"Once the hounds give voice, it's the divil himself couldn't hold me, whether it's the short, sharp war-cry of the Irish or the sweet, deep bell-notes of these Yankee hounds that to me ever seem chantin' a mournful dirge for the quarry. Sure, it's the faster Irish hounds that make the grandest runnin', but it's the deep-throated mellow chorus of a Yankee pack I love best to hear.
"Nouveaux riches, whatever kind of bounders that spells, is what Bob Berry calls the lot of mouth-sawers New York sends us; and whenever the patron is out or Jack has his way, it's niver one of them I'm disgraced with.
"Sometimes it's me good old Jack up; sometimes hard swearin', straight goin' Bob; sometimes little Raven, as true a pair of hands and light and tight a seat as hunter ever had; sometimes Lory Ling, as reckless as the old Roscommon sire of him I used to carry when I was a five-year-old, with a ring in his swears, a stab in his heels, and a cut in his crop that can lift a dead-beat one over as tall gates as the best and freshest can take; sometimes it's Priest, that with the language of him and the hell-at-a-split pace he'll hold a tired one to but ill desarves the holy name he wears; and sometimes—my happiest times—it's a daughter of the patron up, with hands like velvet and the nerve and seat of a veteran.
"Horse or human, it's blood that tells, every time, me word for that. Be they old or young, you can niver mistake it. Can't stop anything with good blood in it—gallops straight, takes timber in its stride, and finishes smartly every time. Know it may not, but it balks at nothing, sets its teeth and drives ahead till it learns.
"And perhaps that wasn't driven well home on me last Fall!"
"Out to us came a little woman, a scant ninety-pounder I should say, so frail she wouldn't look safe in a drag, and a good bit away on the off side of middle age; but the mouth of her had a set that showed she'd never run off the bit in her life, and her eye—my eye! but she had an eye, did that woman. And it was hell-bent to hunt she was, bound to follow the bounds, though all she knew of a saddle came of five-mile-an-hour jogs along town park bridle paths, and all her hands looked fit for was holdin' a spaniel.
"Well, it was Lory and Priest took her on, turn about, usually me that carried her, and it was break her slender little neck I thought the divils would in spite of me. Took her at everything and spared her nowhere, bowled her along across meadow and furrow, over water, timber, and walls, like she was a lusty five-year-old, and all the time a guyin' her in a way to take the heart out of anything but a thoroughbred. 'Don't mind the fence!' Lory would sing out, 'if you get a fall, just throw your legs in the air and keep kickin' to show you're not dead; we never want to stop for any but the dead on this hunt.' And smash on my quarters would come her crop, and on we'd go!
"Again, when we'd be nearin' a fence across which two were scramblin' up from croppers, Lory would brace her with: 'Don't git scared at that smoke across the fence; it's nothin' but the boys that couldn't get over burnin' up their chance of salvation!' And into me slats her little heel would sock the steel, and high over the timber I'd lift her for sheer joy of the nerve of her!
"But it was not always me that had her. One day I saw a cold-blood give her a fall you'd think would smash the tiny little thing into bran; landed so low on a ditch bank he couldn't gather, and up over his head she flew and on till I thought she was for takin' the next wall by her lonesome. And when finally she hit the ground it was to so near bury herself among soft furrows that it looked for a second as if she'd taken earth like any other wily old fox tired of the runnin'.
"But tired? She? Not on your bran mash! Up she springs like a yearlin' and asks Lory is her hat on straight—which it was, straight up and down over her nigh ear. 'Oh, damn your hat,' answers Lory; 'give us your foot for a mount if you're not rattled. Why, next year you'll be showin' your friends holes in the ground on this hunt course you've dug with your own head!' And up it was for her and away again on old cold-blood. Faith, but those cold-bloods make it a shame they're ever called hunters. Fall the best must, one day or another; but while the thoroughbred goes down fightin', strugglin' for his feet and ginerally either winnin' out or givin' his rider time to fall free if down he must go, the cold-blood falls loose and flabby as an empty sack, and he and his rider hit the ground like the divil had kicked them off Durham Terrace. Ah, but it was the heart of a true thoroughbred had Mrs. Bruner, and whether up on cold or hot blood, along she'd drive at anything those two hare-brained dare-devils would point her at, spur diggin', crop splashin'!
"Nor is all our fun of hunt days. Between times the lads are always larkin' and puttin' up games on each other out of the stock of divilment that won't keep till the next run, each never quite so happy as when he can git the best of a mate on a trade or a wager.
"One day little Raven and I galloped over to Lory's place.
"'Whatever mischief are you and His Wisdom up to?' sings out Lory toRaven, the minute we stopped at his porch.
"'Nary a mischief,' answers Raven; 'want some help of you.'
"'Give it a name,' says Lory.
"'Easy,' says Raven; 'the master's got a new fad—crazy to mount the hunt on white horses. I've old Sol here, and Jack has a pair of handy white ones for the two whips, but where to get a white mount for Jack stumps us. Jogged over to see if you could help us out.'
"Lory was lollin' in an easy-chair, lookin' out west across his spring lot. Directly I saw a twinkle in his eye, and followin' the line of his glance, there slouchin' in a fence corner I saw Lory's old white work-mare, Molly. Sometimes Molly pulled the buggy and the little Lings, but usually it was a plough or a mower for hers. I'd heard Lory say she was eighteen years old and that once she was gray, but now she's white as a first snow-fall.
"'How would old gray Molly do, Raven?' presently asks Lory.
"'Do? Has she ever hunted?' asks Raven.
"'Divil a hunt of anything but a chance for a rest,' says Lory; 'never had a saddle on, as far as I know, but she has the quarters and low sloping shoulders of a born jumper, and it's you must admit it. Let's have a look at her.'
"So out across the spring lot the three of us went, to the corner where Molly was dozin'. And true for Lory it was, the old lady had fine points; when lightly slapped with Raven's crop she showed spirit and a good bit of action.
"'She's sure got a good strain in her,' says Raven; 'where did you get her, Lory?'
"'Had her twelve years,' says Lory; 'brought her on from my Wyoming ranch; she and a skullful of experience and a heartful of disappointment made up about all two bad winters left of my ranch investments. The freight on her made her look more like a back-set than an asset, but she was a link of the old life I couldn't leave.'
"'Well, give her a try out,' laughs Raven, 'and if she'll run a bit and jump, we may have some fun passin' her up to Jack.'
"So Lory takes her to the stable, has her saddled and mounts, and I hope never to have another rub-down if she didn't gallop on like she'd never done anything else—stiff in the pasterns and hittin' the ground fit to bust herself wide open, but poundin' along a fair pace. Then we went into a narrow lane and I gave her a lead over some low bars, and here came game old Molly stretchin' over after me like fences and her were old stable-mates.
