hoofs sucked sharply in the clay. She

had no shoes to lose in these drawing vacuums. The scent of her came

up warm and good to the horse-lover. Alone on a road, she had always

been manageable, hating crowds and noise--soldiers, Chinese, and

accoutrements. Perhaps, this was merely a biding of time. Eve had a

fine sense of keeping a strange road. This was not usual, although a

horse travels a familiar road in the darkness better than a man. These

two worked well together.

By map the distance from Liaoyang to Koupangtse was seventy miles.

Morning counted upon ninety, at least. The Manchurian roads are old and

odd as the Oriental mind.... He passed the southward bend of the big

river, and at daybreak reached Chiensen, ten miles beyond, on the Hun.

Chiensen, unavoidable on account of the ferry, was a danger-point.

Japanese cavalry, it was reported, frequently lit there, and the _Hun

huises_ (Chinese river-pirates and thieves in general, whom Alexieff

designated well as “the scourge of Manchuria”) were at base in this

village.... In the gray he found junks, a flat tow and landing.

You never know what Chinese John is going to do. If you have but

little ground of language between you, he will take his own way, on

the pretext of misunderstanding. Morning’s idea was to get across

quickly, without arousing the river-front. He awoke the ferryman,

placing three silver taels in his hand. (He carried silver, enough

native currency to get him to Japan, his passport, and the two large

envelopes Duke Fallows had given him, in the hip-pockets of his riding

breeches.) The ferryman had no thought of making the first crossing

without tea. Morning labored with him, and with seeming effect for a

moment, but the other fell suddenly from grace and aroused his family.

He was not delicate about it. Morning resigned himself to the delay,

and was firmly persuading Eve to be moderate, as she drank from the

river’s edge, when Chinese John suddenly aroused the river population.

Standing well out on the tow-flat, he trumpeted at some comrade of the

night before, apparently no less than a hundred yards up the river.

There were sleepy answers from many junks within range of the voice.

It was the one hateful thing to John Morning--yet to rough it with the

ferryman for his point of view would be the only thing worse.

The landing was rickety; its jointure with the tow-boat imperfect.

The American took off his coat, tossed it over the sorrel’s head,

tying the sleeves under her throat. She stiffened in rebellion, but

as the darkness was as yet little broken by the day, she decided to

accept the situation. Morning felt her growing reluctance, however,

as she traversed the creaking, springy boards. The crevasse between

the landing and the craft was bridged; and the latter, grounded on the

shore-side, did not give. The mare stood in the center of the tow,

sweating and tense.

Numerous Chinese were now abroad--eager, even insistent, to help. Their

voices stirred the mare to her old red-eyed insanity. Morning could

hold himself no longer. Once or twice before in his life this hard,

bright light had come to his brain. Though the exterior light was

imperfect, the ferryman saw the fingers close upon the butt of the gun,

and something of the American’s look. He dropped his tea, sprang to

the junk and pulled up the bamboo-sail. This was used to hold the tow

against the current.

Two natives in the flat-boat stood ready with poles. And now the

ferryman spoke in a surprised and disappointed way as he toiled in

front. He seemed ready to burst into tears; and the two nearer Morning

grunted in majors and minors, according to temperament. The American

considered that it might all be innocent, although the voices were many

from the town-front. Poling began; the tow drew off from the landing.

Clear from the grounding of the shore, the craft sank windily to its

balance in the stream.

This was too much for Eve. Her devil was in the empty saddle. She

leaped up pawing. The two Chinese at the poles dived over side

abruptly. Water splashed Eve’s flanks, and she veered about on her

hind feet--blinded and striking the air in front. The wobble of the

tow now finished her frenzy--and back she went into the stream. The

saddle saved her spine from a gash on the edge of the tow. Morning had

this thought when Eve arose; that he need fear no treachery from the

Chinese; and this as she fell--a queer, cool, laughing thought--that

after such a fall she would never walk like a man again.

He had been forced to drop the bridle, but caught it luckily with

one of the poles as she came up struggling. He beckoned the ferryman

forward, and Eve, swimming and fighting, was towed across. To Morning

it was like one of his adventures back in the days of the race-horse

shipping.

Eve struck the opposite bank--half-strangled from her struggle and the

blind. The day had come. The nameless little town on this side of the

Hun was out to meet him. Had he brought a Korean tiger by a string,

however, he could not have enjoyed more space--as the mare climbed

from the stream. He talked to her and unbound her eyes. Red and deeply

baleful they were. She shook her head and parted her jaws. The circle

of natives widened. Morning straightened the saddle and patted Eve’s

neck softly, talking modestly of her exploit.... Natives were now

hailing from mid-stream, so he leaped into the sticky saddle and guided

the mare out to the main road leading to Tawan on the Liao.... Queerly

enough, just at this instant, he remembered the hands and the lips of

the ferryman--a leper.

Ten miles on the map--he could count thirteen by the road--and then

the Liao crossing.... The mare pounded on until they came to a wild

hollow, rock-strewn, among deserted hills. Morning drew up, cooled his

mount and fed the soaked grain strapped to the saddle since the night

before. Eve was not too cross to eat--nor too tired. She lifted her

head often and drew in the air with the sound of a bubble-pipe.... Just

now Morning noted a wrinkle in his saddle blanket. Hot with dread, he

loosed the girth.

He looked around in terror lest anyone see his own shame and fear. He

had put the saddle on in the dark, but passed his hand between her

back and the cloth. Long ago a trainer had whipped him for a bad bit

of saddling; even at the time he had felt the whipping deserved. He

lifted the saddle. A pink scalded mouth the size of a twenty-five-cent

piece was there.... God, if he could only be whipped now. She was

sensitive as satin; it was only a little wrinkle of the rain-soaked

blanket.... His voice whimpered as he spoke to her.

Only a horseman could have suffered so. He washed the rub, packed soft

lint from a Russian first-aid bandage about to ease the pressure; and

then, since the rain had stopped again, he rubbed her dry and walked

at her head for hours, despairing at last of the town named Tawan.

The Liao was visible before the village itself. Morning shook with

fatigue. He had to gain the saddle for the possible need of swift

action, but the wound beneath never left his mind. It uncentered his

self-confidence--a force badly needed now.

And this was the Liao--the last big river, roughly half-way. The end of

the war-zone, it was, too, but the bright point of peril from _Hun

huises_.... Morning saw the thin masts of the river junks over

the bowl of the hill, their tribute flags flying.... To pass was the

day’s work, to make the ferry with Eve. There was too much misery and

contrition in his heart for him to handle her roughly. The blind could

not be used again. She would connect that with the back-fall into the

Hun. The town was full of voices.

CHINESE were gathering. Morning went about his business as if

all were well, but nothing was good to him about the increase of these

hard, quick-handed men. They were almost like Japanese. With the tail

of his eye, he saw shirt signals across the river. The main junk fleet

was opposite. Trouble--he knew it. The hard, bright light was in his

brain.

In the gathering of the natives, Eve was roused afresh. His only way

was to try her without the blind. If she showed fight, he meant to

mount quickly and ride back through the crowd for one of the lower-town

crossings.

Without looking back, he led the way to the landing, holding just the

weight of the bridle-rein. His arm gave with her every hesitation.

To his amazement she consented to try. The tow-craft was larger

here--enough for a bullock-pair and cart--and better fitted to the

landing. Step by step she went with him to her place.

Now Morning saw that in using the blind the first time he had done her

another injury. She would not have gone back into the Hun but for that.

She awed him. Something Fallows had said recurred--about her being

unconquerable, different every day. Also Fallows had said, “She will

kill you at the last....”

He drove back the Chinese, all but two pole-men, that would have

gathered on the tow. This was quietly done, but his inflexibility was

felt. Many signals were sent across, as the tow receded from the shore,

and numbers increased on the opposite bank.

Eve, breathing audibly, swung forward and back with the craft, as it

gave to the river. The towing junk, as in the Hun, held the other

against the current; the rest was poling and paddling.... The junk

itself slipped out of the way as the tow was warped toward the landing.

Other junks were stealing in.... Morning already had paid. He felt the

girth of the saddle, fingered the bridle, tightened his belt. A warm,

gray day, but he was spent and gaunt and cold. Eve was hushed--mulling

her bit softly, trembling with hatred for the Chinese.

The road ascended from the river, through a narrow gorge with rocky

walls. The river-men were woven across the way. While the tow was

yet fifteen feet from the landing, Morning gained the saddle. The

ferry-man gestured frantically that this had never been done before;

that a man’s beast properly should be led across. Morning laughed,

tightened his knees, and at an early instant loosened the bridle-rein,

for the mare to jump. The heavy tow shot back as she cleared the

fissure of stream.

Morning was now caught in the blur of events. The Chinese did not give

way for the mare, as she trotted across the boards to the rocky shore.

Up she went striking. Again he had not known Eve. The back-dive into

the Hun had not cured her. She would walk like a man and pitch back

into Hell--and do it again.... Someone knifed her from the side and she

toppled.

The fall was swift and terrible, for the trail sloped behind. Morning’s

instinct was truer than his brain, but there was no choice of way to

jump. He could not push the mare from him completely to avoid the

cliff. He was half-stunned against the wall, and not clear from the

struggle of her fall. The brain is never able to report this instant

afterward, even though consciousness is not lost. He was struck,

trampled; he felt the cold of the rock against his breast, and the burn

of a knife.

