His Excellency Hao Su Ting seated himself beside the table, deliberately put on his round spectacles with heavy tortoise-shell rims, and tucked his hands inside his flowing sleeves. The deferential secretary stood waiting for him to speak. O’Shea fidgeted and yearned to break the silence. The airhad turned chill with an east wind that blew strong and damp from the sea. Nevertheless the ambassador found it necessary to take a handkerchief from his sleeve and wipe the little beads of perspiration from his bald brow. O’Shea made note of it, and wondered what powerful emotion moved behind the round spectacles and calm, benignant countenance of the diplomat.
At length he spoke to the secretary in Chinese and indicated O’Shea with a slow wave of the hand. The young man translated with some unreadiness as though endeavoring to bring the words within the bounds of courtesy.
“His Excellency says that it is impossible, that you are mistaken. He is not convinced.”
“He calls me a liar?” and O’Shea’s sense of humor was stirred. With his easy, boyish laugh he added: “’Tis your own reputation for veracity that needs overhaulin’, me lad. Your own two eyes have seen the thing. I had the proof, but ye would not let me take the two-legged document by the collar and fetch him to the house.”
The ambassador turned to the table at his elbow. Upon it was an ink box and a soft brush used for writing his own language. From a drawer he withdrew a sheet of rice-paper. Shoving these toward O’Shea, he said something and the secretary explained:
“He wishes you to write what it is like, the thing that I also have seen. Please be good enough to oblige.”
The brand was etched in O’Shea’s memory. Without hesitation he picked up the brush and blazoned the character in broad, firm strokes. For perhaps a minute His Excellency gazed at it. Then he caught up the sheet of rice-paper and tore it into small fragments.
“He is now convinced that you and I speak truth,” the secretary murmured in O’Shea’s ear.
“Well and good. He looks as if it made him unwell. Now can we get down to business and tackle the mystery of it? It is Chinese writing. What does it mean? That is me errand.”
His Excellency Hao Su Ting no longer resembled a round-faced Buddha seated in reposeful meditation upon a throne of teak-wood. The words came from him in a torrential flow, and the harsh, sing-song intonations were terribly in earnest. It was a harangue that warned, expostulated, lamented with all the fervor of an issue that concerned life and death. It startled O’Shea to behold a man of his unemotional race, and one so hedged about with the dignity of rank, in this stormy tide of feeling. It ceased abruptly. The old man sank into his chair and closed his eyes. The secretary rang a gong for a servant and ordered tea. Presently the ambassador signified that he wished to retire to a couch, and others of his staff attended him into the library and thence to an upper floor of the house.
The secretary returned to join O’Shea and began to explain in his measured, monotonous way:
“I will now inform you as much as it is permittedto know. It disappoints you, I am aware, that his Excellency is unable to translate the writing character which has made so much disturbance. Nor can I translate it, either into Chinese or English words. My language is what you call arbitrary, built up of symbols, not letters. This particular character has been invented to signify some secret purpose. It has the root-sign forman, and also the two curved lines which mean asending, amessage. The rest of it is hidden from us. His Excellency is a scholar of the highest grade among the literati of China. This character, as a whole, he has never been able to find in the classics or the dictionaries.”
More puzzled than ever, O’Shea broke in to demand:
“But if nobody knows what it means, why does the sight of it start a full-sized panic?”
“Many men in China have been found dead, and upon their backs had been hacked with a sword this strange character. It was thus that the own brother of His Excellency was discovered, in the court-yard of his house.”
“I begin to see daylight,” said O’Shea.
“Ah, there is only the blackest darkness,” gravely replied the secretary. “The branded men have not been coolies, but officials, merchants, people of station. No precautions avail. It smites them like the lightning from the sky. The fear of it walks everywhere. And now it has crossed the sea like an evil shadow.”
“That is not quite right,” was the matter-of-factcomment. “Poor Bill Maguire got it in China and brought it with him. ’Tis not likely to trouble you.”
“Never have we heard of a man who lived and walked with this mark upon his back, Captain O’Shea. All those to whom this fate has happened were infallibly dead. When they beheld it this afternoon, some of our people believed they gazed upon a red-haired ghost. I am an educated man, a graduate of Oxford University, but I tell you my blood turned to water and my heart was squeezed tight.”
“My friend Maguire is hard to kill,” said O’Shea. “I tried it meself. So he was put on the list by this damnable whatever-it-is, and the autograph was carved on him, and he was left for dead! Can ye tell me any more?”
“It is not in my power to enlighten you. I have known of men who found this character painted on the posts of their gate-ways. They surrounded themselves with soldiers and hired guards. They moved not from within their own walls. And they could not save themselves. They died as I have described it to you.”
