XIX
Klondyke was ten months an ordinary seaman aboard theMargaret Carey. In that time the old tub, which could not have been so crazy as she seemed to the experts of the forecastle, went around the Pacific as far as Brisbane, thence to Durban, thence again to California. Meanwhile, friendship ripened. It was a great thing for Sailor to have the countenance of such a man as Klondyke. He knew so much more about the world than Sailor did, also he was a real friend and protector; and, when they went ashore together in strange places, as they often did, he had a wonderful knack of making himself respected.
It was not that Klondyke wore frills. In most of the places in which they found themselves a knife in the ribs would have done his business out of hand had that been the case. It was simply that he knew his way and could talk to every man in his own language, and every woman, too, if it came to that. Whether it was a Frisco hash-slinger or a refined bar-lady along the seaboard made no difference to Klondyke. It was true that he always looked as if he had bought the earth at five per cent. discount for cash and carried the title deeds in his pocket, but he had such a way with him that from Vancouver to Sydney and back again nobody seemed to think the worse of him for it.
However, the day came all too soon when a tragic blow fell on Sailor. The ship put in at Honolulu one fine morning, and as soon as Klondyke went ashore he picked up a substitute for himself on the waterfront, whom the Old Man was willing to accept for the rest of his term. Klondyke then broke the news to Sailor that he had just taken a fancy to walk across Asia.
It was a heavy blow. Sailor was very near tears, although he was growing in manhood every week.
"It's no use asking you to come with me," said Klondyke. "We shouldn't have enough brass to go round. Besides, now thewanderlustis on me there is no saying where I'll get to. I'm very likely to be sawed up for firewood in the middle of Tibet."
Sailor knew that Klondyke wanted to make the journey alone. Partly to soften the blow and partly as an impulse of friendship, he gave the boy his Bible and also his wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears.
"Stick to the reading and writing, old friend," were the final words of this immortal. "That's your line of country. It'll pay you in the end. You'll get no good out of the sea. If you are wise, whenever you touch the port of London, you'll give a miss to this old tub. A life on the ocean wave is never going to be the least use to you."
Sailor knew that Klondyke was right. But among the many things he lacked was all power of initiative. As soon as he had lost his prop and stay, he was once more a derelict. For him life before the mast must always be a hell, but he had no power of acting for himself. After Klondyke left the ship there didn't seem anything else to do beyond a mere keeping of body and soul together aboard theMargaret Carey. There was nothing else he could do if it came to that. He had only learned to sell papers on land, and he had given the best years of his life to the sea. Besides, every voyage he became a better sailor and was paid a bit more; he even had visions of one day being rated able seaman. Moreover, being saving and careful, his slender store of dollars grew. But his heart was never really in his work, never in the making of money nor in the sailing of the ship.
He was a square peg in a round hole. He didn't know enough about himself or the world or the life he was trying to live to realize fully that this was the case. And for all his weakness of will and complete lack of training, which made his life a burden to him, he had a curious sort of tenacity that enabled him to keep on keeping on long after natures with more balance would have turned the thing up. All the years he was at sea, he never quite overcame the sense of fear the sea aroused in him; he seldom went aloft, even in a dead calm, without changing color, and he never dared look down; he must have lost his hold in many a thrashing northeaster and been broken on the deck like an egg but for an increasing desire to live that was simple torment. There was a kind of demon in his soul which made him fight for a thing that mocked it.
He had no other friend after Klondyke went. No other was possible; besides, he had a fierce distrust of half his shipmates; he even lost his early reverence for Mr. Thompson, in spite of the fact that he owed him his life, long before the mate left the ship at Liverpool nine months after the departure of Klondyke. Above all, the Old Man in liquor always inspired his terror, a treat to be counted on once a month at least. The years of his seafaring were bitter, yet never once did he change ship. He often thought about it, but unluckily for Henry Harper thought was not action; he "never quite matched up," as Klondyke used to express it. He had a considerable power of reflection; he was a creature of intuitions, with a faculty of observation almost marvelous in an untrained mind, but he never seemed able to act for himself.
Another grave error was that he didn't take Klondyke's advice and stick to reading and writing. No doubt he ought to have done it; but it was such a tough job that he could hardly take it on by himself. The drudgery made him miserable; it brought too vividly to his mind the true friend who had gone out of his life. For the rest of his time aboard theMargaret Careyhe never got over the loss of Klondyke. The presence and support of that immortal had meant another world for him. For many months he could hardly bear the sight of the Bible his friend had given him, but cherished it as he had once cherished an apple that had also been given him by one who had crossed his orbit in the night of time and had spoken to him in passing.
It is not unlikely that Henry Harper would have sailed the seas aboard theMargaret Careyuntil that miraculous ship went to pieces in mid-ocean or turned turtle round the Horn; it is not unlikely that he would have gone down to his grave without a suspicion that any other kingdom awaited him, had it not been that in the last resort the decision was taken out of his hands.
