"But his wife—won't she be lonesome, John?"
"For her own good and Peter's, I cert'nly hope so, ma'am. But she won't be lonesome for too long, ma'am. Their age—an' healthy an' lovin'—they're the kind, ma'am, to have a houseful o' children. An' that'll be a good thing. Many's the day an' night, out on the wide ocean there, Peter'll be drivin' his vessel, thinkin' o' them children an' the mother to home, an' plannin' how he's ever goin' to kill fish enough to pay for the shoes an' their clothes an' their schoolin' an' the house rent, an' all the rest of it. Many a hard night out to sea he'll be thinkin' o' that, an' it'll be that'll hold him to his work an' make a full man o' him. And the mother she'll be keepin' the home, lovin' the children an' lovin' Peter that's workin' night an' day to keep 'em. I tell you, ma'am, they're the wise ones that lay their courses so that by 'n' by, whether they will or no, they got to go on with the steady drivin'."
"Look at her now, ma'am, down to the rail already an' whalin' away through it! An' there's Peter—look at him—in the oilskins up by the wind'ard bitt! An'— But there's some one callin' you, ma'am."
It was her maid, who came running over to say that there was an urgent telephone message.
"It is from Mr. Henston, madam."
Mrs. Pentle nodded that she heard, but continued to look through the glasses at theCeliasailing out to sea.
The maid coughed. She was at the foot of the tower, looking up.
"He says, madam, that the silk-buyer wishes him to go to New York for that stock of pongees, and that he is waiting for an answer to his letter before he goes."
Mrs. Pentle stood at the hatch of the tower, looking down.
"Fishermen are pretty careful of what they use for bait, aren't they, John?"
John, after consideration, said:
"Bank fishermen are maybe more careful than most, ma'am; though, when we was hard put to it, I've seen some pretty poor quality o' stuff cut up for bait."
Mrs. Pentle looked down the ladder to the maid.
"Tell Mr. Henston there is no answer. Tell him to go to New York and that, hereafter, he had better stay there and look after the silks exclusively."
For as long as the falling darkness would allow, John saw Mrs. Pentle picking out the plunging course of Peter's vessel through the green-white waters. And then, turning to him, she said:
"I've been thinking that I ought to take more interest in my young girls when they marry. On the day the Cruddens have a baby born to them I shall make over theCelia Pentleto the baby."
For all she smiled when she said that—and in John's opinion she should 'a' been a happy woman to be able to say things like that—for all that there was what John called a melancholy in her voice and a sort of vapor in her eyes when she said it; and, looking after her making her lonesome way over to the big house with all the lighted windows, he couldn't help thinking that for all they said she was such a boss of a woman—for all that—there ought to be somebody more than a lot of butlers and maids and cooks to meet her at the door.
There is the story of Peter's stop ashore, as old man Flaxley, John Ferguson, and Fred Lichens know it. Fred had to add that he couldn't see where Peter's stop ashore ever hurt him any.
"Certainly," said Fred, "since the baby came, he has been making fishing history in theCelia!" He looked over to Mr. Duncan when he said that.
Mr. Duncan wasn't deaf.
"A little stop ashore never harmed anybody," retorted Mr. Duncan—"it's the stopping ashore too long!"
It was fine summer weather, and John asked me how about a swordfishing trip for a change. I said all right, and we got a chance in theHenriette, and went down that same morning to Duncan's Wharf to go aboard.
TheHenriettelay ready to go to sea, and John and I stood on the string-piece and looked down on her deck and up at her mastheads. A lumper hanging around Duncan's was standing near us.
I never knew a dock lumper that couldn't tell you all about everything. "She is weak-built and pretty deep—I don't like to see them so deep," said this lumper. "And down by the head, too."
"Maybe you'd be deep if you were on'y thirteen tons net register an' thirty tons of ice in you," said John.
And a proper answer. A man should always have a good word—even if he don't more than half believe it himself—for the craft he's going to sea in. At the same time I was thinking that I was having an eye to a new, able fresh-halibuter—a big ninety-ton vessel—across the slip.
I like the big fellows to go to sea in. I said so to John.
"A big, able brute—yes, boy. But that big brute—Lard Gard, she'd look sweet, wouldn't she, chasin' swordfish in the shoal water south o' Georges. She's a good little boat, theHenriette—and a pretty name," said John.
It was a fresh southwesterly, and a day to make a man over, as we passed on by Eastern Point. Just to look at the young blue seas was life, and the soft salt air was a cure for whatever blue feeling a man might have had hooked into himself ashore.
A great morning. We passed two big salt fishermen bound in. From the Western Banks they were, or from Flemish Cap, half across the ocean, maybe; and the brown rocks of Cape Ann must have looked to them like mother's johnny-cake on the kitchen table that sunny morning. Swinging by like a pair of twins they went, flying both topsails the pair of them, but neither of them much more than flushing their scuppers to the fine fresh breeze. Whoo-o-sh! fifteen hundred miles we've come from the east'ard! In the name o' heaven—we could almost hear them saying it—don't stop us!
The sea was more than swishing through the littleHenriette'sscuppers. Our rail was good and wet as we belted across the bay, and rounding Cape Cod we rolled down till the solid water began to fill her lee gangway; rolled lower and lower, 'till it was solid between her lee rail and house; and those of us on her wind'ard quarter had our feet braced so we wouldn't take a slide down her high-slanting deck and overboard.
Our skipper was a driver. By and by we were rolling low enough for a buoy keg to go floating off our house and overboard astern. A fine half-barrel of a buoy keg it was—black and white painted, smooth and tight as a drum; a beauty of a buoy which by and by, at the end of a fifty-fathom warp, ought by rights to be towing after a fat swordfish; and so the skipper said. But now she was dancing atop of the swirling seas astern, and the skipper, looking astern after it and then at us, also said: "To hell with it now! Buy a new one out your share—and next time some o' you'll learn to lash 'em, maybe!"
It was a day to see pictures. From astern of us came bowling up one of the biggest and stiffest knockabouts sailing out o' Gloucester. She had a bow like a bulldog's jaw; and she sent that bow smashing through the white-collared seas as if she had come out for no more than to give her ugly face a wash. Stiff? She was a church on a rock.
"There's the able lady!" said Shorty. "No water sloshin' solid through her lee gangway an' washin' buoy kegs off her house—hah, John?"
John was a Newfoundlander. He told me that the earliest thing he remembered was helping bait his father's trawls on a Grand Banks fisherman.
With his arms folded over the corner of the house, his chin resting on his arms, and his eyes like two razor-edges peering out between his eyelids, there wasn't much happening up to wind'ard—or leeward either—that John wasn't seeing. And it was a great day to see things; for it was a gale o' wind blowing, the sky was still clear blue, and the air was the kind to make a man over.
A quick-acting, quick-talking, wiry little fellow was John. Big Bill couldn't keep up with him at all. Bill's right name was not Bill. Nobody knew what it was; nor cared. Bill was probably a better name, anyway. One peek at him as the big fellow hove himself aboard was enough for John. "Will ye look at Big Bill!" cried John; after that no other name would fit him. "Lard, Lard," said John, "but I be wantin' to see the look o' that bulk of a man when he jams hisself into a bosun's chair to the masthead!"
Bill never could see anything funny in John's line of talk, and said so across the supper-table that same afternoon. Breakfast was at four o'clock, dinner at half-past nine, and supper at three o'clock on theHenriette. "Somebody'll come along and set on you right hard some day," said Bill. To which John said: "So long's 'tisn't some one o' your tonnage does the settin', I callate I c'n stand it," and then, reaching over and scooping to himself another wedge of blueberry pie: "You cert'nly do make great blueberry pie, cook."
"Not so ferry bad," said the cook.
