"What with these young schools aboard ship and chocolate caramels where bottled beer was one time in the cantine, 'tis a changed navy we've come to."
There was Porto Bello with its painted walls, there was the liberty boat at the gangway, and there was Monaghan with nothing but abuse for all present institutions.
"'Twas a good adventure the navy was once, but 'tis a kind of factory they would be making of it, with pay-days, not fightin' days, the grand thing to be lookin' for'ard to.
"And oh," he sighs after a breath, "the hearty arguments a liberty party would find to their elbows in any foreign port of importance in the old days! But now—puh!"
"Monaghan," I says, "is it in human nature, do you think, to alter so wonderfully in one short generation?"
"'Tisn't me," says Monaghan, "that reads shelves of books from the ship's library, includin' poetry. Go on, you; cling to your hopeful views, till some day you die of them. But for me—I'll go with you on no shore liberty this day."
So over the side I went without Monaghan, but our executive—him we called Regulations—was there to speed our going from the gangway grating.
"Remember, now," says Regulations, "no street brawlings and no ordering rounds of intoxicating drinks in cantinas. Whoever isn't there when the liberty boat leaves the landing-pier this afternoon, and whoever returns aboard here under the influence of liquor I shall send 'em to the brig. And don't think for one moment that any one of you can fool me with any cock-and-bull story of what happened you."
No great evil in Regulations, but a pity, I was thinking, he would not leave a little more to our imagination and maybe good intentions. Some of us there were, I knew, that would like to think that 'twas maybe not altogether fear of the ship's discipline would be holding us to our good behavior.
Meditating, maybe sadly, I was on the distrust of Regulations and the defection of Monaghan, when I looked up to find myself abreast of a cantina that was run by an Americanized native called Tony, the same who one time kept a fruit-stand on West Street in New York till he discovered that bananas and pineapples and lemons were not the most staple articles of diet on the water-front of a great American port. "Tony," I says, "'twould grieve a certain superior officer of my ship exceedingly were I to order one single draft of spirituous liquor on this my first day of liberty in two months. But 'tis no summer resort on the New England coast this is. Will you, in God's name, give me something to cool the blazing throat of me?"
"When I tended bar in a hotel one time in a prohibition State in your country," says West Street Tony, "we made one drink especially for temperance people. I mix one now," he says; and he did.
"Lemonado Porto Bello we call that down here," says Tony.
"'Tis satisfying," I said; and had another, and passed on my way.
'Twas truly a beautiful port—Porto Bello—in the low latitudes; and there were little children playing in the streets and long-tailed birds singing in the trees; and from one place to another I passed, having here and there along the way a lemonado Porto Bello by way of abating the heat of the hot morning. And so, until approaching noon found me under the portales of a hotel on a fine high hill.
'Twas in truth a hot morning. The Hot Coast the guide-books in the ship's library called all that country, and no misname in that; but when a waiter steps up with a negligée air and a towel and swipes a battalion of camping flies from the marble deck of my table to the scuppers of the sidewalk, and says: "Vairy gooda beer on icey—two bottlas for-r da one-a peso," like a friendly soul who would help out a thirsty and innocent foreigner, I said no.
"No," I said; "no intoxicating beverages will I order myself this day. Lemonade Porto Bello," I said: "duo"—holding up two fingers to maybe help out his lack of his own language. "One for me, one for him," I said, and pointing to a glass a young fellow with an air of preoccupation and melancholy at the next table had standing empty to his elbow.
"Bueno, bueno!" said the waiter, and in good season brought me one and replaced the empty glass of the abstracted young man with the other.
It was, as I said, a hot day. As to that, I've yet to see a morning in twenty years of cruising on that blasted coast when it wasn't hot. Sitting in the shade of the portales on that high hill and almost a breeze coming in from the waters of the Gulf—even so, all ready to soak iced Porto Bello lemonados into me, even so it was hot.
And while I'm waiting there having another lemonade, and by and by another and another, a young girl enters the shade of the portales; and no man could carry two eyes in his head and not notice the loveliness of her. Lovely and good. I could feel it in the air when I wasn't looking straight at her. Women's hats and men's cigarettes bobbed in high approval, and the watery eyes of two gray-whiskered old rounders grew almost bright and decent to look at when from over the tops of their newspapers they gazed after her in passing.
My little table was up by the main entrance, and as if for no more than to let her lovely glance rest on some manly creature who might be sitting unattached in the neighborhood, she stopped on the lowest step of the hotel doorway and her eyes were slanted in my general direction.
"Jeepers!" I said to myself, for even with a gray hair here and there impinging on the black mop above my temples—even so, I needed no ship's surgeon to testify that the pension-list was a long way from me yet. And as for the rank, 'twas well I knew that when the heart goes cruising 'tis little the rank matters. Gunner's mate, even as an admiral of the line, may well have his fair romance: that I knew.
But what man of intelligence and natively good intentions may run riot through the years of tempestuous youth and not arrive some day at a belated wisdom? After another upward glance I saw that not for me was that look of virginal yearning and distress. The line of fire of her gaze had for its target the back of the head of the young fellow who so melancholy and abstracted was gazing on the blue waters of the Gulf from the next table.
"Jeepers!" I said to myself, "is he asleep or what?" and above my lemonade I points a soft cough at him.
But no sign from him, and I coughed again—the short double cough which is the signal among all males from Kamchatka to Punta Arenas, sailing east or west, north or south, great or little circles, as you please—for all males above the age of apprentice boys to stand to attention—that 'tis lovely ladies coming over the side.
But never a sign of hearing from him, and "Mucho calero, mucho heato," I said respectfully, and with a side look of apology, meaning in that way to intimate to the lovely creature that I had gone as far as the regulations would permit a rough and simple nature who hadn't been formally introduced.
I thought she would step down onto the walk beside us there to speak, but a voice from within the hotel called out: "Marguerite! Marguerite!" A firm, commanding voice it was, and with it the lovely vision faded somewhere into the forbidding dark between-decks of the hotel.
By and by the chin of the young fellow at the next table lifted off his chest, his eyes came slowly back from the blue waters—or whatever it was they were staring at—to the white marble top of his table, and he stared, puzzled, at his full glass. "I thought I drank that," he says, and has a sip of it.
"I never ordered anything like that," he says, and shoves it from him, and then he spies me. "Excuse me," he says, "but did you speak?"
"I did," I says, "but so long ago that I've most lost the use of my tongue. But no harm; I'll speak now again," and I clapped my hands and "Muchacho! Boyo!" I calls. "Oono lemonado plaino—and oono lemonado Porto Bello with much frio—you know—mucho iceyo and hurry like helleo!"
And I explained to the young fellow how long years back my chum Monaghan had taught me how to talk these tropic languages: the way to do was to wave both hands, stick an "o" onto every other word and yell like a bo'son's mate in the morning watch, and, with the waiter maybe knowing a little American to help you out, you could get what you ordered every time.
"But I'm wondering who it was called her," I said when the lemonades had come. "There she was, sort of standing on one foot like she wanted to talk to somebody, and I know that somebody wasn't me, when 'Marguerite!' a voice called—like that—and whing! she was gone, with sighs soft as the bubbles in the wake of a torpedo to mark her going."