One day, when he had been rather more than six years at sea, theMargaret Careywas within three days of London, whither she was bound with a cargo of wheat, when the Old Man informed him briefly and curtly that she was making her last voyage and that she was going to be broken up. The news was such a blow that at first Sailor could not realize what it meant. He had come to feel that no sort of existence would be possible apart from theMargaret Carey. He had lived six crowded and terrible years of worse than discomfort, but he could envisage no future apart from that leaking, crazy, foul old tub.
All too soon the day came, a misty morning of October, when he stepped ashore. A slender bundle was under one arm, Klondyke's fur cap on his head, a weird outfit on his lathlike body, an assortment of clothes as never was on sea or land before; and he had a store of coins of various realms, no less than eighty-five pieces of all sizes and values, from an English farthing to a Mexican five dollars, very carefully disposed about his person.
BOOK II
TRAVAIL
I
The Sailor, shipless and alone, was about to enter the most amazing city in the world.
He was a handsome boy, lean, eager eyed, and very straight in the body in spite of his gear, which consisted mainly of leggings, a tattered jersey, and a wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears. He was fairly tall, but being as thin as a rail looked much taller than he was. His face and hands were the color of mahogany, his vivid eyes were set with long intercourse with the sea, and in them was a look that was very hard to forget.
He came ashore about ten o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, October the fifth. For a while he stood on the edge of the quay with his bundle under his arm, wondering what he should do. It had not occurred to him to ask advice when he left the ship. Even the bosun had not said, "So long" to him; in spite of six years' service he was a poor seaman with no real heart for his job. He had been a cheap and inefficient hand; aboard a better ship, in the Old Man's opinion, he would have been dear at any price.
His relations with the rest of the crew had never been intimate. Most considered him "soft" or "a bit touched"; from the Old Man to the last joined ship's boy, he was "only Sailor." He never thought of asking what he ought to do; and had he done so his curious intuition told him the answer he would have been likely to receive. They would have told him to go and drown himself.
He had not been ashore a quarter of an hour when he began to feel that it was the best thing he could do. But the queer faculty he had told him at once that it was a thing he would never be able to do now. If he had had any luck it would have been done years ago.
Therefore, instead of jumping over the side of the quay, he suddenly walked through the dock gates into the streets of Wapping. All the morning he drifted aimlessly up one street and down another, his bundle under his arm, but neither plan nor purpose in his mind. At last, he began to feel very hungry, and then he found himself up against the problem of getting something to eat.
Opposite where he stood in the narrow, busy, interminable street was an imposing public house, painted a magnificent yellow. He knew that bread and cheese and a tankard of beer, which he so greatly desired, were there for the asking. But the asking!—that was the rub. He always felt tongue-tied in a public house, and his experience of them in his brief shore-goings in Frisco, Sydney, Liverpool, or Shanghai had never been happy, and had sometimes ended in disaster. But now under the spur of need, he crossed the street and, fixing his will, found his way through the swing doors into the gilded interior of the Admiral Nelson.
Happily, the American bar was at that moment without a customer. This was a great relief to the Sailor. But a truly thrilling bar-lady, replete with earrings, a high bust, and an elaborate false front, gave him an eye of cool disdain as he entered with his bundle, which he laid upon a marble-topped table as far from her as possible; and then, after a long moment's pause, in order to screw his courage to the sticking-point, he came over to the counter.
The sight of the bar-lady brought a surge of previous shore-goings into the Sailor's mind. Quite automatically, he doffed his fur cap as Klondyke would have done in these heroic circumstances, and then all at once she forgot to be magnificent. For one thing, in spite of his grotesque clothes and his thin cheeks and his shock of chestnut hair, he was a decidedly handsome boy. Also he was a genuinely polite and modest one, and the bar-lady, Miss Burton by name, who had the worldly wisdom that owns to thirty-nine and the charm which goes with that period of life, was favorably impressed. "What can I do for you?" Miss Burton inquired. It was clear that her one desire was to help a shy youth over his embarrassment.
The voice of the fair, so charmingly civilized, at once unlocked a door in the Sailor's memory. With a further slow summoning of will-power which made it the more impressive, he answered precisely as Klondyke had at the Bodega in Frisco: "May I have some bread and cheese, please, and half a pint of beer?"
"Certainly you may," she smiled.
The tone of deference had touched a chord in her. Moreover, he really was handsome, although attired as a very ordinary, not to say a very common, seaman, and evidently far more at home on the deck of a windjammer than in the American bar of an up-to-date public-house.
"Fourpence, please." The bar-lady set before him a pewter flagon of foaming fresh-drawn ale, also a liberal piece of bread and cheese, beautifully white to one accustomed to hard tack aboard theMargaret Carey.
In some confusion the Sailor produced a handful of silver coins from his amazing trousers, out of which he solemnly chose a Spanish fourpenny.
