Chapter 6

"'Pardon, Colonel,' I butted in, 'pardon me, Colonel, but in your day the army people never left the country. Even when you were fighting Indians on the frontier, after all it was only the frontier and never more than a couple of thousand miles at the most to get back home. And when you were through campaigning and back in garrison, your people could come to see you. But twelve thousand miles! It isn't as if a man's within telephone call then. And when you're not to see your people for that length of time, there's danger.'

"'Danger?' He stiffens up and takes a peek at me.

"'Danger, yes sir,' I said. 'I've been out there in the islands, in a tugboat with her engines broken down and she drifting onto a beach where four hundred squatting Moros with Remington rifles were waiting hopefully for us to come ashore. Four hundred of them and five of us all told. But that's not danger, sir,' I hurries on, 'of the kind to scare a man, though it did sicken me to think I'd never see Doris again, and that perhaps it would shock her when she heard of it. But otherwise, sir, that's no danger. But when a young officer goes a thousand miles up a Chinese river in command of a gunboat, as I was this last time--gone for months on it--and being commander was everywhere received as the representative of a great country by all the governors and topside mandarins along the route. And they haven't our idea of things--a lot of things that seem wrong to us seem all right to them. They mean no harm. They intend only to be courteous and complimentary, and so they strew a fellow's path with the flowers of ease and pleasure--if he forgets himself, there's danger, Colonel,' I said. 'I sail at eight in the morning, sir. I'm to be gone I don't know how long, perhaps another two years, and--Colonel--I want a home anchor.'

"He said no word till he had finished his cigar. When he does he drops it at his feet, steps on it to put out the light, and says: 'A good argument for yourself, Richard, but what of Doris?'

"'Doris has probably done a lot of thinking in the matter, sir. Why not leave it to Doris, sir?'

"'Of course,' he said, dry as powder, 'Doris would be disinterested in this case!'

"'Then leave it to her mother, sir.'

"'I see neither logic nor prudence in your argument, Richard,' he answers at last, 'but I will leave it to her mother.' And when he said that, I knew I had won; for, without her ever telling me, I knew her mother was with us. If I had told him that, I would only have been telling what he already guessed, as he told me that same night, later.

"Anyway, after a minute with Doris and her mother, I jumped over to the hotel, and from the side of a most billowy waltz partner I detached Shorty Erroll to get the ring and the smaller stores for a proper wedding, and then I went out to bespeak my own ship's chaplain. I found him lying in his bunk in his pajamas with a History of the Tunisian Wars balanced on his chest and a wall-light just back of his head, and he says: 'Why surely, Dick,' when I told him, but added: 'Though that old sieve of a _Bayport_, I doubt will you ever get her as far as Manila,' after which, carefully inserting a book-mark into the Tunisians, he glides into his uniform and comes ashore with me.

"And without Doris even changing her dress we were married--in the colonel's quarters, with every officer and every member of every officer's family on the reservation--even the children--standing by. And the women said, 'How distressing, Mr. Wickett, to have to leave in the morning!' and the men said, 'Tough luck, Dick'--and be sure I thought it was tough luck, and it would have been tough luck only by this time the entire post had got busy and got word to Washington, and at eleven o'clock, while we were still at the wedding-supper, word came to delay the sailing of the gunboat for twenty-four hours. And that was followed by a telegraphic order next morning to haul the _Bayport_ into dry dock and overhaul her."

Wickett, who had been talking rapidly, came to a full stop, while three bells were striking throughout the fleet.

"Nine-thirty," said Wickett. "I thought I saw a steamer's light beyond the breakwater."

Carlin looked where he pointed. "I don't, but I haven't your eyes. How long was the respite?"

"In ten days they had her afloat again. I thanked my God-given luck for every flying minute of those ten days."

"And did she stay afloat long enough to get to Manila?"

"Oh, yes. She wasn't half bad. Needed a little nursing in heavy weather, but outside of that she wasn't hopeless at all."

"And what of Mrs. Wickett?"