"Marguerite?" says the young fellow, coming wonderfully back to life. "What did she look like?"
"Queen o' the Movies—nothing less for looks, but with a touch o' home and mother and little babies clinging to her neck."
"That's Marguerite! Why didn't you call me?" he says.
He reminded me in his indignation of the rookies aboard ship when they're first shook up to go on night watch. If you don't haul 'em out of their hammocks and throw them ten feet down the passageway by their necks and ankles, they bellow to the skipper at the mast next morning how no one called them. But I would not tell him that. Let him who has never felt the sting of the barbed arrow rub salt in the wound it makes.
"I coughed so loud at you the second time that I had all the Johnnies along the row looking up over their coffee demi-tasseys, and all the stout señoras were eying me with more than ordinary female suspicion," was all I said to that.
He ran inside the hotel then. By and by he comes back. "She was here, but she's gone, the clerk doesn't know where."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I says; and, moved by my further words of sympathy, he tells me how he's been steaming in the wake of the beautiful young lady through seven European monarchies and four Central American republics, and of how, whenever he thought he was safe alongside, the mother would up anchor and leave him riding to a lonesome mooring in the dark of some foreign port.
"Just ten minutes with Marguerite and her mother together and I know I could explain how it came about I got mixed up in what they think was a disgraceful row, but I can't get the chance."
To my way of thinking the young lady at least wouldn't require much explanation; and, talking of one thing and another, we had a bite of lunch and after lunch a smoke, and we were absorbing, to abate the heat—he a plain and myself another lemonado Porto Bello—when a mahogany-tinted boy with a musical voice and his pants held up by one suspender stops in front of us to chant of a bull-fight which is to come off that afternoon.
"Maybe," I says to my new young friend, "this bull-fight would make you forget your troubles for a while." And he agrees it might. So "Boyo! Muchacho!" I hail the waiter. "Duo—two-o seatso for the bull-fighteo! You know—good seatso—the besto!"
"Bueno, señor," says the waiter, and hurries off, and pretty soon is back with two yellow tickets for three pesos each, proving again what I'd said about talking the language.
'Twas the advice of the waiter to take a blue-line trolley-car for the bull-ring, the same being quick and cheap. But it was no blue or any other colored trolley-car that I hailed from the shadow of the hotel portales. No, no. A rakish, two-horse cruiser of low freeboard—that was the craft befitting two American señors of importance to go sailing through the streets of Porto Bello on a hot day to a bull-fight, and, that the inhabitants of the benighted place might be fully informed of our high rating, I stuck both feet over the port side. "And I want to see any five-foot spig policeman try to put 'em back inboard," I said.
No policeman tried to, and in due season and good order we made entrance to a plaza that was crowded with long-legged tables piled high with chile con carnes and olla podridas and various other comestibles indigenous to the region; and under the tables, where the shade was deepest, were many cases of native beer piled high with ice.
From behind the tables men and women in green and yellow and red and blue and purple and I don't know what-all colors of clothes were crying out what they had to sell, and up and down the long lines of waiting people were men telling how they had the best seats to sell to the bull-fight.
"Beer on ice and the speculators with the best seats out on the sidewalk—it makes me almost feel that I'm back on Broadway," says my young friend. 'Twas the first sign of life he'd shown since he'd jumped into the hotel to look for the young lady of his sorrows, and the same encouraged me to hope that maybe before the afternoon was over he'd remember that 'twasn't yet the Last Day—that the blue waters of the Gulf and the golden rays of the sun was still shining and sparkling, the one to the other below and above us—glory!
'Twas a plaza of promise we had come to. On a stand over by the bull-ring entrance was a band of hill Indians trying to jam a little music out of a collection of queer-looking instruments, but making a poor job of it, not to speak of resting up too frequently to please a young American bluejacket who was standing by. A festive lad he was, and he climbed up on the band-stand and stepped a lively jig by way of speeding up the band.
But the band hadn't come there to be speeded up. It was a hot day, and after the crazy Americans were come and gone there would be other hot days—or such, I gathered, was the leader's retort.
"No hurry?" says the young bluejacket. "No hurry uppo? Then you guys watch me do an imitation of a whirlin' dervish I see one time in the Caffey dee Joy in Cairo. Watch!"
They watched and saw him revolve himself, one, two, three, four times atop of the stand, and then down the steps and on to his head in the plaza area. But he was of unquenchable spirit; without letting on that that wasn't part of it, he climbed back on to the band-stand and questioned the leader further. Did he know any American music, and would he for a peso—or two pesos, say—play some? Did he sabe Americano musico?
The leader of the band did sabe, and, the two pesos being passed, out rolled "Marching Through Georgia." Which pleased our dancing blue-jacket. "Fine!" he says. "My old man was with Sherman's outfit on that hike. Roll her out again!"
And once more was "Marching Through Georgia" rolling nobly out, and as it was so rolling, a young American marine—but looking too slim and melancholy to so much as give back talk to a scuttle-butt—detached himself from a file of his comrades, and, marching stiffly up onto the band-stand, said: "What d'you-uns mean tellin' this yer nigger to play that-a-one for? I was bawn 'n' raised in Jaw-juh. In Jaw-juh, and my daddy fit with Lee," and he whaled our dancing bluejacket under the ear.
The band-leader was playing an instrument that sounded like a currycomb rubbing across a battle-hatch. Swishy-swishy, it was going, with a loud r-r-rump-umph every few bars, and it was shaped like a long-necked pumpkin. This the young native of Jaw-juh grabbed by its long neck and bent in several places over the leader's skull. There was a platoon of native policemen standing by and another platoon within easy signal distance. With the first shriek of the band for help that first platoon came limbering up, not forgetting to pass the word for their watchmates as they came.
But waiting in line for their tickets, or sampling in their strollings the wares above and beneath the piled-up tables, were a few files and boatloads of our own marines and bluejackets, and these now came steaming up to the battle line, meaning harm to nobody in particular, but curious to know what all the ballyhooing was about and so as to be handy in case anything was doing.
The native police came galloping up and captured the outraged Georgian in the first rush, and as they did so up charged in one thin khaki wave his marine comrades to his rescue. And 'twas a gallant charge, even if all that came of it was to bury the band-stand under the falling bodies.
The mind of my young friend—it pleased me to know him for being so thoughtful—was running in much the same groove as my own. "Down under that pile that poor band-leader is still wondering what he did to get hit. That marine shouldn't have bothered him," says he.
"You're right," I said. "And this everlasting looking for trouble on shore liberty—it gives me the needles."
'Twas just then a tall policeman, with a sword and his chin stuck out belligerently before him gave signs for me to vamose from the plaza. "And what board of examiners," I says, "gave you a rating to be ordering me around?" and I relieved him of his sword and drove his chin back to front dress.
Says the young fellow with me then: "Once in New York I tried to keep some policemen from taking a couple of friends of mine into a patrol-wagon, and they took me along too, and my picture was in the paper next morning—that's what got me in wrong with Marguerite's mother, and this will probably get me in wrong again. But where a fellow's people are there's where he must be too, I suppose."