"Haven't you got anything English?" she asked, bursting suddenly into a laugh.
Not a little disconcerted, the Sailor began to struggle with a second handful of coins which he took from another pocket. Blushing to the tips of his ears, he finally tendered half a crown.
"Two-and-two change." With an intent smile she marked what he did with it.
Having stowed away the two-and-twopence, he was about to carry his plate of bread and cheese and tankard of beer to the marble-topped table where he had left his bundle, when the lady said, in a royal tone of gracious command, "Why not sit and eat it here?"
The Sailor would have been the last young man in the world to think of disobeying. He felt a little thrill creep down his spine as he climbed up on the high stool exactly opposite her. It was the sort of thrill he had had when under the ægis of Klondyke he had carried out this delicate social maneuver for the benefit of the bar-ladies of Frisco, Liverpool, and Shanghai.
At first, he was too shy to eat.
"Go on. Don't mind me," she encouraged him.
An intensive politeness caused him to cut his bread carefully with his knife. And then before he put it into his mouth he said, in an abrupt, but well modulated Klondyke manner, "'Scuse me, lady, won't yer 'ave a bite yerself?"
The deferential tone belonged to the mentor of his youth, yet the speech itself seemed to owe little to Eton College.
"No, thank you," said Miss Burton. "I'm not hungry." And then, seeing his look of embarrassment, "Now get on with it. Don't mind me."
This was a woman of the world. She was a ripe student of human nature, at least of the trousers-wearing section of human nature. Not for many a day had she been so taken by a specimen of an always remarkable genus as by this boy with the deep eyes, whose clothes and speech and behavior were like nothing on earth.
A true amateur of the male sex, she watched this quaint specimen eating bread and cheese. Presently he raised his tankard aloft, said, "Good 'ealth, lady," in a shy manner, and drank half of it at a gulp.
"When are you going to sea again?" asked Miss Burton, conversationally.
"Never going to sea no more," said the young man, with a strange look in his eyes.
"What—never?" She seemed surprised.
"Never no more. I'll never sail agen afore the mast. I'd sooner starve. It's—it's——"
"It's what?"
"It's hell, lady."
Miss Burton was taken aback by the tone of conviction. After all, this grotesque young sea monster was no true amphibian.
"Well, what are you going to do ashore?" she asked after a pause, while she gazed at him in astonishment.
"Dunno."
"No plans?"
The boy shook his head.
"Like another tankard of mild?"
"Yes, please, lady."
The impact of the bar-lady's easy and familiar style had caused a rather sharp relapse from the Klondyke standard of refinement, but not for a moment did the Sailor forget the dignity of her estate. In spite of the hybrid words he used, the note of subtle deference was never out of his voice; and Miss Burton, unconsciously intrigued by it, became even more interested in this strange product of the high seas.
"How long have you been afloat?" She handed him a second tankard of mild.
"Near six year."
"Six years. Gracious goodness! And you didn't like it?"
"No."
For some reason, the look in his eyes caused her to shiver a little.
"Why did you stick it, then?"
"Dunno."
A pause followed. Then he lifted his tankard again, said, "'Ere's lookin', lady," and drank it right off.
"Well, you are a rum one, you are, and no mistake," murmured Miss Burton, not to the Sailor, but to the beer engine at her side.
II
After the young man from the sea had drunk his second tankard of mild, he sat on the high stool silent and embarrassed. He was hoping that the gorgeous creature opposite would continue the conversation, but he didn't seem to know how to encourage her. However, as soon as a powerful feminine intelligence had told her the state of the case, she said abruptly, "Well, and what are you going to do for a living now you've retired from the sea?"
He gave his head a wistful shake.
The gesture, rather pathetic in its hopelessness, touched Miss Burton.
"Well, you can't live on air, you know."
"No, lady."
"Well, what are you going to do?"
Another shake of the head was the only answer, but as he met her sympathetic eyes, an inspiration came to him.
"Lady," he said humbly, "you don't happen to know of a shack?"
"Know of a what!" The touch of acerbity froze him at once. "Shack!" Coming to his assistance, "What on earth's that?"
"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." The phrase was Klondyke's, and it came to him quite oddly at that moment in all its native purity. His mentor had a private collection of such phrases which he used to roll out for his own amusement when he went ashore. This was one. Henry Harper could see him now, pointing to a dingy card in a dingy window in a dingy street, in some miserable seaboard suburb, and he could hear him saying, "There you are, Sailor, lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man."
Miss Burton pondered. And then the slow smile came again.
"Well, if you really want lodgings clean and decent for a single man I suppose I must try and help you," she said graciously. "But I'm afraid I shan't be much use. They are not quite in my line."
"No, lady."
"Still, Fore Street is full of them. That's the second turn to the left and then the first on the right, and then the first on the right again."
"Yes, lady."
"You might try No. 5—or No. 7—or No. 9—but Fore Street's full of them."