He was a good cook, who had followed the sea since he was fifteen. The big ports of the world—he knew them all, and when he wasn't too busy he would talk about them; though what he most liked to talk about was his blueberry patch in Stoneport, where he owned a nice little white house with a simment cellar—up on the hill next the isinglass factory. He had a dog at home, a part of him Skitch and the other part of him Sin Bernard. Gardner, the milkman, owned the Bernard. Who owned the collie he didn't know. Nobody knowed. And when those smart Alecks of Stoneport kids came along and tried to bemboozle those blueberry-bushes where they was hangin' in bunches as on a grapewine, why that dog— Well, he was the cleffer dog, that was all.
He had brought a few of the blueberries aboard, he said; which we very well knew—two bushels of them charged to the ship's stores at current market rates. His blueberry pies were all right; but the blueberry stews! With dumplings! There was a cook sailed out of Homburg on a barque when our cook was a cabin-boy on her, and that dumpling receipt was got out of him one night in Yokohama when the old fellow had a couple of bowls of saki into him. Saki and rice, yes. Which was how it came about that thirty-four years later we were getting dumplings noon and night with our blueberry stew aboard theHenriette. John, after maybe five hours to the masthead, would come sliding cheerily down to deck at dinner call. At the head of the forec's'le companionway he would haul up and have half a peek below. And then a sniff. A long sniff, and then a full peek. "Lard Gard, dumplin's!" John would say, and look sadly around and up at sea and sky.
But so as not to hurt the cook's feelings, John, when he sat down, would take the big fork and go sounding in the blueberry stew, and soon, bright blue and beautiful, he would gaff a half-dozen of them onto his plate. And the cook, noticing it, would smile and say: "You like tem tumplings, Chon?" And John would say: "This side o' Fortune Bay I never saw nothin' to ekal 'em." And when the cook would turn his back, John would slip them into his pocket.
After dinner John would take the dumplings aloft, and, when Big Bill would take the skipper's place out at the end of the bowsprit, John would heave the dumplings at him from the masthead. Sometimes he would heave a few astern at whoever happened to have the wheel. Generally it was Oliver at the wheel, because his eyesight was not so sharp as the others of us for seeing fish from aloft.
Oliver was the first spectacled fisherman that John had ever seen; and one day when Oliver laid his glasses down, John took them up, and set them on his own nose and picked up a newspaper. And quickly removed them. "Lard, Lard, a swordfish she'd look like a whale in them and his sword as long's a vessel's bowsprit!"
When Oliver was not to the wheel, Steve would be there. Steve was a tall fellow. To give an idea of how tall he was, John would run down the deck, leap into the air and give a grab at the sky. "Where me hand touched would maybe reach to his waist," John would say. Steve, when he turned in, had to let his feet hang over his bunkboard and onto the locker; and when he did that John came and sat on them. Steve slept in the cabin under the overhang. Big Bill slept under the overhang, too, in the opposite bunk. One of our pleasures was to watch Bill kick his way into his bunk under the low overhang, then to tell him the skipper wanted to see him on deck, and watch him wiggle his way out. Feet first he had to come. Steve could do it all right, but Bill—he weighed three hundred.
On foggy nights Bill turned in on the locker, with one arm and leg stretched out to keep him from rolling onto the floor. He had once been in a steamer collision, and he warn't of any notion to be sent to the bottom by no steamer collision—leastways not if he saw her comin'. And he callated to see her comin'. His last word to the next on watch on a foggy night was always: "Call me soon's you see any steamer lights. An' don't wait to diskiver if it be a pote or stabbid light." On watch in a fog Bill never got farther away from the fog-horn than he could make in two leaps; and he was no Olympic leaper.
With Bill and Steve in the cabin slept Oliver and the skipper. Most sword-fishermen carry an auxiliary engine to hustle after the fish in calm summer weather. The rest of us bunked in the forec's'le. She was a little creature, theHenriette, and it was pretty close sleeping for'ard on a hot night. To abate the heat nights, we rigged up a wind-sail which came down the air-port forward of the foremast; which was all right till the vessel tacked. When she did, her jumbo-boom would sweep across the deck and swipe our wind-sail over the rail. When we fellows bunking forward talked of how hot it was for'ard, the cabin gang would only say: "Hot? You want to come aft and soak in the gas off the engine for a few nights!"
We cruised four days off Block Island without seeing a sword-fin. Plenty of big sharks were loafing under the surface there, but sharks don't bring anything on the market. We stood easterly. Off Nantucket light-ship we picked up Bob Johnson of Nantucket and Bill Jackson of Maine, Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien of Gloucester, theMasterand theNormaalso of Gloucester, a Boston schooner, theAlarm, and a big, black brute of a sloop which nobody could name. Tom Haile was there, too—in theEsther Ray.
No fish in sight that afternoon; but even so the skipper took his station in the pulpit. John, Shorty, and I went aloft. John was topmost, and swung in his chair just under the truck. Shorty and I were just under John. When we got tired of swinging in our chairs we could stand up, one cross-line in the small of our backs, another against our chests, and balance ourselves. When the vessel dove we could wrap our arms around the topmast and hang on. There was a swell on this morning—no crested seas, but a long, smooth, black swell, enough to send the vessel's bowsprit under every little while; and sometimes to send the pulpit atop of the bowsprit under, too.
"But this skipper—he don't mind gettin' wet," explained Shorty. "I've seen him go divin' till it was over his head in the pulpit an' he still hangin' on waitin' for fish."
Bill did not stand watch at the masthead. His eyesight was good enough, but Bill's three hundred pounds climbing up the rigging four or five times a day to the masthead—the skipper said he guessed he'd take pity on the rigging. So Bill stayed on deck to go in the dory, when a fish would be ironed. Also he took the pulpit when the skipper came inboard to eat. The first time John saw Bill go into the pulpit, he let a yell of mock terror out of him from aloft. "Skipper, skipper, he's puttin' her down by the head, and Lard knows she was down by the head enough before. Let she go into a good head sea, she'll never come up an' we'll be lost, all hands!" Which made Bill turn and glare up at John; and when he did that, John hove one of the cook's bright-blue dumplings down at Bill.
That afternoon we sighted our first fish. The skipper was in the pulpit, with the pole half hitched across the pulpit rail. Bill was resting his chest across the gunnel of the top dory and with half-closed eyes studying the sea to wind'ard. Oliver was sitting on the wheel-box, motionless except when he moved an arm or a hand to roll a spoke or two up and down. Aloft, we had not seen a sign of fish, near or far, for an hour or more.
John let out a sharp little cry: "Fish-O!" The skipper stood up and balanced his long pole. Oliver straightened up at the wheel-box. Bill came out of his trance, looked to us aloft and shifted his gaze to leeward. The bright, bald head of the cook shone up the forec's'le ladder. He cast a peek aloft, said "Fish-h?" inquiringly, and stepped onto the deck, smoking his pipe.
"Fair abeam to looard!" John called, and Oliver put the wheel up. Soon they could see the curved three-cornered fin from the deck. A shark's fin is three-cornered, too, but straight-edged, not curved. And a swordfish's tail moves almost without motion through the water.
The skipper balanced his pole, but without looking down at it. His eyes were for the fish only. "Hard up!" called John, and Oliver sent our bow swinging into line.
"Stea-a-dy!" called John.
The skipper was swaying from the waist. A big-boned, rangy man the skipper, more than six feet high and wide-shouldered, with a great reach and a strong-looking back. He hefted his pole—more than a week since he had ironed a swordfish—and he looked to see that the line running from his pole to a tub in the waist of the vessel was all clear. To look after that was the cook's business, and now, meeting the skipper's look: "All clear!" he sang out, and stowed his pipe in his stern pocket.
We were within half the vessel's length of our fish when, he dived. "Port!" called John. "Stea-a-dy! stea-a-dy! Lard, man, stea-a-dy-y!" They could not see the fish from the deck, but we at the masthead could follow his course under water.
The fin and tail showed again. We swung around to head him off in his course. The skipper, to loosen up his waist and back muscles, was swaying from his hips.