"'Well, Iwillbe damned,' says Raven; 'she's a hoary wonder. Give her a week of handlin' and trim her up, and it'll be Jack for mother at a stiff price; he's so bent on his fad, he'll take a chance on her age.'
"And then it was clinkin' glasses and roarin' laughter in the house with them, while I began tippin' Molly a few useful points at the game as soon as the groom left us in adjoinin' stalls.
"Four days later Lory brought Molly over to the hunt-club mews, and if I'd not been on to their mischievous plot, I'll be fired if I'd known her. It was a cunnin' one, was Lory, and he'd banged her tail, hogged her mane, clipped her pasterns, polished her hoofs, groomed, fed up, and conditioned her, and (I do believe) polished her yellow old fangs, till she looked as fit a filly as you'd want to see.
"And soon after, when Molly was unsaddled and stalled, into an empty box alongside of me slips Lory with Tom, the best whip and seat of our hunt, and says Lory: 'You never seem to mind riskin' your neck, Tom.'
"'Thank ye kindly, sir,' says Tom; 'hall in the day's work.'
"'Well, if you'll give the old gray mare a week's practice at wall and timber, gettin' out early when none but the sun and the pair of you are yet up, I'll give you the little rifle you lovin'ly handled at my place the other day. But mind, it's your neck she may break at the first wall, for I've niver taken her over anything much higher than a pig sty.'
"'Right-o, sir,' says Tom; 'an' there's any jump in the old girl, I'll git it out of 'er.'
"The next Saturday afternoon, the biggest meet of the season, up rides that divil of a Lory on Molly, him in a brand-new suit of ridin' togs and her heavy-curbed and martingaled like she was a wild four-year-old, the pair lookin' so fine I scarce knew the man or Raven the mare.
"'Hi, there, Lory!' says Raven; 'wherever did you get the corkin' white un?'
"'Sh-h-h! you damn fool,' says Lory.
"'The hell you say!' whispers Raven, reins aside, chucklin' low to the two of us, and with a knee-press which I knew meant, 'Sol, jist you watch 'em!'
"And we were no more than turned about when up rides the master, Jack, both ears pointin' Molly, and says:
"'Good-looker you have there, Lory. New purchase?
"'No, indeed,' says Lory; 'old hunter I've had some years; brought her on from the West; just up off grass and not quite prime yet; guess she'll finish, though.
"Think of it—the nerve of the divil—and him knowin' she was more likely to finish at the first fence than ever to reach the check. For the day's course was a full ten-mile run, and a check was laid half-way for a blow or a change of mounts.
"Presently the hounds opened at the 'throw-in,' an Irish pack it takes near a steeplechase pace to stay with, and we were off on as stiff a course as even Lemon County can show. And a holy miracle was Lory's ridin' that day. For nigh four miles he held tight behind two duffers who, while up on top-notchers, pulled their mounts so heavily that they took a top rail off nearly every fence they rose to and swerved for low wall-gaps, till he'd got Molly's nerves up a bit. Then, takin' a chance on the last mile, Lory threw crop and spur into her and raced straight ahead, liftin' her over wall and timber to try the best, until close up on Jack. Just then Jack turned and watched them, just as they were approachin' a heavy four-foot jump, a broad stone wall and ditch. Sure, I thought it was all up with Lory, but at it he hurled her, and I'll be curbed if she didn't take it as cleverly as I could.
"Old Molly finished third at the check, but at the expense of a pair of badly torn and bleedin' knees, got scrapin' over stone and wood, which that rascal of a Lory hid by swervin' to a white clay bank and plasterin' her wounds with the clay, and then she was led away by his groom.
"Joggin' back from the 'worry' that evenin', Jack lay tight in Lory's flank till Lory had consented, apparently with great reluctance, to sell him Molly for five hundred dollars.
"The very next week, Jack, Raven, and the two whips turned out on white hunters, Jack of course upon Molly and happy over the successful workin' out of his fad. But good old Jack's happiness was short-lived, for after the 'throw-in' he was not seen again of the hunt that day, The first fence Molly negotiated in fine style, but at the second she came a terrible cropper that badly jolted Jack and knocked every last ounce of heart out of her, cowed her so completely that she'd be in that same meadow yet if there'd not been a pair of bars to lead her through, and divil a man was ever found could make her try another jump.
"Great was the quiet fun of Lory and Raven, though Lory's lasted little longer than Jack's joy of his white mount. Of course Jack was too game to let on he knew he'd been done, but not too busy to sharpen a rowel for Lory.
"And the rankest wonder it was Lory niver saw it till Jack had him raked from flank to shoulder—just stood and took it without a blink, like a donkey takes a lash.
"Within a week of Molly's downfall Lory was out on me one day, when up rides Jack and says:
"'There's a splendid hunter in me stable I want ye to have, Lory. Got more than I can keep, and your stable must be a bit shy since you parted with the white mare. He's the bay seventeen-hander in the Irish lot. Stands me over a thousand, but you can have him at your own price; don't want the hardest, straightest rider of the hunt shy of fit meat and bone to carry him.'
"Belikes it was the blarney caught him, but anyway Lory buried his muzzle in Jack's pail till he could see nothin' but what Jack said it held, and took the bay at six hundred dollars just on a casual lookover.
"It was a good action, a grand jumpin' form, and rare pace the bay showed on a short try-out that afternoon, so much so I overheard Lory tellin' himself, when he was after dismounting just outside me box: 'Gad! but ain't old Jack easy money!'
"But when Lory and the bay showed up at the next day's meet, I noticed the bay's ears layin' back or workin' in a way to tell any but a blind one it was dirty mischief he was plannin'. Nor was he long playin' it. For about a third of the run the bay raced like a steeplechaser tight on the heels of the hounds, leadin' even the master, for Lory could no more hold him than his own glee at the grand way they were takin' gates and walls. But suddenly that bay divil's-spawn swerves from the course, dashes up and stops bang broadside against a barn; and there, with ears laid back tight to his head and muzzle half upturned, for four mortal hours the bay held Lory's off leg jammed so tight against the barn that, rowel and crop-cut hard as he might, the only thing Lory was able to free was such a flow of language, it was a holy wonder Providence didn't fire the barn and burn up the pair of them.
"And as Jack passed them I heard the divil sing not [Transcriber's note: out?]: 'Ha! Ha! Lory! it was the gray mare wanted to jump but couldn't, and it's the bay can jump but won't! It's an "oh hell!" for you and a "ha! ha!" for me this time!'
"Which, while they're still fast friends, was the last word ever passed between them on the subject of the funker and the balker."
"A cat may look at a king, but the son of a village lawyer may not venture to bare his heart to the daughter of the Duque de la Torrevieja. And yet a man of our blood was ennobled early in the wars with the Moors, while the Duke's forebears were still simple men-at-arms, knighted under a name that in itself carries the ring of the heroic deeds that earned it."