Miss Burton was really trying to be helpful, and the young seaman was very grateful to her, but Klondyke would have known at once that "she was talking out of the back of her neck."
Armed with this valuable information, the young man got off his high stool at last, raised his fur cap once more, with a little of the unconscious grace of its original owner, said, "So long, lady," collected his bundle and went out by the side door. And in the meantime, the bar-lady, who had marked every detail of his going, hardly knew whether to laugh or to shed tears. This was the queerest being she had ever seen in her life.
The Sailor managed to find Fore Street after taking several wrong turnings and asking his way three times. And then his difficulties really began.
Fore Street was very narrow, very long, very gloomy, very dirty. In each of these qualities it seemed well able to compare with any street he had seen in Frisco, in Sydney, in Liverpool, or even in Port Said. But it didn't discourage him. After all he had never been used to anything else.
The first house in Fore Street had a grimy card in a grimier window, exactly in the manner to rejoice the heart of Klondyke. Sailor, who had forgotten almost every syllable of "book-learning" he ever possessed—and at no time had he been the possessor of many—leaped at once to the conclusion that the legend on the card was, "Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." Unfortunately it was, "Dressmaking done here."
A very modest knock was answered by a large female of truculent aspect, to whom he took off his cap, while she stood looking at him with surprise, wonder and inveterate distrust of mankind in general and of him in particular spreading over her like a pall.
"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man!"
The door of No. 1, Fore Street, was slammed violently in the face of the applicant.
The Sailor nearly shed tears. He was absurdly sensitive in dealing with the other sex and prone to be affected by its hazards and vicissitudes. However, Auntie of the long ago surged into his mind, and the recollection seemed to soften the rebuff. All, even of that sex, were not bar-ladies, sympathetic, smiling, and magnificent. Therefore he took courage to knock at the door of the next house which also had a card in the window. But, unfortunately, that again was not to proclaim lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man, but merely, "A horse and cart for hire."
Here the blow, again from the quarter which knows how to deal them, was equally decisive. A creature, blowsy and unkempt, told him, after a single glance at his fur cap and his bundle and his deep-sea-going gear, "that if he didn't take hisself off and look sharp about it she'd set the pleece on him."
At this second rebuff the Sailor stood at the edge of the curb for some little time, trying to pluck up spirit to grapple with the problem of the next card-bearing domicile, which happened to be the third house in the street. He felt he had begun to lose his bearings a bit. It had come upon him all at once with great force that he was a stranger in a strange land whose language he didn't know.
He had just made up his mind to tackle the next card in the window, let the consequences be what they might, when he felt his sleeve plucked by a small urchin of nine with a preternaturally sharp and racial countenance.
This promising product of the world's greatest race, one Moses Gerothwohl by name, had had an eye fixed on the fur cap ever since he had heard its owner ask at the first house in the street for lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man. This was undoubtedly one of those foreign sailors, perhaps a Rooshian—a Rooshian was the very highest flight of which the imagination of Moses Gerothwohl was at present capable—who, even if they were apt to get drunk on queer fluids and sometimes went a bit free with their knives, were yet very good-natured, and as a rule were pretty well off for money.
"Did yer sye, mate, yer wanted a shakedown?" said Moses Gerothwohl, plucking at the sleeve of the Sailor.
The Sailor looked down at the urchin and nodded.
"Come with me, then," said Moses, stoutly. "And I'll take yer to my grandma's."
He led the Sailor through a perfect maze of by-streets, and through a nest of foul courts and alleys, until at last he came to the house of his grandmother, to whom he presented the foreign seaman.
She was not very prepossessing to look at, nor was her abode enticing, but she had a small room to offer which, if not over clean and decidedly airless, contained a bed of which he could have the sole use for the reasonable sum of sixpence a night.
The young man accepted the terms at once and laid his bundle on the bed. But the old woman did not accept him with equal alacrity. There was a little formality to be gone through before the transaction could be looked upon as "firm." It was usual for the sixpence to be paid in advance.
Grandma was one-fifth tact, three-fifths determination, one-fifth truculence, and the whole of her was will power of a very concentrated kind. She was as tough as wire, and in the course of several tense and vital minutes, during which her wolf's eyes never left Henry Harper's face, that fact came home to him.
It took nearly five minutes for the Sailor to realize that Grandma was waiting for something, but as soon as he did, the way in which he bowed to fate impressed her right down to the depths of her soul. He took an immense handful of silver out of his pocket, the hoarded savings of six years of bitter toil, chose one modest English "tanner" after a search among many values and nationalities, and handed it over with a polite smile.
The old woman was a very hard nut of the true waterside variety, but the sight of such affluence was almost too much for her. Money was her ruling passion. She went downstairs breathing hard, and with a deep conviction that Rothschild himself was in occupation of her first floor front.
