“Oh, sailor, my sailor boy, bonny and blue,You're rompin', you're roamin',The long slantin' sorrows are waiting for youIn the gloamin', the gloamin'.”
I remember, when it came morning, on the beach at Corazon, I got up, and I says:
“Clyde's mucky old bags can stay there till I'm ready,” I says. “What's the use!”
I took a dislike to Clyde's money. I bought a passage to San Francisco, and came there in the year '75.
There I put the profits of six years on the West Coast into shares in a ship called theAnaconda, and shipped on her myself as second mate.
I found Stevey Todd cooking in a restaurant in San Francisco. He'd gone into gold mines, after getting loose from theJane Allen. He'd left his profits from the Hotel Helen Mar in the gold mines. Every mine he'd invested in got discouraged, so he said, but I judge the truth was more likely Stevey Todd was taken in by mining sharks. He'd made up his mind property wasn't his stronghold and gone back to cooking, and never took any more interest in property after that, nor had any to take interest in. But he told me Sadler was in business and getting rich, and in partnership with a Chinaman, and living in a town called “Saleratus,” sixty miles down the coast, which none of these statements seemed likely at the time. Stevey Todd didn't know why the town was named Saleratus. He thought maybe Sadler had named it, or maybe gone there on account of the name, foreseeing interesting rhymes with “potatoes” and “tomatoes.” But I didn't look Sadler up at that time.
The Captain turned to Uncle Abimelech, and said:
“Happen you might remember Sadler's tune to that verse, 'Sailor, my sailor boy, bonny and blue'?”
“He never said no such impudent thing to me,” said Uncle Abimelech wrathfully. “I'd 'a' whaled him good.”
“Why, that's true, Abe,” said Captain Buckingham. “You wasn't much on looks.”
Stevey Todd said:
“They changed that name, Saleratus.”
“That's true too,” said Captain Buckingham. “An outlandish name is bad for a town, or a ship, or a man; same as theAnaconda,for theAnacondahad bad luck, same as Abimelech Dalrimple. He'd never've got his brains frazzled if he'd been named Bill.”
He paused several minutes before going on, to think over this theory of names.
I invested the profits of the Hotel Helen Mar and the Ananias plantation in shares in theAnaconda, and shipped myself as second mate. She was carrying a cargo of steel rails for a railroad in Japan.
There was a man named Kreps who came aboard at Honolulu. He was a round-faced, chubby man, with spectacles and a trunk full of preserved specimens, and out of breath with his enthusiasm; and he was a German, too, and a Professor of Allerleiwissenschaft, which I take to mean Things in General. He was around gathering in culture and twelve-sided fish in the Pacific, and had a pailful of island dialects and sentiments that were milky and innocent. But I liked him.
I had no objection to theAnacondaeither, except that she went to the bottom of the Pacific without any argument about that, and left me stranded on a little island there along with Kreps, and a hen named Veronica, and a Kanaka named Kamelillo. There was a fourth that got stranded there too. We called her “Liebchen” and she surely acted singular, did Liebchen, but I liked her too. Kreps said she was “symbol,” but his ideas and mine didn't agree. He said she was a type of the “Ewigweibliche,” which is another good word though a Dutch one. Maybe she was. Maybe Veronica was another type. I guess it's a word that's got some varieties to it.
Veronica belonged to the ship, but had never been cooked, being thin and stringy; and Kamelillo was a silent, sulky Kanaka that had lived up and down the Pacific, and harpooned whales, and been shipwrecked now and then, and was sometimes drunk and sometimes starved, and had no opinion on these things, except that he'd rather be drunk than starved. I never knew one that took less interest in life, provided he was let alone. I liked them all well enough, too. I took things as they came in those days. I'd as soon have bunked in with an alligator as a Patagonian.
It was south of Midway Island that we ran into the typhoon come over from Asia. A typhoon is to an ordinary storm what a surf is to a deep-sea wave, for it's short but ugly. When it was done with us theAnacondabegan to leak fearful in the waist, and I dare say the typhoon was excuse enough if she'd broken in two. She went down easy and slow, with all I had and owned sticking in her. It's bad luck to give a ship an outlandish name.
There were two large boats and a small one, and trouble came from Kreps' tin cans of specimens, for the captain wouldn't take them in his boat, nor the first mate in his, so Kreps wanted to put them in the small boat. He shed tears and got low in his mind.
“Dey are von der sciences ignorant, obtuse,” he says.
I says, “So's the Pacific Ocean.”
“But you, so young, so intelligent! Not as de Pacific Ocean, hein?”
I allowed there was difference between me and the Pacific. Kreps got his tin cans in, and I put the boat off. Kamelillo was spreading the cat-sail and had no opinion. Veronica came flapping over the rail with a squawk, and lit on Kamelillo, and fell into the bottom of the boat. We got away after the other boats, the night coming on clear, and Kamelillo talked island dialects at Veronica for scratching him when he wanted to be let alone. Kreps sat over his specimens, innocent and happy and singing German lullabies.
The next morning the other boats were not in sight. We steered north, for there were odd islands in that direction by the chart, without names enough to go around them; and on the second morning we saw a high shore to port, with surf like a white rag sewed along the bottom, and rags of mist sticking to the black bluffs.
“Ach,” says Kreps, and the tears trickled down under his spectacles. “Gott sei dank! I am mude of the sea. It iss too large.”
“How she get up them high?” Kamelillo says. “No! Maybe dam hen fly up. Not me. No!”
We coasted by the east side a little way and came to a place where the water was quiet and black in a slip of maybe a hundred feet in width, where the bluff had broken in two. The channel appeared to curve, so that you could only see a little way up. We dropped sail and pulled through. It might have been twenty feet deep in the channel, being high tide, and running in slow. Wine-palms and cocoanut trees grew on the bluffs on each side. Some leaned over, with roots out where the earth had caved away. We came about the curve and saw a closed bay, shut in by the bluffs from the outer sea and even the winds. It was wooded on the north and very rocky on the south, and might have been a quarter of a mile across. We landed on the north side and camped, and set a signal on the bluffs, and then we laid off to wait for accidents. I knew there were whalers cruising in the neighbourhood, and thought likely it would be seen.
Now Liebchen came in one day at high tide, chasing those little goggle-eyed squids that lived so many in the harbour. The first we saw was tons of her gambolling around in the water. She was a medium-sized whale, and might have been forty feet in length, but I never was in the whaling business, and Liebchen was the only one I ever got real acquainted with. I've heard it's common for them to be stranded on shallow shores, and get off again if let alone. The harbour may have been Liebchen's boudoir for aught I know. Maybe she'd come there before. She surely knew how to get out if let alone. After an hour or so she was over by the entrance trying to leave. She seemed to be in trouble, and then we saw the tide had gone out, and left the channel too shallow to heave over.
When Kreps understood that she was penned in, he acted outrageous, and pranced like a red rubber balloon.
“Gieb mir das axe! Ich will de habits of de cetacean studieren!” he says.