We were almost on the big fish. He was cruising lazily. The skipper drew back his right arm and shoulder, but fin and tail took a sudden shoot. John was in command at the masthead. "Luff—luff!" called John. The vessel shot up, the skipper leaned far over the pulpit rail. Fin and tail were gone from his sight, but from aloft we could follow the blue-black shadow of the body under water. Suddenly the shadow turned and shot diagonally back under our bowsprit. John called a warning. The skipper rose on his toes—with that long right arm raised above and behind his head, he looked seven feet tall—and waited. We feared he was waiting too long, when whing!—a backward swoop of the arm, a downward thrust of the pole, and "Gottim!" said the cook, and tossed the bight of the warp over the rail and calmly bent on a new warp for the skipper's pole. The skipper took a backward look at the flying fish; then quickly, but with never a hurry, rigged a fresh iron and line to his pole. After a man has ironed a few thousand swordfish it is probably hard to get excited over one more.
The big fish was gone, deep down, and after him the warp was whirling out of the tub in the ship's waist. In no time the whole fifty-fathom line was gone, and atop of the sea the black-and-white-painted barrel was going a good clip. And then under it went, but not for long. Up it came, and around in a quarter-circle and then straight away again with a grand little wake after it. By this time Bill had been dropped into a dory and was rowing after the buoy.
The buoy ran round another big circle before Bill caught up with it. When he did he took the buoy into the dory and began to warp in the fish, and had him alongside and was about to lance him in the head, when whir-h-h! tail and sword beat the sea white, and Bill cast him loose.
Now, if John, or Oliver, or Shorty had ever got that fish snubbed up under the dory gunnel like that, they would have finished him. If he was as long and big around as a dory, be sure they would, or try to; but getting on to middle age was Bill, and he probably had in mind a clear picture of every doryman that was ever killed swordfishing.
Bill was going after them in his own way. He'd get 'em just the same. Just let that fish play hisself out. Which he did after an hour or so, and then Bill hauled him under the dory's quarter, and reached over and a dozen times or so drove the long lance into his head. The fish flurried around and churned white water, but the deep lance thrusts did for him at last. And then Bill hitched him around the tail and waited for the vessel; and Oliver, who had been having a windward eye to the dory all the time, put over to him, and the dory tackle was hooked under the tail-knot and the fish hauled in.
A swordfish is a handsome creature when fresh caught. Plump and tapering in body, with pointed head and big eyes, and his skin a lovely dripping blue-black, which had not faded hours later when he was lowered into the hold after being dressed. The cook had a fine large round of beef on top of the ice in the hold, but it had to come out on deck to make room for that first fish—which is how deep theHenriettewas loaded.
He weighed perhaps three hundred pounds. A good-sized fellow. "Jist the size to be lively," said Bill. "And to fight—I don't take no chances with them kind."
The iron had gone diagonally through his body amidships. It was now hanging out with six inches of the line on the under side of him. A great stroke, passing through almost two feet of solid meat and just grazing the back-bone on the way. The cook explained that he had seen the skipper drive his iron clean through the backbone and then clear through the body of bigger ones than that.
By dark we had four good fish in, and all hands were pleased. The cook, before he turned in for the night, told us more about his blueberry patch. The skipper came below and broke in on the cook to talk about the weather. "A sea the same's if there was gasolene poured over it," said the skipper. "A clear sky, but a swell and near the horizon at sunset clouds piled up with gashes of green and purple and a hundred other shades. Wind there—plenty of it—we'll see to-morrow."
To-morrow came, but no breeze. The skipper felt put out. "I'd 'a' bet it," he said.
That night came an ugly sunset. No oily sea this time, but a gray tossing and murmuring, and showing behind among the clouds, long deep-red streaks paralleling the horizon, and the horizon lifting up and down like it had something the matter with it, too.
Next morning nothing, or no more than what Shorty said when he came down from his watch at eight o'clock. "Just a good liver shaker aloft," said Shorty.
Just before ten o'clock came a stirring out of the sea; but nothing much. Another stirring and the skipper took a good look around, and then came in from the pulpit. He called out to us to come from the masthead. We came, and took sail off her—all but her foresail. No word was given to hurry, but there was no loafing over it. Oliver, a great fellow to keep looking clean, said he guessed he'd take a chance to shave himself; and then he took another look around at sea and sky, and then he said he guessed he'd wait awhile.
While a man would be drawing on a pair of rubber-boots it came—oh, whistling! And four hours of it followed. Wind to blow a man's ears off. And rain! Oh, rain! Not rain in sheets—nothing so soft and easy as that; but rain which came driving in like a billion bullets at once. We could pick out where every one hit us. The wind blew maybe eighty miles an hour for four hours. And then the real thing came. For an hour or so more wind really blew. How many miles? Lord knows. John said a good hundred miles. Bill snorted: "A hunderd? Take on'y what's above a hunderd an' you'd git a gale by itself!"
With all the wind there was a high-running sea; and wind and sea together were driving us into shoal water. And the shoal water of Georges is bad—no worse anywhere. We sounded and got ten fathoms. Bad. There was nothing but to make a little more sail and get out. Put jumbo and trysail to her, was the word; as we started to do that a forepeak block came away, and the halyards and block got fouled with the jib-stay aloft. The skipper sent John and me aloft to clear it.
We went; and were lying out to get it, when we saw this sea come at us. It was a white yeast all around the vessel, but this one was a solid white, solid as marble almost. It came roaring like a mad bull at us. I took one peek at it and "Hang on, John!" I yelled. I did my best to leave the print of my fingers on the steel stay with the way I hung on myself—we were both of us to the masthead and that sea was just high enough to roll over our heads. I could just see a light-green color over my head as it passed.
As we stuck our heads through and looked at each other, John was saying something. There was a ringing in my ears. I asked him: "What? What did you say, John?"
"You told me to hang on," said John. "To hang on! Lard Gard, boy, did y' think I was goin' to dive into it?"
On deck when they saw it coming they had all jumped below and pulled the hatches after them. They began to come out now, and the skipper called for us to come down. Nothing was washed from her deck. Of course, everything before that had been double-lashed—dories and barrels of gasolene—before that. The skipper now ordered the bung pulled from a full barrel of gasolene. We stove one in and let the oil run out; and the seas calmed to leeward and we threw a dory to the lee rail, after lashing an empty gasolene barrel to each side of her.
"Whoever's handiest jump in!" yelled the skipper.
Big Bill was handy to the dory, but he never would have made it if John hadn't stopped to push him over the gunnel from behind. Shorty and Oliver leaped over the other gunnel. I waited for John; but the skipper had called "More oil and another dory!" and John had turned back.
We four—Bill, Shorty, Oliver, and myself—were hardly in when a sea came over the vessel's deck and swept our dory away—wh-f-f! like that. She all but filled to the gunnels before we were fair away from the vessel's side, but the two empty barrels kept her from sinking. And before another sea could get a fair chance at her Oliver and Bill were busy bailing her, and Shorty and I keeping her head to the sea with an oar astern. We looked back to the vessel, and could see them rigging up another dory and breaking out another barrel of oil.
We kept going in our dory—none of us could say how long, whether it was one hour or four, we were all so busy—Big Bill and Oliver with their heads down bailing her out with their sou'-westers, and Shorty and I with an oar keeping her head to windward. Bill and Oliver had to bail pretty fast. Bill kept getting out of wind and Oliver's eye-glasses kept getting wet with salt water so he couldn't see out of them.
"What d'y' want to see out of 'em for?" asks Shorty. "We're here in the stern to do the seein' an' the steerin'. Might's well heave your specks overboard."
Oliver hove them overboard.
So far as our seeing went we never saw the vessel which picked us up until after she saw us. She was theEsther Rayand she was under a jumbo and storm trysail, working off from the shoal water and having trouble enough; but they saw us, and stood down and hailed. We made out what they said, more by their signs than by what words we heard.
"I'll tack and come by close to looard of you!" called Tom Haile, her skipper; "and when I do, take your chance and come board. You'll maybe have to jump!"
