Part 2
"No; I remembered that it was darn valuable, and I didn't want to lose freight on it. I was afraid it would break its neck drawing its head out of my window--I had a big deck cabin, of course--so I shoved it out softly like a hen, and the head slid out, with those Mary Magdalene eyes following me to the last. Then I heard the quartermaster calling on heaven and earth for his lost giraffe, and then the row began all up and down the decks. The giraffe had sense enough to duck its head to avoid the awnings--we were awned from bow to stern--but it clattered about like a sick cow, the quartermaster jumping after it, and it swinging its long neck like a flail. 'Catch it, and hold it!' said the quartermaster. 'Catch a typhoon,' said I. 'She's going overboard.' The spotted fool had heaved one foot over the stern railings and was trying to get the other to follow. It was so happy at getting its head into the open I thought it would have crowed--I don't know whether giraffes crow, but it heaved up its neck for all the world like a crowing cock. 'Come back to your stable,' yelled the quartermaster, grabbing hold of the brute's tail.
"I was nearly helpless with laughing, though I knew if the concern went over it would be no laughing matter for me. Well, by good luck she came round--the quartermaster was a strong man at a rope's end. First of all she slewed her neck round, and I could see those tender, loving eyes under the stars sort of saying: 'Cruel man! What are you doing to my tail?' Then the foot came on board, and she bumped herself up under the awning, looking ready to cry with disappointment. The funniest thing was she didn't make any noise--a pig would ha' roused the ship in no time--only every time she dropped her foot on the deck it was like firing a revolver, the hoofs clicked so. We headed her towards the bows, back to her moorings--just like a policeman showing a short-sighted old woman over a crossing. The quartermaster sweated and panted and swore, but she never said anything--only whacked her old head despairingly against the awning and the funnel case. Her feet woke up the whole ship, and by the time we had her fairly moored fore and aft the population in their night-gear were giving us advice. Then we took up a yard or two in all the moorings and turned in. No other animal got loose that voyage, though the old lady looked at me most reproachfully every time I came that way, and 'You've blasted my young and tender innocence' was the expression of her eyes. It was all the quartermaster's fault for hauling her tail. I wonder she didn't kick him open. Well, of course, that isn't much of a yarn, but I remember once, in the city of Venice, we had a Malayan tapir loose on the deck, and we had to lasso him. It was this way":
"_Guzl thyar hai_," said the steward, and I fled down the companion and missed the tale of the tapir.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: Vol. V., Jan.--March, 1889.]
A SMOKE OF MANILA[4]
The man from Manila held the floor. "Much care had made him very lean and pale and hollow-eyed." Added to which he smoked the cigars of his own country, and they were bad for the constitution. He foisted his Stinkadores Magnificosas and his Cuspidores Imperiallissimos upon all who would accept them, and wondered that the recipients of his bounty turned away and were sad. "There is nothing," said he, "like a Manila cigar." And the pink pyjamas and blue pyjamas and the spotted green pyjamas, all fluttering gracefully in the morning breeze, vowed that there was not and never would be.
"Do the Spaniards smoke these vile brands to any extent?" asked the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure as he inspected a fresh box of Oysters of the East. "Smoke 'em!" said the man from Manila; "they do nothing else day and night." "Ah!" said the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure, in the low voice of one who has received mortal injury, "that accounts for the administration of the country being what it is. After a man has tried a couple of these things he would be ready for any crime."
The man from Manila took no heed of the insult. "I knew a case once," said he, "when a cigar saved a man from the sin of burglary and landed him in quod for five years." "Was he trying to kill the man who gave him the cigar?" said the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure. "No, it was this way: My firm's godowns stand close to a creek. That is to say, the creek washes one face of them, and there are a few things in those godowns that might be useful to a man, such as piece-goods and cotton prints--perhaps five thousand dollars' worth. I happened to be walking through the place one day when, for a miracle, I was not smoking. That was two years ago." "Great Caesar! then he has been smoking ever since!" murmured the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure.
