Part 2

Larry, if he saw us, paid no attention to us; neither did he pay any attention to Carmen Whiffle when she stood at his elbow. "There's no changing nature, Nan," I said--"the male in war time is a warrior first and a lover afterward."

"Would you want him not to be?" said Nan, who had dropped grabbing tables to stand off and admire Larry; and while she was at that, her mother, in a dressing-gown of a chocolate shade, came down the wide stairs.

"Mamma, there's Larry--look!" cried Nan. "And he won't pay the least attention to us!"

"Why should he?" retorted auntie. "He has his work before him. Let him do it in peace."

By this time the tables were all piled up as Larry had ordered, and half the women in the hotel were clustering around him. You would think they had a special claim on him. But he almost rudely waved them away; among them Carmen Whiffle, who retired, I was pleased to see, in some wonderment.

"Good for you, Larry!" I said; but was myself shocked a moment later when he said, with both hands in the air warning us: "Mesdames--señoras, señoritas, ladies, demoiselles--there probably isn't the least danger, but no harm in standing clear. You, Nettie," he added, when I was going to rush over to him, in my pride to let the others know who he was and I was--"you, too, Nettie, same as the rest!"

"Larry Trench, why, what--" I began, and "O Larry!" began Nan.

"And you, Nan--you know I'm not allowed to speak to you," said Larry. "I promised your mother I wouldn't"; but he gave her a glance which sent her trembling up against me, murmuring: "O Nettie, Nettie, I'm so glad!"

"And you, too, Mrs. Wedner," said Larry--"all stand clear of the main entrance. Perhaps you'd all better go up a flight--yes, two flights, up out of the way--everybody!" And he began shooing us all toward the stairs.

"Why, Larry Trench!" I cried, "you'd think you'd been seeing us every day for the last year, instead----"

"Don't be silly," said Nan's mother. "He is right. Ladies, I think we would all do well to follow Lieutenant Trench's instructions." And she always did look the born leader--all we women followed her when she led the way up-stairs.

But we did not go up any two flights. At the head of the grand staircase we stopped, and there waited to see what would happen next.

It soon happened. A man looked through between the tables and chairs of the portales. Larry invited him in. He was one of Podesta's officers, and he came in with a pistol in his belt, but very polite; and Larry just as much so. They talked, and were still talking, when we heard the tramping of men in shoes outside in the plaza, and then--I couldn't believe my eyes--when I took another look there was my own Ned in uniform; and he stepped past the chairs and tables to where Larry and the native officer were; and there was a palavering all around. And I felt pretty proud the way Ned could talk the lingo with so many looking on.

"Ned, Ned!" I called out; and he heard me, but gave me a sign to be quiet with his hand behind his back. And by and by Ned and Larry and the native officer marched out, and then we rushed to the windows of the rooms opening on the plaza, and we saw General Podesta order his men to march off; and as they did our bluejackets and marines stacked arms in the plaza, and then we knew everything was going to be all right.

And Ned came back into the hotel with Larry to tell us that we need have no further fear--that Podesta's men were to leave the city; and Podesta came back and bowed to us, and said it was so.

And we came running down the stairs, and some of those women there acted as if they would kiss Ned, but I soon let them know who I was, especially Carmen Whiffle, who, after looking in surprise at us, turned to Larry. But auntie and Nan and Larry were already strolling over to the row of palmettos, at which Carmen Whiffle, tossing her head and swaying her waist like every Carmen of every Carmen opera I ever saw, walked over to where Podesta had sat down at a table by himself.

"Will you tell me," I asked Ned on our way up-stairs, "how Larry ever came to know Carmen Whiffle?"

"If there is a young officer in port who doesn't know Carmen Whiffle, I have not met him. She takes care of that."

"But he didn't have to talk with her by the hour--and dance with her."

"In the service, Nettie," said Ned, "we sometimes have to find out things that have nothing to do with the main engine or the turret-guns. And Carmen Whiffle knows General Podesta very well. And Larry, if somewhat young and innocent, is not without brains. Now don't ask any more."

And I did not; but I went on to tell Ned how I had planned the balcony interview. Ned could not keep it to himself--he told auntie.