"She was to come to me just as soon as I cabled where in the East the gunboat would fetch up for any sort of a stay. But I was never in one spot for long. We cruised from Vladivostok to Manila and back again, never more than a week in any one place. Even so, as soon as I'd saved enough out of my ensign's pay, she was to come--and she would have--to meet me; but before enough months of saving had passed she wrote me. There was a baby coming, and then I wouldn't let her come. I did not want her jumping from port to port in foreign waters before the baby was born, and she would soon be needing every cent of my ensign's pay that I could save.

"And the months rolled around and the cable came which told that the baby had come, and that Doris and everything was fine; and I was as happy as a man could be with a wife and boy he was crazy to see, but couldn't. She wanted to come out and join me right away, but I said no.

"Well, when the baby was big enough to stand travel she was coming, anyway, she wrote; but I reminded her that before a great while now I ought to be on my way home. And one day in the China Seas I saw the sun between us and the shore setting under a thousand golden lakes and pools and purple pillars, and a home-bound pennant of a full cable's length whipping the breeze in our smoke astern."

Wickett paused, and resumed: "That was a great night. It was two years and three months since I'd left Bayport. The first thing I did in the morning after turning out, and for every morning thereafter, was to step to the calendar on the wall of my room and block out that day's date with a fat blue-leaded pencil I'd got from the paymaster for that purpose alone, and then, estimating the run on the chief engineer's dope, count how many days were left."

Wickett was silent. He remained silent so long that Carlin thought that that must be the end, abrupt though it was, to the story. But it was not that. Wickett was pointing across the bay.

"See, Carlin--the flag-ship of the second squadron has just sent out an order for its first division to prepare for an emergency signal drill. And the first division are to have a torpedo drill at the same time. Wait--in half a minute it will be on. There--look!"

From the mastheads the red and white Ardois lights were winking even as the illuminated arms of the semaphores were wigwagging jerky messages from bridge to bridge; on shore, on the water, on the clouds, the great search-lights swept and crossed endlessly. It was dazzling. Suddenly it ceased. "Oh-h!" protested Carlin.

"Life is just like that, isn't it?" said Wickett; "all light and play and color for a spell, and then--pff--lights out."

"Maybe," admitted Carlin, "but don't impede the speed of the story. Your ship was racing for home."

"Our orders were to proceed by way of Suez and to rendezvous with the battle-fleet at Guantánamo, Cuba. We got into Guantánamo the day before the _Missalama_ arrived from the North. The _Missalama_ had orders to proceed to the West Coast. Half a dozen of the officers already in Guantánamo were ordered to her. I was one of them."

"Good night! But that was a jolt!"

"That's what it was. But that's the service."

"And couldn't you do anything about it?"

"What could I do? There were my orders. A couple of the fellows came as near to being politicians then as ever they did in their lives. They tried to reach people in Washington--bureau chiefs, senators, influential congressmen--to have me detached and ordered home. But next day was a holiday and the day after was Sunday, and the ship had to sail by Sunday. And she did, and I with her."

"And how do you account for your being shunted off like that? Somebody have it in for you?"

"No, no--not that. Simply the politicians. I don't suppose the service will ever be free of the near-politicians. The navy has them--fellows who are not good enough officers to depend upon themselves alone, and not good enough politicians to go in for politics altogether. Somebody with a good shore billet somewhere was probably due for sea-duty, and not wanting to let go of a good thing, and having the pull, somebody else went instead. And somebody else for that somebody else, and somebody else again, and so on till at last the somebody else who could be made to serve a turn happened to be me.

"'Hard luck, Dickie,' said the ward-room mess. 'But cheer up--in three months you'll see the Golden Gate, and by then you'll be ready for a little duty on your home coast. Then your lieutenant's straps and shore duty, and your wife and baby to yourself for a while.' I had that thought to cheer me through the night-watches around South America, but at Callao we got orders to proceed to Manila, and after six months out that way it was off to the Island of Guam, and from there to make a survey of some islands in the South Sea. No way I could fix it could I tell my wife to come and meet me at any certain place.