"Was not smoking," continued the man from Manila. "I had no business in the godowns. They were a short cut to my house. When half-way through them I fancied I saw a little curl of smoke rising from behind one of the bales. We stack our bales on low saddles, much as ricks are stacked in England. My first notion was to yell. I object to fire in godowns on principle. It is expensive, whatever the insurance may do. Luckily I sniffed before I shouted, and I sniffed good tobacco smoke." "And this was in Manila, you say?" interrupted the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure.
"Yes, in the only place in the world where you get good tobacco. I knew we had no bales of the weed in stock, and I suspected that a man who got behind print bales to finish his cigar might be worth looking up. I walked between the bales till I reached the smoke. It was coming from the ground under one of the saddles. That's enough, I thought, and I went away to get a couple of the Guarda Civile--policemen, in fact. I knew if there was anything to be extracted from my friend the bobbies would do it. A Spanish policeman carries in the day-time nothing more than a six-shooter and _machete_, a dirk. At night he adorns himself with a repeating rifle, which he fires on the slightest provocation. Well, when the policemen arrived, they poked my friend out of his hiding-place with their dirks, hauled him out by the hair, and kicked him round the godown once or twice, just to let him know that he had been discovered. They then began to question him, and under gentle pressure--I thought he would be pulped into a jelly, but a Spanish policeman always knows when to leave off--he made a clean breast of the whole business. He was part of a gang, and was to lie in the godown all that night. At twelve o'clock a boat manned by his confederates was to drop down the creek and halt under the godown windows, while he was to hand out our bales. That was their little plan. He had lain there about three hours, and then he began to smoke. I don't think he noticed what he was doing: smoking is just like breathing to a Spaniard. He could not understand how he had betrayed himself and wanted to know whether he had left a leg sticking out under the saddles. Then the Guarda Civile lambasted him all over again for trifling with the majesty of the law, and removed him after full confession.
"I put one of my own men under a saddle with instructions to hand out print bales to anybody who might ask for them in the course of the night. Meantime the police made their own arrangements, which were very comprehensive.
"At midnight a lumbering old barge, big enough to hold about a hundred bales, came down the creek and pulled up under the godown windows, exactly as if she had been one of my own barges. The eight ruffians in her whistled all the national airs of Manila as a signal to the confederate, then cooling his heels in the lock-up. But my man was ready. He opened the window and held quite a long confab with these second-hand pirates. They were all half-breeds and Roman Catholics, and the way they called upon all the blessed saints to assist them in their work was edifying. My man began tilting out the bales quite as quickly as the confederate would have done. Only he stopped to giggle now and again, and they spat and swore at him like cats. That made him worse, and at last he dropped yelling with laughter over the half door of the godown goods window. Then one boat came up stream and another down stream, and caught the barge stem and stern. Four Guarda Civiles were in each boat; consequently, eight repeating rifles were pointed at the barge, which was very nicely loaded with our bales. The pirates called on the saints more fluently than ever, threw up their hands, and threw themselves on their stomachs. That was the safest attitude, and it gave them the chance of cursing their luck, the barge, the godown, the Guarda Civile, and every saint in the calendar. They cursed the saints most, for the Guarda Civile thumped 'em when their remarks became too personal. We made them put all the bales back again. Then they were handed over to justice and got five years apiece. If they had any dollars they would get out the next day. If they hadn't, they would serve their full time and no ticket-of-leave allowed. That's the whole story."
"And the only case on record," said the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure, "where a Manila cigar was of any use to any one." The man from Manila lit a fresh Cuspidore and went down to his bath.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: "Turnovers," Vol. VII.]
THE RED LAMP[5]
"A strong situation--very strong, sir--quite the strongest one in the play, in fact."
"What play?" said a voice from the bottom of the long chair under the bulwarks.
"_The Red Lamp._"
"Oh!"
Conversation ceased, and there was an industrious sucking of cheroots for the space of half an hour before the company adjourned to the card-room. It was decidedly a night for sleeping on deck--warm as the Red Sea and more moist than Bengal. Unfortunately, every square foot of the deck seemed to be occupied by earlier comers, and in despair I removed myself to the extreme fo'c'sle, where the anchor-chains churn rust-dyed water from the hawseholes and the lascars walk about with slushpots.