He had to watch his chance to tack. He waited maybe five minutes, both hands on the spokes, waiting and watching. And then he gave her the wheel; and when he did, it was something to look at. Between seas and sky she hung for I don't know how long—maybe five seconds, maybe ten, maybe thirty seconds—between heaven and hell she hung, before she came over. And, man, when she did, she wouldn't have started a pack thread. Judgment there, boy! Then falling and rising, and falling again, she came down onto us. A sea lifted our dory straight for her; up we went and down—straight for her windward rail. We watched. We jumped—all but Bill. He was hove aboard. The dory under us was smashed on her rail as we jumped, but we could spare the dory—we were safe aboard theEsther.
Once we were aboard they gave theEsthera little more sheet, and off she went on her ear till we made twenty-five fathoms of water; and there we brought her to. And while we lay there hove to the wind moderated to fifty miles or so, and as the wind came down the seas went up. Higher and higher they kept mounting. Just to look at the height of them would make your back ache. And then the wind backed into the northwest, and the seas came two ways together. No dodging them at all now, and the littleEsther Ray—stripped to her last little white shift, a corner of a storm trysail—lay to a drogue and took it.
I'd been fishing mostly in big vessels before this trip, and for the first time in my life I saw a little boat stand up and take a beating. She was a few tons bigger than theHenriette, but still little enough—theEsther. Little and deep-laden, she lay there and took it.
Little and deep-laden, yes; but, man, a stout one, too. When she was building it was Tom Haile himself who drove every bolt—every trenail—into her. He had seen to it that her timbers were heavy enough for a vessel four times her tonnage. Believe him, a vessel theEsther! A solid block of oak, yes! And like a solid block of oak she lay there, and "Come on, damn you, come on and get me!" we could almost hear her saying to the big seas.
Of course, she could not do it all herself. After all, she was no five-hundred-foot steamer, that no matter how it came all you had to do was to let her lay and no harm come to her. There were the moments when it was up to the skipper and her crew. But a capable skipper on her quarter and a quick-moving, handy crew in her waist—when your vessel is well-found leave the rest of it to them! They were all there, and there on the jump when wanted. No talk, no questioning—when the word was passed the word was carried out. By seven o'clock that night the littleEstherhad ridden out the gale in glory. To be sure, it was a thunderer of a night that followed, with seas pounding her solid little head, and perhaps the man in the peak bunk did not have a word to say about that in the morning! But with the morning—Glory be!—'twas a silver sunrise and a little schooner smiling and bowing like to the baffled ocean.
But not all the swordfishing fleet were there in the morning. Bill Jackson was there, and the big, ugly sloop, and we thought we could make out Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien on the horizon. But where was theNorma? And theMaster? And Bob Johnson? And theAlarmof Boston? And our own littleHenriette?
We made sail, and after a time the big sloop with the ugly bow also made sail. And we jogged back to where we had left the good fishing, and, the sea having moderated sufficiently, lookouts went aloft and theEsther'sskipper to the pulpit. Vessels and men may be lost, but men and vessels have to keep on with the fishing just the same.
But there were no fish to be seen. The storm had scattered them. The skipper wanted to know what somebody else thought of the storm. He ran down to speak to Bill Jackson.
Bill was sitting on the wheel-box whittling a piece of red cedar when we drew alongside. Bill's half-bared chest seemed to be trying to burst through his undershirt, and above the shirt his seamed neck rose ruggedly. Neck, arms, and chest were burned red. His beard, red in the shadows and gold in the sun, was ten days old at least. Fifteen centuries ago it must have been men of Bill Jackson's style that left the marshes of the Elbe and, sailing westward across the North Sea, looted the shores of wherever they happened to beach their keels.
"How'd you make out yesterday, Bill?" asked Tom.
"Rolled our sheer-poles under," said Bill, "not once in a while, but reg'lar. An' not a stitch o' canvas on her to the time, nuther. An' washed over everything that warn't bolted. When I see it warn't lettin' up, I ran her under bare poles. Logged eight and a half knots under bare poles. Goin' some? I call it so. Glad not to be lost, we were."
"Same here. I'm worried about some o' the fleet, Bill."
"Some of 'em's gone, all right. I don't want to see another day like yesterday in a hurry, Tom."
"Nor me, Bill. A good breeze o' wind I call it, Bill."
"Adamngood breeze o' wind I call it," said Bill.
"I guess by this time there's no argument 'bout it bein' a pretty good little blow," said Shorty.
We left Bill Jackson. The middle of the morning it was, a fine day, and, still hoping for fish, the Esther's lookouts were aloft. One called out something—not Fish-O!—and pointed. We looked. It was part of a drifting mast, the lower part, broken off raggedly from a foot or two above the saddle. It drifted on by.
"A white-painted saddle," said Tom Haile, looking at Shorty and me.
"TheHenriette'ssaddles was painted white," said Shorty. "But she ain't the only vessel with white-painted saddles."
"That's right," said theEsther'screw, "she ain't."
A few minutes later a floating gasolene barrel drifted by, and soon another. Tom Haile reached out with a boat-hook and gaffed in that second barrel. There was a hole in the head of it—made by an axe. That didn't mean anything—it could have washed off theHenriette'sdeck, off anybody's deck. The surprise would be in a barrel staying on her deck in the shoal water she was in when we left her. Yes, that could be, agreed theEsther'screw.
From the masthead then they saw a dory—bottom up.
"A yellow dory?" Shorty and I asked.
The lookout scanned the water. "A yellow dory, yes."
The skipper put off for the yellow dory, and when he towed it back, there was the name:
HENRIETTE
on her bow planks.
"That's her other dory, all right," said Shorty. "But they still have the vessel under them." Nobody said anything to that.
Next we picked up a hatch-cover. And the hatch-cover, when we got it aboard, had a star carved on it.
"Yes, the main hatch-cover o' theHenriettehad a star carved on it," said Shorty. "But there's plenty o' chances for her yet."
What looked like a watermelon came drifting up.
Shorty looked to see better. "If it's a watermelon, I give up—she's gone," said Shorty. "They's nobody heaves a watermelon overboard to lighten a vessel."
It was a watermelon; and we all gave up. Everybody knew that theHenriette'scook was a great fellow to ship a watermelon and keep it down among the ice for the passage home. As Shorty said, there was no reason ever for a watermelon being hove overboard. And it couldn't have floated out of her hold unless the vessel had broken up. The mast, the gasolene-barrel, the dory, the hatch-cover, and now the melon.
Shorty made a flying leap into the yellow dory towing astern, and, leaning far enough out to lay the dory over on her side, he spread wide his arms and the melon floated right in over the gunnel and into his arms, and he took it to his bosom.
Big Bill hurried to take the melon when Shorty passed it up over the rail. "Poor littleHenriettean' the good fellers in yer—where are yer now, I wonder?" said Bill, looking down on the melon. And then he tested it for soundness. "Only one soft spot where she bumped into somethin'," announced Bill. He called for a knife and cut it up, and tasted a piece.
"Not a touch o' salt," he said, and passed slices of it around.
A good-tasting melon, everybody said; and eating it on theEsther'squarter we said all the good things we knew of the Henriette and her skipper and crew.
Two days later theEstherput into Newport. We came past Point Judith in a night of black vapor—a bad night for Big Bill. He saw steamer lights all sides of him, and never went to sleep at all.
We stood up Narragansett Bay in the dawn, and the cook of theEsther, smoking his pipe on the deck, was the boy could tell all about the big summer houses on the bluffs. There is that about cooks—they always seem to hold more gossip than anybody else aboard a vessel. Names of who owned the cottages, how many millions—and how they made the millions—was what the cook could tell us, with a few bits of flaming gossip added on.
Some big schooner-yachts from New York were anchored in Newport Harbor. One of them, as large again as any fresh halibutter that ever was launched—a great black-enamelled cruising schooner with a high free-board, perhaps fifteen times the tonnage of theHenriette—held the eyes of all. "If we'd only had her out there the other day!" was what most of us were thinking.