“I have listened to pleasanter yarns. I am greatly obliged to ye,” and O’Shea was ready to take his departure. “I am afraid I will know no more unless Bill Maguire uncorks himself and confides the story of his life.”
“When the time comes it will interest me greatly to be informed of it,” said the secretary, offering his hand.
“Pass me kind regards to His Excellency and givehim my regrets that I jolted his nervous system. He is a fine old gentleman.”
The shipmaster hastened on foot to the railroad station, where Johnny Kent was patiently and peacefully awaiting orders. The red-haired sailor was sitting on a baggage truck and munching peanuts. At sight of O’Shea he grinned in recognition and waved a greeting hand. The engineer was eager for tidings, but a train was almost due and he was briefly assured:
“’Tis a bugaboo tale, Johnny, and we will digest it at our leisure. And how has Bill behaved himself?”
“As good as gold, Cap’n Mike. But there’s something goin’ on inside him. His eye looks brighter and he has mumbled to himself several times. I dunno whether he’s primin’ himself for another explosion or kind of rememberin’ himself in spots. Anyhow, he has symptoms.”
“We will steer him home as soon as we can, Johnny. He has enjoyed an exciting afternoon.”
The locomotive whistled and a few minutes later they filed into the smoking-car. O’Shea fished out a black cigar and his comrade rammed a charge of cut plug into his old clay pipe. No sooner had they lighted matches than their irresponsible protégé reached over and snatched them away. Instead of trying to set fire to the car or to the abundant whiskers of the old gentleman across the aisle he flung the matches on the floor and stamped them with his heel. His guardians regarded him with puzzledsurprise, and were not quick enough to restrain him before he surged among the passengers and plucked from their faces every lighted cigar, cigarette, and pipe. These he rudely made way with by grinding them under his feet or tossing them through the windows.
The persons thus outraged were for assaulting him until they perceived the width of his shoulders, the depth of his chest, and the color of his hair. The shipmaster and the engineer tackled him like a brace of foot-ball players, yanked him back to his seat, and calmed the ruffled travellers with explanations and offers to pay damages. The blue eye of Bill Maguire was alertly roving to detect the first sign of smoke, and during the remainder of his journey no one dared to burn the hazy incense of tobacco.
“You’re a great man for theories, Cap’n Mike,” quoth the bewildered engineer. “Can you figger what’s happened to Bill?”
“I am on a lee shore this time, Johnny. I would call him a firebug no longer. He has turned himself into a fire department.”
“That’s precisely it,” excitedly cried the other. “And here’s how I explain it. He’s had some mighty violent experiences during the last twenty-four hours, what with your tryin’ to knock his head off and runnin’ him afoul of those Chinamen which is his pet aversion. His intellect has jarred a mite loose from its dead centre, but one cog slipped into reverse gear. In place of settin’ fires, he wants to put ’emout. His machinery ain’t adjusted right, but it’s movin’. Instead of starting ahead on this conflagration theory of his, he goes full speed astern.”
“You are a knowing old barnacle,” admiringly exclaimed O’Shea. “This ought to make Bill an easier problem to handle. The strain of keeping up with him begins to tell on me.”
“Pshaw, Cap’n Mike, I’ll set him to work on the farm if this latest spell sticks to him.”
They drove home from the village in the twilight. The Perkins boy had tarried to do the chores and kindle a fire for supper. He fled without his hat when the big, silent, red-haired stranger marched into the kitchen, halted to look at the blazing grate, and promptly caught up a pail of water from the sink and flooded the stove. Johnny Kent entered a moment later and gazed aghast at the dripping, sizzling embers. Then his common-sense got the better of his annoyance and he shouted to O’Shea:
“Bill’s gear is still reversed. Coax him out on the porch and hold him there while I get supper. He just put the stove awash.”
O’Shea laughed and took charge of the derelict, while Johnny locked the kitchen doors and windows and rekindled the fire. Freed from the fear that the cottage and barn might go up in smoke, the comrades enjoyed a quiet evening. Maguire was disposed of in the attic bedroom and insisted on going to bed in the dark.
“He will not wander away,” said O’Shea. “His wits are in a sad mess, but he knows he has found a friendly anchorage.”
They felt the need of sleep, and Johnny Kent was yawning before he had heard the end of the interview with His Excellency Hao Su Ting. It entertained him, but the edge of his interest was blunted. The hapless sailor in the attic had been struck down and mutilated by some secret organization of Chinese assassins, and there was no finding out the meaning of the brand upon his back. It was their trademark. This was explanation enough. It satisfied the engineer’s curiosity. He had no great amount of imagination, and although he was ready to share his last dollar with the helpless Maguire, he felt no further call to pursue the mystery of his wrongs.