The throb of the engines reached this part of the world as a muffled breathing which might be easily mistaken for the snoring of the ship's cow. Occasionally one of the fowls in the coops waked and cheeped dismally as she thought of to-morrow's entrees in the saloon, but otherwise all was very, very still, for the hour was two in the morning, when the crew of a ship are not disposed to be lively. None came to bear me company save the bo'sun's pet kittens, and they were impolite. From where I lay I could look over the whole length of awning, ghostly white in the dark, and by their constant fluttering judged that the ship was pitching considerably. The fo'c'sle swung up and down like an uneasy hydraulic lift, and a few showers of spray found their passage through the hawseholes from time to time.
Have you ever felt that maddening sense of incompetence which follows on watching the work of another man's office? The civilian is at home among his despatch-boxes and files of pending cases. "How in the world does he do it?" asks the military man. The budding officer can arrange for the movements of two hundred men across country. "Incomprehensible!" says the civilian. And so it is with all alien employs from our own. So it was with me. I knew that I was lying among all the materials out of which Clark Russell builds his books of the sea--the rush through the night, the gouts of foam, the singing of the wind in the rigging overhead, and the black mystery of the water--but for the life of me I could make nothing of them all.
"A topsail royal flying free A bit of canvas was to me, And it was nothing more."
"Oh, that a man should have but one poor little life and one incomplete set of experiences to crowd into it!" I sighed as the bells of the ship lulled me to sleep and the lookout man crooned a dreary song.
I slept far into the night, for the clouds gathered over the sky, the stars died out, and all grew as black as pitch. But we never slackened speed; we beat the foam to left and right with clanking of chains, rattling of bow-ports, and savage noises of ripping and rending from the cut-water ploughing up to the luminous sea-beasts. I was roused by the words of the man in the smoking-room: "A strong situation, sir, very strong--quite the strongest in the play, in fact--_The Red Lamp_, y' know."
I thought over the sentence lazily for a time, and then--surely there was a red lamp in the air somewhere--an intolerable glare that singed the shut eyelids. I opened my eyes and looked forward. The lascar was asleep, his face bowed on his knees, though he ought to have been roused by the hum of a rapidly approaching city, by the noises of men and women talking and laughing and drinking. I could hear it not half a mile away: it was strange that his ears should be closed.
The night was so black that one could hardly breathe; and yet where did the glare from the red lamp come from? Not from our ship: she was silent and asleep--the officers on the bridge were asleep; there was no one of four hundred souls awake but myself. And the glare of the red lamp went up to the zenith. Small wonder. A quarter of a mile in front of us rolled a big steamer under full steam, and she was heading down on us without a word of warning. Would the lookout man never look out? Would their crew be as fast asleep as ours? It was impossible, for the other ship hummed with populous noises, and there was the defiant tinkle of a piano rising above all. She should have altered her course, or blown a fog-horn.
I held my breath while an eternity went by, counted out by the throbbing of my heart and the engines. I knew that it was my duty to call, but I knew also that no one could hear me. Moreover, I was intensely interested in the approaching catastrophe; interested, you will understand, as one whom it did in no wise concern. By the light of the luminous sea thrown forward in sheets under the forefoot of the advancing steamer I could discern the minutest details of her structure from cat-head to bridge. Abaft the bridge she was crowded with merrymakers--seemed to be, in fact, a P. & O. vessel given up to a ball. I wondered as I leaned over the bulwarks what they would say when the crash came--whether they would shriek very loudly--whether the men and women would try to rush to our decks, or whether we would rush on to theirs. It would not matter in the least, for at the speed we were driving both vessels would go down together locked through the deeps of the sea. It occurred to me then that the sea would be cold, and that instead of choking decently I might be one in a mad rush for the boats--might be crippled by a falling spar or wrenched plate and left on the heeling decks to die. Then Terror came to me--Fear, gross and overwhelming as the bulk of the night--Despair unrelieved by a single ray of hope.