The speaker, Mauro de la Lucha-sangre (literally "Mauro of the Bloody Battle"), stood one June morning of 1874 beneath the shade of a gnarled olive-tree on the banks of the Guadaira River, rebelliously stamping a heel into the soft turf. Son of the foremost lawyer of his native town of Utrera, educated in Sevilla at the best university of his province, already at twenty-four himself a fully accreditedlicenciado, Mauro's future held actually brilliant prospects for a man of the station into which he was born. And yet, most envied of his classmates though he was, to Mauro himself the future loomed black, forbidding, cheerless.
Mauro's father, by legacy from his father, was the attorney and counsellor of the Duque de la Torrevieja; and so might Mauro have been for the next Duke had there not cropped out in him the daring, the love of adventure, the pride, and the confidence that had lifted the first Lucha-sangre above his fellows. It was a case of breeding back—away back over and past generations of fawning commoners to the times when Lucha-sangre swords were splitting Moorish casques and winning guerdons.
Nor in spirit alone was Mauro bred back. He was deep of chest, broad of shoulder, lithe and graceful. His massive neck upbore a head of Augustan beauty, lighted by eyes that alternately blazed with the pride and resolution of a Cid and softened with the musings of a Manrique. Mauro was a Lucha-sangre of the twelfth century, reincarnate.
Little is it to be wondered at that, as the lad was often his father's message-bearer to the Duke, he found favor in the eyes of the Duke's only daughter, Sofia; and still less is it to be wondered at that he early became her thrall. Of nights at the university he was ever dreaming of her; up out of his text-books her lovely face was ever rising before him in class.
Of a rare type was Sofia in Andalusia, where nearly all are dark, for she was a truerubia, blue of eye, fair of skin, and with hair of the wondrously changing tints of a cooling iron ingot.
And now here was Mauro, just back from Sevilla, almost within arms'-reach of his divinity, and yet not free to seek her. And as the rippling current of the Quadaira crimsoned and then reddened and darkened till it seemed to him like a great ruddy tress of Sofia's waving hair, Mauro sprang to his feet and fiercely whispered: "Mil demonios!but she shall at least know, and then I'll kiss the oldpadre, and his musty office good-bye and go try my hand at some man's task!"
Opportunity came earlier than he had dared hope. The very next morning the elder Lucha-sangre sent Mauro to the castle with some papers for the Duke's approval and signature. Still at breakfast, the Duke received him in the great banquet-hall of the castle, the walls covered with portraits of Torreviejas gone before, several of the earlier generations so dim and gray with age they looked mere spectres of the limner's art.
While the Duke was reading the papers, Mauro stood with eyes riveted to the newest portrait of them all, that of Sofia's mother—Sofia's very self matured—herself a native of a northern province wherein to this day red hair and blue eyes are a frequent, almost a prevailing type, that tell the story of early Gothic invasions. So absorbed in the picture, so completely possessed by it was Mauro, that when the Duke turned and spoke to him, he did not hear.
And so he stood for some moments while the Duke sat contemplating the fine lines of his face and the splendid pose of his figure; his eyes lightened with admiration, his head nodding approval.
Then gently touching Mauro's arm, the Duke queried: "And so you admire the Duchess, young man?"
With a start Mauro answered, after a dazed stare at the Duke: "A thousand pardons, Excellency! But yes, sir; who in all the world could fail to admire her?"
"Yes, yes," replied the Duke; "God never made but one other quite her equal, and her He made in her own very image—Sofia;que Dios la aguarda!"
Mauro gravely bowed, received the papers from the Duke, and withdrew.
Turning to his secretary, the Duke sighed deeply and murmured: "Dios mio!if only I had a son of my own blood like that boy! What a pity he should be tied down to paltry pettifoggery!"
Meantime Mauro, striding disconsolate past an angle of the narrow garden of the inner courtyard, was detained by a soft voice issuing from the seclusion of a bench beneath the drooping boughs of an ancient fig tree: "Buenos dias, Don Mauro. Bueno es verte revuelto."
"Buenos dias, Condesa; and it is indeed good to me to be back, good to hear thy voice—the first real happiness I have known since my ears last welcomed its sweet tones. Good to be back! ah! Condesa Sofia, for me it is to live again."
"But, Don Mauro—"
"A thousand pardons, Condesa, but thy duenna may join thee at any moment, and my heart has long guarded a message for thee it can no longer hold and stay whole,—a message thou mayest well resent for its gross presumption, and yet a message I would here and now deliver if I knew I must die for it the next minute.
"From childhood hast thus possessed me. Never a night for the last ten years have I lain down without a prayer to the Virgin for thy safety and happiness; never a day but I have so lived that my conduct shall be worthy of thee. Though I am the son of thy father'slicenciado, thou well knowest the blood of a long line of proud warriors burns in my veins. Hope that thou mightst ever even deign to listen to me I have never ventured to cherish—"
"But Don Mauro—"
"Again a thousand pardons, Condesa, but I must tell thee thou art the light of my soul. Without thee all the world is a valley of bitterness; with thee its most arid desert would be an Eden. The birds are ever chanting to me thy name. Every pool reflects thy sweet face. Every breeze wafts me the fragrance of thy dear presence. Every thunderous roll of the Almighty's war-drums calls me to attempt some great heroic deed in thine honor, some deed that shall prove to thee the lawyer's son, in heart and soul if not in present station, is not unworthy to tell to thee his love. And—"
"But, Mauro, Maurom—mio!" And with a sob she arose and actually fled through the shrubbery.
Two days later the betrothal of the Countess Sofia to the Count Leon, the eldest son and heir to the Duke de Oviedo, was announced by her father. And that, indeed, was what she had tried but lacked the heart to tell him—that, wherever her heart might lie, her father had already promised her hand!
It was a bitter night for Mauro, that of the announcement, and a sad one for his father. Their conference lasted till near morning. The son pleaded he must have a life of action and hazard; his country at peace, he would train for the bull ring.
"Why not the opera, my son?" the thrifty father replied. "Thou hast a grand tenor voice; indeed the Bishop has asked that thou wilt lead the choir of the Cathedral. With such a voice thou wouldst have action, see the world, gain riches, while all the time playing the parts, fighting the battles of some great historic character."
"But no, father," answered Mauro; "such be no more than sham fights. Not only must I wear a sword as did the early Lucha-sangres, but I must hear it ring and ring against that of a worthy foe, feel it steal within the cover of his guard, see the good blade drip red in fair battle. True, there be no Moors or French to fight, but what soldier on reddened field ever took greater odds than a loneespadatakes every time he challenges a fierce Utrera bull? And I swear to thee,padre mio, whatever my calling, I shall ever be heedful of and cherish the motto that Lucha-sangre swords have always borne: 'No me sacas sin razon; no me metes sin honor.'" (Do not draw me without good cause; do not sheath me without honor!)