The Chinese struck at him as he rose. The mare was up, facing him, but

dragging him upward, as a dog with a bone. His left hand found the

pistol. He cleared the Chinese from him, emptying the chambers.... Eve

let him come to her. He must have gained the saddle as she swung around

in the narrow gorge to begin her run. The wind rushed coldly across

his breast and abdomen. His shirt had been cut and pulled free. It was

covered with blood. He tried to hold the mare, but either his strength

was gone or she was past feeling the bit. It was her hour. All Morning

could do was to keep the road.

He was all but knocked out. He had mounted as a fighter gets up under

the count--and fights on without exactly knowing. The mare was running

head down. He tried his strength again. The reins were rigid; she had

the bit and meant to end the game.... He loved her wild heart; mourned

for her; called her name; told her of wrongs he had done. Again and

again, the light went from him; sometimes he drooped forward to her

thin, short mane, and clung there, but the heat of her made him ill.

They came into hills, passed tiny villages. It was all strange and

terrible--a hurtling from high heaven.... Eve was like a furnace....

And now she was weaving on the road--running drunkenly, unless his eyes

betrayed.... The rushing wind was cold upon his breast. His coat was

gone; his shirt had been cut. He tried to pull the blood-soaked ends

together. At this moment the blow fell.

These Chinese had been quick-handed, and they knew where to search for

a man’s goods. He was coldly sane in an instant, for the rending of his

whole nature; then came the quick zeal for death--the intolerableness

of living an instant. The wallet--the big story--some hundreds of tales

in paper! It was the passing of these from next his body that had left

him cold.... Fury must have come to his arms. The mare lifted her head

under his sudden attack.

Yes, he could manage her now. The bloody mouth and the blind-mad head

came up to him--her front legs giving like a colt’s. Down they went

together. Morning took his fall limply, with something of supremely

organized indifference, and turned in the mud to the mare.

She was dead. The gray of pearl was in her eyes where red life had

been.... No, she raised herself forward, seemed to be searching for

him, her muzzle sickly relaxed. She could not stir behind. Holding

there for a second--John Morning forgot the big story.

Eve fell again. He crawled to her--tried to lift her head. It was heavy

as a sheet-anchor to his arms.... Her heart had broken. She had died on

her feet--the last rising was but a galvanism.... He looked up into the

gray sky where the clouds stirred sleepily. He wanted to ask something

from something there.... He could not think of what he wanted.... Oh,

yes, his book of Liaoyang.

And now his eye roved over the mare.... Her hind legs were sheeted with

fresh blood and clotted with dry.... Desperately he craned about to see

further. Entrails were protruding from a knife wound. The inner tissues

were not cut, but the opened gash had let them sag horribly. She had

run from Tawan with that wound.... He had worn her to the quick in

night; blinded her for the Hun crossing, when she would have done nobly

with eyes uncovered.... He had not been able to keep her from killing

herself.... John Morning, the horseman.... He had left a gaping wound

in the spirit of Duke Fallows.... All that he had done was failure and

loss; all that he had planned so passionately, so brutally, indeed,

that the needs and the offerings of others had not reached his heart,

because of the iron self-purpose weighed there.

Luban, Lowenkampf, Mergenthaler, even the Commander-in-chief, looked

strangely in through the darkened windows of his mind. The moral

suffocation of the grain-fields surged over him again.... He caught a

glimpse of that last moment in the ravine, but not the taking of the

wallet.... Was it just a dream that a native leaped forward to grasp

his stirrup, and that he leaned down to fire? He seemed to recall the

altered brow.

The pictures came too fast. The sky did not change. The something did

not answer.... Eve was lying in the mud. She looked darker and huddled.

He kissed her face, and as he gained his feet, the thought came

queerly that _he_ might be dead, as she was. He held the thought

of action to his limbs and made them move.

When he could think more clearly, he scorned the pain and protest of

his limbs. He would not be less than Eve. If he were not dead, he would

die straight up, and on the road to Koupangtse.

THIRTY-SIX hours after Morning left Eve, an English correspondent

at Shanhaikwan added the following to a long descriptive letter

made up of refugee tales, and the edges and hearsay of the

war-zone:

Night of Sept. 5.... An American whose name by passport is John

Morning reached here to-night on the _Chinese Eastern_, having

left Koupangtse this morning. According to his story, he was with the

Russians, now in retreat from Liaoyang, on the night of Sept. 3, only

forty-eight hours from this writing.

Morning was in an unconscious condition upon arrival. His passage

had been fourth-class for the journey, and he was packed among the

coolies and refugees on an open flat-car so crowded that all but the

desperately fatigued had room only to stand. This white man had fallen

to the floor of the car, among the bare feet of the surging Oriental

crowd, beneath their foul garments.

... He was lifted forth from the car by the Chinese--a spectacle

abjectly human, covered with filth; moreover, his body was incredibly

bruised, his left puttee legging torn by a deep knife-wound that began

at the knee, and traversed a distance of eight inches downward--the

whole was gummed and black with blood; another knife-wound in his side

was in an angry condition, and his clothing was stiffened from flow of

it.

A few _taels_ in paper and silver were found upon him; the

passport, an unopened letter addressed to himself; also a manuscript

addressed to a San Francisco paper, and to be delivered by John

Morning. The natives reported that he had reached Koupangtse an hour

before the arrival of the _Chinese Eastern_; had employed a

native to buy him fourth-class passage, paying the native also to

help him aboard. He had collapsed, however, until actually among the

Chinese on the flat-car. He had tasted neither food nor drink during

the long day’s journey, nor in Koupangtse during the wait. The natives

affirm that he crawled part of the distance up to the railway station;

and that there were no English or Americans there.

Upon reaching here, Morning was revived with stimulants, his wounds

bathed and dressed, fresh clothing provided. His extraordinary

vitality and courage indicate that he will overcome the shocks and

exhaustion of a journey hardly paralleled anywhere, if his story be

true. He asserts that he must be on his way to Tientsin to-morrow

morning--but that, of course, is impossible.... He is not in condition

to answer questions, although undoubtedly much is in his dazed and

stricken brain for which the world is at this moment waiting.

In his half-delirium, Morning seems occupied with the loss of a

certain sorrel mare. He also reports the loss of his complete story

of the battle, the preliminary fighting, the generals in character

sketch, the terrain and all, covering a period of four months up to

the moment of General Zarubaieff’s withdrawal from the city proper.

This manuscript, said to contain over a hundred thousand words done on

Chinese parchment, was in a wallet with the writer’s money, and was

cut from him in the struggle on the bank of the Liao, when the wounds

were received. His assailants were doubtless _Hun huises_.

Whatever can be said about the irrational parts of his story, the

young man appears to know the story of the battle from the Russian

standpoint. He brings the peculiar point of view that it was the

millet that defeated the Russians, although the superiority of the

Japanese in _morale_, markmanship, fluidity, is well known, etc.

... Morning lay in a decent room at the Rest House in Shanhaikwan.

There seemed an ivory finger in his brain pointing to the sea--to

Japan, to the States. So long as he was walking, riding, entrained,

all was well enough, and the rest was mere body that had to obey--but

when he stopped, the ivory finger grew hot or icy by turns; and as now,

he watched in agony for the day and the departure of the train for

Tientsin.

He would require help. Below the waist he was excruciating wreckage

that for the present would not answer his will.... They were good to

him here. The Chinese coolies had been good to him on the open car....

Lowenkampf, Fallows, good to him--so his thoughts ran--the sorrel

Eve was his own heart’s mate. He loved her running, dying, striking.

She had run until her heart broke. He could not do less. She had run

until she was past pain--he must do that--and go on after that....

Was it still in his brain--the great story? Would it clear and write

itself--the great story?

That was the question. All was well if he could get Liaoyang out in

words. He would do it all over again on the ship. Every day the ship

would be carrying him closer to the States. He was still on schedule.

He would reach America on the first possible ship after the battle of

Liaoyang--possibly, ahead of mails. On the voyage he would re-do the

book--twenty days--five thousand words a day. He might do it better.

It might come up clean out of the journey, the battle itself and the

pictures strengthened, brightened, impregnated with fresh power....

Three weeks--every moment sailing to the States--the first and fastest

ship!... The driving devil in his brain would be at rest. The big story

would clear, as he began to write. The days of labor at first would

change to days of pure instrumentation. He would drive at first--then

the task would drive him.... But he must not miss a possible day to

Japan--to Nagasaki.... He had not money for the passage to America. At

this very moment he could not get out of bed--but these two were mere

pups compared to the wolves he had met....

They found him on the floor drawing on his clothes in the morning--an

hour before the train. His wounds were bleeding, but he laughed at that.

“You see, I’ve got to make it. You’ve been very kind. I’ll heal on the

way--not here. I’ve got the big story. I’ve got to keep moving to think

it out. I can’t think here. I’ll get on--thank you.”

And he was on. That night his train stopped for ten minutes at Tongu,

the town near the Taku Forts, at the mouth of the Pei-ho.... All day

he had considered the chance of getting ship here, without going on

to Tientsin, seventy miles up-river. The larger ships lightered their

traffic from Tongu; he might catch a steamer sailing to-night for

Japan, or at least for Chifu.... It was getting dark.

The face that looked through the barred window at the Englishman in

charge of the station at Tongu unsettled the latter’s evening and many

evenings afterward.