In the meantime, the Sailor had seated himself on the bed at the side of his bundle, and had started to think things out a bit. This was a long and tough job. Hours passed. The small, stuffy, evil-smelling bedroom grew as black as pitch; a heavy October darkness had descended upon the strange land of Wapping, but the Sailor was still thinking very hard; also he was wondering what he should do next.
He hadn't a friend on the wide earth. There was nothing to which he could turn his hand. He could neither read nor write. And in his heart he had a subtle fear of these queer longshore people, although he had sense enough to know that it was a Sailor's duty to trample that feeling under foot. One who six long years had sailed before the mast aboard theMargaret Careyhad nothing to fear in human shape.
As Henry Harper sat on that patched counterpane in the growing October darkness, unloosing that strange and terrible thing, the mind of man, he was not merely lonely, he was afraid. Afraid of what? He didn't know. But as the darkness grew there came an uncanny feeling under his jersey. It seemed to stick him in the pit of the stomach like the icy blade of a knife. He had tasted fear in many forms, but this kind of stealing coldness was something new and something different.
It grew darker and darker in the room. The sense of loneliness was upon him now like a living presence. There was not a soul in the world to whom he could turn, to whom he might speak, unless it was the old woman downstairs. Yet lonely and rather terrified as he was, his odd intuition told him it would be better to converse with no one than to converse with her.
At last, shivering and supperless, although his pockets were heavy with silver untold, he made up his mind to turn in. It was a counsel of desperation. He was sick to nausea with the business of thinking about nothing, a process which began in nothing and ended in nothing; and at last with a groan of misery, he pulled off his boots and leggings, but without removing his clothes stretched himself on the bed.
If he could have had his wish he would have gone to sleep, never to awake again. But he could only lie shivering in the darkness without any hope of rest. Presently a clock struck two. And then he thought he heard a creak on the stairs and shortly afterwards a stealthy footfall outside his door.
He had never been anything but broad awake. But these creeping noises of the night seemed to string up every sense he had to a point that was uncanny. He held his breath in order to listen—to listen like a frightened animal in a primeval forest that has begun to sense the approach of a secret and deadly foe.
The door of the room came very softly open. It was at the side of the bed, and he could not see it; but he felt an almost imperceptible vibration in the airless stuffiness in which he lay. Moreover, a breathing, catlike thing had entered the room; a thing he could neither hear nor see. It was a presence of which he was made aware by the incandescent forces of a living imagination.
It was too dark to see, there was not a sound to hear, but he knew there was a breathing shape within reach of his left hand.
Suddenly his hand shot out and closed upon it.
He caught something electric, quivering, alive. But whatever it was, a deadly silence contained it. There was not a sound, except a gasp, as of one who has made a sudden plunge into icy water. The Sailor lay inert, but now that live thing was in his hand he was not afraid.
He expected a knife. Realizing that he must defend his face or his ribs or whatever part might be open to attack, he knew he must be ready for the blow.
But a queer thing happened. The attack was not made by a knife. It was made by a human will. As he lay grappling in the darkness with his visitor, slowly but surely he felt himself enfolded by an unknown power. Such a force was beyond his experience. His own will was in a vice; there was a deadly struggle, yet neither moved. Not a sound was uttered, but in the end the Sailor nearly screamed with the overmastering tension which seemed to be pressing out his life. And then he realized that his hand was no longer holding the thing upon which it had closed.
The room was empty again. The darkness was too great for his eyes to tell him, but every sense he had, and at this moment he had more than five, seemed to say that whatever his peril, it had now passed.
He sat up and listened tensely through the still open door. He thought he could hear the creak of a foot on the stairs. Then he began to search his pockets for a box of matches, and suddenly remembered that he hadn't one. But the sense of physical danger had given him a new power over his mind. He was now terribly alert.
His instinct was to get out of that house at once. But a very little reflection showed that such a course was not necessary. It was only an old woman after all.
III
Reinforced with the idea that an old woman with wolf's eyes should have no terrors for a sailor, Henry Harper decided to stay where he was, until daylight at least. In the absence of matches and local knowledge it would not be easy to find a way out of the house in the middle of the night. Moreover if he drew the chest of drawers from under the skylight, which was too thickly plastered with generations of grime to dispense light from the sky or anywhere else, and barricaded the door, he could not be taken by surprise and need have fear of none.
He decided to do this. With arms as tough as steel, he lifted up the chest of drawers bodily and dumped it with a crash against the door. Let Grandma get through that if she could. If she did, God help her.
Yes, God help her. The Sailor suddenly took from his pocket a large, bone-hafted clasp knife. There came the friendly click of the opening blade, he felt the well ground edge lightly with the ball of his thumb. He would lie quietly for Grandma in comfort and in simple faith.
What a fool to let her go! ... the trusty friend in his hand was speaking to him.... Had you forgotten me? I'd have done Grandma's business in a brace of shakes, you know.
The Sailor, aware of that, felt rather sorry.
But in a little while there was another voice in the room. In climbing back on the bed, one hand touched the fur cap which lay at the foot of it. Instantly, a second voice spoke through the darkness.