The less strong-minded of the two, the father yielded, and even furnished funds sufficient for a year's private tutoring by Frascuelo, then the greatestmatadorin all Spain.
Thus the first time Mauro ever appeared before a public assembly was a chief espada of a cuadrilla of his own, at Valladolid. An apt pupil from the start, bent upon reaching the highest rank, of extraordinary strength and activity, utterly fearless but cool headed, a natural general, at the close of his firstcorridahe was acclaimed the certain successor of the great Frascuelo himself, and at the same time christenedEl Tigre(the Tiger) for the feline swiftness of his movements and the ferocity of his attacks.
The next eight years were forEl Tigrefruitful of fame and riches but utterly arid and barren of even the most casual feminine attachment. Well educated, clever, with the manners of a courtier, and with physical beauty and personal charm few men equalled, he was invited by the nobility often, received as an equal by the men and literally courted by the women. But the attentions of women were all to no purpose. ForEl Tigreonly one woman existed—Sofia, now the Duchess de Oviedo—though he had never again set eyes on her from the hour of their parting beneath the fig tree.
Owners of large Mexican sugar estates in the valley of Cuautla, the Duke and Sofia divided their time between Paris and Mexico. Their marriage was far from happy. Before their union, busy tongues had brought Count Leon rumors of her admiration for Mauro, rousing suspicions that were not long crystallizing into certainty that, while she was a faithful, honest wife, he could never win of her the affection he gave and craved. Obviously proud of her, always devoted and kind, he received from her respect and consideration in return, which indeed was all she had to give, for the loss of Mauro remained to her an ever-gnawing grief.
Oddly enough, fate decreed that the destiny of Mauro and Sofia should be worked out far afield from their burning Utreran plains, high up on the cool plateau of Central Mexico.
For several years most generous offers had been madeEl Tigreto bring hiscuadrillato Mexico, but, surfeited with fame and rolling in riches, he had declined them. At last, however, in 188-, an offer was made him which he felt forced to accept—six thousand dollars a performance for tencorridas, to be given on successive Sundays in the Plaza Bucareli in the City of Mexico, all expenses of himself and hiscuadrillato be paid by the management. And so, late in April of that yearEl Tigrearrived in Mexico with hiscuadrillaand (as stipulated in his contract) sixty great Utreran bulls, for the bulls of Utrera are famed intoreadorhistory and song as the fiercest, most desperate fightersespadaever confronted.
At the first performanceEl Tigretook the Mexican public by storm. No such execution, daring, and grace had ever been seen in either Bucareli or Colon.El Tigrewas the toast in every club andcafeof the city. Every shop window displayed his portrait. All the journals sung his praises. Maids and matrons sighed for him. Youth and age envied him.El Tigre'scoffers were well-nigh bursting and his cups of joy overflowing, all but the one none but Sofia could fill.
Where she was at the timeEl Tigrehad no idea. And yet, wholly unsuspected by him, not only were she and the Duke in Mexico, but both had attended all his performances at Bucareli, up to the last, inconspicuous behind parties of friends they entertained in their box.
Whether it was the Duke caught the pallor of Sofia's face in moments of peril for Mauro, or the light of pride and admiration in her eyes during his moments of triumph, sure it is the smouldering fires of the Duke's jealousy were rekindled, and he was prompted to plan a test of her bearing, when free of the restraint of his presence. On the morning of the last performance he announced that he must spend the afternoon with his attorneys, and must leave Sofia free to make her own arrangements for attendance at the lastcorrida.
And glad enough was she of the chance. The boxes were far too high above, and distant from, the arena. For days she had coveted any of the seats along the lower rows of open benches, close down to the six-foot barrier between the ring and the auditorium, close down where she could catch every shifting expression of Mauro's mobile face, and—where he could scarcely fail to see and recognize her. The thought of seeking in any way to meet or speak to him never entered her clean mind, but she had been more nearly a saint than a woman if she had been able to deny herself such an opportunity to convey to him, in one long burning glance, a knowledge of the endurance of the love her frightened "Mauromio" had plainly confessed the night of their parting beneath the fig tree. So it naturally followed that the Duke was barely out of the house before Sofia rushed away a messenger to reserve a section of the lower benches immediately beneath the box of thePresidente, directly in front of which Mauro must come, at the head of hiscuadrilla, to salute thePresidente.
The city was thronged with visitors come to seeEl Tigre. Hotels and clubs were overflowing with them. And thousands of poor peons had for months stinted themselves, often even gone hungry, to save enoughtlacosto buy admission to the spectacle, to them the greatest and most magnificent it could ever be their good fortune to witness. The day was perfect, as indeed are most June days in Mexico. For two hours before the performance the principal thoroughfares leading to the Plaza Bucareli were packed solid with a moving throne all dresseden fete.
In no country in the world may one see such great picturesqueness, variety, and brilliancy of color in the costumes of the masses as then still prevailed in Mexico. Largely of more or less pure Indian blood, come of a race Cortez found habited in feather tunics and head-dresses brilliant as the plumage of parrots, great lovers of flowers, three and a half centuries of contact with civilization had not served to deprive them of any of their fondness for bright colors. Thus with the horsemen in the gracefultraje de chorro—sombreros and tight fitting soft leather jackets and trousers loaded with gold or silver ornaments, the footmen swaggering inserapesof every color of the rainbow, the women wrapped in more delicately tinted rebosas and crowned with flowers, the winding streets looked like strips of flower garden ambulant.
Bucareli seated twenty thousand, and when all standing-room had been filled and the gates closed, thousands of late comers were shut out.
The level, sanded ring, the theatre of action, was surrounded by a six-foot solid-planked barrier. Behind and above the barrier rose the benches of the auditorium, the "bleachers" of the populace; they rose to a height of perhaps forty or fifty feet, while above the uppermost line of benches were the private boxes of theelite. Within the ring were five heavily planked nooks of refuge, set close to the barrier, behind which a hard pressedtoreadormight find safety from a charging bull. These refuges were little used, however, except by the underlings, thecapadores, or by capsizedpicadores;espadasandbanderillerosdisdained them. On the west of the ring was the box of thePresidenteof thecorrida(in this instance, the Governor of the Federal District); on the east the main gate of the ring through which thecuadrillaentered; on the north the gate of the bull pen.
At a bugle call from thePresidente'sbox, the main gate swung wide and thecuadrillaentered, a band of lithe, slender, clean-shaven men, in slippers, white stockings, knee breeches, and jackets of silk ornamented with silver, each wearing the little queue and black rosette attached thereto that from time immemorial Andalusiantoreadoreshave sported.