There were almost tears in the poor boy's voice but nothing like them in his eyes when beside me he waded in knee-deep, and he was a wide-shouldered, round-chested lad with quick, strong ways to him. Knee-deep, I say, for by this time the uniformed natives were threatening to roll over us like some huge, advancing wave. And such natives as weren't in uniform stood to one side and cheered, or maybe hove a doby brick or two at intervals.
But not entirely one-sided was it, for every bluejacket or marine arriving by the blue-line cars, after a quick masthead view of the situation, took a running hop, step, and a leap into the middle of it.
Our numbers were increasing, and there were other matters to aid us. The pedlers at the tables were hurrying to remove their wares from the war zones, but the quick advances of battle overtook the most of them, and tropical things to eat and drink from above and beneath the tables were soon adding a grand variety to the first plans of battle. There was the ice that had been cooling the beer. You take a lump of ice about the size of a small man's head, point the same carefully at a range of three or four feet, and hurl it with the full power of a moderately strong arm and—but 'tis a bad habit, boasting. And a thick-bottomed bottle of native beer—'tis a useful little article, too, at close quarters.
It was a hot day. "Mucho calero, mucho heato, be quiet, you!" I admonished one of the enemy lying prone at my feet, and picked up a beer-bottle, taking notice that it was not empty and that the cold beads of a late icing still clung to it. And I snapped free the patent stopper, and, for better action, loosened the blouse about my neck, giving thanks at the same time for the lucky man I was to have a blouse left on me to loosen.
Now, if Regulations had been there to see, it is a fine sermon he could have preached on the evils of strong drink—how it brings its own punishment always in its wake. And not a word but would be true. But a man exalted by the clash of battle is no man to preach to. 'Tis then he delights in confounding the precepts of his betters. And, man, the hot day it was! In all my cruisings on that abandoned coast I never knew a hotter; from the melting asphalt the heat was rising in torrid waves. I placed the cold bottle of beer to my lips and felt the first trickle of it on my swollen tongue. But no more than felt it, when the enemy—who by all rights was out of the combat at my feet—stood up, and what it was he clouted me with on the back of my head I never learned, nor does it matter now; war is war. But in falling I remember saying sad like to myself: "A man that would do that would ship his mother in the navy!"
Elbow to elbow with me all this time was my new young friend, and he had in his hand at the moment of my fall the mahogany leg of a table, that fine-grained mahogany for which, as I had so often read in the ship's library, that Hot Coast is also justly famous. With the table leg, the same being of good length and moderately thick through, the lad reached over and tapped on the temple the party who had exploded the shell, or whatever it was, on the back of my head. And as McWarrish, an eye-witness, informed me later, my would-be assassin shared no further in the glory of that day.
It had been a pleasant and not unequal prospect up to then, but by now they had routed the colonel of the barracks from his box-seat in the bull-ring, and "Fix bayonetso!" he calls to his soldiers coming on at the double, and they fixed bayonets. "Advanceo!" he says, and they advanced and continued to advance until presently, the ice being melted and the beer-bottles expended—being, as I should have poetically said, short of ammunition—such of our bluejackets and marines as were not in the need of first aid to the injured might presently be seen making the best of their way back to their liberty boats.
In good time I revived, and I could taste it even then—that one teaspoonful of cold beer on the end of my swollen tongue, and, recalling the incident, "The green-eyed spig!" I says. "Is it any wonder they have revolutions every other week or so in their God-forsaken land?"
And what did I hear then but a voice calling me, and what did I see when I turned my head but my young friend with his head in the lap of the lovely Marguerite, and the rest I knew without being told, for Marguerite's stern mother was pouring water onto her lace handkerchief and applying the same to a lump topside of the youth's ears!
A large hearty-looking party was tending to my case. McWarrish was his name, and he was Marguerite's mother's brother, who managed a silver or lead (or was it a gold?) mine on that same Hot Coast, which, according to the ship's library, was likewise rich in oil, rubber, pepper, tabasco sauce, palm-leaf fans, and all manner of vegetable and mineral resources: a fertile and auriferous country that needed only the intelligence and energy of the superior northern races to make of it a marvellous commercial asset.
I did not have to tell McWarrish about the fight. He had seen it with the ladies from the veranda of the plaza hotel. And at dinner at the hotel, where in what was left of my uniform I sat in state, it developed that McWarrish and myself were of the one mind concerning Bobbie Burns. He poured six or eight or maybe a dozen libations to the memory o' rantin' Robbie, and says McWarrish then: "Mon, mon," he says, "but 'tis inspirin' tae meet wi' sich rare friendliness," and leads me down to where he had his motor-boat ready to take me out to the ship.
"Would ye no like tae ha' been there," says McWarrish, "the rainy nicht Robbie cam' ridin' on his horse frae the tavern wi' fower or five, or eight or ten it micht be, guid measures o' usquebaugh under his shirt tae keep him wet inside, wi' his cloak doon ower his shouthers tae keep him dry ootside, the whiles he composed the grandest song ever writ by the hond o' mon? Listen!" And he rolls out:
"Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,Scots wham Bruce has aften led—"
He was a large-boned man, McWarrish, with a voice that left no idle spaces in the air about him, and I am myself no dwarf, nor weak of lung; and singing in and out among the fleet we went, while marine guards looked over top-rails and bluejackets rolled out of their blankets to give us a cheerful word in passing and sailors on anchor watch warned us in a friendly way not to run 'em down and sink 'em—from one battleship after another—when in the silvery night they would loom surprisingly up before McWarrish, who was steering.
"Wull I gae aboard wi' ye, brither," he says to me when by and by we made my ship, "tae explain the reason o' your delay?"
"Thank you, friend," I said, "but there'll be trouble enough as it is." And I climbed up the side the while he shoved off for the beach again.
"What," says Mr. Trench, who had the deck, "shall I set down in the log for your overstaying your liberty after you were so strictly warned?"
"Yes," says Regulations, bobbing up behind him, "what's the alibi this time?"
And I gives them the log of the day from first to last, even as I've told it here, omitting, of course, the personal allusions, and all gravely and respectfully, as befitted an enlisted man to his officers.
"M—m—," says Regulations, and considered the case. "You say you bought tickets to the bull-fight, eh? And didn't use them? M—m—m—then you must have the tickets yet. Where are they?"
From the inside of my cap I pulls out two yellow tickets, and passes them to him. No great evil, as I've said, in the make-up of Regulations, and doubtless, in good time, by reason of advanced age and taking no mad chances, he will rise to be commander-in-chief of the fleet.
He looks at the tickets under the deck light. "H—m," he sniffs; "h—m," and leaves the deck.
"Just as well, Cohalan," says Mr. Trench, "you saved those two tickets."
"If I hadn't, sir," I says, "there was a hatful of them to be had for the picking up in the plaza when the battle was over. And they're to be married next Tuesday, and I'm invited."
Mr. Trench was my division officer, and this was not our first cruise together. "I'll recommend you for shore liberty," says Mr. Trench—"providing there's no bull-fight the same day."
And I'm passing on when I hear the whispering voice of Monaghan.
"I was listening to you," says Monaghan, "and thinking while I listened of what you said one day. 'Nothing like poetry,' says you, 'to develop the imagination.'"