"No, Sailor, my boy." What a voice it was! "It ain't quite white. Put your knife in your pocket, old friend. And if Grandma calls again and you feel youmustset your mark on her, what's wrong with your ten commandments, anyway?"
The tones of Klondyke filled the darkness with their music.
Sailor obeyed instinctively, in the way he had always done. He put the knife back in his pocket with a gentle sigh.
The dirty dawn of a wet October day stole on the young man's eyes as he was attempting a doze on the patched counterpane with his sea-going gear around him. The arrival of an honest Wednesday morning, chill and dismal as it was, dispelled with a magic that seemed ironical any lingering trace he might have of his night fear of Grandma. Was he not a sailor who six long years had sailed the seas? Had he not seen, done and suffered things which held him forever from any human thrall?
But Henry Harper knew better than to ask Grandma what she had got for breakfast.
He chose instead to sling his hook. Gathering his truck back into its bundle, and cramming the magic cap over his eyes, he pulled the chest of drawers away from the bedroom door. Then as soon as there was light enough to see the way he crept down the creaking stairs, unlocked, unbolted and unchained the door below, and slipped out into Wednesday morning.
Wednesday morning received him with a chill spatter of rain. He stood a minute on the cobbles of the squalid yard in front of Grandma's abode—wondering where he was, what he should do, which turn he should take. As a fact, there was only one turn he could take, and that lay straight ahead across the yard, through a short arched passageway leading to a maze of courts and alleys which led heaven knew where.
He proceeded to find out. Bundle under arm, fur cap over eyes, a roll in his gait, the Sailor emerged at last upon a main street, at present only half awake. But it contained a thing of vast importance: a policeman.
The Law in its majesty looked at the Sailor. The Sailor in his simplicity looked at the majesty of the Law. There was a time, six long, long years ago, when he would not have ventured such a liberty with the most august of human institutions. But he was through that phase of his career. By comparison with all the stripes that had since been laid upon him even the police were gentle and humane.
There was not a soul in sight except this solemn London bobby, who stood four square in the Sailor's path.
"Mornin', mister." The Sailor lifted his cap, partly from a sense of fraternity, partly from a proud feeling of being no longer afraid to do so.
The bobby surveyed the strange nondescript that had been washed up by the tide of Wapping. He looked gravely at the bundle and at the fur cap, and then decided in quite an impersonal way not to return their owner's salutation.
The Sailor was not hurt by the aloofness of the Law. He had not expected anything else. After all, the police were the police. He knew that a gulf of several hemispheres was fixed between a real three-stripe rozzer of the Metropolitan Force and a thing it had pleased fate to call by the name of Henry Harper.
"A wrong un, I expect," was the reflection of Constable H23, who always expected a wrong un at that hour of the morning. Upon the spur of this thought, the bobby suddenly turned on his heel, and saw the wrong un, bundle, fur cap and all, crossing the road like an early morning fox at the lure of a favorite hencoop. Moreover, he was crossing it for the reason that he was frantically hungry.
Across the road, at a junction it formed with three others as mean and dismal as itself, was a sight supremely blessed in the eyes of the Sailor. It was nothing less than a coffee stall in the panoply of matutinal splendor. Steaming fluids, with flames glowing under them, flanked one half of its counter; rock cakes, ham sandwiches, beef sandwiches, rolls and butter, and pork pies, splendidly honest and genuine pork pies, flanked the other half of it.
The proprietor of the stall, an optimist in white apron and shirt sleeves, being unmistakably of the male sex had no terrors for the Sailor. Besides, he was flushed with the knowledge that he had just said good morning to the police.
"Cup o' coffee, mister, and one o' them."
Nothing less than a pork pie could meet the need of the Sailor. Moreover, he dived in his pocket, took the first coin that came, which happened to be half a crown, and laid it with true Klondyke magnificence on the counter.
The proprietor of the stall, who added a power of clear thinking to his many qualities, appeared to see in the action as well as in the coin itself, a declaration of financial status on the part of the young seaman in the remarkable gear. Also this view was shared by the only one of his early morning customers who happened to be at the stall: to wit, an almost aggressively capable looking and slightly bow-legged young man with flaming red hair and ears set at right angles to his head, who was devouring a pork pie with quiet ferocity.
A single glance passed between Ike, who owned the stall, and the most influential of his patrons, who answered to the name of Ginger; a single glance and that was all.
"Nothing smaller, sonny?" said Ike, smiling and pleasant. "Not used to big money at seven g.m. Penny the corfee and two pence the pie. Three d." The proprietor raised three fingers and beamed like a seraph.
Ginger suspended operations on the pork pie to see what Dr. Nansen would do next.