We were not fifty yards apart when the passengers on the stranger caught sight of us and shrieked aloud. I saw a man pick up his child from one of the benches and futilely attempt to climb the rigging. Then we closed--her name-plate ten feet above ours, looking down into our forehatch. I heard the grinding as of a hundred querns, the ripping of the tough bow-plates, and the pistol-like report of displaced rivets followed by the rush of the sea. We were sinking in mid-ocean.
* * * * *
"Beg y' pardon," said the quartermaster, shaking me by the arm, "but you must have been sleeping in the moonlight for the last two hours, and that's not good for the eyes. Didn't seem to make you sleep easy, either." I opened my eyes heavily. My face was swollen and aching, for on my forehead lay the malignant splendour of the moon. The glare of the Red Lamp had vanished with the brilliantly-lighted ship, but the ghastly shrieks of her drowning crew continued.
"What's that?" I asked tremulously of the quartermaster. "Was it real?"
"Pork chops in the saloon to-morrow," said the quartermaster. "The butcher he got up at four bells to put the old squeaker out of the way. Them's his dying ejaculations."
I dragged my bedding aft and went to sleep.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: "Turnovers," Vol. VII.]
THE SHADOW OF HIS HAND[6]
"I come from San Jose," he said. "San Jose, Calaveras County, California: that's my place." I pricked up my ears at the mention of Calaveras County. Bret Harte has made that sacred ground.
"Yes?" said I politely. Always be polite to a gentleman from Calaveras County. For aught you know he may be a lineal descendant of the great Colonel Starbottle.
"Did you ever know Vermilyea of San Luis Obispo?" continued the stranger, chewing the plug of meditation.
"No," said I. Heaven alone knows where lies San Luis Obispo, but I was not going to expose my ignorance. Besides, there might be a story at the back of it all. "What was the special weakness of Mister Vermilyea?"
"Vermilyea! He weak! Lot Vermilyea never had a weakness that you might call a weakness until subsequent events transpired. Then that weakness developed into White Rye. All Westerners drink White Rye. On the Eastern coast they drink Bourbon. Lot tried both when his heart was broken. Both--by the quart."
"D'you happen to remember what broke his heart?" I said.
"This must be your first trip to the States, sir, or you would know that Lot's heart was broken by his father-in-law. Lot's congregation--he took to Religion--always said that he had no business fooling with a father-in-law. A good many other people said that too. But I always adhered to Lot. 'Why don't you kill the animal, Lot?' I used to say. 'I can't. He's the father of my wife,' Lot used to say. 'Loan him money then and settle him on the other side of the States,' I used to say. 'The old clam won't move,' Lot used to say."
"Half a minute. What was the actual trouble between Vermilyea and his father-in-law? Did he borrow money?"
"I'm coming to that," said the stranger calmly. "It arrived this way. Lot had a notion to get married. Some men get that idea. He went to 'Frisco and pawned out his heart--Lot had a most feeling heart, and that was his ruin--to a girl who lived at back of Kearney Street. I've forgotten her given name, but the old man's name was Dougherty. Guess he was a naturalised Irishman. The old man did not see the merits of Lot when he went sparking after the girl evenings. He fired Lot out off the stoop three or four times. Lot didn't hit him because he was fond of the daughter. He just quit like a lamb; the old man welting into him with anything that came handy--sticks and besoms, and such. Lot endured that, being a tough man. Every time Lot was fired out he would wait till the old man was pretty well pumped out. Then he used to turn round and say, 'When's the wedding to be?' Dougherty used to ramp round Lot while the girl hid herself till the breeze abated. He had a peculiar aversion to domiciliary visits from Lot, had Dougherty. I've my own theory on the subject. I'll explain it later on. At last Dougherty got tired of Lot and his peacefulness. The girl stuck to him for all she was worth. Lot never budged. 'If you want to marry her,' said the old man, 'just drop your long-suffering for half an hour. Stand up to me, Lot, and we'll run this thing through with our hands.' 'If I must, I must,' said Lot, and with that they began the argument up and down the parlour floor. Lot he was fighting for his wife. He set considerable value on the girl. The old man he was fighting for the fun of the affair. Lot whipped. He handled the old man tenderly out of regard for his connections. All the same he fixed him up pretty thoroughly. When he crawled off the old man he had received his permission to marry the girl. Old man Dougherty ran round 'Frisco advertising Lot for the tallest fighter in the town. Lot was a respectable sort of man and considerable absorbed in preparing for his wedding. It didn't please him any to receive invitations from the boss fighting men of 'Frisco--professional invitations, you must understand. I guess he cussed the father-in-law to be.