"But no task is endless. We were homeward bound at last. I remember how I used to say at mess that I was never going to believe I was home, till with my own eyes I saw the anchor splash in a home port. But there it was now--the anchor actually splashing in Bayport. I had the bridge making port, and I remember what a look I took around me before I turned the deck over to the executive. From the bridge, with a long glass, I could see above the tree tops the roof of the colonel's old quarters. I pictured him on the veranda below with the baby and Doris waiting for me. I'd sent a wireless ahead for Doris not to risk herself or that baby out in the bay with a fleet of battle-ships coming to anchor. And the baby! I dreamed of him reaching up his little hands and calling, 'Papa, papa!' when he saw me.

"Well, everything was shipshape. We were safe to moorings and I was relieved of the deck and about to step off the bridge when the word was passed that somebody was waiting to see me in the ward-room. And with no more than that--'Somebody to see you, sir'--I knew who it was. The fort boat had come alongside and people had come aboard--officers' wives and families, I knew, but not just who, because the boat had unloaded aft while I was on the bridge forward. But I knew.

"The messenger smiled when he told me. The men along the deck smiled when they saw me hurrying aft. The marines on the half-deck smiled as I flew by them. Everybody aboard knew by this time of my five years from home and the little baby waiting. Good old Doctor and Pay, going up to take the air on the quarter-deck, said: 'Hurry, Dick, hurry!' Hurry? I was taking the ladders in single leaps. At the foot of the last one, in the passageway leading to the ward-room, I all but bowled over a little fellow who was looking up the ladder like he was expecting somebody. I picked him up and stood him on his feet again. 'Hi, little man!' I remember saying, and thinking what a fine little fellow he was, but no more than that, I was in such a hurry.

"And into the ward-room, and everybody in the ward-room that wasn't occupied with some of his own was smiling and pointing a finger to where, in the door of my stateroom, Doris was waiting for me. And I dove through the bulkhead door, leaped the length of the ward-room country, and took her in my arms. For a minute, five minutes, ten minutes--just how long I don't know--but I held her and patted her and dried her tears.

"'And where's little Dick?' I asked at last.

"'Why, that was Dick you stood on his feet in the passageway,' she said, and laughed to think I didn't know him. 'But that's because he looks so much like you and not me. No man knows what he looks like himself,' she said, and ran and got Dick, and brought him to me, and said: 'Dick, here's your papa.' And Dick looked at me and he said: 'No, mama, that is not my papa. My papa has no legs,' just as I was going to fold him in my arms and hug him to death.

"And--will you still think I was only a kid?--I stepped into my room and drew the curtains, and sat down by my bunk and cried. After five years! And Doris came in, and perhaps she wanted to cry, too, but she didn't. She drew a photograph from her bosom and showed it to me. It was the only one of me that ever suited her, and it happened to be only a head and shoulders, and every day since the baby was old enough she had told him: 'That's your papa, dear, and some day he'll come home in a great big war-ship with guns and guns, and then you'll see.' And the poor little kid, four years and three months old, had never seen any legs on the man in the photograph; but he had seen his mother cry almost every time she looked at it, and he supposed that was why she cried--because papa had no legs. And so the poor kid was waiting to see a man with no legs."

Wickett was silent. Carlin asked no more questions. In silence he, too, studied what was left of the night-life of the fleet. Only the white anchor-lights of the motionless battle-ships, the colored side-lights of the chugging steam-launches, were now left.

Carlin pointed out to Wickett a green light coming rapidly in from sea. "Another battle-ship, Wickett?"

Wickett shook his head. "No. I've been watching her. It's the _Clermont_. She's due. And I'm half afraid to go and board her."

"Why?"

"If my wife's aboard, she'll have with her a fifteen-months-old daughter that I have never seen. Suppose she, too, greets me with--She's swinging back--to her anchorage--look."

The green light rolled in a great half-circle inshore, and disappeared. A red light curved into sight.