“Is there a ship from the river-mouth to-night?”

Morning repeated his question, and perceived that the agent had dropped

his eyes to the two hands holding the ticket-shelf. Morning’s nails

were tight in the wood; he would wobble if he let go.

“Yes, there’s the little _Tungsheng_. She goes off to-night----”

“For Japan?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t carry passengers--that is--unless the Captain

gives up his quarters, and he has already done that this trip.”

“Deck passengers----”

“Sure, all carry coolies out of here--best freight we have.”

“Do you sell the tickets?”

“Who’s going?”

“My servant.... I won’t go on to Tientsin if I can get--get him on

to-night----”

“The launch and lighter are supposed to be down shortly from

Tientsin--that’s all I can say. It’s blowing a bit. She may not clear.”

“She’ll clear if any does?”

“Yes, Himmelhock has taken her out of here worse than this. You’d

better decide--I’ve got to go out now. The train’s leaving.”

Seventy miles up the river, he thought,--the wrong way if he stuck

to the train. Every mile that ivory finger would torture him. His

brain now seemed holding back an avalanche. If he chose falsely, he

would tumble down the blackness with the rocks and glaciers.... This

Englishman looked a gamester--he might help. Perhaps he wasn’t a corpse.

“I’ll stay,” he said, and the story and all his purpose wobbled and

grew black.... He mustn’t forget. He mustn’t fall.... So he stood there

holding fast to the ticket-shelf, which he could not feel--held and

held, and the train clattered, grew silent, and it was dark.

“Where’s your servant?”

Morning’s lips moved.

“Where is your servant?”

“I am my servant.”

“I can’t give a white man deck passage. It’s not only against the

rules--but against reason.”

Morning groped for his arm. “Take me into the light,” he said.

The man obeyed.

“What day is this?”

“Night of September six.”

“I left Liaoyang the night of the third. I rode a good horse to

death--along the Taitse, over the Hun and the Liao. I rode through the

_Hun huises_ twice. I was all cut up and beaten--the horse went

over backward in the Hun, and in the gut on the bank of the Liao....

I was in Liaoyang for the battle. I was there four months waiting for

the battle. They took my story--hundred thousand words--the _Hun

huises_ did, in the fight on the Liao bank. The horse killed herself

running with me ... but I’ve got it all in my head--the story. I’ll get

to the States with it before any mail--before any other man. It’s all

in my head--the whole Russian-end. I can write it again on the ship to

the States in three weeks.... I’ve got to get off to-night. You’re the

one to help me.... See these----”

Morning opened his shirt and then started to undo his legging.

“For God’s sake--don’t.... But you’ll die on the deck----”

“No, the only way to kill me would be to wall me up--so I couldn’t keep

moving.”

“I’ll go down to the river with you in a few minutes.”

And then he had John Morning sobbing on his shoulder.

THE Englishman at Tongu was a small, sallow man, with the face

of one who is used to getting the worst of it. Tongu, as a post, was no

exception from an outsider’s point of view. Morning saw this face in

odd lights during the days that followed. It came to the chamber of

images--and always he wanted to break down, and his hands went out for

the shoulder.... He remembered a pitching junk in the windy blackness

at the mouth of the Pei-ho. (He had seen the low mud-flats of the Taku

forts from here in another service.)... The _Tungsheng_ looked

little--not much bigger than the junk, and she was wooden. There was

chill and a slap of rain in the blackness.

“Hul-lo, who is dere?” The slow, juicy voice came from the door of the

pilot-house.

“Endicott. I’ve got a deck passenger----”

“Huh--dere dick as meggots alretty----”

“This is a kitchen coolie of mine--he must go. Send someone down to

make a place and take his transportation----”

The grumbling that followed was a matter of habit rather than of

effectiveness. Morning seemed to see the lower lip from which the voice

came, a thick and loppy member.... The mate came down, stepping from

shoulder to back, across the complaining natives. They were three deep

on the deck. He kicked clear a hole in the lee of the cabin.... Morning

sank in, and Endicott bent to whisper:

“Put the grub-basket between your knees and don’t take your hands

off it.... Put the blanket over it. It’s a thick, good blanket. I

could give you a better passage, but they wouldn’t take you--honest,

they wouldn’t. If they see you’re white, tell old Himmelhock you’re

Endicott’s house-coolie. He can’t do anything now.... If you live,

write and send the big story to Endicott at Tongu.”

Morning was sinking to sleep. He felt the warmth of the blanket, a

thick, rough blanket Endicott had donated. Its warmth was like the

man’s heart.... Morning’s hands went out. A coolie growled at him....

There was no worry now. It was the night of the sixth, and he was

sailing. He could do no more; the ivory finger in his brain neither

froze nor burned.... The pitching did not rouse him--nor the men

of sewers and fields--sick where they sat--woven, matted together,

trusting to the animal heat of the mass to keep from dying of exposure.

John Morning lay in the midst of them--John Morning whose body would

not die.

The days and nights rushed together....

Sometimes he wondered if he were not back at the shipping--in some

stock-car with the horses--but horses were so clean compared to

this.... When he could think, he put clean lint to his wounds. He

scorned pain, for he was on his way; and much was merciful coma.

There was rain, deluges; and though the air rose heavy as amber

afterward, the freshness at the time was salvation. He learned as it

is probable no other American ever learned, what it means to live in

the muck of men. All one at the beginning and at the ending, it is

marvelous how men separate their lives in the interval--how little they

know of one another, and how easily foolish noses turn up. Here was a

man alive--dreaming of the baths he had missed, of Japanese Inn baths

most of all.

“Who am I?” he asked.... “John Morning,” would whip back to him from

somewhere. “And who in hell is John Morning to revolt at the sufferings

of other men?”

He had seen the coolies in the steerage of many ships--even these

massed deck passages of the Yellow and China Seas and the Coasting

trade. He had looked at them before as one looks into a cage

of animals. Now he was one of those who looked out, one of the

_slumees_. Once he asked, “Is this the bottom of the human drain,

and if not--must I sink to it?”

The Chinese did steal his food that first night, but fed him

occasionally from their own stock. Finding him white, they fouled him,

but kept him warm.... The _Tungsheng_ ran into Chifu harbor to

avoid a storm, and a full day was lost. John Morning had no philosophy

then--a hell-minded male full of sickness--not good to view, even

through the bars of a cage. But at best to sit five hours, where he sat

more than five days and nights, would condemn the mind of any white man

or woman to chaos, or else restore it to the fine sanity of Brotherhood.

And then the day when the breeze turned warm and the Islands were

green!... Coolies were men that hour, men with eyes that melted to

ineffable softness. It was like Jesus coming toward them on the

sea--the green hills of Japan. Their hearts broke with emotion; they

wept and loved one another--this mass all molten and integrated into

one. It was like the Savior coming to meet them through the warm bright

air. He would make them clean; their eyes would follow Him always....

Morning was not the only one who had to be carried ashore at

Shimoneseki, after the quarantine officer had finished with the herd.

His passport saved him. “I had to come. It was the first ship out

of Tongu. Deck passage was the only way they would take me,” was

the simple story. He was fevered, but strangely subdued that day.

Himmelhock was at the door of the pilot-house, when Morning looked up

from the shore a last time, and his native sailors, bare to the thigh,

were sluicing the decks.

The bath was heaven. He was able to walk afterward. The officials

burned his clothing, but made it possible for him to buy a few light

things. The wound in his leg was healing; the bruises fading away. The

wound in his side did not heal; it was angry as a feline mouth.

He had bandages, but no stockings; clean canvas clothing, but no

underwear.... He found that he had to wait before answering when anyone

spoke; and then he was not quite sure if he had answered, and would

try again--until they stopped him. Somewhere long ago there was a

parrot whose eyes were rimmed--with red-brown, and of stony opaqueness.

He couldn’t recall where the parrot was, but it had something to do

with him when he was little, almost beyond memory. His eyes now felt

just as the parrot’s had looked.

It was a night run back to Nagasaki by rail--his thought was of ships,

ships, ships. He could stand off from the world and see the ships--all

the lines of tossing, steaming ships. Then he would go down to the deck

of one--and below and aft where Asiatics were crowded together. To the

darkest and thickest place among them he would go, and there lie and

rest until the finger in his brain roused him. Then he would find that

the train had stopped. It was the halt that awakened him.

There were two ships, all but ready to clear for the States, lying

in the harbor of Nagasaki that morning. The first was the liner

_Coptic_, but she had to go north first, a day at Kobe, and

two days at Yokohama, before taking the long southeastern slide to

Honolulu. She was faster than the American transport, _Sickles_

(with a light load of sick and insane from the Islands), but the latter

was clearing for Honolulu at sundown and would reach San Francisco at

least one day earlier than the liner. Moreover, the _Coptic_ would

have recent mails; the _Sickles_ would beat the mails.

Money was waiting for him at Tokyo, less than an hour’s journey from

Yokohama; he would have good care and a comfortable passage home on the

old liner, but his brain burned at the thought. Four days north--not

homeward.... The _Sickles_ was clipper-built--she was white and

clean-lined, lying out in the harbor, in the midst of black collier

babies. She was off for Home to-night. He had traveled home once before

on a transport. He was American and she--the flag was there, run

together a bit in the vivid light, but the flag was there! And to-night

he would be at sea--pulling himself together for the big story, alone

with the big story--the ship never stopping--unless they stopped in

ocean to drop the dead....