"Yes," said auntie, when he had finished, "it was very clever. Nettie always is. My door was ajar when I saw Neddo running for down-stairs, and I stopped him to learn what in the world he was doing. And he told me the secret that I wasn't to tell Nan."

She is the most annoying woman. "If you knew so much, why didn't you stop it?" I asked.

"Why should I stop it?" she answered, with the most exasperating calm. "I always wanted Nan and Larry to marry. But I always believed in a little discipline, too. When young people have merely to cry for a thing to get it--it doesn't do them any lasting good."

To escape the quizzical eyes of auntie, I looked back down the stairs; and if there weren't Carmen Whiffle and General Podesta sitting at a table and the fat majordomo himself opening a bottle of wine for them!

"Well!" I gasped to Ned.

"Yes," said Ned. "The rumor is that she may be the Señora Podesta any time she pleases. And if she had learned from Ned or some other indiscreet young or old officer that we were to land to-night--it would have saved Podesta from making a rather ridiculous entry into the city, wouldn't it?"

"What a schemer!" I cried.

"Yes," smiled Ned--"everybody schemers but our own selves. I spoke a word to the flag-lieutenant to-day--he's a classmate--to put in a word for me for the landing party to the Old Man."

"Your courage and your brains," I began--"or was it your knowledge of the language----"

"The fleet," interrupted Ned, "is crowded with officers of courage and brains. And I am not alone on the language end of it. But I was the only officer with a wife and two children ashore. And, as we hadn't seen each other for a year, the Old Man thought it mightn't be a bad idea for me to come ashore and have an eye out for them."

By this time Nan and Larry had passed onto the latticed balcony, and Nan's mother to her room; and Ned was hugging Neddo and Anna together.

"Perhaps," I said, "I'm not such a strategist after all!"

"Nettie," said Ned, "cheer up. You have your share of brains. I, your husband, say it. And if your husband admits it, it must be so. But, Nettie dear, don't forget that here with the children is your bidding suit. Lead the play up to the children, Nettie, and they will sure have to hold some cards to set you."

"I haven't seen you in a year--go ahead and laugh at me," I said. But I didn't care--he was my own Ned, and I had him, and told him so.

"And haven't I you!" said Ned--and swept me with the children into his arms.

And Nan and Larry were sitting out on the balcony--I could hear their murmuring voices through an open window; and from the patio below I could make out the tinkle of a fountain and some kind of a native instrument, and a voice chanting--not of pride or glory or riches, but of love--human, humble, eternal love. And before I even knew I was crying Ned was kissing the tears from my eyes.

The Weeping Annie

We had a baby born, and when he was old enough to almost wiggle out of his baby-carriage the wife asks me if I didn't think it was time to consider seriously the future of my growing family. Well, she pretty generally told me what I ought to do, and Wheezer Mills and Scoot Schulte had been writing to me to come on South and share what looked like a good prospect to them in the wrecking line.

I went South, and even after I'd inspected what they'd picked up for a bargain I didn't reproach them; for, after all, what's an old wrecking tug beside two old friends? The _Weeping Annie_ was her name, and she had her virtues, but not the kind to take to sea with you.

We had great hopes that fall of what we would do in the _Annie_. But luck was against us. It turned out a clear, mild winter, with wrecks infrequent; so coming on to spring we swapped the _Annie_ for a self-propelling steam-lighter with a pile-driving attachment on the for'ard end, called the _Happy Day_.

We warned the new owner of the _Annie_ to keep a sharp eye out for her little tricks, but he was a wise one and we were only a bunch of young fellows that maybe were willing to hustle, but in his eyes didn't know much. The new owner only waved his hand and said: "You boys watch out for the _Happy_ and I will for the _Annie_."

We already guessed the _Happy Day_ must have had her secret faults, but also we knew that if the _Annie_ hadn't sunk under us four or five times while we had her it was owing to Scoot and his Leakitis. The first time we ever saw any of it was one morning in a pudding-dish on the galley-table while Scoot was gone up the street to get some bacon to go with eggs for breakfast.