"More beautiful than the flowers of the imagination," I says to that, "are the rocks of eternal truth. You were saying only this morning how when yourself and myself were apprentice lads together, 'twas paroquets and blue monkeys 'stead o' picture post-cards as in these degenerate days we would be sending home to show the family and neighbors how we'd been in foreign parts. And that's true, but such are only the temporary frivolities of the human creature and not to be measured as important. I tell you, Monaghan, that in its potentials human nature has not changed—not yet."
"Not yet?" says Monaghan. "How much longer of this mechanical age will you be giving it?"
"That," I said, "is to be determined. But 'tis my belief, Monaghan," I says, "that let the drums beat and the banners wave and the gonfalons and the various other palladiums and symbols of our liberty be carried in marching columns before us, and, barrin' the shell-makers and the spellbinders and the owners maybe of newspapers with increasin' circulations, 'tis my belief we would march forth to war as cheerfully and rampageously as any band of red Indians that ever danced around a red fire in the full of an autumn moon."
"If all you say is true," says Monaghan, "then it must 'a' been a grand place for an hour or two—that plaza this day. And yourself and myself and that husky bridegroom-elect standin' elbow to elbow this day—man, but 'tis talkin' of us in the cantinas they would be for a full generation to come. And, 'stead o' that, here was I, a man of my tonnage an' speed under forced draft, lyin' here useless as an old cruiser in ordinary."
From the little motor-boat, the same being navigated in devious ways back to the pier, I could hear McWarrish:
"Oh, my luve's like a red, red rose,That's newly sprung in June;Oh, my luve's like the melodie—"
Always, or so I've thought, there's something disposing to romance, or maybe melancholy, in the quiet that lies o'er great waters, and something, it may be, softening to large voices.
Anyway, 'twas a lovely, moonlit tropic night—fitting close to a blessed day.
They were holding what was almost a public reception in the ward-room of theMissalanna. The Honorable J. J. Flavin, having appeased his hunger and slaked his thirst, signalled the Filipino mess-boy for a smoke; and having decided as to what was the most expensive cigar on the tray, he took two, and moved on to where, through a shining air-port, a fresh sea-breeze might find its cooling way to his beaded brow, for it was a warm summer's day and at trencher-play the Honorable Flavin had been no laggard.
As the Honorable J. J. smoked, so did he take the time to observe; and, observing, he vouchsafed the opinion to a thin-faced, high-shouldered young fellow who happened to halt near him: "These navy fellows must have a fat time of it, huh, Carlin?"
Carlin flashed a glance on Flavin. "How do you figure that?"
"Why, look at the swell feed—and the champagne here to-day. And look!" He slid off for inspection the band of the cigar he was smoking. "I paid three for a dollar for that same cigar the other day at a big hotel in Washin'ton. They must have money to throw overboard to be givin' that kind away."
Carlin knew the brand. He also knew that only two, or it might be three, officers of that ward-room mess could afford to smoke that make of cigar regularly; but he did not tell Flavin that. "They get those cigars for twelve cents apiece—buying 'em by the hundred—in Cuba, J. J.," he suggested mildly.
"And the dealers stick us thirty-five cents for em up here! Anyway, a fat time they have swelling 'round in uniforms given 'em by the gover'ment for the ladies to admire 'em."
Two years of political reporting in his home city and two more as Washington correspondent for the paper of most vital circulation in that same home city had not made of Carlin a politician, and it is to be doubted if ten times four years in a political atmosphere would have so made him; because ancestrally implanted in Carlin's breast was an inextinguishable desire to speak what he thought, and usually as soon as he thought it.
He said now—sharply: "What do you know about naval officers or navy life, J. J.?"
The Honorable J. J. Flavin had never, not even when he was only ward leader and therefore much more disposed to humility than now, been able to reconcile Carlin's unworshipful tongue with his own sense of what was due a man of importance in the political world. And Judas priest, he had a tongue of his own if it came to that! "Of course, you know all about it!" he retorted.
"No, I don't," replied Carlin promptly and placidly. "But I probably know more than do you or almost anybody else who has never had the chance to live aboard ship and see some of it. This afternoon the officers of this ship are spreading themselves according to service traditions to give you and me and all aboard here a good time. To-morrow they'll be to sea and on the job, a simple-living, busy crowd—working hard, taking chances, and making no talk about it."
Flavin whoofed a funnel of doubting cigar smoke into the teeth of the air-port breeze. "Taking chances! How? And where?"
"Everywhere. Day and night—battleships, destroyers, in submarines and aeroplanes. Thirty men and officers killed in one turret explosion only last month."
"Taking chances—huh! Foolish chances!"
"Anybody who isn't living to see how long he can live takes a foolish chance once in a while. That turret crew were on the battle-range trying to make big-gun records."
"And did they make 'em?"
"They did. And their seven-inch batteries made 'em, too. Single guns and broadsides at ten thousand five hundred yards."
"I didn't hear about that," growled Flavin.
"No? That's a shame, J. J. The department ought to 've wired you about it."
Flavin eyed Carlin sidewise. No use—he would never change. Would he never get on to himself? Flavin wondered. Carlin ought to have been one of the best-advertised men in his line in the country, as everybody around Washington said, but a fellow liable to hop out any time and bat somebody that could be of use to him over the eye, how could anybody go boosting him?
"They must 'a' treated you pretty well, Carlin?" he hazarded slyly.
"They treated me well—yes," snapped Carlin. "And they're treating you pretty decently now, aren't they?"
"I'd like to see 'em treat me, or any member o' Congress, any other way!"
"A member of Congress—that's right. And as a member of Congress you're drawing down how much, J. J.?"
"Seventy-five hundred a year—and allowances," replied Flavin, looking around the wardroom and not caring particularly who might hear the figures.
"And before you were sent to Washington you never made more than fifteen dollars a week in your life," thought Carlin. Aloud he said, in as gentle a tone as he could on short-order muster: "And did you ever stop to think, J. J., that while you're being paid that seventy-five hundred a year—and allowances—the captain of this ship, with ten or eleven hundred lives and a twelve-million-dollar war-machine to look out for, gets less than five thousand a year—and that only after thirty-odd years of professional study and practice? And that almost all of these other officers you see standing around here will regularly have to go up on the bridge and take full charge of this ship and all on her, and let 'em, some night or day, make a mistake, lose their nerve, or close their eyes for an instant and—bing! All off with the ten or eleven hundred lives, not to mention the twelve-million-dollar plant! And these officers under the captain have had all the way from seven or eight to thirty years of continuous professional study and practice, and yet some of them are getting less than one-third of the money you get."
To which the Honorable J. J. responded blandly: "Well, what of it? Their pay and my pay is fixed by the same gover'ment. If they don't pay more, it's because the people who regulate their pay and my pay think they ain't worth any more."
"Fine!" said Carlin—"seeing that Congress regulates them both!"
"Huh!" Flavin hadn't foreseen that. "Here, you!" he roared to the mess-boy with the tray of cigars; and the little brown boy, with no inclining admiration for stout-waisted, loud-voiced men in splendid new gray trousers and frock coats, but always well drilled, floated himself and his tray respectfully, if not over-hurriedly, across the ward-room deck to Flavin.
"If you worked for me I'd soon learn you to move faster," growled Flavin. He began to paw through the tray. "Where's that cigar I had before? This it?" He read the name on the band. "Yes, that's it. Twelve cents apiece in Cuba, did y' say, Carlin? I wonder couldn't I get somebody to get me some of 'em? Here, ain't you having one?"