El Tigreheaded the squad, followed by two juniormatadores, threebanderilleros, threecapadores, and two mountedpicadores, while at the rear of the column came two teams of little, half-wild, prancing, dancing Spanish mules, one team black, the other white, each composed of three mules harnessed abreast as for a chariot race, but dragging behind them nothing but a heavy double tree, to which the dead of the day's fight might be attached and dragged out of the arena.
Each of the footmen was wrapped in a large black cloak passed over the left shoulder and beneath the right, the loose end of the cloak draped gracefully over the left shoulder, the right arm swinging free. Thepicadoreswere mounted (as usual) on old crowbaits of horses, mere bags of skin and bones, so poor and thin that neither could even raise a trot; a broad leather blindfold fastened to their head-stalls. Each rider was seated in a saddle high of cantle and ancient of form as those Knights Templar jousted in. The breast of each horse was guarded by a great side of sole leather falling nearly to the knees, while the right leg of each rider was incased in such a stiff and heavy leather leg-guard as to render him afoot almost helpless; and he was further guarded by still another side of sole leather swung from the saddle horn and covering his left leg and much of his horse's barrel. On the right stirrup of eachpicadorrested the butt of his lance, a stout eight-foot shaft tipped with a sharp steel prod, barely long enough to catch and hold in the bull's hide.
As thecuadrillaentered, a regimental band playedEl Hymno Nacional, the National Anthem, while the vast audience roared and shrieked a welcome to the gladiators.
Marching to the time of the music in long tragic strides, heads proudly erect, right arms swinging and shoulders slightly swaying in the challenging swagger whichtoreadores affect, thecuadrillacrossed the arena and halted, close to the barrier, in front of thePresidente'sbox, bared their heads, gracefully saluted thePresidente, and received the key to the bull pen and his permission to begin the fight. And asEl Tigre'seyes fell from the salute to thePresidentethey rested upon Sofia, doubtless from some subtle telepathic message, for it was a veritable hill of faces he confronted. There she sat on the second bench-row above the top of the barrier, matured and fuller of figure but radiant as at their Utreran parting; there she sat, her gloved hands tightly clenched, her lips trembling, her great blue eyes pouring into his messages of a love so deep and pure that it needed all his self-command to keep from leaping the barrier and falling at his feet.
For a moment he stood transfixed, staggered, almost overcome with surprise and delight again to see her, thrilled with the joy of her message, blazing with revolt at the painful consciousness that she was and must remain another's. His emotions well-nigh stopped the beating of his heart. And so he stood gazing into Sofia's eyes until, self-possession recovered, he gravely bowed, turned, and waved his men to their posts.
Instantly all was action, swift action. Cloaks were tossed to attendants, each footman received a red cape, the twopicadorestook position one on either side of the bull pen gate, the band struck up a tune, the gate was opened and a great Utreran bull bounded into the arena, maddened with the pain of a shortbanderilla, with long streaming ribbons, stuck in his neck as he entered, by an attendant perched above the gate.
His equal had never been seen in a Mexican bull ring. While typical of his Utreran brothers, all princes of bovine fighting stock, this coal-black monster was by the spectators voted their King. Relatively light of quarters and shallow of flank and barrel, he was unusually high and humped of withers, broad and deep of chest and heavy of shoulders—indeed a well-nigh perfect four-legged type of a finely trained two-legged athlete, with a pair of peculiarly straight-upstanding horns that were long and almost as sharp as rapiers. Evidently by his build, he was of a strong strain of East Indian Brahminic blood. For his great weight, his activity was phenomenal—his leaps like a panther's, his turns as quick.
Dazed for an instant by the crash of the music and the brilliant banks of color about him, he stood angrily lashing his tail and pawing up the sand in clouds—"digging a grave," as Texas cowboys used to call it—his eyes blazing and head tossing, but only for a moment. Then he charged the nearestpicador, literally leaped so high at him that head and cruel horns crossed above the horse's neck, his own great chest striking the horse just behind the shoulder with such force that man and mount hit the ground stunned and helpless.
Barely were they down when he was upon them and with a single twitch of his mighty neck, had ripped open the horse's barrel and half amputated one of the rider's legs. Then, diverted by thecapadores, he whirled upon the secondpicadorand in another ten seconds had left his horse dead and the rider badly trampled. Next thebanderillerostackled him, but such was his speed and ferocity that all three funked the work, and not one of them fastened his flag in the black shoulders.
When the bull had entered the ring,El Tigreleft the arena—a most unusual proceeding. Now he returned, clad in snow-white from head to foot, a white cap covering head and hair, his face heavily powdered. He slipped in behind and unseen by the bull to the centre of the arena, and there stood erect, with arms folded, motionless as a graven image.
Presently the bull turned, sawEl Tigre, and charged him straight.El Tigrewas not even facing him, for the bull was approaching from his left. But there he stood without the twitch of a muscle or the flicker of an eye lid, still as a figure of stone.
A great sob arose from the audience, and all gave him up for lost, when, at the last instant before the bull must have struck, it turned and passed him. Once more the bull so charged and passed. Whether because it mistook him for the ghost of a man or recognized in him a spirit mightier than its own, only the bull knew.
Before the audience had well caught its breath,El Tigre, wearing again his usual costume, was striding again to the middle of the arena, carrying a light chair, in which presently he seated himself, facing the bull, a showbanderilla, no more than six inches long, held in his teeth. And so he awaited the charge until the bull was within actual arm's-reach, when with a swift rise from the chair and a turn of his body quick as that of a fencer's supple wrist, he bent and stuck the teeth-held banderilla in the bull's shoulder as he swept past.
Now was the time for the kill.
El Tigre received his sword,muleta, and cape. Themuletais a straight two-foot stick over which the cape is draped, and, held in thematador'sleft hand, usually is extended well to the right of his body. Thus in an ordinary fight the bull is actually charging the blood-red cape, and not thematador. But, with Sofia an onlooker, determined to make this the fight of his life,El Tigretossed aside themuleta, wrapped the crimson cape about his body, and stood alone awaiting the bull's charge, his malleable sword-blade bent slightly downward, sufficiently to give a true thrust behind the shoulder, a down-curve into heart or lungs.
With a bull of such extraordinary activity the act was almost suicidal, butEl Tigresmilingly took the chance. By toreador etiquette, thematadormust receive and dodge the first two charges; not until the third may he strike. On the first chargeEl Tigrestood like a rock until the bull had almost reached him, and then lightly leaped diagonally across his lowered neck. The second charge, come an instant after the first, before most men could even turn, he dodged. The third he swiftly side-stepped, thrust true, and dropped the great Utreran midway of a leap aimed at his elusive enemy.
It was a deed magnificent, epic, and the plaza rung with plaudits while hats, fans, and even purses and jewels showered into the arena—all of which, bytoreadoretiquette, were tossed back across the barrier to their owners.
