Part 15

“‘There isn’t any real reason why they shouldn’t,’ said he; ‘but there used to be a prejudice against the trade. As for me, I don’t see why people considered it in such a bad light, for shipping the article not only paid the owners but improved the ebony--after they got it ashore.’

“‘I see,’ I answered; ‘the ebony was alive, then, and in the form of men and women.’

“‘Most likely,’ he replied, ‘though they do say that life in a ship’s hold is not uncoupled with death, especially when a vessel gets caught in the hot calms outside the Guinea Gulf. Anyhow, the vessel had no lights and was crowding along with every rag on her.

“‘The first thing anybody on board knew of the whereabouts of the fruit schooner was the crash of her bowsprit poking into the fore-rigging and knocking the foremast out of the Guinea trader. Then she ranged alongside, all fast, with her head-gear tangled in the wreck.

“‘There were a great many men on the vessel carrying the ebony, and in a few minutes they swarmed on deck with muskets and cutlasses. As soon as they found the fellow was a fruit schooner they started to cut her adrift, cursing the captain and crew for the damage.

“‘Everything might have gone well and the vessels separated but for the fact that the passengers on board were two officers and their families bound for Havana. These two men came on deck in uniform, and in less than a minute the men saw them. To let them go meant certain death to all hands on the ebony schooner, so they started over the rail after them.’

“Here Alvarez became suddenly silent for a few moments, and his eyes wandered towards the trees, as if expecting to see some one. Then, facing me again, he continued:

“‘They made a terrible fight, they say, cutting down half a dozen men as they crowded aft. The captain and crew of the schooner were soon tied up, and the men rushed onto the quarter-deck to take the officers at any cost. It was all over in a minute, and the two wives and a beautiful girl were carried on board the ebony schooner. The men were so worked up that a plank was rigged from the weather-rail and the lashings cast off from the feet of the prisoners. One by one they walked to their death along that narrow strip of wood with their eyes bandaged and elbows lashed fast behind them--and that was all.’

“He remained silent for some moments after this, and again looked sharply at the clump of palmettoes.

“‘But, Alvarez,’ I said, ‘what became of the two women and the beautiful young girl?’

“‘I never heard,’ he answered, dryly, and started to walk slowly back to the blind.

“‘Did they ever catch the ebony schooner?’ I ventured again.

“‘I don’t know,’ he replied, shortly, and, as I saw he would talk no more, I kept silent.

“After walking up and down the beach trying to get cool, we finally laid down under the trees and slept until daybreak. Then we started home. On the way back we were becalmed, and having drunk up all the water, we drifted along under a scorching sun with our mouths too dry to open. As I lay on my back in the bottom of the boat, I could not help thinking of the stories about this old man, and it suddenly flashed upon me that he had been seen near those same palmettoes before.

“I vaguely wondered if he had been a pirate and had buried his ill-gotten money under those trees on that lonely shore. There he sat in the stern-sheets, his grizzled hair shining in the bright sunlight under his old slouch hat, and his small gray eyes looking seaward for the first cat’s-paw of the coming morning breeze. His skin, tanned to leather from long exposure to the weather, made him as impervious to the sun’s rays as a negro. But in spite of this his features were as clearly cut and as strongly marked as those of a Don of bluest blood. Altogether he was not a bad looking old man, even with his slightly hooked nose and too firm mouth.

“I soon fell asleep and dreamed of rich galleons fighting huge canoes full of grizzled pirates, armed to the teeth, who squinted carefully along their old muskets and fired with loud yells. I suddenly awoke to find Alvarez calling to me to sit to windward, as we were heeling over and rushing along through the water before the sea-breeze only a few miles from town.

“The next day we started out bass-fishing in the surf on the outer beach. A rod and reel would have been considered strange instruments in those days down there. We used to take our hand-lines, which were very long, and, coiling them carefully, would wade out to our armpits. Then swinging the heavy sinkers about our heads until they acquired sufficient velocity, we would send them flying out beyond the first line of breakers, and paying out line, would wade back to the beach. Sharks abounded, and often we lost our gear when they took a fancy to our baits. We never feared their attacking us, as the waters abounded with fish, and in such places they seldom if ever attack a man.