The actual cost of the transport passage is very little, merely a

computation for food and berth; the difficulty is to obtain the

permit. As it was, he had not enough money, barely enough to get up

to Yokohama, second class on the _Coptic_; and yet, this hardly

entered. It was like a home city, this American ship, to one who had

been in the alien heart of the Chinese country so long. He would know

someone, and a telegram from ’Frisco would bring money to him. He had a

mighty reliance from the big story.

The U. S. quartermaster at Nagasaki was a tired old man. He advised

Morning to cable to Manila for permission. Morning did not say that

he lacked money for this, but repeated his wish to go. The old man

thought a minute and then referred him to Ferry, the _Sickles_

quartermaster. He had been doing this for thirty years, referring

others to others so that all matters merely struck and glanced from

him. Thus he kept an open mind. Morning wanted something to take

from this office to Ferry of the _Sickles_. The resistance he

encountered heated him. The smell of the deck-passage was in his

nostrils; it seemed in his veins, and made him afraid that others

caught the taint. The old quartermaster did not help him. Morning could

hear his own voice, but could not hold in mind what he said.... The

officer did not seem to be interested in Liaoyang. This disturbed him.

It made him ask if he had not gone mad after all--if he could be wrong

on this main trend, that he had something the world wanted.

He took a _sampan_ at the harbor-front and went aboard the

transport. Ferry, the _Sickles_ quartermaster, was a tall, lean

man with a shut smile that drooped. The face was a pinched and

diminished Mergenthaler, and brought out the clouds and the manias of

Morning’s mind.

Were all quartermasters the same? What had become of men? Had the world

lost interest in monster heroisms? Ferry did not help him--on the

contrary, stood looking down with the insolence of superior inches.

Morning found himself telling about the sorrel mare. That would not do.

He returned to the main fact that he had the big story and must get

across the Pacific with it.

“I can’t take you----”

Morning heard it, but couldn’t believe. He tried to tell about

the _Hun huises_ and the loss of the manuscript, the walk to

Koupangtse----

“Really--it’s no affair of mine. I can’t take you on.... The

_Coptic_ is sailing----”

And just now Mr. Reever Kennard appeared on the deck. The summer had

added portliness. He was in flannels--a spectacle for children and

animals.... The insignificance of all about was quickened when Mr.

Reever Kennard appeared. The decks were less white, sailors, soldiers

more enlisted. John Morning became an integer of the _Tungsheng’s_

deck-passage again, and the lining of his nostrils retained the reek of

it.

“How do you do, Mr. Kennard?” he said. His back was different. He felt

a leniency there, very new or very ancient, as he turned to Ferry,

adding: “This gentleman knows me. We parted in Tokyo this Spring, when

I went over with the Russians. I met him long ago in the Philippine

service. He will tell you----”

Ferry’s face grew suddenly saturnine, his eyes held in the glance of

the famous correspondent’s.

“You’ll please count it closed--I can’t take you.”

Morning now turned to Kennard, who was sealing with his tongue a little

flap of cigar-wrapper which may have prevented the perfect draught.

Morning bowed and moved aft, where the dust of the coaling was thick,

and the scores of natives, women and men, who handled the baskets, were

a distraction which kept the reality from stifling him. Presently he

went ashore and it was noon.... He could not understand Kennard; could

not believe in an American doing what Ferry had done, to a man who had

the big story of Liaoyang. It was some hideous mistake; he had not been

able to make himself understood.

The _Sickles_ launch was leaving the pier at two. Morning was

there and took a seat. He was holding himself--the avalanche again--and

rehearsing in his mind what he should say to Ferry. His brain was

afire; the wound in his side had scalded him so long that his voice had

a whimper in it. He had not eaten--the thought was repulsive--but he

had bought drink in the thought of clearing his brain and deadening his

hurt....

His brain was clearer on the launch, but the gin fumed out of him as he

approached the upper deck, where Ferry’s quarters were.

The Quartermaster saw him, but was speaking to an infantry captain.

Morning waited by the rail. Many times he thought--if he could only

begin to speak _now_. Yet he feared in his heart when Ferry

turned to him, he would fail. It was something little and testy in the

man--something so different from what he had known in the great strains

of Liaoyang--except for Luban. Yes, Ferry was like Luban, when Luban

was in the presence of a fancied inferior.... They talked on--Morning

thought of murder at last. A peculiar wiry strength gathered about the

idea of murder in its connection with Ferry’s dark, mean face. He felt

all the old strength in his hands, and more from days of pain--days of

holding one’s self--will, body, brain.

“Well----” Ferry had turned to him suddenly.

Morning’s thoughts winged away with a swarm of details of the

crime.... “I could tell you something of the Story--I could show you

how they cut me on the Liao--the _Hun huises_----”

“If you come to this deck again--I’ll send you ashore in irons.”

At four that afternoon Morning saw the _Coptic_ draw up her chains

and slide out of the harbor, with the swift ease of a river-ferry....

He could not count himself whipped on the _Sickles_--and this is

the real beginning of John Morning. He was Fate-driven. The man who

did not have the courage to ask his rights in Tokyo--to inquire the

reason of his disbarment, was not through with the American transport

_Sickles_. A full day ahead of the mails in San Francisco--and he

was waiting for the dusk. The fight had been brought to him. He was

dull to the idea of being whipped.

Three enlisted men were drinking in the little apothecary shop which

Morning had used for the day’s headquarters. They belonged to the

_Sickles_. They had been taking just one more drink for many

minutes. He told them he was sailing on the transport and joined

them in a _sampan_ to the ship when it was dark. The harbor was

still as a dream; the dark blending with the water.... They touched

the bellying white plates of the ship. Morning seemed to come up from

infinite depths.... The men were very drunk; they had ordered rapidly

toward the end; the effect caught up as swiftly now. They helped

each other officiously. Morning put on the fallen hat of one who had

become unconscious.... The watch was of them, a corporal, who was

no trouble-maker. He blustered profusely and hurried them below....

Morning was bewildered. He had spoken no word, but helped the others

carry the body, a wobbly deputation, down among the hammocks.... He

heard the voices of those maimed in mind.... He placed his end of the

soldier’s body down, left his companions, and made his way forward, to

where the hammocks were farther apart. Early years had given him a

sort of enlisted man’s consciousness of things; and he knew now not to

take another’s place. He chose one from a pile of hammocks and slung

it forward, close to the bulk-head of the bedlam, and well out of the

lights.... He lay across his only baggage, a package containing a

thousand sheets of Chinese parchment. He lay rigid, trying to remember

if out-going ships took a pilot out of Nagasaki.

He heard the anchor-chain. He was very close to it. The voices of the

sun-struck and vino-maddened men from the Islands were deadened by the

hideous grating of the links in the socket.... It was not too late for

him to be put ashore even now; since it was war-time. Of course there

would be a pilot, for the harbor was mined.... He drew the canvas about

his ears, but the voices of the brain-dead men reached him.... Cats,

pirates, and river-reptiles terrified them; one man was still lost in

a jungle set with bolo-traps; the emptiness of others was filled by

strange abominations glad of the flesh again.

HE had been listening to Duke Fallows for a long time--Duke’s

voice blended with war and storm and a woman’s laugh.... Then he

reverted to the idea of murdering Ferry. Finally someone said:

“He’s a new one from Nagasaki. He’s got the fevers----”

And then:

“Who in hell is he?”

They began to ask questions. Morning answered nothing. Day had come.

He heard the throb of the engines, felt the swell of the sea, but the

strength of yesterday’s concentration was still upon him. It had built

a wall around him, holding the life of his mind there; as a life of low

desires imprisons the spirit to its own vile region after death.... He

did not speak, but looked from face to face for Ferry.

They ceased to expect an answer from him.... A young doctor appeared.

His eyes rolled queerly; his cheek folded over his mouth, as if he were

beyond words from drink, and tremendously pleased with his prowess.

They called him Nevin. He prepared himself profoundly for speech.

Morning now realized the nimbleness of Nevin’s hands, unwinding the

filthy bandages. Presently, the Doctor straightened up, passed his hand

over his brow, tongued the other cheek, and after a sweating suspense

ordered:

“Take him to the hospital.”

A white room.... The Doctor came again. They took his clothing and

bathed him.... He heard and smelled the sea through an open port ...

glad, but utterly weary ... waiting for Ferry.

“My God--not only cut, but trampled----” a voice said.

Morning felt if he were alone with Nevin he could have said

something.... The Doctor looked like a jockey he had once known. It

wasn’t that, however, that gave him heart, but the quick, gentle

hands.... More and more as he watched the dusty face with its ineffable

gravity, he saw bright humanity burning like a forge-fire behind the

mask. This brought tears to his own eyes. Nevin, seeing them, became

altogether nervous to look at, seemed to have a walnut in his mouth.

And now John Morning felt himself breaking--he was brittle, hard like

glass--and his last idea concerned the package of Chinese parchment

which they had not brought from the hammock.... Six days afterward he

asked for it.