Then the teams entered and quickly dragged the dead from the arena; the ugly, dangerously slippery red patches were fresh sanded, and the second bull was admitted. Thus, with more or less like incident, three more bulls were fought and killed.
The fifth and last, however, proved a disgrace to his race. Bluff he did, but fight he would not; the noise and crowd unnerved him. At last, frenzied with fear and seeking escape, he made a mighty leap to mount the barrier directly in front of the box of thePresidente. And mount it he did, and down it crashed beneath his weight, leaving the bull for a moment half down and tangled in the wreckage, struggling to regain his feet.
Directly in front of the bull, not six feet beyond the sharp points of his deadly horns, sat Sofia. Indeed none about her had risen; all sat as if frozen in their places. And just as well they might have been, for escape into or through the dense mass of spectators about them was utterly impossible. Whatever horror came they must await, helpless.
But at the bull's very start for the barrier,El Tigre, realized Sofia's peril and instantly sprang empty-handed in pursuit; for it was early in this the lastcorridaand he did not have his sword,
Leaping the wreckage,El Tigrelanded directly in front of the bull, happily at the instant it regained its feet, where, with his right hand seizing the bull by the nose—his thumb and two fore-fingers thrust well within its nostrils—and with his left hand grabbing the right horn, with a mighty heave he uplifted the bull's muzzle and bore down upon its horn until he threw it with a crash upon its side that left it momentarily helpless.
But, himself slipping in the loose wreckage, down alsoEl Tigrefell, the bull's sharp right horn impaling his left thigh and pinning him to the ground.
Before the bull could rise, the men of thecuadrillahad it safely bound andEl Tigrereleased.El Tigre, however, did not know it. With the shock and pain of his wound he had fainted.
When at length he regained consciousness, it was to find his head pillowed in Sofia's lap, her soft fingers caressing his brow, her tearful eyes looking into his, and to hear her whisper: "Mauromio!"
Just at this moment the Duke de Oviedo approached, no one knew whence.
White with jealousy but steady and cool, he quietly remarked:
"Madame, I ought to kill you both, but that my rank precludes. Lucha-sangre, in yourself, as son of a notary and hiredtoreadorand purveyor of spectacles, you are unworthy of my sword; nevertheless blood once noble is in your veins. And so as noble it suits me now to count you. As soon as you are recovered of your wound I will send you my second."
"Most happy, Duke," answered Mauro; "mine shall be ready to meet him."
One evening a week later, while the Duke de Oviedo and two Mexican army officers were having drinks at the bar of the Cafe Concordia, General Delmonte, a Cuban long resident in New York and a distinguished veteran of three wars, entered with two American friends. Delmonte was describing to his friendsEl Tigre'slast fight, lauding his prowess, extolling his noble presence and high character. Infuriated by the ardent praise of his enemy, the Duke grossly insulted General Delmonte—and was very promptly slapped in the face.
They fought at daylight the next morning, beneath an arch of the ancient aqueduct, just outside the city. Encountering in Delmonte one of the best swordsmen of his time, early in the combat the Duke received a mortal wound. And as he there lay gasping out his life, he murmured a phrase that, at the moment, greatly puzzled his seconds:
"Gana El Tigre." (The Tiger Wins!)
It seems it must have been somewhere about the year 4000 B. C. that we lost sight of the tall peaks of the architectural topography of Manhattan Island, and yet the log of theBlack Princemakes it no more than twenty days. Not that our day-to-day time has been dragging, for it has done nothing of the sort.
All my life long I have dreamed of indulging in the joy of a really long voyage, and now at last I've got it. New York to Cape Town, South Africa, 6,900 miles, thirty days' straight-away run, and thence another twenty-four days' sail to Mombasa, on a 7,000-ton cargo boat, deliberate and stately rather than fast of pace, but otherwise as trim, well groomed, and well found as a liner, with an official mess that numbers as fine a set of fellows as ever trod a bridge. The Captain, when not busy hunting up a stray planet to check his latitude, puts in his spare time hunting kindly things to do for his two passengers—for there are only two of us, the Doctor and myself. The Doctor signed on the ship's articles as surgeon, I as purser.
Fancy it! Thirty days' clear respite from the daily papers, the telephone, the subway crowds, and the constant wear and tear on one's muscular system reaching for change, large and small! Thirty days free of the daily struggle either for place on the ladder of ambition or for the privilege to stay on earth and stand about and watch the others mount, that saps metropolitan nerves and squeezes the humanities out of metropolitan life until its hearts are arid and barren and cruel as those of the cavemen! Thirty days' repose, practically alone amid one of nature's greatest solitudes, awed by her silences, uplifted by the majesty of her mighty forces, with naught to do but humble oneself before the consciousness of his own littleness and unfitness, and study how to right the wrongs he has done.
Indeed a voyage like this makes it certain one will come actually to know one's own self so intimately that, unless well convinced that he will esteem and enjoy the acquaintance, he had best stay at home. Of my personal experience in this particular I beg to be excused from writing.
Lonesome out here? Far from it. Behind, to be sure, are those so near and dear, one would gladly give all the remaining years allotted him for one blessed half-hour with them. Otherwise, time literally flies aboard theBlack Prince; the days slip by at puzzling speed. Roughly speaking, I should say the meals consume about half one's waking hours, for we are fed five times a day, and fed so well one cannot get his own consent to dodge any of them.
Indeed I've only one complaint to make of this ship; she is a "water-wagon" in a double sense, which makes it awkward for a man who never could drink comfortably alone. With every man of the mess a teetotaler, one is now and then possessed with a consuming desire for communion with some dear soul of thirsty memory who can be trusted to take his "straight." Of course I don't mean to imply that this mess cannot be trusted, for you can rely on it implicitly every time—to take tea; you can trust it with any mortal or material thing, except your pet brew of tea, if you have one, which, luckily, I haven't. Indeed, for the thirsty man Nature herself in these latitudes is discouraging, for the Big Dipper stays persistently upside down, dry!—perhaps out of sympathy with the teetotal principles of this ship. And most of the way down here there has been such a high sea running that the only dry places I have noticed have been the upper bridge and my throat. The fact is, about everything aboard this ship is distressingly suggestive to a faithful knight of the tankard: he is surrounded with "ports" that won't flow and giant "funnels" that might easily carry spirits enough to wet the whistles of an army division (but don't), until he is tempted in sheer desperation to take a pull at the "main brace."
All of which, assisted by the advent of a covey of flying fishes and a (Sunday) "school" of porpoises, is responsible for the following, which is adventured with profuse apologies to Mr. Kipling:
Take me north of the EquatorWhere'er gleams the polar star,Where "The Dipper" ne'er is emptyAnd Orion is not far,Where the eagle at them gazesAnd up toward them thrusts the pine—Anywherestrong men drink spiritsOn the right side of "the line."