He ran away through the woods around the north shore, and I ran after, to see him study the habits of the cetacean. Liebchen had sidled off and was rolling about in the middle of the harbour when we came to the bluffs, where the wine-palms and cocoanut trees leaned over and the channel was narrow. Kreps fell to chopping the landward roots, and I saw he wanted to block the channel.
We slid a tree down under the water, and then another, and so on, till it was a messy-looking channel, a sort of log jam, with roots and palm-tree tops mixed in, which I thought the tide would float out, and it did afterward, some of it.
Then we went back to where Kamelillo was cooking, squatted on the shore with his bare back turned to the water. He took no interest in Liebchen. He was making a kind of paste of ground roots, called “poi,” which wasn't bad, if you rolled a fish in it, and baked it on the coals, and thought about something else. But at that time Liebchen came round the north shore in a roar of foam, bringing her flukes down now and then with a slap to make the harbour ache, and she slapped near a barrel of water over Kamelillo and his fire and his poi. Kamelillo says:
“Why for? She not my whale. You keep her out a my suppa. Why for?”
Kreps was disgusted because Kamelillo didn't like Liebchen. He went and stood on the bank, in the interest of science, and studied the habits of the cetacean, but he got no results. She had no habits, to speak uprightly, only notions. They weren't any use to science. Sometimes she'd flutter with her fins, and twitter her flukes, and sidle off like she was bashful, and then she'd come swooping around enough to make the harbour sizzle, and stick her nose in the bottom and her tail in the air, trembling with her emotions, and then she'd come up and smile at you a rod each way. I judged she meant all right, but she didn't understand her limitations. Her strong hold was the majestic. She appeared to have it fixed she wanted to be kittenish. That was the way it seemed to me. But Kreps studied her mornings and afternoons and into the night, and day after day it went on, and she bothered him. Then he saw he was on the wrong tack, and put his helm about, and he says:
“She is de Ewigweibliche. She is not science. She is boetry. She is de sharm of everlasting feminine,” and he heaved a sigh. I says:
“Ewigweibliche!” I says. “Everlasting feminine! What's the use of that?”
I took to studying Liebchen too, and it appeared to me Kreps' idea wasn't useful He was a man to have sentiments naturally. He'd sit out on the end of a log moonlight nights, with his fat face and spectacles shining, and Liebchen would muzzle around with a ten-foot snout like an engine boiler, and a piggy eye; and he'd sing German lullabies; “Du bist wie eine Blume.” I didn't think she was like a flower. She was more like an oil tank.
So Kreps would sing to her in the moonlight, but Kamelillo didn't like her. Veronica didn't like her either, and would stand off and cackle at her pointedly. She seemed to think Liebchen carried on improper and had no refinement. Why, I guess from her point of view sea bathing wasn't becoming, and when Liebchen stood on her head in the water, Veronica used to take to the woods with her feelings pretty rumpled. Kamelillo disliked Veronica on account of her fussiness, and because she had lit on him and scratched him when he wanted to be let alone. He wanted to make Veronica into poi, but I didn't think there was any real nourishment in her; and he wanted to break the log jam and let the whale out, but I told him it was Kreps' jam.
“Ain' harbour belong him,” said Kamelillo. “Ain' him slap harbour on me. Thas whale bad un. I show him.” He went to Kreps. “I tell you, dam Dutchman,” he says, meaning to be soothing and persuasive. “I tell you, we cutta bamboo, harpoon whale. Donnerblissen! Easy!”
“Du animal!” says Kreps. “Mitout perception, mitout soul, mitout delicate!”
“Oh!” says Kamelillo; “girl whale. All right, dam Dutchman, me fren. You break jam. Letta go.”
“It iss not of use,” said Kreps, and he sighed. “You understand not de yearning, de ideal. Listen! Liebchen, she iss de abstraction, de principle. Aber no. You cannot. De soul iss alone, iss not comprehend.”
“All right,” says Kamelillo. “You look here. Go see thas girl whale on a bamboo raft. No good sit on log all night, sing hoohoo song.”
Kreps was taken with that notion. “So, my friend?” he says.
“You teach her like missionary teach Kanaka girl,” says Kamelillo, getting interested. “You teach her to she wear petticoat, no stan' on her head. You teach her go Sunday school.”
I says, “Look out, Kreps. That whale'll drown you. She's got no culture.”
But Kreps was calm. “I vill approach Liebchen more near,” he says. “It iss time to advance. I vill go mit Kamelillo, my friend.”
Kamelillo spent the morning making a bamboo raft, and in the afternoon they put out. Liebchen was over by the harbour entrance, lying low in the water and maybe asleep. Kamelillo had a bamboo pole in his hand to pole the raft with, but he had shod it with his harpoon head. They drew alongside, and Kreps was facing front, with his back to Kamelillo. He lifted his oar to slap the water, and Kamelillo drew off, and cast the harpoon. Liebchen, she came out of her maiden fancies. She acted plain whale. That's a way of acting which calls for respect, but it's not romantic. She slapped the bamboo raft, and there was no such thing. She swallowed the harbour and spit it out. She whooped and danced and teetered. She let out all her primeval feelings. She put on no airs, and she made no pretences. She turned everything she could find into scrambled eggs, and played the “Marseillaise” on her blow-hole. She did herself up into knots to break whalebone, and untied them like a pop of a cork. She was no more female than she was science. She was wrath and earthquakes and the day of judgment. She scooped out the bottom of the harbour and laid it on top, and turned somersets through the middle of chaos. Veronica took to the woods. I ran along the north shore, thinking they were both scrambled, but I found Kamelillo pulling Kreps through the shallows by his collar, and shaking the water out of his eyes, and not seeming to be disturbed. But Kreps took off his spectacles and wiped them, and he says:
“Ach, Liebchen!” he says. “She iss too much.”
“Thas whale!” says Kamelillo. “Thas all right!”
“Liebchen iss too much of her,” says Kreps very dignified, and stalked to the camp.
“Thas whale!” says Kamelillo. “Thas all right!”
He chopped the jam that afternoon, and it floated out in the night or early morning with the ebb. We went to the bank when the tide was in again to watch Liebchen go out. Kreps was pretty tearful.
“Aber,” he says, “she iss too much of her.”
She came feeling her way through the channel with her snout under water. Kamelillo's bamboo stuck out of her fat side six feet or more. Veronica cackled at her, and her feathers stood up, so that you could see she thought Liebchen was no lady. Liebchen passed close beneath us. Seemed like she felt mortified. Kreps broke down, but Kamelillo was gay.
“Dam hen!” he says, and grabbed Veronica with both hands. “Go too!” and he flung her at Liebchen, and she went through the air squawking and fluttering. She lit on Liebchen's slippery back, and she slid till she struck the bamboo, and roosted. If she had had time to think she might have flopped ashore, but she was flustered, and Liebchen got out of the channel and steered into the Pacific. Veronica squawked a few times, and no more. The sea was quiet. The two moved off, going eastward very slow. Kamelillo went back to his camp fire and made poi, but Kreps and I watched, expecting that Liebchen would go under and Veronica be lost. But they kept on till there was only a black spot near the edge of the sky.
It came on afternoon. The tide was out, and we lay about. There was not enough wind to flutter the signal on the bluffs, which was Kreps' red shirt, and hung there to entertain any one that might come by. Kamelillo suddenly sat up. “Hear im?” he says.