“One day after some good sport Alvarez seemed tired, and instead of holding the end of his line in his hand he tied it around his waist. I noticed this and was about to call his attention to the danger of it, when I hooked a huge bass and was kept busy playing it for some time. The lines we used were about the size of the cod-lines used in the North, and capable of holding a strain of nearly two hundred pounds, while the hooks were like the drum hooks now used. While I was playing my fish my line, which was old, parted near the end, and I hauled it in to fit a new hook and sinker. During the time I was thus engaged Alvarez had waded out up to his shoulders in the surf and had cast his line into deep water. He then started to wade slowly back towards the shore. Before he had made a dozen steps I saw him suddenly reach for his line.

“Three heavy breakers had just rolled in, followed by a comparatively smooth spell that lasted for a few moments. I stopped working at my line and watched him, for I knew he must have had a good bite. Suddenly I saw him throw his whole weight on the line, but in spite of this go slowly forward. He was now in water so deep that he had to jump up every time the swell came to keep his head out of the foam. In a moment I turned, and as I caught the expression of his face I knew what had happened. That face I’ve often seen since in my dreams, and I will never forget the expression of sudden fear that filled it.

“He had gone out so far that he could not get a good foothold; a shark had seized his bait and was making slowly out to sea. He called my name and beckoned me to come and help him. With trembling fingers I finished knotting the sinker to my line and rushed headlong with it down the beach. Water is a yielding fluid, but all who have tried know what tremendous exertion is required to make speed through it when in above the knees. When I was close enough I swung my sinker over my head and sent it whizzing straight and true towards the old man, who was now out to the first line of breakers, and swimming, though steadily moving outward.

“I flung the lead towards him, and he would have caught the line, but at that instant a huge sea broke right over him and he disappeared in the smothering foam. When he reappeared he was beyond reach and going steadily seaward. With a sickening feeling I hauled in the line and plunged into the surf to swim out to him. I made good headway until I reached the first line of curling water, when a heavy breaker fell over me and swept me back a hundred feet from where I started. Standing there in the surf, with the bright sun shining, I saw old Alvarez passing slowly out to sea to disappear forever. I tried to think what to do. He evidently could not break the line. It was impossible to untie it with the strain on it, and he being only half dressed had left his knife ashore.

“I thought of our boat which was on the lee side of the island, and knew that it would take a couple of hours to get around the point. However, it seemed the only thing to do, so I made my way ashore and started across the island as fast as possible. Just before entering the woods I looked seaward, and there on the breast of a long swell, a quarter of a mile off, was Alvarez, swimming steadily with his face turned towards the beach.

“In about a quarter of an hour I reached the boat, hoisted the sail, and shoved off. There was hardly any wind on the lee side of the island, so I put out an oar and sculled until the perspiration poured down my face and my heart seemed as though it would burst. In spite of this I made but little headway, and finally had to give it up exhausted. It was about two in the afternoon when I started, and it was after three before I cleared the point and got wind enough to get to sea. I came around on the sea side of the island and close enough in to see our coats on the beach, but of Alvarez there was not a trace.

“I headed out to sea in the direction that he was going when I saw him last, and searched about until dark, when I gave it up as hopeless. It was late when I arrived in the town that night, so I waited until morning before I reported the accident.

“The sheriff searched the house in which the old man lived, but nothing was found except an old sea-chest filled with clothes, some of which appeared to be Spanish uniforms, but very dilapidated. No money was found in the house except a few Spanish gold coins, and these were in the room that he occupied as a bedroom.

“For months afterwards I kept thinking of Alvarez and his tragic end. Although I felt very sorry for him, I could not help wondering if he did have money concealed in the neighborhood. I often felt heartily ashamed of myself, after discussing with some friend the probability of his having concealed wealth, but, nevertheless, the fancy that he had took a strong hold of me.