Wickett jumped up. "Come on, Carlin, I'll get permission to leave the ship. We'll be there before she lowers the port ladder."

"No, but drop me at the landing on the way and I'll see you in the morning at the hotel. How's that?"

* * * * *

Carlin saw him before the morning. He was in the lobby of the hotel when Wickett with his wife, a fine big boy, and a lovely little baby girl, got out of the hotel 'bus. The boy was clinging to Wickett's hand, all the while talking rapturously of the trip of the _Clermont_. With his free arm Wickett was carrying the baby, which was murmuring, "Papa, papa, papa!"

Carlin would have known Mrs. Wickett without an introduction or the presence of the boy and the baby. Merely from the way she looked at Wickett he knew that this was the girl who had gone sailing with him in the dawn and become engaged before breakfast.

"It's all right," smiled Wickett, with his cheek against the baby's. "This one can't seem to say anything but papa!"

Carlin nodded, and whispered: "And you couldn't afford it?"

Wickett grinned. "We couldn't; but we did. We always do."

"And how about the service--going to quit it?"

Wickett stared at Carlin. "Quit the service!"

Suddenly he recalled, and laughed, and whispered: "Sh-h--! I'm due for a year and a half of shore duty. But don't mind if I hurry along, will you? I got to get these children to bed."

"Go on--hurry--and good night," said Carlin. "Good night, Mrs. Wickett," and handed her into the elevator; and smoked two thoughtful cigars on the veranda and then went inside and sat down and wrote a long letter on the subject of the navy as a profession to the mother of a young lad back home.

There was much detail, and then:

As to being away from home for long periods: Married officers tell me that it is hard at times. But judging by what I saw awhile ago here, the home-coming almost offsets the long absences. The kind of a woman they marry probably makes a lot of difference. I'd say, let him go if he wants to. Good night.

Your affectionate brother,

SAM.

CROSS COURSES

Hearing the boys in the office talking of a lecture at the Sailor's Haven a few nights ago was what set me thinking to-day. It was on superstition, and the speaker digressed to expend ten minutes, as he put it, on sailors. A most superstitious lot, sailors.

He had a lot of fun with the sailors, and a crowd of old seafaring men sat there and let him, until a boss stevedore from our wharf who'd been one time mate of a coaster, with the preliminary contribution that this was sure the wisest party he'd listened to in all o' seven years, rose to inquire of the gentleman how long he'd been to sea.

Well, he had been to sea quite a little. Twice to Europe and return, once to Panama and return, once to Jamaica in the West Indies and----

"--return?" finishes our stevedore. "Sure you returned each time? 'N' in what sortivver craft'd you sail to them places--and return--in?"

"Why, steamers," answers the lecturer.

"Passinjer?"

"Passenger? Certainly."

"Excuse _me_!" says our stevedore. "I oughter known better. O' course, _you know_ all about sailors," and sits down.

The lecturer was all right. He was doing the best he knew, with the finest and fattest of words he could pick out, to make things clearer to his audience; and his audience, appreciating that, let him run on, until he said that there was not one mysterious thing which had ever happened that could fail to be proved very ordinary by mathematical, or historical, or logical, or physical, or some other "cal" deduction; which bounced our watch-dog out of his seat again.

"How d'you 'count," he growls, "for th' _Orion_ 'n' _Sirius_?"

Well-l, he could not account for it, for the simple and overwhelmingly conclusive reason that, previous to that very moment, he had never heard of the ships named.

"Then s'pose you hear 'f 'em now," says our stevedore, and starts in and delivers the lecturer a lecture on the _Orion_ and _Sirius_, and it wound up the show; for when the lecturer started to butt in, all the old barnacles, who before this had been clinging warily to the edge of their seats, now rose up and rallied around our stevedore to finish his story, which he did; and the old fellows, on leaving the hall, said that the credit of the proceeds for the Sailor's Haven fund, for that night, anyway, ought to go as much to their old college chum from the coal wharf as to any imported lecturer with his deckload of lantern slides.