"She'd be the girl to walk us out o' shoal water in that breeze!" put in Shorty. "We'd had her 'nd we'd 'a' washed her face for her!"
"And mebbe a few o' them fancy skylights and brass rails off her deck, too," said Big Bill.
"Maybe. But I'd like to had her tried out, just the same."
Tied up to the other side of Long Wharf when we got in was Tom O'Brien's vessel. Big Bill, like a good gossip, waddled over to get the news, and soon came galloping back.
"She's gone!" he called out, and showed us a Boston paper with the report of how four men's bodies with a life-preserver markedHenriettehad been picked up off Nantucket the day before. There was also the story in a New York paper of how a big ocean liner had been in the storm. She was six hundred foot long and bound for New York. There was a bishop aboard, and when it got too rough for the passengers, some of them wrote notes to the bishop asking him to hold a prayer-meeting in the saloon. He started to hold the prayer-meeting but it grew too rough. They had to quit.
"And they in good deep water where they were! I wonder what they'd 'a' thought if they'd been in this little one and where she was?" said Tom Haile.
"Maybe they'd held the prayer-meetin' anyway, then," said Shorty.
We had come away from theHenriettein only our oilskins and trousers and undershirts. Tom Haile and Tom O'Brien and a couple of fish-buyers on Long Wharf started a collection to get us some clothes. We took the money up Thames Street to some clothing dealer who was a brother Moccasin to Tom Haile and O'Brien. But belonging to the same order didn't make any difference. The clothing dealer wouldn't take a cent off.
"Not even for shipwrecked seamen?" asked O'Brien.
"Being shipwrecked seamen don't make the clothes cost any less to me," said the dealer.
"A hell of a fine brother Moccasin you are!" said O'Brien.
"A fine brother Moccasin yourself!" said the clothing dealer, "wantin' me to lose money on a sale."
So we went to another place, and he happened to be a Jew and not a Moccasin. Not that he wouldn't like to be a member of that noble order; which made O'Brien and Haile warm up to him, so that they forgot to argue about the price at all.
They had to saw a foot off Shorty's new pants to make them fit, and the coat came pretty low down on him; but no harm in that Bill and Oliver and I said. We got pretty good fits.
They bought tickets for us and we took the train to Gloucester, and then I went down to Tony Webber's to get a shave, and there was a young fellow in the chair next to me said to Tony: "Yer sh'd have been out in the breeze!"
"What vessel?" I asked.
"TheThunderbolt," he says.
"And what shape is she in?"
"Go down to the halibut company's wharf and see," he says.
I did go down later. She'd lost both masts to near her deck, and her bowsprit was broken off short at the knightheads—not a thing left on her except her last coat of paint and a few twisted yarns of her lower shrouds. But, thank the Lord, no men lost. They had all stayed aboard.
"They were luckier than theHiawatha. Heard about theHiawatha?" asked a man in the chair.
"No; what about her?"
"I had a brother on her," said this man. "She was hove down and her whole crew washed over—hove flat down and the whole crew of eight men in the water at once. Six of 'em got back—first one and then another, the first of those back aboard heavin' lines to the others still overboard. Two men never came back, though—pretty rough it was."
On his own vessel, theThunderbolt, it was pretty rough sailing, and in the middle of it there was one of the crew—he'd never been off-shore fishing in his life before this—he came on deck with a life-preserver around him. "Seas to our masthead," said the man off theThunderbolt, "and he comes on deck with a life-preserver. He must 'a' thought he was bein' wrecked in some swimmin'-pool in some Turkish bath 'stead of old South Shoal in a gale. If ever he'd got two feet from the deck of that vessel, he'd lasted 'bout two seconds—him and his life-preserver!"
Tony, the barber, was so interested in the man with the life-preserver that he gave me a fine cut on my right cheek.
John and the skipper and Steve and the cook were buried that same day in Gloucester, and we all went to the funeral; and coming away from the funeral: "You goin' back fishin'?" said Shorty to me.
"No more fishin' for me," I said. And Shorty and Oliver, they both said never again for them, either.
That was day before yesterday. This morning the master of theAntoinettecame along with Shorty and Oliver and asked me didn't I want to make just one more swordfishing trip while the season was on.
I looked at Shorty. He was wearing a smile and had a rose on his coat some girl had given him. "I thought you said you were through fishing, Shorty?"
"So I did," said Shorty, "but a man says a lot o' things in his careless hours. I've had a couple o' good nights' sleep since."
"And you, Oliver?" I said.
"Me? Well, there's a wife and an old mother up to my house, and I never read anywhere the gover'ment was paying out money to the families of fishermen who didn't want to fish any more, did you?" said Oliver.
So I said all right I'd go along, too. "What's the use—we're sea-birds," I said. "It's our home and our living—where else should we go but to sea, at the last? But have you seen Big Bill?"
Yes, Shorty had seen Big Bill. He had hopes to get a job at the car-barn. "He's had two warnings, he says," said Shorty, "and not to wait for a third would be foolish. He's up on Main Street right now with people buying drinks for him, while he tells 'em how he managed to save himself off theHenriette."
Well, Big Bill's all right; but he's alive to-day because a better man—the same being John—shoved him into a dory when he might have gone himself instead. And Big Bill thinks of John only as an irresponsible young fellow who liked to play jokes with blueberry dumplings.
The best men don't always come back from sea. Four good men stayed aboard theHenriette, and two of them—the skipper and John—were certainly quicker and braver than any of the others of us. The skipper could have come away first, but he didn't.
Nor John. Six years I was shipmates with John and he was one good shipmate. Good shipmates—they make a long cruise short, a rough sea smooth. Good shipmates! You don't mind going with good shipmates alongside.
And theAntoinette, she's a sister ship to theHenriette—thirteen tons net and thirty tons of ice in the hold. And that same dock lumper who never left a vessel leave Duncan's without he sees her off—he says she's down by the head, too.
A fine joy-killer, that lad.
We're putting out in an hour. So fair wind, boy—I'm off.
Old Bill Green was comin' out of Spiegel's Caffy, meanin' a place where a man can have somethin' to eat while he's havin' a drink, an' he had folded over his arm what looked like a pretty swell coat for old Bill to be wearin'.
Noticin' me, "Hulloh, Hiker!" says Bill, an' we stroll along till we come opposite to Wallie Whelan's father's store on South Street, where Bill stops. "I do like that little Whelan kid," says Bill. "I wonder is he in?"
Wallie was in, an' "Hulloh, Hiker!" an' "How do you do, Mr. Green!" he says, an' comes runnin' out when he sees us.
An' old Bill says, "Oh-h, driftin' by—driftin' by," an' spreads out to the air the coat he's carryin' on his arm. All wrinkled up it was, like somebody's slept in it, but a pretty swell coat just the same, like the kind hackmen wear to a funeral or a weddin' with a stovepipe hat. There's a pocket in one o' the coat-tails, an' old Bill slides his hand into it and out comes a case, an' when he springs open the case there's a shiny black pipe.
"Well, well," says Bill, lookin' at the pipe like he was wonderin' how it come there.
"Where did y' ever get that fine pipe, Mr. Green?" asks Wallie.
"Oh, a souveneer, a little souveneer of other days—of days I'd 'most forgot," says Bill.
"A handsome pipe!" says Wallie.
"Yes," says Bill, "if on'y I had the fillin' of it once in a while!"
"Wait!" says Wallie, an' rushes inside the store.
"Comanche Chief, if you have any in stock!" calls out Bill after him.
Mr. Whelan, who's sittin' by the open winder in his office, looks out to Bill an' then to the clerk an' smiles that it's all right to Wallie over the top of his mornin' paper, an' Wallie comes out with a plug o' Comanche Chief smokin' for Bill an' a plug o' the same of chewin' for me.