“I tried to imagine where on earth he could have hidden anything, and always my thoughts centred on that clump of palmettoes on that low sandy island. This feeling finally took such hold of me that one night I started out pelican-shooting with a shovel in the bottom of my boat.

“I felt something like a robber, but knowing that the old fellow had no relations, or friends even, for that matter, I tried to convince myself that I was right. It was about eight o’clock when I started with a good sailing breeze off the land, so it could not have been more than ten when I ran my boat’s bow on the sand and lowered the sail on the west side of the island.

“As I took up my gun and shovel a feeling of excitement came over me, and I felt as though I had already found a mass of untold wealth. When I started to walk across the island this feeling increased, and soon I was plunging and ploughing through the deep dry sand at a great rate.

“I could see the bunch of trees standing out clearly against the sky, and also the white surf beyond, for, although the moon was only in its first quarter, the night was clear and bright. I halted on the crest of a circular sand-dune to get my breath, and a feeling of lonesomeness crept over me as I looked towards the dark grove and down the lonely beach where everything was lifeless. The stillness seemed intensified by the deep booming of the surf, and I felt as if something or somebody was watching me. I had just turned towards the trees and was starting down the side of the dune when, with a sudden rush and flapping of wings, a huge gray pelican started up within ten feet of me and made off like a great gray ghost to seaward. A sudden chill shot up my spine. Dropping the shovel, I grabbed my gun in both hands and fired instantly at the retreating shadow. The shot was an easy one, but I missed; so, swearing at myself audibly for my nervousness, I picked up the shovel and went on.

“I halted under the largest tree, and, resting my gun against the trunk, tried to form some plan of action. Although the trees were some thirty feet above high-water, there were no tracks or anything else to indicate that any one had ever been there before. I might dig the whole grove up, for all that I had to guide me, before striking the right spot. However, I went to work at the front of the big tree and started to dig to the eastward.

“I toiled for an hour and was getting pretty warm. Thus far I had struck nothing but the roots of a tree, so I began to despair. I knew that I might keep on digging holes clear through to China, and, with nothing to guide me, pass within a foot of what I searched for. I took off my shirt, and the cool breeze blowing on my warm body invigorated me; so, taking up the shovel again, I started to lengthen the hole to the eastward. I dug steadily for another half-hour, when my shovel suddenly struck something solid. This made my heart almost leap into my mouth, and with quickening breath I dug fiercely on.

“Like a miner on making his first find of gold, I trembled all over, and the perspiration poured down my naked breast and shoulders as I threw clouds of sand on all sides. I was as drunk as if I had swallowed a pint of liquor, and I remember nothing except that I felt like shouting with delight. I finally cleared a box of the sand over it and then tried to lift it. To my intense surprise it moved easily. But my excitement gave way to the deepest disappointment, for I well knew that if a box about six feet long, two wide, and two deep contained coin it would take more than one man of my size to move it.

“I lost no time thinking these thoughts, but started to pry off the lid. The wood, which was extremely well preserved, resisted the edge of my shovel so well that it broke the iron. I was losing patience, so, whirling the shovel above my head, I brought it down with crushing force upon the lid. After a few blows it gave way, and I eagerly tore off the splintered fragments. As I did so I leaned over and peered into the face of a corpse.

“I leaped back and gazed at it in a stupefied way for some moments, my head in a whirl, then partially recovering myself, I went forward to examine it. It looked like the body of a man in the uniform of an officer; at least so I judged by some buttons on the coat; but everything had passed through the last stages of decomposition. There was nothing left on the head at all, and the teeth grinned horribly in the moonlight.

“As I stood and gazed I thought of Alvarez. So this was his secret! How came a man to be buried in such a lonely spot? Was it a friend or victim of his former days, brought ashore from some vessel in the offing that dare not land at St. Augustine?

“I did not molest the body, but after recovering myself I put the fragments of the lid back as well as I could and piled the sand over it. I then dressed, and, taking my gun, started for the boat. After sailing several hours with hardly any wind, I arrived at the town just as the rising sun came up out of the ocean. I said nothing of my trip to any one, and soon after left St. Augustine to return no more for years.