There was a great noise over in the channel out of sight, a kind of splashing, thumping, and blowing, and the waves rolled into the harbour. We ran along the shore and came to the bluffs. There was Liebchen! She appeared to have grounded in the channel, trying to get in quick at low tide. But there were two harpoons, more than the bamboo, sticking in her very deep, and the lines were hitched to a longboat, the longboat coming inshore now full of men. Veronica squatting on the thwart of the same, comfortable and dignified.
Kamelillo says, “Whale ain't got sense, thas whale!” And Kreps says, “Ach, Liebchen!”
She struck her last flurry, and filled the air with spray. The longboat held off, seeing she was likely to stay there and needed all the room. After a while she grew quiet. A few motions of her flukes, and that was all. The longboat came in, and we slid down the bluffs. The man in the stern says, “That your hen?”
I said I was acquainted with her.
“Oh! Maybe that's your whale?”
“Ach, Liebchen!” says Kreps.
Kamelillo waded in, and looked at the harpoons, and shook his head, for he knew the laws and rights of the trade.
“No,” he says. “Thas your whale.”
“Been cast up, have ye?” says the steersman, looking around. “We struck that whale ten miles out. We comes up quiet, and I see that bamboo sticking in her, with that hen squatting on it. 'Queer!' says I. And just as Billy here was letting her have it, the hen gives a squawk and comes flopping aboard; and Billy lets her have it, and Dick here lets her have it, and she goes plumb down sudden. Then up she comes and starts, like she was going to see her Ma and knew her own mind, and up this channel she comes, and runs aground foolish. I never see a whale act so foolish. Thought she might be a friend of yours,” says he, “meaning no reflections.”
I said I was acquainted with her, and Kreps took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.
“She vass of de tenderness, das Zartlichkeit.” It made him sad to see Liebchen dead, that was full of sensibility, and Veronica come back with dignity, she being a conventional hen and scornful and cold by nature.
“Ach, Liebchen!” he says; and we went back to gather up his tin cans; and I says:
“Ewigweibliche's a good word, though a Dutch one;” then we came away on the whaler.
But all I owned went down on theAnaconda. I got back to San Francisco in course of time, but no richer than when I left Greenough, and ten years or more older.
Kreps was a man very given to sentiments, in particular about “Ewigweibliche,” and I never knew a man that kept himself more entertained. He settled down for the time, with Veronica and Kamelillo for his family, in a fine house in the upper town of San Francisco. Kamelillo used to cook unlikely things which Kreps and Veronica ate peaceable between them. Kreps was well-to-do, and he seemed cut out for a happy life. Any kind of cooking suited him. The whole world grew knowledge for him to collect. He could suck sentiment out of a hard-boiled egg. But I went to live with Stevey Todd where the cooking was better, and loafed about the streets and docks, wondering what I'd do next. I never knew what became of Kreps after we left San Francisco.
One day I was by the docks, where some people were busy and some were like me, loafing or looking for a berth; and I came on a neat-looking, three-masted ship, named theGood Sister, which appeared to me a kindly name. She was being overhauled by the carpenters. I asked one of them, “Where's the captain?”
“She ain't got any,” he says. “It's the owners are doing it.”
“Maybe you'll remark,” I says, “who they happen to be.”
“Shan and Sadler of Saleratus,” he says.
“I believe you're a liar,” I says, surprised at the name.
“Which there's a little tallow-faced runt in perspective,” he says, climbing down the stays, “that I can lick,” he says, being misled by my size. And when that was over, I started for Saleratus.
It was a town to the south, down near the coast. That's not its name now, because it's reformed and doesn't like to remember the days before it was regenerated. At that time some of it was Mexican, and more of it was Chinese, and some of it wasn't connected with anything but perdition.
Shan and Sadler did a mixed mercantile business, and they seemed to be prosperous people, but I take it Fu Shan mainly carried on the business, and Sadler was the reason why the firm's property was respected and let alone by the Caucasians. There is a big Chinese company in Singapore, called “Shan Brothers,” whose name is well known on bills of lading, and Fu Shan was connected with them. But a man wouldn't have thought to find Sadler a partner in banking, mercantile, and shipping business, with a Chinaman. He'd been the wildest of us all in theHebe Maitlanddays, and always acted youthful for his years. There were two things in him that never could get to keep the peace with each other, his conscience and his sporting instinct. Yet he was a capable man, and forceful, and I judge he could do 'most anything he set his hand to.
He and Fu Shan lived just outside the town of Saleratus in two ornamented and expensive houses, side by side, on a hill that was bare and mostly sand banks, and that hung over the creek which ran past the town into the bay. Sadler lived alone with Irish, but Fu Shan was domestic. He was a pleasant Oriental with a mild, squeaking voice, and had more porcelain jars than you would think a body would need, and fat yellow cheeks, and a queue down to his knees. He wore cream-coloured silk, and was a picture of calmness and culture. Irish hadn't changed, but Sadler was looking older and more melancholy, though I judged that some of the lines on his face, that simulated care, came from the kind of life folks led in Saleratus to avoid monotony. We spoke of Craney among others, but Sadler knew no more of Craney than I did. Likely he was still in Corazon.
We were sitting one evening on Sadler's porch, that looked over the creek, waiting for supper. Fu Shan was there, and Sadler said Saleratus was monotonous. Yet there were going on in Saleratus to my knowledge at that moment the following entertainments: three-card monte at the Blue Light Saloon; a cockfight at Pasquarillo's; two alien sheriffs in town looking for horse thieves, and had one corralled on the roof of the courthouse; finally some other fellows were trying to drown a Chinaman in the creek and getting into all kinds of awkwardness on account of there being no water in the creek to speak of, and other Chinamen throwing stones. But Sadler said it was monotonous.
“I don't get no satisfaction out of it.”
Over the top of the town you could catch the sunset on the sea, and the smoke of the chimneys rose up between. There were red roses all over the pillars and eaves of the porch. Seemed to me it was a good enough place. Fu Shan smoked scented and sugared tobacco in a porcelain pipe with an ivory stem. The fellows down by the creek ran away, feeling pretty good and cracking their revolvers in the air, and the Chinamen got bunched about their injured countryman.
“Have no water in cleek,” says Fu Shan, aristocratic and peaceful. “Dlied up.”
“Dried up. Played out,” says Sadler, not understanding him. “Fu Shan's a dry-rotted Asiatic. Doesn't anything make any difference to him. Got any nerves? Not one. Got any seethin' emotions? Not a seeth. He's a wornout race in the numbness of decrepitude.”
Fu Shan chuckled.
“But me, I'm different,” says Sadler, “The uselessness of things bothers me. Look at 'em. I been in Saleratus five years, partner with Fu Shan. Sometimes I had a good time. Where is it now? You laugh, or you sigh. Same amount of wind, nothing left either way.
What's the use?You chew tobacco and spit out the juice.What's the use?