I bites into mine right away, but old Bill looks at his pipe, an' then, sayin' he didn't know's he'd baptize it yet awhile, he reaches over an' gnaws a corner off my plug o' chewin'.
An' Wallie's dyin' to know how it come to be a souveneer pipe, but is too polite to ask, on'y he can't help havin' another look at the pipe an' noticin' the picksher of a bird on the bowl an' readin' the letters on the gold band. "HRC" he reads out, an' looks at old Bill.
"I know, I know," says old Bill. "They bring me back, them initials, lad, like nothin' else could, to days that is past 'n' gone." He looks across East River over to Brooklyn mournful-like, but not forgettin' to chew an' chew, 'nd bineby, when he has his jaws well oiled up, he says: "'Tis many 'n' many a year ago, lad, an' me the cabin-boy an' the fav'rite o' the capt'n o' the good shipTropic Zone."
"TheTropic Zone! What a corkin' name for a ship!" says Wallie.
"Ay, lad," says Bill, "a noble name an' a noble ship, a full-rigged four-master, an' one fine day we up jibs an' yanchor an' sailed out this same Yeast River an' past the Battery an' down New York Bay an' the Jersey coast, an' on an' on, bearin' s'utherly, till we came to the land o' Yunzano, which was—an' mebby is yet—down South Ameriky way, an' we went ashore, me 'n; the capt'n, to call on the noble don which them same initials stands for.
"HRC," says Bill, readin' 'em off the pipe. "How well do I remember the noble don, Hidalgo Rodreego Cazamma, who lived in r'yal splender in a most lovely an' fertyle valley. Lookin' back now through the vister of my matoored manhood, I can't say's I c'n recall in all my years o' world travellin' a more entrancin' picksher than the valley o' Yunzano when my capt'n 'n' me hove into it of that gorgeous April mornin'. There was a river gleamin' like silver—an' sometimes like gold 'n' copper—flowin' through that marvellous valley, an' above it rose the volkanous mountains with sides of the color of the purple neglijay shirts an' tops like the ruby scarf-pins that sometimes you see of a mornin' on the hot sports in Times Square. An' in that valley was forests with all the tropic trees that ever you read of, bearin' the most jul-luscious fruits—pomgrannits, cocoanuts, pineapples, limes, lemons, grapefruits, alligator-pears—any fruit ever you see to the stalls in the market was there in abundance. An' fr'm the branches o' them same trees came the most melojus birds' voices, an' the birds themselves 'd a-dazzle your eyes with the color o' their feathers. Parrakeets, marrakeets, bobalinks, nightingales, an' a little red, white, 'n' blue-spotted bird the natives called an eggleeno."
"Ah-h!" says Wallie, "and is that the picture on the bowl o' the pipe?"
"The same," says Bill; "done by a master hand, with the same round pop-eyes—see—an' the same wide, square-cut tail like the stern of a ferry-boat.
"'Dijjer ever in yer life, William, see anything more saliferous?' says the capt'n to me whilst we're ridin' up to the don hidalgo's house—a hashyender, they called it—longer 'n' wider than any two blocks on Broadway, but not so high, with a red roof, an' walls o' solid marble, an' marble columns 'n' promenades around it, with thousands o' lofty trees liftin' their heads to the sky, an' balconies outside the winders, an' spoutin' fountains in the r'yal pam garden, which was the size mebby o' Central Park. It took all of a thousand servants, I should say, in pink-'n'-old-rose knee-pants, to look arter the place; an' the old don kep' a band o' musicians in a green-an'-old-gold uniform on tap all the time. The house rules there—the same engraved in silver on ivory tablets an' hung on the wall over the head o' your bed—was that if a guest woke up in the middle o' the night an' didn't feel well enough to go back to sleep, he had on'y to poke the little Injun boy who slep' on a mat afore every door with his big toe an' say to him: 'Boyo, some musico!' An' we did one night, an' in no time the still air was rent by the entrancin' strains of 'In the Sweet By 'n' By,' which was the pop'l'ar toon o' them days, an' the one we ordered. Guitars, manderlins, violins, oboes, trombones, an' cornets they had in squads, though to my mind a native instrerment called the hooloobooloo was the most truly musical of all. Shaped like the bow of a ship it was, with a hundred strings to it, an' made a noise like a breeze o' wind tryin' to steal through a forest o' trees on a summer's night. 'Twas ravishin'.
"Arter the fatigues of our long an' tejus voy'ge, the hashyender o' the don was a most refreshin' place to pass a few days in, but we had our business to attend to. Not that the noble don would sully our ears by mentionin' the same to us. In those tropic countries the greatest insult to the stranger who happens to step in an' camp awhile with you is to ask him what's on his mind—not till he's been restin' up for at least a week. However, after six days o' restin' up, with salubrious fruits an' wines an' the most melojus concerts, my capt'n broaches the cause of why we're callin' on the Don Hidalgo Rodreego Cazamma."
"Ah-h," says Wallie, "now we'll get it, Hiker!"
"Yes," says Bill, "now we'll have it. But, lemme see now—I must tell it so it'll be clear to your young interlecks," an' he looks hard at the pipe an' then mournful-like acrost East River toward Brooklyn.
"In them days," Bill goes on at last, "no place you could go to in the whole Yunnited States—the piny woods, the rocky hills an' grassy plains, no busy city fr'm the rock-bound coast o' Maine to the golden shores where rolls the Oregon, no sleepy hamlet between the wooded hills o' Canada an' the surf-washed sands o' Florida, but you'd see in big letters on the tops o' flat rocks an' the sides o' mountains, the backs o' fences an' the roofs o' barns, in the winders o' drug-stores an' the flags o' back alleys, nowhere but you'd see: YUNZANO SWAMP ROOT, FOR COUGHS, COLDS, LUMBAGO, RUMMATIZ, GOUT, CHILBLAINS, COLD SORES, COLIC, BRIGHT'S DISEASE, AN' LIVER TROUBLE—all in high yoller letters agin black paint.
"Pints an' 'quarts in bottles, for sale at all reputable drug-stores, an' those bottles had to come all the way by sea an' fr'm the estate o' Don Hidalgo Rodreego Cazamma, who owned all the swamp-root region in Yunzano. An' when it'd come on to blow an' the ship'd take to rollin', where there was no way o' tellin' till arter you'd get to port an' counted 'em how many bottles was left that wasn't busted. Sometimes more'n half or three-quarters of 'em 'd be busted.
"An' now we come to that noble benefactor o' the human race who at that time owned the string o' drug-stores painted blue 'n' green 'n' red, with cut-rate prices up 'n' down the side of every one of 'em. 'Twas him owned the Yunnited States rights to Yunzano Swamp Root, an' he used to sell millions 'n' millions o' bottles of Yunzano every year, an' he says: 'Why do we have to have so many o' these bottles o' Yunzano busted in comin'?' An' he says: 'I have it—by Plutie, I have it. I'll build a special ship for carryin' my wondrous tropic medicines!' An' he does. He builds a ship 'special, an' in her he sets a great tank—oh, mebby four hundred foot long an' fifty foot wide an' deep—oh, deep as the ship was deep, and of all the ships ever I sailed in she was the deepest. 'There,' he says to my capt'n, 'spill the Yunzano in there 'stead of in bottles an' we'll make millions—millions, sir!' He meant he'd make millions. An' theTropic Zonewas that ship, an' so it was we come, me 'n' the capt'n, to be doin' business this lovely day with the owner o' the great Yunzano estate.
'What we want, don,' says the capt'n fr'm his chair that was made of inlaid precious woods an' the horns o' th' anzello, a beeyootiful creachure like a nantelope, of which on'y one was killed every hundred years—'what we want, don,' says my capt'n—an' four liveried servants keepin' the flies 'n' other insecks off him with wavin' pam-leaves while he's talkin'—'is to take our swamp-root home in bulk.' An' the don, a man o' most majestic figger, smokin' a fourteen-inch cheroot in another chair that was inlaid all in di'monds 'n' gold, he considers the case and finally agrees to sell us enough to fill our tank, which is two million two hundred 'n' sixty thousand gallons o' Yunzano at forty-two cents a gallon. An' we despatch a fleet messenger back to the ship, an' up comes the gold with forty men-at-arms o' the don guardin' it—a million dollars or so it was, an' all in the coin o' the realm—shiny ten an' twenty dollar gold pieces.