But our stevedore didn't tell all there was of the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_. The lecturer went home thinking he had been told all about it, but he hadn't. Here it is as it was.

I

In the fleet of big coal schooners, which at this time were running from the middle Atlantic ports to Boston, the twin five-masters, the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_, were notable.

They were twins in everything: built from the one set of moulds in the one yard at the one time, launched together, rigged together, sailed on their maiden trips together, and were brought home with their first cargoes of coal together by two masters who were almost as twinlike to look at as their vessels.

It was the history of these two big schooners, that they seemed always to be wanting to get together. Their crews used to say of them that if left anchored at all near each other in the stream, they would start right away to swing toward each other. Even if it was slack water they would. Yes, sir.

I can't speak from personal knowledge of that tide-swinging trick, but I do know that I saw them a few hours after they had twice smashed into each other--once under sail off the Capes and once in tow up Boston Harbor; and it was not to be doubted that in both cases they had more than drifted into each other. And of their near-collisions! A day's loaf along the water-front would yield gossip of a dozen or more.

Now, these next few lines are from out of the sailors' book of gossip of mysterious happenings at sea; and it is true that the more sailorly the gossip, the more likely will it be to try to account for unusual accidents at sea in a natural way; and the most usual reason given is inefficiency--lack of seamanship. As to that, it is true that lack of seamanship or of sea instinct has accounted for many calamities at sea, and the same lack would probably account for many another not so set down on the public tablets; but lack of seamanship won't account for all the queer happenings at sea. Every now and then comes a ship which no earthly power seems able to keep up with. From out of our superior shore knowledge we may deduce that the builder or designer was in fault, that there must have been an asymmetry in her hull, or that her rigging lacked balance, such defects tending to render her uncontrollable under certain conditions. Maybe; but there she is, as she is, with the malign fates seeming to be working double tides to get her.

"Hoodoo ships," sailors term such, and "Hoo-doos, both of 'em," the crews of the collier fleet early labelled the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_. Yes, _sir_. And some day the pair of them were going up--or down--in a whirl of glory. If only they would smash only each other, and not go to putting poor innocent outsiders out of commission when they did go!--that was all they'd ask of _them_.

The master of the _Orion_ was Oliver Sickles; of the _Sirius_, Norman Sickles; and they were from the same little hamlet in that Cape Shore region whence come so many capable sailormen. Each was named for his father, and their fathers were brothers who hated each other and brought up their children to hate each other.

It was curious to see them--two master mariners commanding sister ships for the same owners--passing each other on the wharf, brushing elbows in the office, putting to sea time and time together, sailing, again and again, side by side for days together, and yet never seeming to see each other. Indifference was the word; but if by any chance a third person referred to one in the presence of the other in anything like complimentary terms, that third person was soon let to know that he wasn't making any hit with whichever Captain Sickles it was who had to listen. If it was Norman of the _Sirius_, he would shift his feet and start to stare intently at the ceiling or the sky; if it was Oliver of the _Orion_, with a snarl of disgust he would get up and walk off.

I had heard a lot of the Sickles cousins, but had never had more than a hailing acquaintance with either of them, until this early fall when my firm chartered, among others, the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_, and sent me down to Newport News to see that they lost no time in loading and getting out. It was the time of a threatened coal famine in New England, with coal freights up to two dollars a ton, and my firm chartering everything they could get hold of to take the coal from the railroads at Newport News and rush it east.

In our two new schooner captains, Norman and Oliver Sickles, I found, when I came to have dealings with them, a pair who knew their business. Implacable toward each other they surely were, but so long as their feelings weren't delaying their sailing days, that was their own business. Tall, broad, powerful chaps they both were, twenty-eight or thirty years of age to look at, slow in thought, heavy in action, but competent sailormen always. I had no need to know their records, nor to talk with them too many hours, to find that out. Not much about a schooner, be she two or five master, nor much about the North Atlantic coast, that they didn't know.