If there's anybody with a destiny that's got any assets at all, and he wants to swap even, bring him along. Look at this town! Is it any sort of a town? No honesty, for there ain't a man in it that can shuffle a pack without stackin' it. No ability, for there ain't more'n one or two can stack it real well. No seriousness, for they start in to drown a Chinaman in a dry creek, and they cut away as happy as if they'd succeeded. I sits up here on my porch, and I says, 'What is it but a dream? Fu Shan,' I says, 'this here life's a shadow!' Then that forsaken, conceited, blank heathen, he says one of his ancestors discovered the same three thousand years ago. But, he says, another ancestor, pretty near as distinguished, he discovered that, if you put enough curry on your rice, it gives things an appearance of reality. Which, says he, they discovered the uselessness of things in Asia so long ago they've forgot when, and then they discovered the uselessness of the discovery. They discovered gunpowder, he says, long before we did, but they use it for fireworks in the interests of irony. They've forgotten more'n we ever knew, says he, the stuck-up little cast-eyed pig. Go on! I'm disgusted. Haven't I put on curry till it give me a furred mouth and dyspepsia of the soul? What's the use?”
Fu Shan chuckled again.
“What's the use?” says Sadler. “Things happen, but they don't mean anything by it. You hustle around the circle. You might as well have sat down on the circumference. Maybe the trouble is with me, maybe it's Saleratus. One of us is played out!”
Fu Shan took the ivory pipestem from his mouth, and spoke placid and squeaking. “My got blother have joss house by Langoon. Velly good joss house, velly good ploperty. Tlee hundred Buddha joss and gleen dlagons. My ancestors make him. Gleen dlagon joss house. Velly good.”
“My! You'd think he's an idjit to hear him,” says Sadler, and looked at Fu Shan, admiring. “But he ain't, not really.”
Fu Shan chuckled a third time.
He took no more stock in the happiness of his countrymen than Sadler did in the morals of his. They seemed to be a profitable combination, but I didn't make out to understand Sadler, though I went as far as to see that he had a variegated way of putting it.
Then I told him I wanted a first mate's berth on theGood Sister, supposing he was willing, either on account of old times or because he might happen to be convinced I was good enough for it. I told him the experiences I'd had. What had happened to theHelen MarI told him, and about the Mituas business, and the loss of theAnaconda, and even about Kreps and Liebchen.
“My! My! Tommy,” he says, after the last. “That's a lyric poem,” he says, referring to Kreps and Liebchen.
But he said nothing then about theGood Sister, and I decided to hang around till he did, and one day he brought me a bundle of papers.
“Here's your papers, Tommy,” he says.
“Which?” I says.
“Captain's articles for Tommy Buckingham. Sign 'em,” he says, “and don't be monotonous,” and I was that scared I signed my name so it looked like a rail fence. I contracted to be master of the shipGood Sister, the same to go to Hong-Kong Manila, Singapore, and return.
“You go up to 'Frisco and 'list the crew,” he says. “I'm coming myself by-and-by to look 'em over.”
It was my first ship, and long ago, but the pride of it sticks out of me yet.
I went back to 'Frisco and hired Stevey Todd for cook, and I recollect taking for ship's carpenter the man that called me a “tallow little runt,” which he got misled, there, and he went by the name of “Mitchigan.” I took Kamelillo too, who wanted to go to sea again, but Kreps stayed where he was.
On the day theGood Sistersailed, Sadler came aboard with a valise in his hand, and after him, carrying a valise, was Irish, and after Irish was an old Burmese servant of Fu Shan's that I used to see sweeping the porch, whose name was Maya Dala.
“I'm going along,” says Sadler, and Irish says, “Soime here.” But neither of them said what for, and I thought maybe Sadler was thinking he'd see me safe through the first trip, or maybe it occurred to him to go and take a look at Asia. How should I know?
We went through the Golden Gate that afternoon, and we sat that night in the cabin, while Maya Dala and Irish cleared the table. The oil lamp swung overhead with the lift and fall of the ship, and Sadler spread himself six feet and more on the cabin lounge, and unloaded his mind.
“You remember what Fu Shan said of his brother's joss house?” he says. “It's this way. Why, Fu Shan had a father once, named Lo Tsin Shan, and he was a sort of mandarin family in China. He went to Singapore and started in the tea business. He had a large hard head. He went into a lot of different enterprises, and cut a considerable swath. He died and left ten or twelve sons, who scattered to look after his enterprises. That's how Fu Shan came to Saleratus six years ago. Fu Shan was always some stuck on his own intellect, and at that time he thought he could play cards, but he couldn't. I cleared him out of two hundred and fifty one night, and we went into partnership, but that's neither here nor there. Now, Lo Tsin Shan appears to have been a little fishy as to his feelings, but he had brains. Fu Shan's opinion is reverential, and he don't admit the fish. Lo Tsin had an agency at Calcutta, and Burmah lies on the way, but it wasn't commercial in those days. Now, in Burmah there's a navigable river that runs the length of the country, and all along it are cities full of temples, some of 'em deserted, and some of 'em lively. One of the best is at Rangoon on a hill, and it's called the Shway Dagohn Pagoda. There's a lot of relics in it, and smaller temples around, and strings of pilgrims coming from as far as Ceylon and China. Remarkable holy place. Old Lo Tsin, he drops down there one day and looks around. His fishy feelin's got interested, and he says to himself, 'Guess I'll come into this.' He went sailin' up the river till he found a king somewhere, who appeared to own the whole country. This one's pastime was miscellaneous murder, but his taste for tea was cultured and accurate. Then Lo Tsin got down on the floor and kowtowed to this king for an hour and a half, the way it comes natural if you have the right kind of clothes. Then he bought a temple of him. It stands at the foot of the south stairway of the Shway Dagohn. Fu Shan ain't sure what the old man's idea was, whether it was pure business or not. Anyway he worked up the reputation of the temple, till there was none in the place to equal it, except the Shway Dagohn, which he didn't pretend to compete with. He advertised it on his tea. 'Shan Brothers' have a brand still called 'Green Dragon Pagoda Tea.' There wasn't no real doubt but the income of the temple was large, and yet it didn't appear at Lo Tsin's death that he'd ever drawn anything out of it. The whole thing was gold-leafed from top to bottom, and full of bronze and lacquer statues, and two green dragons at the gate, and ministerin' angels know what besides. Maybe Fu Shan's information ain't complete on that point, but this was a fact, that Lo Tsin, by the will he made, instead of going back to his ancestral cemetery in China, he had himself carried up from Singapore and buried in that same temple; and there he is under the stone floor in the temple of the Green Dragon, but that's not to the point. Now, when they came to split up his enterprises among his sons, one of 'em took the temple for a living. His name was Lum Shan. But Fu Shan says, Lum would rather come over to America and go into business in Saleratus. Lum Shan don't like his temple, but I don't know why. Well, then, I says, 'Speak up, Fu Shan. Don't be bashful, Asia. If you've got a medicine for the hopeless, let it come, Asia. What's five thousand years got to say to a man with an absolute constitution, a stomach voracious and untroubled, who looks around him and sees no utility anywhere? Ebb and flow, work and eat, born and dead, rain and shine, things swashin' around, a heave this way and then that. You write a figure on the board and wipe it out. What's the use? Speak up, Asia, but don't recommend no more curry.' 'Hi! Hi!' says Fu Shan, the little yeller idjit! 'My got blother have joss house by Langoon. All light. He tlade. You go lun joss house by Langoon. Vely good ploperty.' That's what he said. Why not? That's the way I looked at it.”