For a short while each day, during the interval, he just touched

the main idea and sank back to sleep. He suffered very little. The

after-effects of his journey from Liaoyang tried to murder him in

various ways, but relaxation, nourishment, good air and care worked as

a sort of continuous anæsthesia. On this sixth day the Doctor appeared

to ignore his question about the package of paper, but leaned forward,

glanced to the right and left, as if to communicate a plan to scuttle

the ship, and said:

“You’re one more little man. You’ve had a new one each day--pneumonia,

sclerosis, brain-fever.... My hospital report on your case will drive

the Major-Surgeon into permanent retirement.... What did you say was

the matter to-day--Chinese parchment?”

“I’ve got so much to do, Doctor?... What day is this?”

“Morning of the nineteenth.”

The color swept into Morning’s face, terror into his eyes.

“I didn’t think it was so bad as that--I can’t lay up any more--twelve

days left.... Two weeks and two days since I rode out of Liaoyang----”

“I’ll have to let ’em put you in the forward hutch--if you begin to

talk Liaoyang, now that your fever’s down. There wasn’t any Americans

in that fighting----”

“I’m not a soldier----”

Nevin wrung his hands. A thought recurred to Morning.

“There was a couple of letters in my clothes--one addressed to a paper

in ’Frisco, and one to me.”

The other was curious enough to send an orderly to search.

“Have him bring the package of paper, too,” Morning said. When all was

brought in good order, he added: “This letter to me I’ll read later.

The larger package is Duke Fallows’ first hurried story of the battle

of Liaoyang. I won’t read that either, because I’ve got to do one of

my own. I did one, you know--ten times as long as this--but the _Hun

huises_ got it on the Liao-crossing, from Tawan--that’s where I got

cut up. Morning of the fourth, it was.... The sorrel mare did fifteen

miles with her guts sticking out, and I walked thirty to Koupangtse,

with these wounds and smashed from a couple of falls--before the

morning of the fifth.... You can look at Duke Fallows’ story, Doctor,

and I’ll take a little doze----”

Fallows’ battle was done clearly as a football game, and as briskly,

to the withdrawal of the Russian lines upon the inner positions of the

city and the flanking movement of Kuroki. A dramatic pause then to

survey the Russian force on the eve of disaster, from which the reader

drew the big moral sickness. After that Lowenkampf, the millet and the

Ploughman. In quite a remarkable way Fallows turned the reader now from

the mass to the individual. In a little trampled place in the grain the

battle was lost by the Russians and won by Japan.... The Doctor was

interrupted several times, but no force was missed. It was a new voice

to him. He wondered if Fallows would make the world hear it. It seemed

to compel a reckoning.

The Fallows story laughed all the way. One did not have to look twice

at a sentence to understand, yet two readings did not wear it out, nor

would it leave one alone. All the time the Doctor read, matters he had

heard in delirium from the lips of John Morning came back.

Nevin remembered the tears on the first morning, the choke in his own

throat; the first sight of the wounds, the queer, extra zeal he had put

into this case. Finally he could hardly wait to learn the rest--chiefly

how John Morning had happened to be lying in the darkest end of the

hammock-hole, over against the insane compartment.... Yet he did not

wake up his patient. When Morning finally opened his eyes, it was time

for nourishment. Nevin brought a glass of extra wine before inquiring.

“First, tell me--has Ferry seen me?”

“Captain Ferry, the quartermaster?”

“Yes.”

“I’d rather think not. He’s about occasionally--but his truck with the

sick men is mostly transportation and nourishment----”

“The second time I came to ask him to take me across that

afternoon--the second time,” Morning said slowly, “he told me that if

I appeared on his deck again he’d send me ashore in irons. You see the

_Sickles_ is to beat the _Coptic_ in. I had to come. Why, the

mails couldn’t beat me through from Liaoyang.... I finally got aboard

with some soldiers--but I would have leeched to the anchor.... And,

say, I think I knew you that morning. It seemed as if I could let go

when I felt your hands----”

The two were quiet. The Doctor looked obliquely at an open port with

one eye shut, as if he were not sure of the count....

Accompanying the manuscript was a letter to Noyes, editor of _Western

States_, which chiefly concerned John Morning. Many brave things

were said.... Nevin, deeply stirred with the whole business, saw

the Ploughman coming forth from the millet--saw the Ploughman

going home. That little drama so dear to Fallows’ heart _was_

greater than Liaoyang. Nevin saw that such things are deathless....

Deathless--that’s the word. They look little at the time in the midst

of thunder and carnage; but the thunder dies away and the rains come

and clean the stains--and the spirit of it all lives in one deed or in

one sentence. A woman nurses the sick at Scutari, and the Crimean war

is known for the angel of its battlefield, by the many who do not know

who fought, nor what for.... Nevin felt the big forces throbbing in the

world--the work of the world. It had come to him distantly before. It

had pulled him out of the comfort and ease of his home town to serve

the sick at sea and in the Islands.

The mystery of service. He had never dared tell anyone. His voice broke

so easily. He had covered the weakness in leers and impediments, so the

world would not see. He had talked of his rights and his wages, the

dusty-faced little man. Mystery of Service--and men were ashamed when

it touched them.

But Fallows, laughing and so powerful, this boy’s man-friend, wasn’t

afraid. Was the boy afraid? What had driven him? Did the boy know what

had driven him? What, in God’s name, had driven this human engine that

would not stop--that threw off poisons and readjusted itself against

the individual and collective organizations of death?

Nevin was shaken by the whole story--it girded, girdled him.... Let

Ferry come. Ferry was one of those bleak despoilers of human effort,

whose presence consumed the reality in another. What was Ferry anyway

and Ferry’s sort--a spoiled child or an ancient decadent principle? Was

it merely a child-soul with a universe ahead, or was he very old and

very ill--incorrigible self-love on its road back to nothing?... But

the Ploughman lived, Fallows lived, the boy Morning lived--their work

was marching on.

The Doctor did not speak, because his voice would break. He went about

his work instead--swift magnetic hands.... At least, he could stand

between Morning and the quartermaster--if there were need.

When he came back Morning was at work, a hard bright look of tension

about him, and a line of white under the strange young beard....

“I think I can get it going now. I think it is beginning to come

again,” he said in a hushed tone. The Doctor arranged the pillows

better, sharpened an extra pencil and went out.

“I may have to do those first pages again,” he said an hour later.

“It’s hard to get out of the hospital--you know, what I mean--a man’s

bath is so important to one lying-up that it shuts out a battle-line.

What a fool a sick man is. But I’ll get it----”

He fell asleep in the dusk before the candles came. The Doctor found

him cool, his breathing normal.... The next day Morning worked until

Nevin remonstrated.

“You’ll die, if you go on----”

“I’ll die, if I don’t,” said Morning. The Doctor knew in his heart

that it was true. Still they compromised. That night, as Morning

dropped down into an abyss of exhaustion, he mumbled the whole story of

Eve--the sorrel mare. “She rose to her feet--white death in her eyes,”

he finished....

Nothing attracts the eye on ship-board like a man at work. All idle

ones are caught in the current and come to pay their devoirs to the

man mastered by a strong task.... The Doctor had Morning taken to an

extra berth in his own state-room. The door had a spring lock, for many

medicines and stores were there. Ferry was not likely to happen in

the Doctor’s quarters. The latter even doubted if he would recognize

Morning. He came and went, as the task drove on. Once Morning stopped

to tell him about the deck passage on the _Tungsheng_, and

another time about his brush with the _Hun huises_ in the ravine

across the river from Tawan.... The Doctor saw that Morning had made

a wonderful instrument of himself; he studied how the passion of an

artist works on the body of man. The other found that so long as he ate

regularly and fell asleep without a struggle--he was allowed to go on.

The _Sickles_ was swinging down into the warmth. The sick man had

a bad day, lying in the harbor at Honolulu.

“It isn’t the work, Doctor--it’s the ship’s stopping,” Morning said,

squirming in the berth. “It makes my head hot. I see steamy and all

that. I had it when the _Tungsheng_ lay up for a day in Chifu

on account of the blow.... I had it that day in Nagasski when Ferry

wouldn’t take me on. I’ll be all right to-night.... Give me a little

touch of that gin and lime juice----”

“Just lime juice when heads get hot.... You’re a clever little

drunkard. I’ve been wondering how far you’d go.... Yes, we’ll clear

to-night.... Ferry’s ashore. Come out and see the black boys dive for

pennies.”

* * * * *

“There’s something doing with this knife-wound--it doesn’t heal,” the

Doctor said, mid-way between the Islands and the Farallonnes. “The

leg’s all right. Organs and all the little organs seem to thrive on

work. That is, they’re no worse. The leg heals--but this one--you seem

to have established a permanent drain----”

“Fifty pages yesterday--two hundred words a page,” Morning muttered.

“Yes--and the day before--and to-morrow--and the night we left

Honolulu.... If a man worked that way for money, he’d be as dead as

Ferry inside of a month.... Have you read your friend Fallows’ story

yet?”

“No, I don’t dare--a sick man isn’t all himself. And _this_ story

is me. It’s got to be me. It’s better in places than the other, the

one I lost.... I haven’t read Duke’s letter to me yet. He’s strong

medicine. He keeps coming back to me, as it is. I want to get off alone

when the work is done and think. You can’t see him all, when he’s in a

room with you.... He was like you, in being a friend to me.... Yet, I

seem to know you better. You’ve helped me so. I’m pretty happy the way

the story is coming----”

“See how long you can go without a drink to-day.”