Wheezer noticed it before I did, and we thought it was some new kind of a breakfast-food, especially when a note alongside it in Scoot's writing said: "To be tried with one part milk." We gave it two parts milk--we had milk aplenty--and sprinkled a little sugar over it. Scoot's idea was to calk it into any open seam and let the water coming in swell it up. After it swelled up it would harden till it was like concrete. But that wasn't explained to us till later. It had reached the swelling-up stage in both our stomachs when Scoot came back with the bacon for breakfast. "Heaven's greatest gift to sufferin' man--stomach-pumps!" said Wheezer when we were safe over it.

But the chap that took over the _Annie_ didn't have any Scoot Schulte for a partner. About a week after he got her from us he went down to the dock one morning to go aboard, but he didn't see her anywhere. "I told 'em to have her here, six sharp!" he howls; "and here it's half past and no sign of her." But the _Annie_ was there all the time, only she was resting on bottom with only the top of her smoke-stack sticking up, and he didn't know it was her smoke-stack. While her crew was sleeping she'd been sinking. The men in the top bunks got out almost in comfort, but the chaps in the lower bunks were breathing more water than air when they woke up; there was nobody drowned, though. It seems the Leakitis stuff had to be reapplied about once a month or it would soften up and float away, but Scoot forgot to tell him that.

We expected to do great things with the _Happy Day_ in the lighterage business; but there wasn't any lighterage business to do after we took her over. After one month of it, with nothing but overhead charges, we were ready to quit. I told Wheezer and Scoot to sell her for anything they could get and send me my share. I was going North. I'd never let on in my letters to my wife but what the prospects were fine, and she'd been writing me of an option she'd got on a nice little single house with a sun-parlor that would be great for the baby to play in, and I saw where it was up to me to get back to some regular work. Besides, I'd been seven months away and I wanted to see for myself if the baby was actually walking.

To save borrowing money for my passage North, I shipped for deck-hand on an oil-ship. I wanted to ship for seaman, but I heard the skipper say to a man ahead of me: "I got all the seamen I need. What I want is a couple of men to swab decks and look after paint and brass-work and so on--deck-hands----"

He looked pretty sharp at me when I stepped up.

"My last job," I said before he could get started, "was rustling freight on a harbor lighter," and I pointed out the _Happy Day_ to him across the harbor. "Oh," he said, "that's all right. Sign here." So I signed there, for deck-hand on the oil-ship _Yucatan_, Clarence Judkins, master.

Bayport wasn't a regular oil port, but a half-dozen trainloads of oil had been dumped in there to head off some of our war-ships on some manoeuvering cruise and hadn't headed 'em off; so now it was to be transshipped North. After I'd signed on I came down aboard the _Happy Day_ to get my dunnage.

"Judkins--Clarence Judkins, did you say, is the name o' the skipper o' that oil-tanker you're goin' on?" asks Wheezer. "A well-set-up, handsome-lookin' guy, the kind to ketch a lady's eye an' lookin' like he believed in ketchin' 'em, an' a noily black piece o' whisker under his ears? Yes? Then," says Wheezer, "lemme tell you about that lad--Slick Clarence."

Wheezer generally had the asthma, but the mild winter of the South had cleaned out his speaking-tubes, so that at this time he could talk fluently. "Judkins used to go master o' big steam-yachts, but the last time I seen him I was workin' for a ship-buildin' concern on the Delaware, 'n' we was buildin' a big steam-yacht that Judkins was superintendin' the buildin' of for a mult-eye millionaire. 'Anything Captain Judkins wants let him have: anything he wants--anything and everything,' says the millionaire, who had plenty o' money an' was a good sport. I'd like to been workin' for him myself.

"When Clarence'd get a little wine in--he never touched no beer nor cheap stuff--he used to like to have people listen to him talk," goes on Wheezer. 'D'y' s'pose I'm goin' to be standin' around 'n' lookin' on at those rich loafers havin' everythin' good in life an' me pikin' along on a hundred an' seventy-five a month? Not much!' says Clarence. 'Imagine a man o' my class havin' to stand to attention to a gangway when some o' those fat-waisted mushrooms an' their families come puffin' over the side! Look at me, that's got more brains 'n' looks, more class to me, than any owner ever I sailed out with--yeh, four times as much as most of 'em. An' some of 'em--why, I wouldn't use some of 'em to swab the decks o' their own yachts! Well, I might of their own yachts,' Clarence adds after a while, 'but not o' no yacht o' mine if I owned one. An' maybe I will be ownin' one afore long,' he says.