"No, I've smoked enough."
"Enough?—and swell smokes like this kind being passed round!" He took two.
Suddenly, smoking anew, Flavin cast a suspicious glance at the newspaper man. "What you getting at, Carlin—trying to drive into me all this talk about the navy? Is it because I'm a member of Congress?"
"I don't know that I've been trying to drive anything into you," retorted Carlin. "But you made a crack about the navy, and after you've been in Washington awhile longer somebody will be sure to tell you that my favorite monologue is the navy. They'll probably tell you, too, that if I couldn't get anything more intelligent to listen I'd hold up a row of trolley-poles and pump it into 'em. And so long as we are at it—take the officers' case again. As a member of Congress, J. J., you ought to know these things. When from out of his pay an officer deducts the cost of his grub and uniforms, not to speak of other items——"
"Huh!" Flavin was thinking of a new speech. Its theme was to be the soft times of certain pampered government servants, this for the undistinguished and unterrified voter of his district; but this item of grub and clothes was disturbing. "The gover'ment don't furnish 'em grub and clothes?"
"It doesn't. And the special full-dress coat of that officer standing there, or any of those younger officers, happens to cost nearly one-half of one month's pay—just the coat. And being naval officers, they have to live up to a certain standard aboard ship, as do their families, if they have any, ashore. And a lot of other items. Take this reception this afternoon—they have to pay for it out of their own pockets."
Flavin whoofed two, three funnels of smoke thoughtfully toward the air-port. That speech would sure have to be given up, or vamped up in some new way, or saved for prudent delivery before closed secret organizations—that was sure. An impressive speech, too, he could have made of it. Confound Carlin butting in with his inside information! And Carlin not being a politician either, what could a fellow do with him?
Carlin waited for the words of wisdom to flow. They flowed. "Y' know, Carlin, there's nothing to be gained in my district by voting for any naval bill."
"Is there anything to be lost?"
"Suppose I could swap a vote with somebody for a federal building or something in my district for something in his district?"
"Go ahead and swap it!" barked Carlin. "And keep on swapping till your district wakes up to you and swaps you for somebody else!"
Flavin shook his head in triumphant prophecy. "They won't—not in my district, Carlin. It's too solid. A nomination is an election in my district, and the machine says who'll be nominated. But I tell you what, Carlin—a man like you in Washin'ton could help me out a lot through your paper up home." He eyed Carlin narrowly to see how he took that. Carlin said nothing. Flavin continued: "You weren't born in the bushes yesterday, Carlin, for all you're no pol. You know enough about the game to know there's nobody giving somethin' for nothing in politics. And——"
Carlin raised a warning palm. "Pull up, pull up! You don't have to do any trading in this thing. You want to remember, J. J., that I'm a newspaper man even before I'm a navy man, and whatever you do you'll get what's coming to you from me."
The Honorable Flavin, not without doubt in his eyes, stared out of the air-port. Presently he said: "I'll take a look over the ship, I guess. See you later."
The eyes of Carlin, searching the ward-room for such officers of the ship as he had not yet greeted, encountered the quizzical and questioning glance of "Sharkey," otherwise Lieutenant Trench, United States Navy. "Who is your large and sonorous friend?" queried Trench. Being a host he did not put it in words, but being human he could not help looking it.
The spoken answer to the unspoken question would probably have horrified the Honorable Flavin. "He's a man from up my way who made himself useful to the machine, and so they sent him to Washington. He's pretty raw, Sharkey, but I suppose he could be worse. At least we know where he will always be found."
"And where, Carl, will he always be found?"
Carlin smiled with Trench. "Where the votes are. That's his idea of supreme political genius—playing for the votes of the moment. I was talking up the navy to him, with an increased navy-pay bill in mind for this session. But I don't suppose that interests you, Sharkey."
"Thanks to the thrift and thoughtfulness of an acquisitive ancestry," smiled Trench, "I suppose I could worry along if there was never a pay-day in the service. But most of the rest of the fellows would surely be interested. There's Pay Totten now. He'd——"
"Where is Pay? I haven't seen him since I came aboard."
"Nor you won't for some time again, unless you carry a longer than regulation glass, for Pay's by this time on the high seas and southward bound. That's why I spoke of him. But come into my room."
From a pigeonhole in his desk in his room Trench pulled out several typewritten pages. "Ever hear, Carl, of Pay's bale of blankets?"
"Nope."
"Ah-h—yours shall be the joy of hearing the tale from the lips of the poet-author himself. You may elevate your high literary eyebrows at the construction, but recalling that you, or some other competent critic, told me once that construction was, after all, subordinate—that is, physical, not psychological, construction—I venture to tell this story in my own way. Hark, now!" He smoothed out his sheets of paper and read:
"She was the war-shipMissalanna, which lay out in the streamOf a port in Chinese waters which translated means Cold Cream.A wireless comes from the admiral—he flew two stars on blue—And the message read: 'At once cast free and join me in Chee Foo.But bring along all packages, all bundles, and all mailOur need is great, the fleet does wait, come forced draft, do not fail.'
"And says theMissalanna'scommander: 'Whatever shall I do?'Tis a two days' Chinese holiday, don't they know that in Chee Foo?And a thousand tons of coal we'll need, and merchandise in dockFills half the tin-clad warehouse, and immovable as rockAre sampan men and coolies when they've knocked off for the day—And now 'tis snow and hail and sleet and a two days' holiday!'"But he wakes up good old TottenSleeping soundly in his bed,And showing the admiral's wireless,Mutters: 'This is what he said.'"
Trench looked over the top of his first page. "How's it so far, Carl?"
"They've put men in the brig for less. But go ahead."
"Thanks. I proceed:
"'I was dreaming,' says good old Totten, 'I was writing to my wifeOf Chinese native customs and the joys of navy life.But two hundred coolie men we'll need and a score of sampans wideTo get that coal aboard the ship and sail by morning tide.No night for honest men to roam, but be sure ashore I'll go—Mayhap in a shack on the water-side I'll find my friend Jim Joe.'
"Pay found his old-time Chinese friend and tells him what's to do.'A thousand tons of coal I want and I'm putting it up to you.'But Joe he looks at his Melican flend and he says: 'Me no can do—To-night good Chinese mens they go and burn the joss-sticks—so—And bad Chinese mens, my flend,' says Joe, with a wink or two,'They play fan-a-tan, low-lee and mot.' Says Joe: 'Me no can do.'
"And saying the last part over again—With another wink or two,'They play fan-a-tan, low-lee and mot.'Says Joe: 'Me no can do.'
"Then Pay, with a grip of Joe's pigtail, 'You mind the time—you do?—When I pulled you out from a gunboat's snout?—and you now say: "No can do"?Two hundred coolie boys I want and twenty sampans wide,And twice five hundred tons aboard, so we sail by morning tide.When I left the ship the skipper says: "Now, Pay, it's up to you!"'Pay gives Joe's tail a gentle twitch—'Now, Joe, you must can do!'