“It starts me off, you see. It doesn’t seem to touch me--just steams

right off with the work----”

“That’s rotten sophistry. I’m watching you----”

Nevin had never seen a body so driven by will. Morning appeared no

worse; certainly he was no better; his brain was in absolute abeyance;

his will crashed through clouds of enervation and irresolution. There

were times when Nevin believed Morning would collapse, when he was

finished with Liaoyang, but he was not so sure now. He was sure,

however, that he must not interfere except in extremity.... This was

part of the big work. Somehow he trusted in Duke Fallows--who had

allowed the boy to write the detailed battle-end, and gone back to

Europe to feed the babes of the Ploughman. That last made him want to

doctor the whole world....

Morning had done the story and re-written the lead. The _Sickles_

would enter the Gate at daylight.

“There’s seventy-five or eighty thousand words of it. It’s good--unless

I’m crazy. It’s good, unless this is all a dream. God, I’m thirsty.”

With the work done for the day, however, he asked for lime juice and

water. His temperature was less than two points above normal; nothing

had broken; yet the voyage had not replenished Morning’s body. He could

hardly stand.

“To-night I’ll read the Fallows’ stuff--and the letters.... Doctor, can

you get me ashore early?”

“Think a minute--you don’t know what you ask----”

“Quarantine----”

Nevin nodded. “There’s extra attention to a ship like this--they’ll

have to see that running wound of yours for instance----”

“Not if you don’t report it----”

The Doctor’s lower jaw reached down, and to the right, finding the

walnut. “You wouldn’t even read Duke Fallows’ story before you wrote

yours. A man can’t lie in his own work----”

“You’ve been so good,” Morning said huskily. “I begin to expect

miracles----”

“You can get messages--telegrams, letters--ashore.... And then it may

only take a couple of hours. There isn’t any contagion here that I know

of.”

Morning first read Fallows’ letter to Noyes, editor _Western

States_. It told of the story accompanying--but more of the bearer.

Laughing, loving-hearted, eloquent--Fallows was all through it, and

fine gifts of the man’s thinking. There was suggestion to Noyes to use

Morning’s story and get it across simultaneously in New York. “The boy

has never yet, so far as I can see, found time to arrange a decent

payment for his work. Please observe that unless some one, equally as

capable, gets into Port Arthur, Morning’s story will be the biggest

feature of the war in a newspaper way. I’m going on to Europe on the

Ploughman story. Let Morning do the big battle--I’ll begin to crackle

later.”

And then Morning read the story.... His voice trailed up finally from

the shadows of lower berth. “It’s good,” he said to the Doctor after

midnight.

“It’s dam’ good. It’s better than mine.... He was alive with it--I

mean with the _Ploughman_. It’s the way he did it. He tried to

get it across before we separated. He told me from every angle--told

Lowenkampf--told them all at the station at Yentai. None of us could

see.... He was crazed about it--that we couldn’t see. We were all

choked with blood and death that night. He said Kuropatkin and the

others would see that the Ploughman was right--if they had a sense

of humor. Such density to humor, he called the sin against the Holy

Ghost----”

After they had talked many minutes, Morning broke the seal to his own

letter and learned why he had been barred from the earlier Japanese

armies.

THE fineness of Fallows, of Nevin, of Endicott, the station-agent

at Tongu, the risen humanity of the Ploughman--Morning’s soul to

sense these men was empty within him. All that he knew was

blood and blow and force and mass and hate. He lay panting and

possessed. As he had plotted in delirium how to kill Ferry, dwelling

upon the process and the death; so Reever Kennard came in now for a

hatred as perfect and destructive. The letter had called up something

of the same force which had driven John Morning from Liaoyang, over or

through every barrier to the present hour in which the _Sickles_

lay off the entrance of the Golden Gate waiting for dawn, thirty-six

hours ahead of the _Coptic_.

His work was diminished in his own mind; the value of his story was

lost, the zest to market it, the sense of the world’s waiting. He was

a thief in the eyes of men. A man cannot steal. They believed him a

thief.... He thought of moving about the halls of the _Imperial_

that day--of his thoughts as he had watched from the window in the

billiard-room while the picture was taken. He had been tranced in

terror.... Had he but known, he would have made a hell in that house.

He saw Reever Kennard again on the deck of the _Sickles_--his

turning to Kennard for help--unparalleled shame.... The thing he

desired with such terrible zeal now was enacted in his brain. That

hour on the deck of the _Sickles_ was repeated, but this time he

knew what Kennard had done. He called him to the lie in imagination.

The jowl was heavy with scorn and the small slow eyes were bright with

fear--yet they took nothing back and Morning moved closer and closer

demanding, until the devil broke from him, and his knotted hand sank

into the soft center of the man. He watched the writhing of that clean

flanneled liar, watched him arise. The hand sank once more ... the

vile play romping through his mind again and again--hideous fighting

of a man brought up among stable and race-track and freight-route

ruffians--the fighting that feels no pain and only a knockout can

stop....

“Wow--it’s hot as hell in here,” came from Nevin in the upper bunk.

A little before dawn, utterly ravaged by the poison of his thinking,

Morning was struck by the big idea. He turned on the light, steadied

himself to paper and pencil and wrote to Noyes of the _Western

States_:

Inclosed find (I) Duke Fallows’ first story of Liaoyang; (II)

his letter to you, containing among other things information

concerning the bearer; (III) the first ten thousand words of my

eighty-thousand-word story of the battle fought a month ago to an

hour--including sketches of Kuropatkin, and others, covering exactly

terrain, the entire position, strategy, and finally the cause of

the Russian disaster, with word-picture of the retreat, done on

the day when it was at its height. The writer left the field and

made the journey to Koupangtse alone, nearly one hundred miles to

the railroad. This is the only American eye-witness story besides

Fallows’. The mails of the second-hand reports will not reach here

before the arrival of the _Coptic_.... I will sell this story

to the _Western States_ on condition that it appear in the

_World-News_, New York, simultaneously--the story to be run in

not less than seven installments, beginning by telegraph to-morrow. I

insist on the _World-News_, but have no objection to the general

syndicating of the story by the _Western States_, my price for

the American newspaper rights being $1,800 and transportation to New

York.

“In God’s name, are you doing another book?” Nevin demanded, letting

himself down from the berth. “What’s the matter--you’re on fire?”

Morning was counting off the large first installment of his manuscript.

He placed it upon the table, with the Fallows’ story and the two

letters to Noyes.... Then he put an empty water-pitcher on it,

restoring the balance of his story to its place under his pillow.

“Listen” he said, clutching Nevin’s arm, “here’s the whole thing--if

I’m sick to-morrow. Give it to the reporter from the _Western

States_--make him see it is life-blood. Make him rush with it to

Noyes. It’s the whole business.... He’ll get it--before the quarantine

is lifted, if you--oh, if you can! It’s all there.... You do this for

me?”

“And where will you be all this time----”

“Oh, Nevin--Nevin--for God’s sake put me to sleep! I’m full of burning

and devils! Fill up that needle business and put me to sleep!... I

can’t wait to get across in the New York _World-News_. That’s

Reever Kennard’s own paper.”

THE voices sounded far and muted--voices one might hear when

swimming under water. It was easier for him to stay down than rise and

answer. He seemed carried in the strong flow of a river, and preserved

a consciousness, very vague, that it meant death to go down with the

stream. At last, opening his eyes, he saw the city over the pier-sheds.

The rest of the manuscript was still under the pillow, but the

water-pitcher rested upon the bare wood of the table. It was after

twelve. His deadly fury had burned itself out. The thought of the

_World-News_ taking the story, steadied his weakness. It was much

harder to dress than usual, however. He had no shore clothes, but Nevin

would see to that for him. With a glad thrill, he realized that the

_Sickles_ had passed the quarantine, or she wouldn’t be in the

slip. His mind turned to Nevin again, and when he was thinking about

this deep-rooted habit the voyage had inculcated, the Doctor himself

entered.

“Well, you gave me a night.”

“You’ll have some rest now.”

“I’ve brought some clothes for you to go ashore with.... The _Western

States_ got your story two hours ago. Ferry has gone ashore.”

“Did the reporter take it here--or from across the harbor in

quarantine?”

“He was waiting with others--for us to be turned loose. I gave him the

stuff as we were putting about. He didn’t come aboard, I saw his launch

reach landing. I told him to put the stuff into the hands of Noyes and

to hurry back. All of which he did----”

“Why to hurry back?”

The little man’s mouth gave way to strange twistings, and he answered

grudgingly, “Well, I had a story to give him.”

Morning took a room at the Armory, refusing a loan from the Doctor.

“I’ll have it shortly--plenty, I think. I’ll lie up there until I hear

from Noyes. I may hurry East----”

The process was not clear exactly, but the old story of _Mio

Amigo_ had given him a terror of borrowing. The Armory was nearby.

It was clean and cheap. This little decision of choosing the Armory, a

result of _Mio Amigo_, too, is the most important so far.... The

Doctor went with him. The two were hushed and sick with things to say.

Nevin felt he was losing the throb of great service; that he could not

hold it all after this power-house of a man went his way. It was not

only Morning, but Morning was attached to the large, quiet doings and

seeings of the stranger named Duke Fallows.

Morning loved the Doctor. Nevin did not tower; Nevin was instantly in

his comprehension. Their throats tightened.... Nevin saw him to the

light little room, and said as he was leaving:

“I’ve been all over Chinatown, looking up a formula for that wound that

won’t heal. It’s this--full directions inclosed. You’ll have to get

settled before you try it out.”