"When he was married, he concluded to locate in 'Frisco, and started business there. A married man don't keep his muscle up any. Old man Dougherty he must have counted on that. By the time Lot's first child was born he came around suffering for a fight. He painted Lot's house crimson. Lot endured that. He got a hold of the baby and began yanking it around by the legs to see if it could squeal worth listening to. Lot stretched him. Old man howled with delight. Lot couldn't well hand his father-in-law over to the police, so they had it, knuckle and tooth, all round the front floor, and the old man he quit by the window, considerably mashed up. Lot was fair spent, not having kept up his muscle. My notion is that old man Dougherty being a boss fighter couldn't get his fighting regularly till Lot married into the family. Then he reckoned on a running discussion to warm up his bones. Lot was too fond of his wife to disoblige him. Any man in his senses would have brought the old man before the courts, or clubbed him, or laid him out stiff. But Lot was always tender-hearted.
"Soon as old man Dougherty got his senses together off the pavement, he argued that Lot was considerable less of a fighter than he had been. That pleased the old man. He was plastered and caulked up by the doctors, and as soon as he could move he interviewed Lot and made remarks. Lot didn't much care what he said, but when he came to casting reflections on the parentage of the baby, Lot shut the office door and played round for half an hour till the walls glittered like the evening sun. Old man Dougherty crawled out, but he crowed as he crawled. 'Praise the blessed saints,' he said, 'I kin get my fighting along o' my meals. Lot, ye have prolonged my life a century.'
"Guess Lot would like to see him dead now. He is an old man, but most amazing tough. He has been fighting Lot for a matter of three years. If Lot made a lucky bit of trade, the old man would come along and fight him for luck. If Lot lost a little, the old man would fight him to teach him safe speculation. It took all Lot's time to keep even with him. No man in business can 'tend his business and fight in streaks. Lot's trade fell off every time he laid himself out to stretch the old man. Worst of it was that when Lot was made a Deacon of his church, the old man fought him most terrible for the honour of the Roman Catholic Church. Lot whipped, of course. He always whipped. Old man Dougherty went round among the other Deacons and lauded Lot for a boss pugilist, not meaning to hurt Lot's prospects. Lot had to explain the situation to the church in general. They accepted it.
"Old man Dougherty he fought on. Age had no effect on him. Lot always whipped, but nothing would satisfy the old man. Lot shook all his teeth out till his gums were as bare as a sand-bar. Old man Dougherty came along lisping his invitation to the dance. They fought.
"When Lot shifted to San Luis Obispo, old man Dougherty he came along too--craving for his fight. It was cocktails and plug to him. It grew on him. Lot handled him too gently because of the wife. The old man could come to the scratch once a month, and always at the most inconvenient time. They fought.
"Last I heard of Lot he was sinking into the tomb. 'It's not the fighting,' he said to me. 'It's the darned monotony of the circus. He knows I can whip him, but he won't rest satisfied. 'Lay him out, Lot,' said I; 'fracture his cranium or gouge him. This show is foolish all round.' 'I can't lay him out,' said Lot. 'He's my father-in-law. But don't it strike you I've a deal to be thankful for? If he had been a Jew he'd have fought on Sundays when I was doing Deacon. I've been too gentle with him; the old man knows my spot place, but I've a deal to be thankful for.'