"And Joe, with queue curled all anew, in the sleet and hail he goesAnd twoscore crews of coolie boys he drags out by their toes.'Two hundled coolie boys me want and twenty sampans wide,And tice fi' hundled tlons on ship so she sail by morning tlide.'And some he tore from their honest beds and some from loud wassail,But all came out, for Joe was stout, into the sleet and hail.
"And two hundred lusty coolie boysWith twenty sampans wide,Laid twice five hundred tons to whereThe ship in stream did ride."
Trench laid down the sheets.
"That's not the end, Sharkey?"
"No, no. But that's the end of the Jim Joe part, which was hailed as so masterly a performance on Pay's part—getting those sampan men and coolies out of their beds on a night like that and to work at coaling ship for us—that I, the uncrowned poet laureate of the Asiatic squadron, was commissioned to do it in verse, which I proceeded to do one night; and got that far, swinging along fine and dandy, when the messenger called me for the mid-watch."
"And you never finished it?"
"I couldn't—not in rhyme. After that four hours' night-watch the rhymes were all gone from me. It was a rough night. A monsoon made out of the southeast——"
"Omit the professional jargon, Sharkey, and your professional troubles, and remember the first law of story-telling is to tell the story."
"Wizz!" murmured Sharkey. "But, thus encouraged, I proceed. Well, getting Jim Joe started with his twenty sampans and his two hundred coolies was only part of Pay's job that night. The big warehouse, where goods for our fleet and other craft were stored, was in charge of a Chinaman we called Hoo Ling, and he knew less English than Joe, and appreciated even less than Joe the need of quick action. The admiral's wireless message looked just like any other wireless message to this big chink, Hoo Ling. But it's a great thing to be a student of the Chinese and of Chinese customs and of Chinese mental processes. Pay wheedled Ling a little, bluffed him a little, touched on past friendships a little, on possible future business a lot, painted a picture of our warlike forces over to Chee Foo, touched—not too casually—on the so much greater love which the officers and men of the United States Navy bore for China than for Japan, and such other little subtleties as he could invoke or invent. At last the old fellow was moved to open up and let Pay pick out what packages were for the fleet.
"And so, with four yeomen of the ship roused from restful hammocks to make memoranda of the addresses as fast as he pried them loose from the main pile and called them out, and with twelve able seamen of the watch to hustle the packages along as fast as the yeomen recorded them, and with forty other bustling bluejackets to load them into the boats, Pay tore into that pile of freight, which was about as high and twice as long and wide as a three-apartment house. There were probably four or five thousand packages of various kinds to be overhauled, and they were addressed in four languages—English, German, French, and Chinese. If Pay was the only white man in that part of China who could have charmed that impassive old storekeeper out of his bamboo bed that time of night, he was probably likewise the only white man in port that night who could read those Chinese shopkeepers' addresses.
"Dry goods, wet goods, hardware, grocery stuff, butcher's stuff, jeweller's stuff, ship's stores, bales of cotton, bales of silk, curios, souvenirs, bicycles, sewing-machines, sacks of rice, sacks of coffee, sacks of potatoes, barrels of flour and of gasolene, auto tires, boxes of tea, quarters of beef and of mutton, cases of breakfast-food and of oil, packages all the way from the size of a finger-ring to packages the size of an auto-truck. You know what a big, husky chap Pay Totten is? Imagine him on a slushy, snowy night, stripped to the waist, wading into that pile—feet, shoulders, knees, hands, elbows, with his teeth almost—tearing out those packages, and from addresses in English, French, German, and especially Chinese, picking out flying such as were for our ships."
Trench paused. A reminiscent smile was parting his lips.
"Hurry up. Did you sail on time next morning?" demanded Carlin.
"We did. With our coal aboard and the packages for the fleet, we made a record run and arrived in Chee Foo hours before the admiral was looking for us. And it was the day before Christmas, and our coming made the whole fleet happy for Christmas week, and our skipper got 'Well done!' from the flag-bridge, but—" Trench looked at Carlin and smiled ruefully. "There's so often a but, isn't there, to the otherwise happy tale? Among the seven hundred and odd packages receipted for by Paymaster Totten it seems there was missing one bale of blankets. What happened to the bale of blankets? they queried Paymaster Totten, and 'Lord!' says poor Pay, 'how do I know? It might 've been stolen on the wharf, or dropped overboard between the wharf and one of the ship's boats, or lost in rowing out to the ship or hoisting it over the ship's side. There were a dozen ship's boats and two hundred ship's men coming and going, and half a mile between the ship and shore; and it was a black, blustering night of sleet and hail, and there were also hundreds of coolies and dozens of sampans on the coal. It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight—how do I know what happened to one lone bale of blankets?'
"It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight.""It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight."
"However, Pay nor anybody else worried much about the blankets at the time. Our skipper recommended, in view of Paymaster Totten's extraordinary exertions on that night, that the bale of blankets be not charged against his accounts. And the admiral, when he heard all the story, approved and passed it along to Washington. But it came back. And by and by it was sent on to Washington again. And by and by it came back.
"And forth from us it went in due time, and for the last time, we thought, on leaving for home by way of Suez and Guantanamo. In the Mediterranean we picked up the European squadron and with them enjoyed several gala occasions, notably at Alexandria, Naples, Villefranche, and Gibraltar, at each of which ports we deemed it incumbent upon the service to spread itself a little. And during these festivities Pay was there with the rest of us, but between the gala-days going without his bottle of beer with lunch, his cigar after dinner, in order that on the great days he might be able to contribute his share toward these receptions and yet not impair that sum—three-quarters of his pay it was—which he sent home monthly, in order that Mrs. Pay and the five little Pays might have food, lodging, clothes, and otherwise maintain the little social standard of living imposed upon a naval officer's family.
"'Thank God,' says Pay on our last day in the Mediterranean, 'we are leaving here to-morrow!' and he hauls out his aged special full-dress suit, and looks it over, and says with a sigh: 'I'm afraid I'll have to lay you away, old friend; but a few thrifty months in West India winter quarters and I may be able to replace you with a grand new shining fellow, and so come up the home coast the gayly apparelled, dashing naval officer of tradition.'
"And we went on to the West Indies and put in the rest of the winter there, with Pay forgetting all about the bale of blankets, until the night before we were to go north. On that night a steamer from New York puts into where the fleet is, and in her mail for us is our old friend the letter of the indorsements as to the loss of the blankets, and now with one more indorsement since we'd last seen it, to wit: the department saw no reason to change its original ruling as to the responsibility for the loss of the bale of blankets, and Paymaster Totten's accounts would be charged with the loss thereof."
Trench paused to allow a swift hot blast from Carlin to sweep through the room. "The archaic bureaucrats!" concluded Carlin fervently.
"Yes," agreed Trench, "and yet, Carl, from their point of view——"
"A point of view which impairs high service is criminal."
Trench knitted his brows. "Maybe you're right, Carl, but—recalling your advice about story-telling—Pay Totten, foreseeing a battleship cruise along the North Atlantic coast this summer, with certain pleasant but expensive ports in sight, could see where it might well behoove him to ask for a change of venue—that is, if he ever hoped to settle for that bale of blankets. It was costing him thirty dollars on the ship for his grub, which, as you know, didn't include any smokes or an occasional bottle of beer, nor the laundry for fifteen white suits—a fresh one every day in the tropics—and a few other sundry items, not to mention other minor but inescapable items.