On the road to Mombas-a,Drawing nearer toward Cathay,Where the north star now is under,'Neath the Southern Cross's ray.
Take me off this water wagonWhere the Captain's ribbon's blue,Where the Doctor, yclept Barthwaite,And each man-jack of the crewNever get a drop of poteen,Never know the cheer of beer—Anywherea thirsty man mayWet his whistle without fear.
On the road to Mombas-a,With theBlack Prince, day by dayRolling her tall taffrail under,'Neath a sky o'ercast and gray.
Take me back to good old Proctor'sWhere a man may quench his thirst,Where a purser with a shillingNeedn't feel he is accursedBy an ironclad owners' ship ruleThat her officers shouldn't drink—Anywherethe ringing glassesMerrily clink! clink!
On the road to Mombas-a,Where the only drink is "tay,"Where a thirst that is a wonderBurns the throat from day to day.
Take me somewhere close to Rector'sWhere a man can get a crab,Where the blondined waves are tossingAnd every eye-glance is a stab,Where there'sfroufrouof thejuponAnd there's popping of the corkAnywherethe men and womenSnap their fingers at the stork.
On the road to Mombas-a,Where e'en mermaids never play,Where to come would be a blunderHunting hot birds and Roger.
But lonesome out here? Never—with the sympathetic North Atlantic winds ever ready to roar you a grim dirge in your moments of melancholy contemplation of the inverted Dipper, with the gentle tropical breezes softly singing through the rigging notes of soothing cadence, with the lethal ocean billows ever leaping up the sides of the ship, foaming with the joy of what they would do to you if they once got you in their embrace!
Lonesome? With the coming and the going of each day's sun gilding cloud-crests, silvering waves, setting you matchless scenes in color effect, some ravishing in their gorgeous splendor, some soft and tender of tone as the light in the eyes of the woman you worship, scenes beside which the most brilliant stage settings which metropolitans flock like sheep to see are pathetically paltry counterfeits.
Lonesome? With a mighty, joyously bounding charger like theBlack Princebeneath your feet if not between your knees, gayly taking the tallest billows in his stride, whose ever steady pulse-beat bespeaks a soundness of wind and limb you can trust to land you well at the finish!
Lonesome? Where privileged to descend into the very vitals of your charger and sit throughout the midnight watch, an awed listener to the throbs of the mighty heart that vitalizes his every function, while each vigorously thrusting piston, each smug, palm-rubbing eccentric, each somnolently nodding lever, drives deeper into your lay brain an overwhelming sense of pride in such of your kind as have had the genius to conceive, and such others as have had the skill and patience to perfect, the conversion of inert masses of crude metal into the magnificently powerful and obviously sentient entity that is bearing you!
Lonesome? Skirting the coastline of Africa, a country whose potentates, from the Ptolemies to Tom Ryan, have never failed to make world history worth thinking about!
Lonesome? Bearing up toward that sea-made manacle of fallen majesty, St. Helena, absorbed in memories of Bonaparte's magnificent dreams of world-wide dominion, and of his pathetic end on one of its smallest and most isolated patches!
Lonesome? With a chum at your elbow so close a student of the manly game of war that he can glibly reel off for you every important manoeuvre of all the great battles of history, from those of Alexander the Great down to Tommy Burns's latest!
And now and then the elements themselves sit in and take a hand in our game, sometimes a hand we could very well do without—as twice lately.
The first instance happened early last week. Tuesday tropical weather hit us and drove us into pajamas—a cloudless sky, blazing sun, high humidity, while we ploughed our way across long, slow-rolling, unrippled swells that looked so much like a vast, gently heaving sea of petroleum that, had John D. Standardoil been with us he would have suffered a probably fatal attack of heart disease if prevented from stopping right there and planning a pipe line.
Throughout the day close about the ship clouds of flying fish skimmed the sea, and great schools of porpoises leaped from it and raced us, as if, even to them, their native element had become hateful, or as if they sensed something ominous and fearsome abroad from which they sought shelter in our company. One slender little opal-hued diaphanous-winged bird-fish came aboard, and before he was picked up had the happy life grilled out of him on our scorching iron deck, hot almost as boiler plates. Poor little chap! he found with us anything but sanctuary; but perhaps he lived long enough to signal the fact to his mates, for no others boarded us. And yet for one other opal-hued winged wanderer we have been sanctuary; for when we were about one hundred and fifty miles out of New York a highly bred carrier pigeon, bearing on his leg a metal tag marked "32," hovered about us for a time, finally alighted on our rail, and then fluttered to the deck when offered a pan of water—and drank and drank until it seemed best to stop him. By kindness and ingenuity of Chief Engineer Tucker he now occupies a tin house with a wonderful mansard roof, from which he issues every afternoon for an aerial constitutional, giving us a fright occasionally with a flight over far a-sea, but always returning safely enough to his new diggings.
That Tuesday morning the sun rose fiery red out of the steaming Guinea jungles to the east of us, across its lower half two narrow black bars sinister. It looked as if it had blood in its eye, while the still, heavy, brooding air felt to be ominous of evil, harboring devilment of some sort. All the mess were cross-grained, silent, or irritable, raw-edged for the first time, for a better lot of fellows one could not ask to ship with. Nor throughout the day did weather conditions or tempers improve. All day long the sky was heavily overcast with dense, low-hanging, dark gray clouds, which, while wholly obscuring the sun, seemed to focus its rays upon us like a vast burning-glass; wherefore it was expedient for the two pajama-clad passengers to keep well within the shelter of the bridge-deck awning. Toward sunset, a dense black wall of cloud settled upon the western horizon, aft of us. But suddenly, just at the moment the sun must have been descending below the horizon to the south of it, the black wall of cloud slowly parted, and the opening so made widened until it became an enormous oval, reaching from horizon half-way to zenith, framing a scene of astounding beauty and grandeur. Range after range of cloud crests that looked like mountain folds rose one above another, with the appearance of vast intervening space between, some of the ranges a most delicate blue or pink, some opalescent, some gloriously gilded, while behind the farthest and tallest range, at what seemed an inconceivably remote distance, but in a perspective entirely harmonious with the foreground, appeared the sky itself, a soft luminous straw-yellow in color, flecked thickly over with tiny snow-white cloudlets. It was like a glimpse into another and more beautiful world than ours—the actual celestial world.
But, whether or not ominous of our future, we were permitted no more than a brief glimpse of it, for presently the pall of black cloud fell like a vast drop curtain and shut it from our sight. Then night came down upon us, black, starless, forbidding, although in the absence of any fall of the barometer nothing more than a downpour of rain was expected.