"Well, that's settled, so we goes back to the ship, ridin' our sumpter-mules in the dewy morn, an' down the gleamin' silver 'n' gold 'n' copper river comes the Yunzano in the skins o' wild animals on bamboo rafts, an' while they're dumpin' it inter the tank the capt'n 'n' me, by special invitation, have a look at where the don manufactured the Yunzano.
"It was dark like the sassaparilla they served out to church picnics when it oozed first from nature's bosom, an' not till it was mixed with a native liquid called poolkey did it become th' inspirin' article o' commerce which the rocks an' fences an' druggists' winders an' the advertisin' an' sometimes the readin' columns of our American journals shouted to the public. This poolkey grew on trees, in little cups like, which all you had to do was to turn upside down an' into your mouth. It was the grandest proof to me o' the wise provisions of nature. It was a white-colored stuff, an' tasted like an equal mixture o' wood alcohol an' red flame. One part swamp root to one part poolkey made up the Yunzano o' commerce that many folks preferred to tea. The poolkey kep' it fr'm spilin'. Some o' the most inveterate battlers agin the demon rum we ever had, some o' the most cel'brated politicians, platform speakers, an' drug-dealers in the land, certified over their own signatures to the component parts o' Yunzano an' indorsed the same highly.
"Well, our tank was fin'lly filled to the hatches with the two million two hundred 'n' sixty thousand gallons o' prime Yunzano, an' when we considered the sellin'-price—pints fifty cents, quarts a dollar—quarts o' the five-to-the-gallon size—up home we felt happy to think what profits was goin' to be in this v'yage, for—but lemme see—did I say his name, the owner o' theTropic Zonean' the fleet o' drug-stores?"
"No," says Wallie. "An' I was wonderin'."
"No? Well, Nathaniel Spiggs was his name. However, to continue our tale. There we was, our cargo all aboard an' waitin' on'y for the mornin' light to leave to sea. It was a windin', tortuss channel outer that harbor, not to be navvergated at night by no ship of our size, an' the skipper was readin' the Bible in his cabin. He liked to read a few chapters afore turnin' in of a night, an' to my joy he used to invite me to sit 'n' listen to him, an' many a time in after life I'd be minded of my old skipper o' theTropic Zone, an' the mem'ry of his monitions fr'm the Bible was surely a great bullerk to me agin terrible temptations.
"An' while he's sittin' there, balancin' his specks an' readin' to me, 'n' stoppin' to expound now 'n' agin where mebby my young intellergence couldn't assimmerlate it, the mate comes down 'n' salutes 'n' says: 'Sir, there's some people on the beach makin' signs o' distress—on horseback.' An' the skipper, arter a few cusses, which was on'y nacheral at bein' disturbed in his pious occupation, he sets the Bible back in his bunk an' goes up on deck. An' me with him.
"An' there they are. An' behold, as we look, we see—my eyes bein' young an' marvellous sharp in them days was the fust—afar up the mountainside—to descry a band o' people ridin' wildly down to the valley an' makin' what must 'a' been all manner o' loud noises, judgin' by the way they waved their arms an' guns, on'y they was too far away to be heard. An' the capt'n gets out his night-glasses."
"Excuse me, Mr. Green," says Wallie, "but what is a night-glass?"
"A glass you look through at night is a night-glass. Don't all the grand sea-stories speak o' night glasses?"
"That's why I ast. But, excuse me—please go on," says Wallie.
"An' who should they turn out to be on the beach, wavin' dolorous-like signals o' distress, but the don hidalgo an'—I forget mebby to mention her afore—the don's lovely daughter! An' with them is four sumpter-mules, an' the sumpter-mules, when we goes 'n' gets 'em off in a boat, turns out to be loaded down with gold 'n' jewels. The million dollars in gold we'd brought for the Yunzano water 'n' all the jewels the noble don's fam'ly has been savin' up for hundreds o' years is on the mules.
"When we get 'em all aboard—mules 'n' all—the don explains how there's been a revverlootion in th' interior, an' how the General Feeleepo Balbeezo, the leader o' the revverlootionists, 'd planned to capture the hashyender o' the don, includin' his beeyoocheous daughter 'n' the gold 'n' jewels. An', on'y for a cook in the employ o' the wicked general give it away, he would. The don had cured this cook's grandmother of a vi'lent attack o' tropic fever years afore this by frequent an' liberal applications o' Yunzano, an' this grandson, though he was a wild an' reckless an' dark-complected youth, who preferred to associate with evil companions, nevertheless was grateful for the don's curin' his grandmother 'n' never forgot it. An' when he overhears in the kitchen, where he's fryin' a few yoller podreedos for the general's breakfast, the general hisself tellin' of his dastardly plan to his vellay, he ups on the fav'rite war-charger o' the general's, a noble steed eighteen hands high, an' don't stop ridin', without stirrup or bridle or saddle, till he comes gallopin' in a lather o' sweat—a hundred 'n' ten miles in one night over the mountain trails—to the don an' tells him all. O' course, when later the wicked general discovers the cook's noble devotion to the don's fam'ly, he has him hung on the spot, but that's to be expected, an', the hero an' herrin' bein' saved, it don't matter.
"'Cheer up, my brave don!' says our skipper, when the don tells him the story, an' refreshes him with a drink o' vold bourbon fr'm his private stock that he kep' under lock 'n' key in his cabin. An' he has one hisself. An' then he considers, an', while he's considerin', the General Balbeezo 'n' his army, who it was I'd seen ridin' down the high mountainside, they're arrived at the beach. An' they hollers acrost the harbor to us that if we didn't give up the don hidalgo an' the seenyohreeter, his daughter, an' the gold 'n' jewels, why, he, General Balbeezo, regardless of possible international complercations, will bring his artillery to the beach 'n' blow us all outer water.
"The don 'n' his daughter is tremblin' with fear, but 'Fear not, fear not!' says our skipper, an' sends for the owner's son."
"The owner's son—aboard all the time!" says Wallie.
"Sure. I'd 'a' told y'about him afore," says Bill, "but it wasn't time yet. He'd made the passage with us so's he could study the volkanous mountains o' Yunzano, the like o' which mountains wasn't in all the world anywhere else. He was a wonderful stoodent, so abstracted in his studies that he hadn't heard a word of what we was sayin' in the cabin this night till the capt'n sent me to call him outer his room. He was sure a noble specimen o' fair young manhood to gaze upon—'twas on'y the other day I was readin' up to the Yastor Library of a hero in one o' the best-sellers just like him: seven foot tall 'n' three foot acrost the shoulders, an' nothin' but pale pink curls to below his shoulders, an' he no sooner steps inter the cabin now, his wonderful keen, blue-gray eyes still with the absent-minded look o' the stoodent o' science, than I could see the don's daughter, the seenyohreeter, was goin' to fall wild in love with him.
"The capt'n explains the situation to young Hennery. An' Hennery thinks awhile, an' by'n'by he speaks. 'Har, I have it!' he says. 'The volkaners!' an' orders h'isted up from the hold his balloon."
"A balloon, Hiker—whooh!" says Wallie, an' sits closer to Bill.
"A balloon, yes. Y' see, besides bein' brought up by his father to be a great chemist an' stoodent o' mountains, he was likewise professor of airology in one of our leadin' colleges. An' he fills up his balloon—the whole crew standin' by to help him pump the hot air inter it—an' then away he goes. 'In an hour, I promise you, you shall hear from me!' he says, an' we watch him soarin' 'n' soarin' 'n' soarin' till his balloon ain't no bigger than a sparrer an' higher than the large an' silvery moon.