The Sailor, with memories of Grandma still in his mind, put back the half-crown carefully before he brought out anything else. He was not going to give himself away this time. Thus he went warily in search of the smallest coin he could disentangle from the welter of all shapes and sizes, of all values and countries, which had been disposed in every pocket of his person. At last he produced one and laid it on the oilcloth modestly, as though he merely valued it at threepence. But in that part of the world it was valued at half a sovereign.
"Rich aunt," said the proprietor of the stall, with respectful humor.
The young man with the flaming hair turned half about, pork pie in hand, to get a better view of Dr. Nansen. This close observer proceeded to chew steadily without venturing any remark.
There was nothing left for the Sailor but to give away his wealth in handfuls now. He had to keep diving into his secret hoard, which out of deference to the thought of Grandma he was still determined not to disclose in bulk and sum. Now came up a Spanish fourpenny, now a Yankee nickel, now a Frenchman, now a Dutchman, now a Mexican half-dollar, now a noble British quid. For several crowded and glorious minutes, Ike and the most influential of his patrons had the time of their lives.
"Thank you, Count," said the proprietor of the stall urbanely, when at last the owner of the fur cap had managed to discharge his liability in coin current in the realm of Great Britain. Then, in common with the entranced Ginger, he watched the young man recruit exhausted nature.
The Sailor having made short and clean work of his first pie went on to his second, then to his second cup of coffee, then to a rock cake, then to a ham sandwich, then to a third cup of coffee, then to a third pie, when Ike and Ginger, his patron, watched with ever growing respect. And then came the business of finding ninepence, and with it a second solemn procession of Yankees and Dutchmen and Spaniards and Mexicans, which roused the respect of Ginger and Ike to such a pitch that it became almost unbearable.
"See here, Vanderbilt!" said Ike at last, yielding reluctantly the hope that the young plutocrat would ever hit the exact coin that would meet the case. "Dig up that half dollar. Me and Ginger"—a polite grimace at Ginger—"can make up one-and-nine."
Ginger, divided between the reserve of undoubted social position—he was earning good money down at the docks—and an honest desire to make himself agreeable in such romantic circumstances, warily produced a grimy and war-worn sixpence and handed it across the counter, looking Ike straight in the eyes as he did so.
"Any use?" said Ginger, calm, aloof, and casual.
In the meantime the Sailor had begun the search for his half-crown. Ginger and Ike waited hopefully, and in the end they were rewarded. The Sailor found it at last, but not before he had made an end of all secrecy. In sheer desperation he disclosed handfuls of his hoard.
"Thank yer, Count. One-and-nine change," said Ike.
IV
The Sailor, fortified by one of the best breakfasts of his life, politely said "Mornin'" to the proprietor of the coffee stall with a lift of the cap not ungraceful, adding a slightly modified ritual for the benefit of Ginger, and stepped out again into the world.
Ike and Ginger, his patron, turned to watch the Sailor go. Neither spoke, but with eyes that glowed in the gray light of the morning like those of a couple of healthy basilisks, they marked all that the young man did. The Sailor walked into the middle of the road to the point where four arteries of traffic met, and then hesitation overcame him as to what he should do next. For a little while, he stood looking up one street and down another with an expression of bewilderment upon his face.
"So long," said Ginger to Ike.
The proprietor of the stall had now none to share his thoughts. He saw Ginger, assured but wary, saunter up to the Sailor as he stood at gaze; saw him touch the young man on the shoulder as if by chance rather than design; saw him speak words which, bend across the counter as he might, he was too far away to catch.
"Lookin' for anything?" were the words that Ginger spoke. Moreover, he spoke them blandly, yet with such a subdued air that he might have been talking in his sleep. The Sailor, whose eyes were far away in the gray mists of the morning, was looking for nothing, it seemed.
"Which way you goin'?" asked Ginger, in the same tone of mild somnambulism.
"Dunno," said the Sailor, his eyes farther away than ever.
"Don't know," repeated Ginger.
At this point, he ventured to look very hard and straight into the face of the Sailor. His knowledge of the human race was pretty considerable for one of his years, and there was something about the wearer of the fur cap that interested him. The face under it was fine-drawn, much tanned by the weather, open as the sky. Ginger then flung an expert's eye over the lean length of blue jersey which surmounted a grotesque pair of leggings.
"You don't know," said Ginger. "Well, suppose you walk as far as the docks?"
The Sailor didn't seem to mind.
"Been long at sea?" inquired Ginger, as with intimate local knowledge he piloted the young man through a series of short cuts.
"Six year."
"Have ye so!" Ginger was surprised and impressed. "Like it?"
The eyes of the Sailor looked straight down into those of Ginger. But he didn't say anything.
"You didn't like it?"
"No."
"Why did you stick it, then?"
"Dunno."
The conversation languished a moment, but Ginger's curiosity was increasing.
"Still foller the sea?"
"No."
"What's yer job?"
"Ain't got one."
Ginger stroked a resolute jaw.
"Lookin' for a billet?"
"Yep."
"Ashore?"
The Sailor nodded.