"So Pay thought it all over, and on his way north he put in his request, and two days ago he got his orders; and yesterday he left us. And this morning—look!"—from the pile of letters atop of his desk Trench selected one. "This came. Listen:
"DEAR SHARKEY:
"We're sailing to-day for the West African coast to look into Liberian matters. And in that country, where you're likely any time to fall in with a member of the cabinet sitting barefooted in the middle of the road peeling potatoes, the wear and tear on uniforms won't probably be over-heavy. And if there should happen to be anyrecherchéaffairs when we move onto the Congo coast, I am only hoping that the natives won't inspect too closely any special full-dress paymaster's coat which should be blue but, as it happens, is green in the region of the seams. And after the West African sojourn we are bound for a little jaunt of a thousand miles or so up the Amazon, where I learn—and I've taken some trouble to learn—we won't have to wear full dress at all, not even when calling upon the tribal high chiefs. I'll come home yet with that old full-dress standby—if it isn't blown off my back during some tropical typhoon.
"It's a great thing, Sharkey, the being allowed two months' advance pay on leaving for foreign service. For me it means that Mrs. Totten and the children can have their little place and their one little maid at the little beach which did them all so much good last summer, and, if they're economical, maybe an occasional trip to the movies.
"And so I am leaving almost happy. Of course, the good-by and that two years made me feel a bit lumpy and lonesome leaving them, but the race would be too easy if we didn't carry some little extra weight, wouldn't it? As to the bale——"
Trench looked up. "There's something else, personal stuff, which doesn't concern the story." He laid down the letter and looked up. "I couldn't help hearing a word or two of what your friend the congressman was saying to-day—half the ward-room also heard it, I guess. There's a case for him, Carl, if he's the right kind—a special bill to reimburse Totten."
Carlin jumped to his feet. "You're right, Sharkey. And he isn't the worst in the world. I'll put it up to him right now, if he's still aboard."
Congressman Flavin was still aboard, but also was bursting with something to tell. "What d'y'know, Carlin—nine hundred and odd sailors aboard this ship and not home once in ten years to vote."
"Why——"
"And you ask me to vote for bills for a lot of people that ain't ever home to vote. I wouldn't 'a' known only I was speaking to a couple of 'em happened to live in my district, and they told me."
"That's all right, J. J., but forget that voting stuff for a minute and listen to me." And briefly, rapidly, and not without art, Carlin retold the story—retold it in prose entirely—of Paymaster Totten and the bale of blankets. When he had done he added: "Now, J. J., what do you think of a man doing a good job like that and losing out by it?"
"Always the way, Carlin—always," replied the Honorable Flavin briskly. "What most of these fellows on these ships need is a little course in practical politics. Why didn't that paymaster sit tight in his bunk, the time his captain came to him with that hurry-up message, and tell him he couldn't get any coolies or sampans? If he'd just rolled over in his bunk and said, 'Captain, it can't be done,' or if he'd gone ashore and made a bluff it couldn't be done, he wouldn't 'a' had any bale of blankets to pay for—see? This doing things you don't have to do, and nothing in it for yourself when you do do 'em—that's kid's work."
"All fine, J. J., but how about Christmas for the fleet?"
"Christmas? Let 'em look out for their own Christmas! He'd be getting his pay envelope every week just the same, wouldn't he?"
"Fine again—and as beautifully practical as you always are, J. J. But how about doing what Totten thought was his duty?"
"Duty? That ain't duty—that's foolishness. Duty's doing what you got to do, not doing something just to make a good fellow of yourself."
Slowly Carlin began to count: "One, two, three——"
"What's the matter?" demanded Flavin.
"A dream I had is taking the count—eight, nine, ten, out! Say, Flavin, did it ever occur to you that your duty included knowing something about your business—who can vote, for instance, among a thousand other things, and who can't?"
"The mistake you make and all you wise high-brows make, Carlin"—and the Honorable Flavin fixed him with a knowing eye—"is in thinking I don't know my job. My job ain't in being in Congress. A hell of a lot they'll know at home what I'm doing in Washin'ton after I get there. My job is being elected to Congress. And getting elected means to be able to get votes, and getting votes means being with the people who'll give you the votes. And your paymaster friend"—the Honorable Flavin favored Carlin with a wink and another knowing smile—"and his push, they don't swing any votes. But o' course that's for them. With you it's different. Now, you being in Washin'ton with a string o' newspapers—huh?"
Carlin had walked off.
"There he goes," muttered Flavin, "pluggin' the game of a lot of people who can never do a thing for him."
Trench was shaking his head, half-sadly and half-smilingly, at Carlin. He replaced Totten's letter on the pile on his desk. "One of the jokes of the mess is to accuse me of having so much money that I could publish my own books of foolish rhymes if I felt like it, but I haven't enough to pay for that bale of blankets for Pay Totten. Aboard ship Pay has just as much money as I have. But no matter—I'm one of those who believe that nobody beats the game in the long run. The eternal laws are against it. The people get everybody pretty near right in time. And fellows like Pay will get what's due them some time. And your congressional friend, too, I hope. But"—Trench stood up—"what d'y'say, Carl, if we get out into the ward-room country again? It's been a long watch since you and I clinked glasses together."
And outside, in the mess-room, standing almost under the air-port which opened out to sea, Trench held his glass up to Carlin's, saying: "There was a boson's mate I knew one time, named Cahalan. I used to absorb most of my philosophy from him. I was on the bridge one night, and in one of the wings was Cahalan and another lad of the watch. They were evidently having an argument about something, and Cahalan was trying to convince him. I couldn't hear what his watch-mate said, but from out of the dark all at once I heard Cahalan. Said Cahalan: 'When a man does a good job and gets rated up for it, he's a lucky geezer; when he does a good job and don't get rated up for it, he mayn't be a lucky geezer, but what th' hell, he's done a good job just the same, hasn't he?' So, Carl, what d'y'say?—to Pay Totten, sailing lonesome through the Trades—a poor politician, but a damn good officer!"
It was an admiral of a great navy returning a call, and hundreds of bluejackets were peeking out from the superstructure.
"Here he comes—spot me Lord Admiral, fellows!"
"Three ruffles of the drum, three pipes o' the boson's whistle——"
"—six boys an' thirteen guns——"
"—and he swellin' out like an eight-inch sponson comin' over the side, as if it was himself and not his job the guns are for!"
Young apprentice boys' voices those.
There came an older voice: "You kids talk as if it was in admirals and at sea alone. And ashore any day are bank presidents, head floor-walkers, chairmen of reception committees—yes, and bishops of the church—any of them on their great days stepping high to the salutations, as if 'twas something they had done, and not the uniform or the robe or the job they held."
Carlin had a look at the owner of the voice. Later he hunted up Trench—Lieutenant Trench—and to him he said: "Glory to the man who can wear his uniform without tempering hot convictions or coining free speech to the bureaucratic mint! But greater glory to the man who can divest high office of its shining robes and see only the man beneath. Who's your big, rangy gunner's mate with the gray-flecked, thick black hair and what the apprentice boys call go-to-hell eyes?"
"That's easy—Killorin."
"And what's his history?"