He disappeared saying he would be back. Morning put the envelope in

a wallet, which he had carried afield.... It was not yet two in the

afternoon. There was a timorous rap at the door. Morning’s head dropped

over drowsily. The door opened just a little and a voice said:

“Is there a sick American soldier in here?”

It was low and timorous like the tapping, but there was a laugh in it,

and something that drove the wildness out of his heart.

“Yes,” he said.

“And may I come in?”

“Yes.”

She was slight and young and pale. She passed between the window and

his eyes. Her brown hair seemed half-transparent. The day was bright,

but not yellow; its soft gray luster was exactly the woman’s tone.

There was a curious unreality about the whole figure. The light in

her eyes was like the light in the window; gray eyes and very deep.

So quietly, she came, and the day was quiet, the house--a queer hush

everywhere.

“There are a few of us who meet the transports--and call on the sick

soldiers. We talk to them--write letters or telegrams. Sometimes they

are very glad. All we want is to help. I haven’t tried many times

before----”

Someone had told him once of a woman in London, who met the human

drift in from the far tides of chance--and made their passing or their

healing dear as heaven. He had always kept the picture. He scarcely

heard all that this young woman was saying.

She was not beautiful, not even pretty. You would see her last in a

room full of women. Under her eyes--he could not tell just where--there

was a line or shadow of strange charm; and where the corner of her

eye-lids folded into the temple a delicate perfection lived; her frail

back had a line of beauty--again, he could not describe this. The

straightness of the figure was that of lightness, of aspiration....

Sometimes she seemed just a girl. Her underlip pursed a little; it was

not red.... She seemed waiting with the lightness of a thistle--waiting

and listening in the lull before a wind.

“My name is Betty Berry.”

“Mine is John Morning.”

She told him that she was a musician, and that San Francisco was her

home, although she was much away. He saw her with something that Duke

Fallows had given him. The hush deepened with the thought. Had he taken

from that tired breast a certain age and clear-eyedness and judgment

of the ways of love-women? There might have been reality in this;

certainly there was reality in his not having seen a white girl in many

months. He was changed; his work done for the moment; he was very tired

and hungry for something she brought.... “Betty Berry.”

He _was_ changed. This Western world was new to him. He seemed

old to the East--old, much-traveled, and very weary; here was faith

and tenderness and reality. Duke Fallows’ city--Duke had strangely

intrenched himself here; and this wraith of an angel who came to him

ministering!... Malice and ambition--reprisal and murder were gone.

What a dirty little man he had been--how rotten with self, how furious

and unspeakable. Why had he not seen it? Why had he rejected Duke

Fallows with his brain and accepted him with his soul? The soul--what

queer place in a man is this? Duke Fallows, Lowenkampf--were in and

out, and Nevin, even the Ploughman now; and this little gray hushed

spirit of a girl had come straight to his soul. Why could one not

always feel these Presences? Would such destroying and malignant hatred

return as that for Reever Kennard last night? Was it because he had

been so passionate for self--that until now, (when he was resting and

she came), decency, delight, nor vision had been able to break through

the deadly self-turned currents?... This was like his finer self coming

into the room.

“How did you know that boys coming home--need to see you?” he asked.

He had to be very careful and arrange what he meant to say briskly and

short. Most of his thoughts would not do at all to speak.

“Women know. So many boys come home--like those on the _Sickles_

whom one is not allowed to see. I have watched them going out, too.

They don’t know why they go. They don’t expect to find a new country,

and yet it seems as if they must go and look. And many come home so

numbed with loneliness that they have forgotten what they need.”

“Then women know what boys--men are?”

She smiled, and seemed listening--her lips pursed, her eyes like a

cloudy dawn, turned from him slightly. What did she hear continually

that did not come to him?

“I mean the men,” he added, “whom the world calls its bravest--the

gaunt explorers and fighters--do women know what boys they are?”

“I don’t know those whom the world calls its bravest.”

“I think I needed to have you come,” he said, “but I didn’t know it.”

The hush was in the room again. Morning felt like a little boy--and as

if she were a child with braids behind. They felt wonderful things, but

could only talk sillinesses.... There was something different about her

every time he looked. It seemed if she were gone; he could not summon

her face to mind. He did not understand it then.

It had grown quite a little darker before they noticed. The far rumble

of thunder finally made them see a storm gathering.

“You won’t go until it’s over?”

“It might be better for me to go now--before it begins.”

“Do you live far?”

“Yes.”

“Then stay--please.”

She drew her chair closer. They tried to tell each other of what they

had been, but this didn’t prosper. The peculiar thing was that their

history seemed to begin from now--all was far and unimportant but

this. Morning, moreover, did not mean to spoil the primary idea in her

mind of his being an American soldier; though all his recent history

impinged upon the one fact that he wasn’t.... He tried to hold her face

in his mind with shut eyes, but it was a forced and unfair picture when

mentally dragged there.... The thunder increased and the rain.

“Once when I was little,” she said, “I was alone in the house when a

storm came, and I was so frightened that day--that I never could be

since, in just the same way.”

Perfect revelation. Something in him wished she were pretty. She was

such a shy and shadowy creature. He called to mind the girls he had

known--coarse and tawdry lot, poor things. Betty Berry was all that

they were not; yet some of them were prettier. He could see their faces

quite distinctly, and this startled him, because shutting his eyes from

full gaze at this girl, he could not see her twice the same.... The

weather cleared. They were together in silence for moments at a time.

She became more and more like a wraith when the natural dusk thickened.

“Was it hard for you to knock and speak--that first moment?”

“Yes.”

“Do--do any of the soldiers ever misunderstand?”

“No----”

“That’s fine of them,” he granted.

“They couldn’t when one has no thought, only to be kind to them----”

“You think they see that at once?”

“They must.”

“A man doesn’t know all about soldiers simply because he ‘soldiers’

with them,” Morning said.

“And then----”

“Yes----”

“They look at me and it’s very plain that I come just to be good to

them.... They think of me in the same way as a Salvation Army lassie or

a missionary----”

“Now, that’s queer,” said he. “It didn’t occur to me at all. It would

never come to me to ask you to leave a tract.”

“And I didn’t feel like a missionary, either.... Now it’s all cleared

again. I must go.”

There was a pang.... Where was Nevin? Why had Noyes or someone from

the _Western States_ not come to him? Coming back to these things

pained.... A boy in the halls called the afternoon papers in a modified

voice.

“Will you get me the papers--especially the _Western States_?”

She hurried to call the boy. He saw the huge picture of Duke Fallows on

the sheet toward him, as she re-entered.

“This is what I want,” he said hoarsely, taking the _Western

States_....

“John Morning,” she whispered.

In inch letters across the top--there it was:

JOHN MORNING BRINGS IN THE FIRST FALLOWS STORY.

Full Day Ahead of _Coptic_ Mails.... Morning Leaves Fallows on

the Field Beyond Liaoyang, Night of September 3rd.... Two Americans

Alone See Great Battle.... The Incomparable Fallows’ Story Printed in

Full in the _Western States_ To-day.... John Morning’s Detail

Picture--a Book in Itself--Begins in the _Western States_

To-morrow--Biggest Newspaper Feature of the Year’s Campaign.... Read

To-day How John Morning Brought in the News--a Story of Unparalleled

Daring and Superhuman Endurance....

Such was the head and the big-print captions. Morning’s riding forth

from Liaoyang on the night of the third--the sorrel mare--the Hun

Crossing--the Liao Crossing and the fight with the river-bandits--the

runaway of the sorrel and her broken heart--his journey dazed and

delirious, covered with wounds, thirty miles to Koupangtse--Tongu--the

battle to get aboard the _Sickles_, first, second, and third

attempts--redoing the great story on shipboard--all this in form of an

interview and printed as a local story, ran ahead of the Duke Fallows

article.

A great moment, and John Morning, forgetting all else, even forgetting

the girl who glanced at him with awed and troubled eyes, held hard for

a moment to the one realization: Noyes would not have printed, “Begins

in the _Western States_ to-morrow,” had he not arranged for

publication in Reever Kennard’s _World-News_....

Her chair was farther away. She waited for him--as one expecting to be

called. He turned; their eyes met full.

“You are not an American soldier----”

“I am an American. I have had a hard time, almost as hard as any

soldier could----”

“I wouldn’t have come--the whole city will serve you----”

“That’s why I didn’t speak. No soldier could have gotten more good.”

Her eyes turned downward. The room was almost dark. A knock at the door.

“I must go----”

He held out his hand. “Won’t you come again?”

“It doesn’t seem----”

He would not let her hand go. “Oh, won’t you come again?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

Betty Berry opened the door for Noyes and another, and she passed out.

NOYES said lightly:

“The young lady doesn’t need to go on our account----”

“But she’s gone,” Morning muttered. The walls gave him back the words.

“If it’s any interest to you, Morning, I’ve followed directions in your

letter,” the editor said presently.

“The _World-News_----”

“That’s what I waited for--before coming here. They’re using Field’s

local story to-morrow morning. It’s on the wire to them now. This is

Field.”

“I had the pleasure of bringing in your manuscript from the

_Sickles_ rather early this morning,” said the latter. “Also I did

the story that Doctor Nevin told me.”

“I wish he would come,” said Morning.

“Nevin?”

“Yes.”