But shortly after I had gone to sleep, at two o'clock suddenly something in the nature of a tropical tornado flew up and struck us hard. I was awakened by a tremendous crash on the bridge-deck above my cabin, a heeling over of the ship that nearly dumped me out of my berth, and what seemed like a solid spout of water pouring in through my open weather porthole, with the wind howling a devil's death-song through the rigging and an uninterrupted smash—bang! above my head.
Throwing on a rain coat over my pajamas, I went outside and up the ladder leading to the bridge-deck; and as head and shoulders rose above the deck level, a wall of hot, wind-borne rain struck me—rain so hot it felt almost scalding—that almost swept me off the ladder. If it had I should probably have become food for the fishes. I got to the upper deck just in time to see Captain Thomas get a crack on the head from a fragment of flying spar of the wreckage from the upper bridge—luckily a glancing blow that did no more damage than leave him groggy for a moment.
For the next fifteen minutes I was busy hugging a bridge stanchion, dodging flying wreckage and trying to breathe; for, driven by the violence of the wind, the rain came horizontally in such suffocatingly hot dense masses as nearly to stifle one.
It was the watch of Second Mate Isitt. Afterwards he told me that a few minutes before the storm broke he saw a particularly dense black cloud coming up upon us out of the southeast, where it had apparently been lying in ambush for us behind the northernmost headland of the Gulf of Guinea, an ambush so successful that even the barometer failed to detect it, for when Mate Isitt ran to the chart-room he found that the instrument showed no fall. But scarcely was he back on the bridge before the approaching cloud flashed into a solid mass of sheet lightning that covered the ship like a fiery canopy; and instantly thereafter, a wall of wind and rain hit the ship, heeled her over to the rail, swung her head at right angles to her course, ripped the heavy canvas awning of the upper bridge to tatters, bent and tore loose from their sockets the thick iron stanchions supporting it, made kindling wood of its heavy spars, and strewed the bridge and forward deck with a pounding tangle of wreckage. How the mate and helmsman, who were directly beneath it, escaped injury, is a mystery. In twenty minutes the riot of wind and water had swept past us out to sea in search of easier game, leaving behind it a dead calm above but mountainous seas beneath, that played ball with us the rest of the night. Heaven help any wind-jammer it may have struck, for if caught as completely unwarned as were we, with all sails set, she and all her crew are likely to be still slowly settling through the dense darksome depths of the twenty-five hundred fathoms the chart showed thereabouts, and weeping wives and anxious underwriters will long be scanning the news columns that report all sea goings and comings—except arrivals in the port of sunken ships.
The second fall the elements have essayed to take out of us remains yet undecided. The fact is, I am now writing over a young volcano we are all hoping will not grow much older.
Two nights ago I was awakened half suffocated, to find my cabin full of strong sulphurous fumes; but fancying them brought in through my open portholes from the smoke-stack by a shift aft of the wind, I paid no further attention to them. But when the next morning I as usual turned out on deck to see the sun rise, a commotion aft of me attracted my attention, Looking, I saw the first mate, chief engineer, and a party of sailors, all so begrimed with sweat and coal dust one could scarcely pick officers from seamen, rapidly ripping off the cover of one of the midship hatches, while others were flying about connecting up the deck fire hose. This didn't look a bit good to me, and when, an instant later, off came the hatch and out poured thick volumes of smoke, I failed to observe that it looked any better.
When the hatch was removed, the men thrust the hose through it, and began deluging the burning bunker with water; for, luckily, it is only a bunker fire,—in a lower and comparatively small bunker.
The fire had been discovered early the day previous, and for nearly twenty-four hours officers and seamen had been fighting it from below, without any mention to their two passengers of its existence, fighting by tireless shovelling to reach his seat. And now they were on deck, attacking it from above, only because the heat and fumes below had become so overpowering they could no longer work there. But after an hour's ventilation through the hatch and a continuous downpour of water, the first mate again led his men below.
And so, the usual watches being divided into two-hour relays, the fight has gone on wearily but persistently, until now, the evening of the fourth day, the men are wan and haggard from the killing heat and foul air. In the engine-room in these latitudes the thermometer ranges from rarely under 108 degrees up to 130, and one has to stay down there only an hour, as I often have, until he is streaming with sweat as if he were in the unholiest heat of a Turkish bath. And as the burning bunker immediately adjoins the other end of the boiler room, to the heat of its own smouldering mass is added that of the fire boxes, until the temperature is probably close to 140 degrees.
While the fire is confined to the bunker where it started, we are in no particular danger; but if it reaches the bunker immediately above, it will have a free run to the after hold, where several thousand packages of case oil are stored. In the open waist above the oil are a score or more big tanks of gasoline, and, on the poop immediately aft of that, a quantity of dynamite and several thousand detonating caps. Thus if the fire ever gets aft, things are apt to happen a trifle quicker than they can be dodged.
To denizens ofterra firma, the mere thought of being aboard a ship on fire in mid-sea—we are now five hundred miles from the little British island of Ascension and one thousand and eighty off the Congo (mainland) Coast—is nothing short of appalling. But here with us, in actual experience, it is taken by the officers of the ship as such a simple matter of course, in so far as they show or will admit, that we are even denied the privilege of a mild thrill of excitement.
In the meantime there is nothing for the Doctor and myself to do but sit about and guess whether it is to be a boost from the explosives, a simple grill, a descent to Davy Jones, an adventure while athirst and hungering in an open boat on the tossing South Atlantic, a successful run of the ship to the nearest land—or victory over the fire. I wonder which it will be!
If the worst comes to the worst, I intend to do for these pages what no one these last three weeks has done for me—commit them to a bottle, if I can find one aboard this ship, which is by no means certain. Indeed it is so uncertain I think I had best start hunting one right now.
After nearly a twenty-four hours' search I've got it—a craft to bear these sheets, wide of hatch, generously broad and deep of hull, but destitute of aught of the stimulating aroma I had hoped might cheer them on their voyage—more than I have been cheered on mine. For the best I am able to procure for them is—a jam bottle!
While the Doctor and I are not novices at golf, this is one "bunker" we are making so little headway getting out of, that both now seem likely to quit "down" to it.
I wonder when the little derelict, tiny and inconspicuous as a Portuguese man-of-war, may be picked up; I wonder when the sheets it bears may reach my publisher to whom it is consigned. Perhaps not for years—a score, two score; perhaps not until he himself, whom a few weeks ago I left in the lusty vigor of early manhood, is gathered to his fathers; perhaps not, therefore, until the writer has no publisher left and is himself no longer remembered.
The burning bunker is now a glowing furnace, the men worked down to mere shadows. Plainly the fire is getting the best of them and, what is even more discouraging, there is little more fight left in them.
First Mate Watson, who, almost without rest, has led the fight below since it started, says that another half-hour will—