"When I first knew him—on the China station—he was stroke of the ship's racing crew, the best football player I ever saw, and among the men he had the name of being an all-big-gun ship in a fight. A medal-of-honor man, too. Later he went in for booze-fighting and hellraising generally and made a first-class job of that, too. I liked him—all the officers did—and when I was having my first dreams of the day when I should be commanding the latest dreadnought, it was Killorin, settled down and steady, who was to be my chief gunner. I told him as much one night on watch.
"'A warrant-officer and wear a sword and be called Mister?' says Killorin. 'And will you tell me, sir, what's being a warrant-officer and wearing a sword and being called Mister to being all alive when my youth is still with me?'
"I couldn't tell him; and as we grew more friendly many another question he asked me in the quiet of the night-watches I couldn't answer. He could talk the eye out of a Chinese idol himself."
Carlin peered down at Killorin. "Did you ever ask him how—despite the being all alive and having his youth—he is to-day only a gunner's mate?"
"And have him, in ten perfectly respectful words, put me back in my place? I did not—not that I wouldn't like to know."
"I think I half know," said Carlin.
That was in a tropic port. That same night Carlin found it too hot to sleep below. He rolled off his bunk, had another shower-bath, dressed lightly, and went on deck, where his friend Trench was on watch.
He patrolled the deck with Trench. The men were sleeping everywhere around the top deck. The tall form of Killorin rolled out from under the overhang of a turret and sat up. Trench's walk brought him abreast of Killorin.
"Pretty hot?" asked Trench.
"It is hot—yes, sir."
"These young lads"—Trench waved a hand toward the stretched-out shapes all around—"they don't seem to mind it."
"They're young, sir."
"Young? I didn't think there was a tougher man, young or old, in the navy than you."
"A man's body," said Killorin, "can take comfort atop of a hot galley stove—or a cold one. A man's mind—'tis not so simply eased."
"Trench," said Carlin, when they had left Killorin, "when I was a boy there was a great hero in our school. Half the girls I knew carried his picture on their bureaus. And most of the other half were suspected of hiding one away. One of those athletic heroes, a husky Apollo—this Killorin makes me think of him. But suddenly he disappeared from the middle of his glory."
"Any crime?"
"No, no crime. Wild, but straight. His name was Delaney."
"Killorin's right name," said Trench after a while, "is Delaney."
Carlin left Trench and walked around deck, in and out among the sleeping forms. Here was one in a hammock, here one on a cot, but mostly they slept on the bare deck in their blankets. Every odd corner and open space held them. They were tucked in against hatchways, under turrets, inboard of boats, outboard of boats, next the smoke-pipes, in the lee of gypsies, of winches, cook's galley. Everyhow and everywhere they slept—on their backs, their stomachs, on their sides, curled up and stretched out. Some whistled, some groaned, some snored, but mostly they slept like babes.
It was hot, as sometimes it seems to be hotter in the night than ever it can be in the day, even in the tropics.
A young bluejacket under a cluster of deck-lights tossed, rolled, tossed, sat up. A restless lad near him also sat up. Between them they produced the makings and rolled a cigarette. They lit up, inhaled, began to talk.
"How about Bar Harbor, or Rockport, or some other little place off the New England coast a night like this, with a cool, fresh breeze sweeping in from the Atlantic?" asked the first one.
"What's the matter with the little old North River?" said the other, "or the East River, with the Brooklyn trolleys clangin' and the train to Coney and a few dollars in your pocket after a visit to the paymaster? ... And your best girl, o' course," he added after a moment.
They snuffed out their cigarettes and rolled back into their blankets. Killorin was still sitting up wide awake.
"And your best girl?" repeated Carlin to Killorin.
"Yes," responded Killorin, "as if that didn't go, like an anchor to a ship, without saying."
"Isn't it always a girl?" said Killorin presently. "Whatever drives the most of us to whatever it is we do, good or bad beyond the ordinary, but a woman stowed away somewhere to see what we do at the time or read of it later?"
The Killorins of the world are not standing and delivering to men they never saw before; and so it was not that night, nor the next; but on another hot night, and the ship headed up the Gulf, with the men sleeping anyhow and everywhere about the deck, that Killorin sat outboard of the sailing-launch and, looking out over the dark waters, said:
"Progresso astern and Veracruz ahead—always a port astern and another ahead, isn't it? And so you knew old Dan Riley that kept the candy store up home? ... And Mary Riley?" he asked; and, after a while, began to talk of things that had been.
Lovely Mary Riley! No thought ever I had that girls were made for boys to notice till I saw you!
Five blocks out of my way from school her father's store was, but four times I walked past that store window the day after the first time I saw her, and more than four times many a day later—to see her again. It was three months before I got courage to go nearer to her. And then it had to be a night with snow on the ground and sleigh-bells to the horses, and in the faces of men and women a kinder look and in the heart of a boy maybe a higher hope than ordinary.
Christmas eve it was and the store all decorated—candy canes, big and little, hanging among the bright things in the window. There were other people before me, but she nodded and smiled by way of letting me know that she saw I was waiting. She nodded in the same smiling way to a poor child and a rich man of the neighborhood.
"How much for a cane?" I asked when it came my turn, and I that nervous I exploded it from me.
"Canes?" She turned to the window. They were all prices, but I didn't hear what she said. I was listening to her voice and trembling as I listened.
There was a great big brute of a cane, tied with blue ribbons and hanging from a gas fixture. "How much for that one?" I asked.
"That?" She had violet eyes. She opened them wide at me. "That is two dollars."
"Let me have it," I said.
Her thin red lips opened up and the little teeth inside them shined out at me. "But you don't want to be buying that," she said; "we keep that more for show than to sell."
To this day a thing can come to my mind and be as if it happened before my eyes. "She thinks I'm one who can't afford to spend two dollars for that cane, and she's going to stop me," I says to myself. "She thinks I am a foolish kind who would ruin himself to make a show." If there had been less truth in what she thought, maybe I would have been less upset. "I'll take it," I said. "I want it for a Christmas tree for my little nephew."
There was no nephew, little or big, and no Christmas tree, and that two dollars was every cent I had to spend for Christmas. But her eyes were still wide upon me, and I paid and walked out with the cane—without once turning at the door or peeking through the window in passing, for fear she would be looking after me, and I wouldn't have her think that a two-dollar candy cane wasn't what I could buy every day of my life if it pleased me.
I hoped she would remember me, but took care not to pass the store for a week again, for fear she would see me and think I was courting her notice because I had bought the big cane.
I was going to high school then. One Saturday afternoon there came high-school boys from all that part of the country to compete for prizes in a great hall near by. I wasn't in them. I liked to run and jump and put the shot well enough, but to go in training, to have a man tell me what time to go to bed and what time to get up, and what to eat and what not to eat, and after a couple of months of that to have to display yourself before crowds of people—that was like being a gladiator in the Colosseum I used to read about, and performing for the pleasure of the mob—patricians and the proletariat alike!
I would spend hours in the alcove of the school library reading of belted knights in the days of tourneys and crusades—but that was different. I could see myself addressing the kings of the land and the queens of the court of beauty, the while the heralds all about were proclaiming my feats of valor. A knight on a great charger in armor and helmet, with my lance stuck out before me—never anything less glorious could I be than that.