"An' he did. Outer the extra stuff he ordered for the big steam-yacht he built a little steam-yacht for himself 'n' sold her to a party that never asked him how he come to be gettin' so fine a bargain for twenty thousand dollars. So there's Slick Clarence Judkins," winds up Wheezer. "An' will youse tell me what he's doin' master of a noil-tanker at a hundred an' fifty a month?"

I couldn't tell him. But it was time to show up aboard the oil-ship, and I did; and we lay in the harbor for two days, and when we did put out, it was in weather that any longshoreman could have told was going to be thick even if 'twouldn't be rough outside. About forty miles to the east'ard of Bayport is Horseshoe Shoal. In thick weather inbound vessels once in a while went enough out of their reckoning to fetch up there; but anything outbound generally gave it a wide berth, because there was no need to be cutting close to it. It was a long sand-spit shoaling up so easy that in smooth weather a deep-draft ship could slide up on it while she was yet a long way from where any surf showed on it.

In less than four hours out of Bayport the _Yucatan's_ bow fetches up nice and easy on Horseshoe and stays there. It was thick by now, with no sea to speak of; but there was a long swell and we were deep loaded, which meant that we were almost down to our main deck, and we carried an open rail amidships, which meant that when a swell heaved up against our side it didn't have to roll very high to roll aboard, and after rolling aboard it just naturally kept on rolling across our deck and over on the other side. It was like seeing surf breaking over a rock in the ocean; and to men not used to a deep-loaded oil-ship, and not knowing too much of the sea anyway, it wasn't hard to understand why they might think they were in great danger. Anyway, the seamen or deck-hands or seagoing laborers--whatever it was they shipped for--soon began to pick out safe, high spots and to cling tight to them.

Any shipmaster that wanted to could, of course, have stopped all that with ten words; but says Captain Clarence, waving his hand and singing out from the bridge: "Have no fear, my lads. Trust to me. I will bring you safe out of this." Which was a new one, he being, according to Wheezer's account of him, more often given to damning their hides and blue lights and in other little ways putting the fear of the bridge into the deck of what ships he'd ever been master of. "Have no fear, my men, I'll guard your lives," says Captain Clarence. And it sounded fine, only a couple of wrecking tugs would have walked her off, and certainly her own engines ought to have backed her off, if he'd only stop making speeches and try them.

But Wheezer never said that Captain Clarence was any fool, and he probably knew what he was doing every minute. He went for'ard now and hove the lead a few times, and then hove it aft, and then came back to the bridge looking more solemn than before; and, looking up at him, there was no doubt that most of the crew thought if they didn't get off that ship, and in a hurry, they were gone.

"But fear not," says Judkins; "we shall yet escape from this peril," and blows a distress signal, and right away comes an answer; and in about a minute and a half, from almost under our stern, comes a tugboat, the _Niobe_, with "Parson" Davies skipper of her. I'd never met Davies, but I'd heard of him; and I'd seen the _Niobe_ laying off Bayport Harbor when we came out, and what would be bringing her so handy now, and she not hailing from Bayport at all, but from Westport, a hundred miles farther away?

Judkins hailed the _Niobe_ to have a line ready, and then turns to us and says: "Men, it would be a great deed for me to imperil your lives to save this valuable ship and cargo to her owners; but what a nobler, what a far nobler, deed it is to save human lives! Not my life, men, but others'--your lives, fathers of families that I know some of you are, or loving husbands, brothers, and sons of loving mothers. But can we thus save her? No, no; we cannot. In a few hours it will be dark, and these seas, which you see breaking over this noble ship, will most surely batter her and all on her before morning. It would then be too late to escape from her. Not," he says, waving his hand, "that we shall not even now make a desperate attempt to get her off. We shall. Indeed we shall!" and orders a line taken from the _Niobe_. I made it my business--there was no competition--to be the man making the line fast to our after-bitts, and a worn and ancient piece of hemp I saw it was. The _Niobe_ backed off, and the line parted. She passed us another line, and that parted. The second line was rottener than the first, and while she was doing it I knew there was a store-new 200-fathom coil of a 13-inch hawser in our hold.