He paused and blew smoke. Maya Dala and Irish were gone. I asked, “Are you learning Burmese off Maya Dala?” and he nodded.
“Now,” I says, “what I don't see is this temple business. Where was the profit? Don't temples belong to the priests?”
“Seems not always,” he says. “They're a kind of monks, anyway. It's where old Lo Tsin Shan was original to begin with and mysterious afterward. Suppose a Siamese prince brings a pound of gold leaf to gild things with, and some Ceylon pilgrims leave a few dozen little bronze images with a ruby in each eye. They've 'acquired merit,' so they say. It goes to their credit on some celestial record. Their next existence will be the better to that extent anyway, now. Suppose the temple's gilded all over, and lumber rooms packed to the roof with bronze images already. Do they care what becomes of these things? Don't seem to. Why should they? They're credited on one ledger. You credit the same to the business on another. Economic, ain't it? That was the old man's perception, to begin with. But afterwards,—maybe his joss house got to be a hobby with him. Oh, I don't know! Nor I don't care. Fu Shan says it's good property. What he says is generally so. Profits! I don't care about profits. What good would they do me? I'm going to run that temple if it ain't too monotonous.”
That was the limit of Sadler's knowledge of this thing. Maya Dala remembered the Shway Dagohn, but as to the other pagodas and monasteries,—there were many—he didn't know—he thought they belonged to the monks, or to the caretakers, or to no one at all, or maybe the government. What became of the offerings? He thought they were kept in the pagodas. Sometimes they were sold? It might be so. He thought it made no difference, for it was taught in the monastery schools, that the “Giver acquires merit only by his action and the spirit of his giving, wherefore are the merits of the poor and rich equal.” Why should they care what became of their gifts? From Maya Dala's talk one seemed to catch a glimpse of the idea, which occurred to old Lo Tsin Shan, that fishy Oriental, one day forty years before, and sent him up the river to interview King Tharawady on his gold-lacquer and mosaic throne. Yet he had let the profits lie there, if there were any, maybe thinking all along of the handsome tomb he was putting up for himself, when his time came. You couldn't guess all his Mongolian thoughts, nor those of his son, Fu Shan, of whom Sadler asked medicine for a dyspeptic soul. Fu Shan said, “Go lun joss house by Langoon.” Sadler didn't seem to care about the business part of it either, though it looked interesting. He only wanted the medicine.
Days and nights we talked it over, and got no further than that, and drew nearer the East. The East is a muddy sea with no bottom, and it swallows a man like a fog bank swallows a ship.
Sadler made some verses that he called his “Prayer;”—“Sadler's prayer,” and he told me them one wet day, when a half gale was blowing, and he sat smoking with his feet hitched over the rail. He appeared to be trying to get a bead on infinity across the point of his shoe. It ran this way, beginning, “Lord God that o'erulest”:
“Lord God that o'er-rulestThe waters, and coolestThe face of the foolishWith the touch of thy death,I, Sadler, a Yankee,Lean, leathery, lanky,Red-livered and cranky,And weary of breath,“That hain't no theologyBut a sort of doxology,Here's my apology,Maker of me,Here where I'm sittin',Smooth as a kitten,Smokin' and spittin'Into the sea.“The storm winds come sweepin',Come widowed and weepin',Come rippin' and reapin',The wheat of the loam,And some says, it's sport, boys,It's timbrels and hautboys,And some is the sort, boys,That's sorry he come.“Lord God of the motionsOf lumberin' oceans,There's some of your notionsIs handsome and free,But what in the brewin'And sizzlin,' and stewin'Did you think you was doin'The time you done me?“Evil and goodDid ye squirt in my blood?I stand where I stoodWhen my runnin' began;And the start and the goalWere the same in my soul,And the damnable wholeWas entitled a man.“Lord God that o'er-gazestThe waste and wet places,The faint foolish facesTurned upward to Thee,Though Thy sight goeth farO'er our rabble and warYet remember we areThe drift of Thy sea.”
Sadler left theGood Sisterat Singapore, and disappeared.
He dropped out of sight. Afterward his name went from the letter heads of “Sadler and Shan.” They read, “Shan Brothers, Saleratus, Cal. Fu Shan—Lum Shan.”
He was a singular man was Sadler. He held the opinion that this life was an idea that occurred to somebody, who was tired of it and would like to get it off his mind. I took him for one that had got too much conscience, or too much restlessness, one of the two, and between them they gave him dyspepsia of the soul. Sometimes that dyspepsia took him bad, and when he had one of those spells he'd light out into poetry scandalous. Some folks are built that way, some not. J. R. Craney, for instance, he was a romantic man, and gifted according to his own line, and had airy notions ahead of him that he pretty near caught up to; but as to metres, he couldn't tell metres from cord-wood. Yet the first time I saw him again, after leaving him at Corazon, he heaved some at me, but he didn't know it was poetry. It was some years later. I sailed theGood Sisterquite a time, and did pretty well by her.
It was back in San Francisco and several years after, and I was master of theGood Sisterstill, but not feeling agreeable at the time, because Fu Shan and the agent at 'Frisco kept me sitting around collecting barnacles. They didn't seem to know what they wanted me to do with her. I guess the business of Sadler and Shan didn't prosper well for a while after Sadler left, on account of sportive Caucasians.
I was leaning over the rail one day, looking across the wharf, and I saw J. R. Craney come strolling down with one hand in his pocket and the other pulling a chin beard. He hadn't changed so much, except that he looked older and had a chin beard and wore a long black coat and plush vest. He looked at theGood Sister, and he looked at me, and neither of us said anything for a long time, and his business eye was absent-minded and calm, and the blind one pale and dead-looking. Then I says:
“Why don't you get a glass eye, Craney?” and he says, “I wished you'd call me J. R. Phipp. What you doing with that there ship?” which was a promising rhyme, but he didn't know he'd done it. I judged his family name had been collecting barnacles, till it wasn't worth cleaning maybe, or maybe he was a fugitive or exile from Corazon, or maybe he'd speculated in matrimony, and was fleeing from hot water, or maybe kettles, or maybe he'd assassinated his great aunt's second cousin's husband, which was no business of mine, any of it.
“Look here,” I says, not feeling agreeable. “Here's my programme. You go up to 22 Market Street, and ask the agent. Then he'll say he don't know. Then you'll tell him he's a three-cornered idiot, because you'll admire the truth, and come back and we'll have a drink.”
“All right,” he says, absent-minded and calm, and went off up Market Street. By-and-by the agent came down with Craney floating behind.
“This is Mr. J. R. Phipp,” says the agent, “who has chartered theGood Sister. Get her ready. Mr. Phipp will superintend cargo himself and sail with you.”