“The town is a queer old place, but it has changed greatly to one who remembers it as it was years ago. Its quaint old fort and coquina walls doubtless contain many secrets of their former owners. As for old Alvarez, he carried his to sea with him that bright afternoon with a shark for a pilot.”

_THE CURSE OF WOMAN_

“Some skippers are good and some are bad,” said Gantline, joining in the talk on the main-hatch. He was second mate, so we listened. He expectorated with great accuracy into a coil of rope and continued:

“Likewise so are owners. The same holds good to most kinds of people. Some owners don’t want good skippers. They’re apt to be expensive on long runs, for they won’t cheat a poor devil of a sailor out of his lime-juice and other luxuries they have nowadays. At best a sailor gets less pay and works harder than any man alive, leave out the danger and discomfort on a long voyage on an overloaded ship. It’s only fair to treat him as well as possible. This idea that feeding a man well and not cursing him at every order will make him lazy is wrong, and ought to be kept among the class of skippers who take their ‘lunars’ with a hand-lead.

“There are some ships always unlucky. But the luck is mostly the fault of the skipper.

“Take, for instance, the loss of the Golden Arrow or the big clipper Pharos, that was found adrift in the doldrums without a man aboard her. Everything was in its place and not a boat was lowered. Even the dishes lay upon the table with the food rotten in them, but there wasn’t a soul to tell how she came to be unmanned. She was an unlucky ship, for on her next voyage out she stayed. No one has seen plank or spar of her for twelve years. But the skipper and mate who left her adrift outside of the Guinea current were well known to deep-water men.

“I’m no sky-pilot, and I don’t mean to say a skipper who prefers a pretty stewardess to an ugly one--or none at all--is always a bad man, but I do say that a skipper who cuts off a man’s lime-juice, gives him weevils for bread, and two-year-old junk for beef, has got enough devilry in him for anything, and is apt to have things comfortable in the after-cabin.

“It was nothing but scurvy that killed young Jim Douglas, so they said; but what about Hollender, the skipper, who brought him in along with nineteen others?

“I went to see Jim in the hospital, and he was an awful sight. His eyes rolled horribly, but he took my hand and held it a long time; then he tried to talk. His mind wasn’t steady and he often lost his bearings, but there was something besides delirium behind his tale.

“‘Her curse is on us, Gantline,’ he kept whispering. I held him, but he lay mumbling. ‘Dan died, too, an’ we sewed him up in canvas like a ham, an’ over he went; but it wouldn’t have helped, for the water was as rotten as it lays in the deadwood bilge. ’Twas the ghost of the skipper’s wife holding us back--her curse did the business, an’ I knew it.’ Then he calmed down and talked more natural.

“‘She came aboard with the child, an’ Hollender’s stewardess wouldn’t wait on her. Black-eyed she-devil that woman. An’ the skipper grinned, an’ the poor thing cried an’ cried. “Don’t treat me so; have mercy!” But he just grinned. “You can go forward an’ live with the mate if you don’t like it,” he said. She just cried an’ cried. One night she came on deck an’ rushed to the rail. She had her baby with her an’ she hesitated.

“’“Shall we go aft?” I said to Dan. “It’s mutiny an’ death,” says he.

“‘Then she cursed us all--an’ went over the side----’ Jim lay quiet after this for a minute, then he began:

“‘Slower, slower, slower. No wind, two hundred days out, an’ the water as rotten as it is in the deadwood bilge. The cat--I mean the mate--went up on the forecastle, an’ he never came back. We ate him, an’ tied his paws around our necks for luck. No wind, an’ the sails slatted to and fro on the yards. Midnight, an’ bright moonlight when it struck us, an’ tore our masts out an’ drove us far out of the path of ships, an’ we lay there with the boats gone, water-logged till we rigged enough gear to drift home by---- Help! Gantline, help! The curse of the woman was on the ship, for there wasn’t a man aboard----’

“He struggled and rose up in the cot. His eyes were staring at the blank wall. I held him hard for an instant and he suddenly relaxed. Then he fell back dead.