"An' all this time the wicked General Balbeezo an' his bandit army is bringin' their guns down the mountainside 'n' preparin' to blow our ship outer water. An' by'n'by they're all ready to begin, when 'Car-ra-be-ee-sss-toe!' exclaims the don—'what is that sound I hear?' I forgot to say that the last thing young Hennery did afore leavin' the ship was to put in the balloon a handful o' bombs of a powerful explosive he'd invented hisself. An' the sound the don hears is the 'ruption produced when young Hennery drops the first of them bombs into the craters o' the nearest volkaner. An', while we look, the air gets dark an' the moon hides, an' fr'm outer the top of one volkaner after another comes the most monstrous explosions, an' down the mountainside comes a nocean o' fiery, flamin' lavver, with billers 'n' billers o' black smoke floatin' up off it. An' soon we hears groans o' terror an' 'Save us! Oh, save us!' from the wicked general an' his army on the beach, an' inter the harbor they plunges with their war-horses 'n' the cannon 'n' their armer still on 'em.
"An' onter the deck of our ship begins to fall just then a great shower o' yashes. An' we're in danger o' burnin' up 'n' suffercatin' an' wonderin' what to do next, when outer the black heavens comes Hennery 'n' his balloon. An' we grabs his lines that's trailin' below him when he sails over our ship an' makes 'em fast to belayin'-pins, an' he climbs down to the deck 'n' takes charge. He's on'y eighteen year old, but wonderful beyond his years. He see what to do right away, an' runs down an' peels the yasbestos off the boilers 'n' steam-pipes in her injin-room."
"What!" says Wallie. "Was she a steamer?"
"Sail 'n' steam both. Sail for the hot days to make a draft 'n' keep us cool 'n' comfortable, an' steam when there was air 'n' it was cold 'n' rainy. An' young Hennery makes fireproof coats 'n' boots an' hats outer the yasbestos linin' for the capt'n an' me an' the mate an' hisself, 'cause we're goin' to guard the deck agin the wicked general 'n' his army. All the others we puts below, so no danger'll come to them. An' when the bandits comes swimmin' alongside an' up over the rail from the backs o' their war-horses, we captures 'em an' take their weapons from 'em, an' then the capt'n says: 'Now we got 'em, what'll we do with 'em?'
"'O' course,' says Hennery, 'it would be perfeckly proper for the crool men o' the south to kill their prisoners, but as men of the north we must show a loftier example.' So spoke up our hero nobly.
"An', while we're ponderin' what to do, 'Har,' says Hennery agin, 'I have it! We will put them in the medicine-tank.'
"'But,' says our capt'n, 'they'll spile it—your father's two million two hundred 'n' odd thousand gallons o' Yunzano that we paid forty-two cents a gallon for.'
"'An',' says young Hennery Spinks to that——"
"Spiggs," says Wallie.
"Spiggs, I mean. 'Is this the time or the place,' says heroic young Hennery Spiggs then, 'to be considerin' of mere money—with the lives o' human bein's at stake? What though they be viler than dogs, they are still our fellow creatures. Cost what it may an' ruthless though the varlets be, save their lives I shall!' An' y' oughter seen him then, the fair scion of a noble sire, his pink hair flyin' in the southern wind, his pale eyes an' form in general expanded to twice their reg'lar dimensions by his righteous indignation, an' the beeyoocheous an' volupchous daughter o' the noble, wealthy don stickin' her head outer a hatchway to cast a nadorin' gaze upon him.
"An' into the tank o' Yunzano we flopped 'em, one by one as they come over the rail o' theTropic Zone. I wouldn't want to state at this late date how many of 'em we saved from the burnin' lavver by throwin' 'em inter the tanks, but mebby three or four or five hundred souls all told. An', to keep the burnin' yashes off 'em, we makes a few yasbestos tarpaulins an' claps 'em down over the hatches o' the tank.
"All night long we patrolled the decks shovellin' the yashes off where they fell. An' when mornin' comes an' the 'ruptions is over we take the tarpaulins off the tank, an' there was every blessed one of 'em, fr'm the General Feeleepo Balbeezo down to the lowest private, 'spite of all we'd done for 'em, floatin' around drowned. Overcome with grief 'n' surprise we was o' course, but when we come to think it over—their endin' up that way, wi' the noble don 'n' his beeyoocheous daughter saved an' the revverlootion busted up—it sure did look like the hand o' Providence was hoverin' over us.
"And then," says old Bill, borrowin' another chew from me, "arter we'd cleared out the tank of the dead revverlootionists an' the old Yunzano, the don filled her up again free of charge. An' o' course Hennery married the don's daughter, an' for seven days an' seven nights there was no place yuh could cast yer eyes but you'd see pillers o' smoke by day an' columns o' flame by night, an' wherever you see one o' them it meant a barbecuin' of a carload o' goats 'n' oxen 'n' pigs. 'Twas nothin' but feastin' an' the givin' o' presents, an' then the bridal party embarked on theTropic Zone, an' gentle tropic breezes wafted us no'therly an' westerly an' sometimes yeasterly past the shores o' Panama an' Peru an' Brazil an' Mexico an' Yucatan an' the Farrago Islands, an' the don's own band used to sit on their camp-stools under the shadder o' the great bellyin' mains'l an' plunk their guitars an' mandolins 'n' picolettes, not forgettin' the band leader who played the most amazin' solos on the hooloobooloo. An' strange ships used to sail a hundred miles out o' their course to find out who was it was sendin' them dulcet strains acrost the cam waters.An' the bridal couple 'd be holdin' hands an' gazin' over the spanker-boom at the full moon. 'Twas gorgeous an' elevatin', an' a fasset an' pipe led direct from the tank to the little kegs with brass hoops placed at frequent intervals around deck, so that whoever o' the crew wanted to could help theirselves any hour o' the day or night to a free drink o' Yunzano.
"An' thole don sits up on the poop-deck, with his hands folded acrost his stomach, an' says: 'Quiscanto vascamo mirajjar,' which is Yunzano for 'I am satisfied, I can now die happy.' But he didn't die—he lived to be ninety year old, an' before we arrives at New York he makes me a gift o' this pipe. O' course he made me other gifts, the don did, but this I value most of all, bein' made from wood of a rare tree from the heart o' the swamps o' Yunzano. An' I'll never forget him. An' so there's the story o' my youth an' Yunzano.
"'The days of our youthAre the days of our glory—The days of old ageIs the time for the story—'
So I read in a book o' poetry one time."
"'Quiscanto vascamo mirajjar,' which is Yunzano for 'I am satisfied, I can now die happy.'""'Quiscanto vascamo mirajjar,' which is Yunzanofor 'I am satisfied, I can now die happy.'"
"But young Henry and his bride," said Wallie—"what happened them later?"
"Them?" says old Bill. "Well, it was on'y the other day I met a nold friend o' mine who used to report prize-fights an' jail matters, but is now writin' about society matters for one of our great metropolitan journals, an' he shows me in the Sunday supplement a full-page picksher, in brown ink, of a solid granite buildin' that looked like a jail but wasn't. It was the Hennery Spiggs Home for Inebriates, an' built strong like that so no one could escape from it 'n' the good that was to be done 'em. An' there was another two-page picksher, in brown ink, of Hennery Spiggs, our same young hero of other days, but now a noldish gentleman with whiskers under his ears an' his child an' grandchild gamblin' on the green lawn of his million-dollar Newport cottage. A great philanthropist he is now, an' a leader of society, with wealth beyond the dreams of a movin'-picksher actor—all made outer Yunzano. Before he dies he's hopin' to see erected a fittin' monument for that world-famous chemist, that great benefactor to the cause o' humanity an' medicine, the Honorable Nathaniel Spiggs, his father. Already his best-paid foremen an' employees was bein' invited to contribute. Sometimes I think o' goin' to see him."