That was the way it happened. Craney spent days going round the stores in the city and buying everything that took his eyes. He bought house-furnishings and pictures, toys, horns, drums, cases of tobacco and spirits, glass ornaments and plaster statues, crockery and cutlery, guns, clothes, neckties, and silk handkerchiefs, and cheap jewelry. He'd go in and ask for a drygoods box. Then he'd potter around the shop till the box was full. He'd buy out a show case of goods, and maybe he'd buy the show case. He bought barrels full of old magazines and books on theology and law, and a cord or two of ten-cent novels, and some poetry that was handy, and three encyclopaedias, and two or three kinds of dogs, and a basket phaeton with green wheels, and a printing press, and a stereopticon. The agent says to me:
“He has a scheme for trading in the South Pacific. He's a lunatic, and he's paid for six months. Send me news when you get a chance, and come back by Honolulu for directions. He's a lunatic,” he says, “and you'd better lose him somewhere and get a commission on the time saved.”
Then he hurried off the way you'd think he was a man with energy, instead of one that would sit still and let the weeds grow in his hair. But Craney went on buying chandeliers and chess-boards and clocks and women's things, such as dresses and ostrich-feathers hats, and baby carriages, and parasols, and an allotment of assorted dinner-bells, and one side of a drug store. I don't know all there was in his cases, only I judged there wasn't any monotony. I says:
“Maybe now you might be done.”
He came aboard and looked thoughtful. Then he felt in his pocket and pulled out a bunch of knitting needles, and looked thoughtful.
“Well,” he says. “I rather wanted to look up some front porches, ready made, with door-knockers, but I didn't get to it. It's just as well.”
We dropped out of the Gate with the tide on a Saturday night, and stood away to the southwest.
Craney was always a talkative man, liking to open out his point of view. At first I thought he'd gone lunatic of late, and then again when he showed me his point of view, I found he hadn't changed so much, as got more so.
Many nights we sat on deck in the moonlight and with a light breeze pushing in the sails, for the weather in the main was steady, and he'd smoke a fat cigar, and look at the little shining clouds. He'd talk and speculate, sometimes shrewd, and then again it was like a matter of adding a shipload of pirates to the signs of the zodiac, and getting the New Jerusalem for a result. By-and-by, I felt that way myself, as if, supposing you kept on sailing long enough, you might run down an island full of mixed myths and happy angels. Sure he was romantic.
“I'm a romantic man, Tommy,” he says. “That's my secret. Yes, sir, Romance, that's me! That's the centre of my circumference, that's the gravity of my orbit, that's the number of my combination. Visions, ideals! I'm a man to get up and look for the beyond. I want to expand! I want to permeate! I want the beyond! Here I am, fifty years old. I gets up and looks out on to the world. I says: 'J. R., this won't do. Is it for nothing that you're a man of romance? Is it for nothing that you long to permeate, to expand? The soul of man' I says, 'is airy; it's full of draughts. Your soul, J. R., flaps like a tent,' I says, 'in the breezes of dawn. The world is round. Time is fleeting. Is man an ox? No. Is he a patent inkstand? No. Was he created to occupy a house and fit his head to a hat? No. Then why delay? Why smother your longings?' I says; 'J. R., this won't do. This ain't your destiny. Rise! Be winged! Chase the ideal! Get on the vastness! Seek and find!' But what? I says, 'Fame, fortune, a vocation that's worthy of you.' Where? I says, 'In the beyond.' Then I took a map, Tommy, and looked over the world; I examined the globe; I took stock of the earth, and compared lands, seas, climates. The likeliest-looking place appeared to be the South Pacific Ocean. Why? It appeared to be, in general, beyond. It was the biggest thing on the map. It was tropical. Palm-trees, spicy odours, corals, pearls. 'All right,' I says: 'J. R., it wouldn't take much to be a millionaire in those unpolluted regions. You'd be a potentate. You'd wear picturesque clothes, and lie on poppies and lotuses. You'd be a Solomon to those guileless nations. You'd instruct their ignorance and preserve their morals. You'd lead their armies to victory on account of your natural gifts. You'd have your birthdays celebrated with torch-light processions. You'd be a luxurious patriot.' Now that's a pleasant way of looking at it. But it seemed to me the likeliest thing was to go out as a trader. Now as to trading. Sitting on a stool and figuring discounts is business, and trading cheese-cloth for parrots is business too. A horse is an animal, and so's a potato-bug. But I take it where society is loose and business isn't a system, there's always chance for a man with natural gifts. But you're going to ask me: What for is all this mixture I've got aboard? If some of it's tradable, you'd say, there must be a deal of it isn't. And I ask you back, Tommy: Take it in general, haven't I got a mixture that represents civilisation? Did you ever see a ship that had more commodious, miscellaneous, and sufficient civilisation in her than this? I'm taking out civilisation. Maybe I'm calculating on a boom. Now, the secret of a boom is to spread out as far as you can reach, and then flap. That's business. When you've got people's attention, you can settle down and make your bargains. Mind you,” says Craney, turning on me an eye that was cold and calm—“mind you, I don't say that's what I'm going to do, nor I don't say what I'm calculating to trade for. Maybe I have an idea, and maybe I haven't.”
I says, “Course you have.”
“You think so?” he says. “It's no more than reasonable. But look at all this now”—with one thumb in the armhole of his vest and waving his cigar with the other hand toward the moon and sea—“look at this here hemisphere. It's big and still. The kinks and creases of me are smoothing out. I'm expanding, permeating. I look out. I see those there shining waves. I says to myself, 'J. R., as a romantic man, you may be said to be getting there.'”
He used to read some in the daytime, but mostly he'd smoke and meditate and pull his chin beard, sitting on deck in a red plush-covered easy-chair, with his feet on the rail. One time he had a volume of poetry in his hand, turning over the leaves.
“Some of it appears to be sawed down smooth one side,” he says, “and left ragged on the other, and some of it's ragged both sides.”
Then he read a bit of it aloud, but it didn't go right, for sometimes he'd trot, as you might say, when he ought to have galloped, and sometimes he'd gallop when he ought to have trotted, and sometimes he'd come along at a mixed gait. As a rule, he bumped.
He was no hand at poetry. Nor was he romantic to look at, but thin, and sinewy, and one-eyed, and some dried up, clean shaven except for a wisp of greyish whisker on his chin, and always neatly dressed now. When he'd laugh to himself, the wrinkles would spread around his eyes, one blind, and the other calm and calculating, and absent-minded. He'd sit with his cigar tilted up in one corner of his mouth, and his hat tilted forward, and whittle sticks. He'd talk with anybody, but mostly with me and Kamelillo, whom he appeared to be asking for information. Kamelillo knew island dialects about the same as he did English, but wasn't much for conversation. Craney came one day with a bundle of charts, and he collected me and Kamelillo in a corner and spread his charts on the deck. They were old charts.
“Now,” he says, “here is the lines of trade.”
He had the regular routes all marked on his charts.
“There appears to be some vacant spaces,” he says. And there did. “And here's about the biggest!” And it was. “There don't seem to be any island there, but here's a name, 'Lua,' only you can't tell what it belongs to.” No more you could. The name appeared to be dropped down there so that section of the Pacific wouldn't look so lonely. I brought out the ship's chart, but it didn't give any name, only two or three islands sorted around where Craney's chart said “Lua.” It looked as if you might find one of them, and then again you might not.