When the second line parts, Judkins waves his arms in despair and orders the _Niobe_ to make fast under our high lee quarter, where it is smooth as milk and plenty of water for a tug of her tonnage. "Captain Davies," he calls out then, "what a fortunate event for us you happened along!"

"Yes, captain," responds "Parson," his head out of his pilot-house window. "A most heavenly inspiration it was which impelled me in this direction in weather like this."

"Doubtless, doubtless, the hand o' Providence," says Judkins in a downcast voice; and then, more lively: "What is your judgment of this gale, Captain Davies?"

Gale! A man could have almost gone motor-boating with a bunch of seaside hotel guests in it.

"If I know anything of weather, captain," says "Parson," rolling his head this way and that at the sky, "she's comin' on to blow a hurricane. And for you to keep your crew aboard your doomed ship durin' the fury of it would be nothin' less than criminal, captain. Not" (raising one pious hand) "that I would set my judgment over agin yours, captain, for your vast experience of the sea qualifies you to judge of these things even better than I."

By this time most of our crew had left their high roosts and were crowding the lee rail to get aboard the _Niobe_; and Judkins says: "All right, men--go aboard." And all went aboard the tug, Judkins checking off every man by the ship's list as we passed him at the rail. And the _Niobe_ headed back to Bayport.

On the run back to Bayport Judkins and Davies were alone in the cabin of the tugboat. I spent all that same way back trying to figure out their little game. I didn't feel too sure I had it right, but when the _Niobe_ hit the dock I went four bells and the jingle up the street looking for Wheezer, and found him where anybody in town could of a Wednesday or Saturday night:

TERPSICHORE HALL 25 Cents for Gents--15 for Ladies

There was the illuminated sign hanging out over the sidewalk so that even a drunken sailor couldn't miss it.

You didn't have to haul Wheezer into any dry dock to see that his lines weren't laid down for speed, but his first rush, when I told him what was in sight, carried him clear to the head of the dock.

"The salvage! O the lovely salvage! We'll get her off!" says Wheezer. "We'll charter a tug, hah?"

I wasn't strong for chartering any tugs and let everybody know about it. We had no money to be chartering tugs, anyway, and, besides, if I had Judkins and Davies's little game sized up right, there'd be no loose tugs left to charter out of Bayport that night. "We'll make it in the _Happy Day_," I says.

"The _Happy Day_!" says Wheezer; and then: "Well, all right--if you think she'll make it."

We went down to tell Scoot, and found him reading from a book he was holding up before him with one hand and eating crackers and cheese and a smoked herring from a plate atop of a galley-stove with the other.

"A wonderful, wonderful man, Confucius," says Scoot to Wheezer; and then seeing me, too: "What! Hasn't that oil-packet departed yet?"

"Wonderful maybe, but stow him, whoever the loafer is, 'n' listen to me 'n' the captain," says Wheezer. And Scoot listens, and before I was half through he stows Confucius--a fine, fat volume, with a leaf turned down to mark the place--under his mattress.

"I shall need a helper," says Scoot. "And also I think it will be wise for me to prepare some fresh applications of Leakitis if we are to put out to sea in this venerable ark to-night."

Up to the Blue Light saloon there was always a bum or two looking for a bit of change. On the way there I passed the Bayport Hotel and saw that Captain Judkins and Captain Davies had already an admiring audience to listen to the disaster to the _Yucatan_.

A hard-looking party was trying to hold the barkeeper up for a drink when I reached the Blue Light. He was the only being in the place who looked husky enough to lift more than the weight of his elbow to the level of his shoulder. I offered him ten dollars for the next twenty-four hours. "To work on a hurry-up job on a steam-lighter," I explained. "That's if you're tough enough for it on a windy night," I added.

"Tough work? William T. Coots is my name--and the T stands for tough."

"Come on then," I said, "here's one dollar down." It was the last dollar I had.