"Better come with me, then," said Ginger, with an air of decision. "Dare say we can fix you at our shop. Fifteen bob a week ... fifteen bob and a tizzey ... if you leave it ter me."
The heart of the Sailor leaped under his jersey. This was big money as money was understood aboard theMargaret Carey.
At the end of a narrow street they came suddenly upon the dock gates. Through these on the left, then to the left again, and then to the right was the private wharf of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited, and also at Hull and Grimsby. Ginger, having told the Sailor tersely to wait outside, entered the decrepit wooden office at the entrance to the wharf, with the air of a partner in the firm. After he had had two minutes' conversation with a melancholy individual with a red nose and a celluloid collar, he beckoned to the Sailor to come inside.
The Sailor entered the office like a man in a dream.
"Name?" said, or rather snapped, the Individual.
"Enry Arper."
The Individual took down the time book from the rack above his head with a vehemence that seemed quite uncalled for, opened it savagely, dipped a pen in a cracked inkpot and dashed down the name ferociously.
"Sign."
The Sailor took up the pen coolly and with a sense of power. The Individual was a mere babe at the breast compared to Mr. Thompson and the Old Man. Moreover, the ability to sign his name was his one literary accomplishment and he was honorably proud of it. Klondyke had taught him that, and he had hung on for all he was worth to such a priceless asset. H-e-n with a Hen, r-y Henry, H-a-r with a Har, p-e-r Harper—the letters were formed very carefully with his tongue sticking out of his mouth.
Ginger, rather impressed by the insouciance of the whole proceeding, then led the Sailor across the yard to his duties. He wasn't quite such a guy as he looked. There was something there it seemed; something that went pretty deep. Ginger noted it not unfavorably. He was all for depth. He was a great believer in depth.
The Sailor was informed by this new and providential friend that he had stood out for the princely emolument of seventeen and a tizzey, and had been able to get it. This was big money for his rank of life, but his occupation was menial. He had to haul sacks, to load and unload cargoes. Still he didn't complain. It was the life of a gentleman in comparison with being afloat on the high seas.
To be sure his money was not as big as it looked. He had to live out of it and to find a berth to sleep in at night. But making every allowance for longshore extravagance there could be no doubt that this new existence was sheer luxury after six years of Sing and wet hash and hard-tack and a bed in the half-deck of theMargaret Carey.
Dinner time came at twelve o'clock, and under the ægis of Ginger, the Sailor walked up the main street once more to Ike's coffee stall, and at Ginger's expense had as much as he could eat for sixpence. He wanted to pay his own shot and Ginger's also, but Ginger simply would not hear of such a thing. This was His, he said firmly; and when Ginger spoke firmly it generally had to be His whatever it was or might be. It was nice of Ginger; all the same that paladin was far-sighted, he was clear-headed, he was sure and cool. What Ginger didn't know was not knowledge, and it was no less a person than Ike who said so.
For example, after dinner, which took exactly twelve minutes by the clock of the Booteries across the road and opposite the stall, Ginger remarked almost in the manner of one who communes with his subliminal self, "There's one thing yer wantin'."
The Sailor looked incredulous. At that moment he felt it was not in the power of wide earth or high heaven to offer him anything further.
"You want a belt for your brass." Ginger spoke behind his hand in a whisper. "Mon't carry it loose. Wear it round your waist, next your skin. Money's money."
Ike, absorbed in the polite occupation of brushing stray crumbs of rock cake from the strip of grimy oilcloth which graced the counter, was so much impressed by Ginger's grasp of mind that he had the misfortune to bring down a jubilee mug with his elbow, without breaking it, fortunately.
Ginger laid such emphasis upon the point that the Sailor accompanied him across the street to Grewcock's emporium, where body belts were kept in stock. A careful survey of all to be found on the premises, together with an examination, equally careful, of their prices convinced Ginger that better value for the money could be had elsewhere. Thus they withdrew lower down the street to Tollemache and Pearson's, where unfortunately the scale of charges was even higher.
This was discouraging, but there was a silver lining to the cloud. It appeared that Ginger had a belt, which in his own opinion was far superior to anything they had yet seen; it was Russia leather of the finest quality and he was willing to sell it for less than it cost if the Sailor was open to the deal. The Sailor was not averse from doing business, as Ginger felt sure would be the case, when the material advantages had been pointed out to him. But as Ginger had not the belt upon him he suggested that they should call at his lodgings on their way back to the docks in order that the Sailor might inspect it.
Ginger's lodgings were within a stone's throw of the wharf of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited. Not only were they very clean and comfortable, but also remarkably convenient; in fact, they were most desirable lodgings in every way. Their only drawback was they were not cheap. Otherwise they were first class.
By a coincidence the Sailor, it seemed, was in need of good lodgings as well as a belt for his money. Before he returned to the wharf of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited, at one o'clock, he had been provided with things so necessary to his comfort, well-being, and social status.