“Ever been on any of 'em?” he asked. I hadn't and Kamelillo didn't know, but looked as if he might have swallowed one without remembering it.
“Nor I,” says Craney, “but I know there's likely to be natives when the islands are sizable.”
“These might be only coral circles,” I says.
“Well, I guess we'll go and look at 'Lua,' anyway,” he says. “A man don't put 'Lua' on a map without he's got some idea.”
It was nearly two months from the day we left the coast of the States when we came to the edge of the letter “L,” as according to Craney's chart, and we sailed along the bottom of it and around the curve of “U,” and up the inside on the right, where the ship's chart had an island, but we missed it, if it was there. Then we came to the top of the right leg of “U,” where there might be an island on Craney's chart, except that it looked more like part of the letter. Craney says:
“Try 'A.'”
We cut across into “A.” It was in the curve of the twist at the end of the “A” that we sighted land at last. The ship's chart had an island in the neighbourhood, but somewhat to the north. Likely Craney's notion of coasting the edge of the letters was as good as any. I never claimed the ship's chart was a good one, for it wasn't. I only told him I'd rather sail by the advertisements in a newspaper than by his.
There was a reef at the north end of the island, and we ran south down the coast some miles to where it fell away to the southwest, and dropped anchor at night in a bay with a white beach and a long row of huts back from it under the trees. A bunch of natives ran down and stood looking at us. Some of them swam out a little, or paddled on a log, and then went back. There was a splashing and calling all night, and fires shining on the beach. Kamelillo thought he'd been there before, but he didn't remember when; but if he had, it stuck in his mind, there was some trouble connected with it, and with one he called a “bad-lot chief”; but I told Craney that Kamelillo had seen too many islands and too much strong drink in his career, and he might be thinking of something that happened in New Zealand.
In the morning Craney took Kamelillo and went ashore. I saw the natives gathered around him. They all went up the beach and disappeared, and the boat came back with word from Craney that he and Kamelillo were going inland and wouldn't be back before night. I didn't think he ought to go off careless like that; but they came back safely about seven o'clock, only Craney seemed to be thoughtful and not talkative. He said there was a business opening there, and he guessed he'd speculate; and he sat on deck in his red plush chair till past twelve, smoking fat cigars and staring at the shore. The next day he had up three or four cases from the hold. There was a crowd waiting for him on the beach, and I saw him tying the boxes on poles, and some of the barbarians shouldered the poles, and they all went off in procession. I didn't ask him when he'd come back, and he didn't come for near a week. Only every day there would be a native come down and dance around in the shallow to attract attention, or maybe swim out to the ship with a bit of paper in his mouth. And the paper would read: “O. K. Business progressing. Yours, J. R.” or; “I'm permeating. Yours, Julius R.” So I judged it was a peaceful island, and likely Craney had found something worth trading for. We went ashore every day, but not inland. We were satisfied to stay on the beach, and to watch the naked little children dive in the surf, and to play tag with the population.
But one day I followed a path a mile inland, and climbed a hill and saw an open valley to the south with several hundred palm-leaf huts, and farther up was more open country and some hills beyond thickly wooded. I judged the island was twenty miles north and south, but couldn't see how far it went westward, and coming back, found a note for me: “O. K. I never see folks so open to conviction. Yours, J. R.”
It was Craney's business, and not mine. I thought to myself, sometimes these men you'd think lunatic weren't that way, only they had their point of view. Next day there was another note: “Two of 'em are dead. I guess it's a good thing. I bought it anyway. Julius R.” And while I was thinking it over, and thinking sometimes these men that claimed they'd got a point of view were really lunatic, Craney came back. He must have had three hundred natives following him, and they camped on the beach and seemed to rejoice, for they danced and sang most of the night, while he and I sat on the deck and talked it over,
“This island,” says Craney, “is full of politics. I'll tell you. They had a king lately, and, according to accounts, he was old and fat, and his morals were bad. But he died, and up came five candidates for the place, and their claims to it I didn't make out, but if it was a question of votes, I gathered the ballot was tolerable corrupt, and if it was inheritance, I took it the late royalty had so many heirs they were common like anybody else. But everybody was busy, and it looked as if business would be dull for me, and they told me it was no use trying to be neutral. I'd have to back one of 'em. Course, I didn't know. Each of the candidates occupied a corner of the island, and now and then they'd meet in the middle for slaughter. What could I do? Well, I tell you what I did. I hired five messengers and invited the candidates to a congress. I says:
“'Not more'n ten to each party.' And they came.
“Kamelillo's a good enough interpreter, only he's sort of condensed. If a man makes a speech of half an hour, Kamelillo gives a grunt to cover most of it, and then he states what he guesses is the point of the rest. But he did well enough.
“Then I got in the middle of 'em and I argued. I says:
“'Gentlemen, this is a peaceful interview. Pile your weapons.'
“I got 'em piled in a heap and I sat on 'em, and argued, and the candidates argued. They did pretty well, considering only one of 'em had a shirt. He was old, too, and had chicken bones in his hair, and, it was curious, but he knew considerable English, and could cuss skilful in it. The other four were younger, and they appeared a good deal surprised with the way I argued it. I says:
“'Gentlemen, there ain't room in this island for a Civil War. You see it for yourself. Now I'll show you. Each of you five take one spear and one shield, and get into the middle here and fight it out. The rest of us'll watch.'
“I appealed to the fifty followers, and they all agreed that was a good thing. The five candidates were doubtful. The old man said he wasn't any good at that. I says:
“'Venerable, what you want is comfort, not to say luxury, for your declining years. I'll guarantee you that. You stay quiet.' Then I knocked open a box and showed him assorted drygoods, and says, 'What do you say?'
“He thought it looked luxurious, and said he'd think it over. By this time the others were willing to fight, for their followers all agreed it was a good thing.
“I never saw the equal of it, Tom, never! I never saw a dog-fight come up to it for prompt execution. I won't harrow your feelings as mine were harrowed. I won't puncture you with thrills as I was punctured. We buried two of 'em decent. The other two were cut up and played out quite a little. I collected weapons, and I says:
“'Now there are two ways. Either you two can have it out, and when you're through, anything that's left can have it out with me, or I'll buy you as you stand.'
“They looked surprised to see it put that way. They were low in their spirits. They said they didn't want to fight any more that week. I knocked open the boxes and spread the goods, and then they acted avaricious, particularly the old man with the chicken bones. Burying two of 'em was economic. I says:
“'Gentlemen, what's the value you put on your claims? State 'em, and state 'em reasonable.”
“I dribbled out gingham dresses, and hair-brushes, and pocket mirrors, and colored prints, and bottles of bay-rum. I never saw folks act happier. I bought up the claims. I scattered what was left of the goods among the crowd. I got on the empty boxes, and I says:
“'Here's your monarch. That's me, Julius the First, and only. If anybody else from now on claims he's a monarch in these regions, he shall be skinned and melted.' And they all cried: 'Hoi! Hoi!' or words to that effect. They were unanimous. Kamelillo said they 'liked it good.'”