“He’s on his toes where you are concerned,” said Field.

“He has done much for me----”

“Friend Fallows is rather strong for you, too, I should say,” Noyes

offered.

He was a pale, soft, middle-aged man who gave the impression of being

more forceful than he looked.

“I owe everything to him,” said Morning.

“By the way, Morning, what were you mad at, when you wrote that

letter of directions to me? I followed it carefully as you

said--price--_World-News_--everything. We’ll have a lot of other

papers beside the _World-News_--but that letter made me hot under

the collar every time I glanced at it----”

“I was just about to break. I was very sick of words. Every sentence

was like drawing a rusty chain in one ear and out the other.”

“Of course you know you’ve got the world by the tail on this Russian

end--this Liaoyang story,” Noyes observed.

“I’ve written the story. The big part of the copy is here for you.”

“You’re not going to quit now. Are you down and out physically?”

“No.”

“Why, Morning,” Field broke in, “you ought to make ten thousand dollars

in the next thirty days. You’ve got a big feature for every magazine in

America--and then the book.”

“The chance doesn’t come but once in a life time--and then only to

God’s chosen few, who work like hell,” said Noyes, and he sat back to

review this particularly finished remark.

“What would you do?” Morning asked.

“I’d start for New York to-night. Field’s story about you--the one

we run to-night at the head of Fallows’ story--will start the game.

A couple of installments of your big yarn will have appeared in the

_World-News_ when you reach New York. If it ends as good as it

begins, you’ll have the big town groggy within a week. You’ll receive

the magazine editors in your hotel, contract to furnish so much--and

talk off same to expert typists. That’s the way things are done. You’ve

got the goods. New York serves a man like that. It’s nothing to me, but

I know the game--even if I never cornered a Liaoyang story. Fallows

said you have done more work for less money than any man in America.

He’s one of our owners----”

So Noyes rambled on; Field breaking in with fresh and timely zest.

Morning had not looked beyond the main story. He saw separate articles

now in every phase. It would work out.... Four days of rest--looking

out of the car-window. He would land in New York once and for all--land

hard--do it all at once. Then he would rest.... He was seething

again.... With this advantage he could break into the markets that

would stand aloof from his ordinary product for years. All day his

devil had slept, and now was awake for rough play in the dusk. His

dreams organized--the big markets--breaking out of the newspapers into

the famous publications! He had the stuff. It would be as Noyes said.

He would have thought of it for another man.

“How soon can I start?” he said.

“Four or five hours.”

“I’m obliged to you.... Fallows seems still with me,” he said

strangely.... “I must see Nevin----”

There was a ringing in his brain at some unused door, but he did not

answer. He was driven again. Harrowing the idea of waiting a single day

... in these modern hours when world-events are so swiftly forgotten.

Everything was settled. Morning was taken from place to place in a

cab. Noyes not only was conscientious about seeing to every detail for

Friend Fallows--but he made it very clear that he was not accustomed to

spend his evenings down-town. From time to time, he dropped hints of

what he would be doing at home at this hour. Down-town nights were all

put away for him, he declared.

The balance of the manuscript was locked in the safe at the _Western

States_ to be set up to-morrow, and proofs sent out. The second

and possibly third installments of the story would go to the

_World-News_ by telegraph, the rest follow by mail.

“To-morrow morning, out in the mountains, you’ll have the satisfaction

of knowing that New York is reading Field’s story which we ran to-day.

Is that stuff the Doctor gave us, right, Morning?”

“Huh?”

“Did you dream about that sorrel mare--entrails out--walking like a

man--white death in her eyes?” Noyes pursued.

“God, I wonder if I did? Did I dream that I did the big story

twice?----”

He was in pain; there was lameness in his mind at being driven again.

He wished Noyes would go home.... Messengers were back and forth to the

_Sickles_ trying to get Nevin. Transportation to New York was the

newspaper’s affair; when it was handed him, something went from Morning

that he could not get again. There was much to drink. Noyes had put all

this from him so long that he found the novelty humorous--and yet, what

a bore it was after all! Field was a steaming geyser of enthusiasms.

Both talked. Others talked. Morning was sick with words. He had not

had words drummed into his brain in so long. He half-realized that his

impatience for all these things was disgust at himself, but all his

past years, and their one-pointed aim held him now. This was his great

chance.... He wanted Nevin.

These city men gave him everything, and disappointed him. Had he

been forced to battle with them for markets; had he been forced to

accept the simple column rate, he could not have seen them as now.

Because they had become his servants, he touched their weakness. And

what giants he had known--Fallows and Nevin--and Endicott, the little

Englishman at Tongu.... You must answer a man’s need when that need is

desperate--to make a heart-hold. A man makes his friends before his

world capitulates.

He was waiting in the bar of the _Polander_.... Nevin had not

been found. Morning was clothed, expensed; his order upon New York for

the price of the story would not be touched until he reached there. He

had won already; he had the world by the tail.... Nevin did not come.

There was no bite in the drink for Morning. He was in pain; others

made a night of it. He struggled in the pits of self, that sleepless,

never-forgetting self. There was a calling, a calling deep within, but

the outer noise spoiled the meaning. Men drank with single aim; they

drank like Russian officers--to get drunk. They were drunk; all was

rich and free. Noyes knew many whom he saw every day, and many whom

he had seen long ago. He called them forward to meet Morning, who had

brought in the story.... Morning who knew Duke Fallows--Morning who had

the big story of the year, beginning to-morrow.... And always when they

passed, Noyes remarked that the down-town stuff was silly as the devil.

White and clerical, his oaths were effective. He drank hard and well

as men go. Field drank well--his impulses becoming more gusty, but not

evil.... Once Morning would have called this a night of triumph. Every

one looked at him--talked respectfully--whispered, pointed.... Twenty

minutes left--the crowd grew denser in the _Polander_ bar. There

was a voice in the arch to the hotel. Ferry entered in the midst of

men. He was talking high, his eyes dancing madly.

“Why, the son of ... threw me--that’s all. He’s done with the

_Sickles_.... Who? Why, Nevin, the squint-eyed son of a.... He

threw me.... I thought this Morning was some drunken remittance man

wanting passage. Reever Kennard said he was a thief.... Nevin might

have come to me.... Why, Morning didn’t even pay his commutation for

rations----”

“I would have mailed it to you, Ferry--except for this meeting,” said

Morning, his voice raised a little to carry.

An important moment to him, and one of the strangest of his life. This

was the man whom he had dreamed of murdering, the man who had made

him suffer as only the gods should make men suffer. And yet Ferry was

like an unpleasant child; and Morning, troubled by greater things,

had no hate now, no time nor inclination to hate. The face that had

seemed dark and pitiless on the deck in Nagasaki harbor--was only weak

and undone--an unpleasant child crying, refusing to be quieted--an

annoyance to the house. Such was the devil of the _Sickles_,

the man who had stood between him and America, the man who had tried

to make him miss beating the _Coptic_ mails.... They faced each

other, the quartermaster, wincing and shrunken.

“I had to get across, Ferry. I was too sick to make you see. Kennard

always says that. He seems to know that best--but it isn’t true.... I

was bad to look at. You see, I had come a long way. I was off my head

and eyes----”

“I didn’t know,” Ferry blurted, “and now Nevin has thrown me. I wasn’t

supposed to take civilians----”

“I know it--only I had to get across.... I don’t know what I’d have

done but for Nevin. He was mother and father on the voyage. I can give

you the commutation now----”

“You were a stowaway----”

“That’s what made it delicate to pay for the passage----”

Ferry was broken-nerved. He suggested buying a drink, as a child who

has learned a fancied trick of men.

And Morning drank. Noyes glanced at Field, who had suddenly become pale

and anxious with a story-idea. He was at work--drink-clouds shoved

back and all the exterior enthusiasm--fresh as after a night’s rest. He

was on a new story.

Ferry went away and Morning looked at the clock. Only five minutes

of his life had been used in this important transaction. Nevin had

not come--Nevin who had lost his berth, thrown over his own work for

him.... There would be no more _Nevin_ on the _Sickles_.

Would he come East?

“Oh, I say, Field--drop the Ferry end of the story,” Morning said.

“Sure,” said Field glibly.

“Nothing to it,” said Noyes.

Morning was too tired to go further, though he felt their lie.

“But, Nevin,” he said to Noyes.

“I’ll have him found to-morrow. That’s the big local thing to-morrow.”

“Tell him----”

When Morning stopped telling Noyes and Field what to tell Nevin for

him, it was time to go for the ferry. The _Polander_ slipped

out of Morning’s mind like a dream--smoke, voices, glasses, indecent

praise. Noyes reached across the bar for a package. That last seemed

quite as important as anything.

They left him at the ferry--these men of the _Western States_--servants

of his action and his friends.... And somewhere in the city was little

Nevin, who had done his work and who had not come for his pay; somewhere

in the city, but apart from voices and adulation--the man who had

forgotten himself in telling the story of how the news was brought

in.... It was all desperately unfinished. It hurt him every moment.

In the Pullman berth he opened the package Noyes had given him; the

porter brought a glass. Afterward, he lay in the darkness. It was very

still when he had become accustomed to the wheels. The going always had

soothed him. In the still train and the peace of the road, he heard

at last that ringing again at the new door of his life, and opened to

Betty Berry, who had promised to come.

“We’re all shot to pieces to-night, Duke----”