“Then, you see, there was the Albatross that sailed----”

“But hold on a bit. Stop a minute!” said Mr. Enlis. “If you keep on like that, Gantline, you’ll ruin the passenger trade as far as wimmen are concerned. As for stewardesses, there won’t be one afloat if you keep croaking. You seem to think wimmen do nothing but harm afloat, whereas I know plenty who have done good. I don’t see what wimmen have to do with wittles, anyhow?”

“Who in the name of Davy Jones said they had?” growled Gantline, angrily. “I’m no sky-pilot, and I----”

“Right you are, mate, you say true there, for if I was to go to you to get my last heading I’d fetch up on a lee shore where there’d be few strange faces.”

Gantline gave a grunt of disgust. “That’s just the way with you every time any one starts a line of argument to prove a thing’s so; you always sheer off, or bring in something that’s got nothing to do with the case and don’t signify. Here I’ve been showing that bad luck to ships is caused by something wrong with the skippers, and here you are trying to bring wimmen into the case, just as if your thoughts ran on nothing else. But, pshaw! everybody knows what kind of a fellow you are when you’re on the beach.” And he jerked his pipe into his pocket and walked aft.

“Never mind him,” said Mr. Enlis. “He’s an old croaker, and it’s just such growling that makes trouble for skippers. But whenever you see a man talk like that there’s always something behind it. Yes, sir, every time.”

“How do you mean?” asked Chips.

“Well, when a man’s soured on wimmen there is always a cause for it, and I happen to know something about Gantline’s past. It’s the old story, but who wants to know how Jim or Jack’s wife fell in love with him? Neither does any one care about how she comes to leave him, though nearly all story books are written about such things, and that’s the reason I never read them. There ain’t much novelty in that line.

“Lord, love is all alike, just the same in the poor man as in the rich; but what I was about to say is this: Gantline, here, gives the idea that wimmen are dangerous afloat and leaves off telling anything good about them. That ain’t exactly fair. It’s true most wimmen who follow the sea are not exactly to be considered fighting craft, and are mighty apt to strike their colors do you but let it be known you’re out for prizes. Still, I know of cases where they’ve done a power of good. There was ‘Short Moll,’ who was stewardess with old man Fane, and she made him.

“The old man, you see, had been getting lonely, and had taken to carrying large invoices of grog, which is bound to break a man in the long run.

“One day at the dock Moll came along and inquired for the skipper. The old man saw her coming, and bawled out, ‘For Heaven’s sake, Mr. Enlis, don’t let her come aboard!’ and dived below.

“I ran to the gang-plank as she started over and said, ‘Captain’s gone up-town, and there ain’t no visitors allowed.’

“‘Oh, there ain’t?’ she said sort of sweetly, and she screwed up her little slits of eyes. ‘If that’s the case, you may consider me one of the crew, for I’ve got a notion they want a stewardess aboard.’

“‘There ain’t no passengers, so get back on the dock and obey orders!’ And I planted myself athwart the plank.

“Well, sir, if you ever seen a change come over a woman in three shakes of a sheet-rope you ought to seen her.

“‘What!’ she yelled. ‘You stop me from coming aboard a ship in this free an’ easy country of America? Git out o’ the way, you slab-sided, herring-gutted son of a wind-jammer, or I’ll run ye down an’ cut ye in two.’ And she bore down on me under full sail.

“She carried a full cargo, and I stepped down on the main-deck, for, after all, that gang-plank was too narrow a subject for such broad-minded folk as Moll and me to discuss on the spur of the moment.

“She never gave me a look, but steered straight for the cabin and disappeared.

“There was a most uncommon noise, and I saw the skipper’s head pop up the hatchway. But in a moment he was drawn slowly downward, and as he turned his face he looked like a drowning man sinking for the last time.

“Well, the first day off soundings there was another fracas, and Moll came forward with a can of condensed milk in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other. She gave me a leer and waved the can of milk, and I knew we were to live high that voyage. I hadn’t tasted the stuff for nigh two years.