Craney was silent a while, and I didn't say much. I didn't know how to get along with monarchs, anyway. The men forward were working by lantern, hauling up stuff from the hold, and piling it on deck to start unloading in the morning.
“I'm going out of trade,” he went on. “I'm going into royalty. That's my retinue on the beach. What's more, it's most of the male population, including nobility and masses. I'll show 'em. The old king was a bad lot. I'll be a benevolent monarch. I'll give 'em free schools and a constitution.
“Tommy,” he says after a long silence, “you'll be going back to San Francisco, and maybe you'll see some folks that are looking for me, and maybe they'll be hostile. Very good. You come back with 'em and you watch me. You're an old friend of me, Tommy. You're a man capable of expanding. You can get on to large ideas. You can take in vastness. You come back, and I'll make you heir to the throne.”
But I didn't hanker for Craney's throne. The last I saw of him for that time was bidding him good-bye on the beach. He appeared to have most of the public to carry up his cargo, and he appeared to be popular. Kamelillo stayed with him as interpreter.
At Honolulu there came two men aboard with a letter from the agent in San Francisco, which agent was irritating on account of slowness, and had weedy-looking hair. But the letter said:
“Put theGood Sisterat service of bearers. They have a warrant for Phipp.” I says:
“Warrant for Phipp! What for?”
One of them was a sheriff named Breen, a slow, temperate man, and the other a detective named Jessamine, a yellow-bearded one with light open eyes, who seemed a pleasant talker, but to the best of my recollection was one you might call obstinate. They showed me their papers, and these appeared to be correct. Jessamine's papers stated that he represented parties in St. Louis, whose names don't count.
“Warrant!” I says. “What for?”
“Why,” says Jessamine, “Phipp isn't his name, as you will see by the warrant;” which was no particular news to me. But I didn't like the job of going back after Craney. I didn't seem to take much interest in parties in St. Louis, but it set me arguing again whether he was a lunatic, or had a point of view. And so, though I thought it might be they were going to be surprised when they came to Lua, I said nothing about that, but fitted up a bit in Honolulu, taking my time, and set sail once more for Lua. We came there in a high wind on a rainy morning, about six weeks since I'd left it.
No one was in sight on the beach at first, but the sky clearing, I went ashore with Breen and Jessamine, and several natives ran out of the huts and across the beach to meet us. I says, “Man, Ship,” and pointed inland, at which they seemed to be pleased and set off; and we followed them by a long trail that came at last in the cleared valley, where were long-strung-out villages, leading inland to the open country this side of the wooded hills. By this time we were a procession. We knew when we had arrived, for there appeared a long range of roofs through the stems of a palm grove, and a broad path led to it through bushes covered with red thick-scented flowers. It was King Julius's palace. The front of it was all one piazza, maybe two-hundred feet long and forty deep, with slim bamboo pillars; and men seemed to be still shingling one end of it with layers of plantain leaves. But the king was out in a sort of square to one side, and had about fifty warriors with feathers in their hair, practising spears at a mark. Then he saw us, and then he said something sharp, and the fifty fell into line behind, with spears and shields in disciplined order. They marched very pretty, and came down on us in a way to make a man feel shy. I says, “Which of you is going to arrest him, and how's he going to do it?” Breen says, “You have me!” And Jessamine says: “Let's see.”
Then the king halted his company and came on alone, looking calm, with the thumb of one hand in the armhole of his vest, and the other pulling his chin beard. And Jessamine stepped forward and says:
“J. R. Craney, I arrest you for embezzlement.” And the king looked him over calm and benevolent. He says, “You don't mean it! Better be careful. Why, the trouble is, the army ain't really disciplined yet. They'd jab you full of holes, when I wasn't looking, if they caught your idea. Better come and have tea. I didn't expect you'd be along for two months yet.”
It appeared he calculated on three or four months, and my meeting Jessamine at Honolulu had cut him short. But I didn't see but he held the cards. Jessamine might arrest till he was blown. The crew of theGood Sisterhadn't shipped to be speared by a king's bodyguard, and I didn't care much for parties in St. Louis.
Soon we were eating comfortably, sitting on the big piazza around one of Craney's black walnut tables. The palace seemed to be fitted and furnished so far mainly from the cargo. Each of us had two or three waiters back of his chair, some men, some women. The warriors squatted in line out in front among the flowers. Whenever we were through with a dish, Craney would send the rest of it down to the warriors, and they'd gobble it, and watch for more, with their eyes shining, but very quiet. I recollect there was something that was like a duck, and some canned tomatoes, and a kind of fruit with a yellow rind.
“There's two hundred in my army,” says Craney sociably, “in four divisions. This is a special one. Mighty fond of drilling they are. Fact, 'most everybody's in the army. They're softening under discipline, but some of 'em are bloodthirsty yet.”
“J. R.,” says Jessamine, “I hate to do it. It's a painful duty.” Craney says: “Just so. Say no more. You couldn't be expected to know the law of this state touching the person of the king. Fact is, foreigners ain't allowed to arrest royalty here. Fact, it's a new law. I just passed it the other day. You didn't mean any harm. We'll say no more.”
Jessamine looked hurt. “Come now, J. R., it's no use. You're not going to resist the law.”
“I'm going to maintain it, Jessamine, maintain it.”
“I say, I got the authority of the States of Missouri and California.”
“I asks you, what authority they've got here? First place, you want extradition papers. You can't have 'em. I won't give 'em to you. Trouble with you, Jessamine, is you're narrow. You're small, there ain't any vastness about you, Jessamine.”
“J. R.,” says Jessamine, remonstrating, “this isn't right, and you know it.”
“You don't expand, Jessamine,” says Craney. “You don't permeate. You ain't got on to large ideas.”
Craney here distributed cigars, lit a fat one himself, pushed back from the table, crossed his legs, stuck a thumb in the arm-hole of his plush vest, and went on unfolding his mind.
“It ain't the king's pleasure to leave this island, nor it ain't the ways of monarchs, as I take it, to apologise. But putting aside all that, and supposing you was expanded enough to take that in, I'm going on to state the way it appears. You says, 'J.R., how'd you come to take the cash of parties that trusted you?' I answers, 'It comes from being romantic.' You ain't romantic, Jessamine? That's too bad. You don't see it. You don't expand to my circumference. You don't permeate my orbit. You don't get on to me. It was this way. I got up and looked out on the world. I says: 'J. R., it's clear you haven't enough cash for your ambitions. But you've got a opportunity. Throw it in. Be bold. If your conscience squirms, let it squirm. If it wriggles, let it wriggle. Take the risk. Expand to large ideas.' I took it. Say, I made parties unwilling investors in me. Now, then, there they are, as delegated in you. Here's me, Julius R., monarch by purchase and election of the sovereign state of Lua. You asks, 'What next?' I says: 'This. I'll pay. I'll settle the claims with interest on investment' But I've got to have time. Pay with what? Now there's the point. I've been investigating the produce of this island, the pearl-fishing, the coral, the hardwood. The pearl-fishing is good. As a business man, I tell you it can be done.”