Captain O’Shea was very differently affected. He had not forsaken the quest of adventure. His soul was not content with cabbages and cows. The world beyond the horizon was always calling in his ears. As children are fond of fairy-stories, so his fancy was lured by the bizarre, the unexpected, the unknown. Your true adventurer is, after all, only a boy who has never grown up. His desires are wholly unreasonable and he sets a scandalous example. If you had asked him the question, this rattle-headed shipmaster would have frankly answered that nothing could give him more enjoyment than to sail for China and try to discover how and why the brand had been put on Maguire. Besides, he had an Irishman’s habit of taking over another man’s quarrel.
“Poor Bill cannot square it himself,” reflected O’Shea. “’Tis the duty of some one to undertakeit for him. It makes an honest man’s blood boil to think of the black wickedness that was done to him. As long as the heathen are contented to murder one another ’tis no business of mine. But an American sailorman—and maybe he is not the only one.”
When he went downstairs in the morning, Johnny Kent was in the barricaded kitchen and Maguire paced the porch with the air of a man physically refreshed. He paid no heed to O’Shea, who was amazed to discover that he was talking to himself. The sounds he made were no longer inarticulate, but words and fragments of sentences curiously jumbled. In the stress of great excitement he had previously spoken with brief coherence, only to lapse into dumbness. Now, however, with no sudden stimulus to flash a ray of light into his darkened mind, he was beginning to find himself, to grope for expression like a child painfully and clumsily learning to read. To the listening O’Shea it sounded like heaping phrases together in a basket and fishing them out at random.
The sailor’s voice had lost much of its harshness. Its tones were rather deep and pleasant. Swinging his long arms as he walked, he kept repeating such disjointed ideas as these:
“Heave her short—eleven dollars Mex—no, Paddy Blake—a big wax doll—all clear forward, sir—stinking river—roll the dice—the painted joss—a year from home—way enough—Wang Li Fu—die like rats—sampan, ahoy—no more drinks—good-by,Mary dear—in the paint locker—the head-devil—fish and potatoes.”
It made O’Shea feel dizzy to listen to this interminable nonsense, but he followed it most attentively, and stole behind a lilac-bush lest Maguire should spy him and be diverted from his mad soliloquy. For some time there was no catching hold of a clew, but at length the shrewd shipmaster began to sift out certain phrases which were emphasized by reiteration. They were, in a way, themotifof the jargon, hinting of impressions most clearly stamped on the man’s mind.
He mentioned again and again “the painted joss,” and occasionally coupled it with reference to “the stinking river.” Stress seemed to be laid also on the proper nameWang Li Fu. Many of the other fragments O’Shea discarded as worthless. Some of them related to routine duties on shipboard. He hazarded a guess that the sailor was a married man. At any rate, he had left a “Mary dear,” and it was a plausible conjecture that he had promised to bring home “a big wax doll.”
When Maguire became silent O’Shea made for the kitchen and hammered on the door.
“Is that you, Cap’n Mike?” responded the perturbed accents of Johnny Kent. “If it’s Bill, he can stay out till breakfast’s cooked. I don’t want my stove drownded again.”
Reassured, he cautiously admitted the shipmaster who pounded him on the back and shouted:
“Bill has been leakin’ language from every pore.’Tis all snarled up most comical, but I seem to get hold of a loose end now and then.”
“Hooray, Cap’n Mike! It’s just as I said. When you hit him over the ear it sort of jarred his brain loose. It ain’t fetched clear yet, but he’s begun to make steam in his crazy fashion. What does he say?”
“Wait till I tow him in to breakfast and maybe he will start up again.”
But Maguire ate in silence and O’Shea could not persuade him to pick up the rambling monologue. Johnny Kent therefore escorted the sailor to the garden, gave him a hoe, and thriftily set him to work. He fell to with the greatest good-will and showed an aptitude which betokened an earlier acquaintance with this form of husbandry.
After a discussion of some length the engineer exclaimed:
“You’re a bright man, Cap’n Mike, but you haven’t knocked around the Chinese ports as much as I have. Bill mentioned one or two things that I can elucidate. Paddy Blake, eh? So he knows Paddy Blake. The blackguard runs a sailors’ rum-shop in Shanghai. It’s just off the Bund, as you turn up the street that’s next to the French Concession. I’ve rolled the dice for drinks there myself and blown my wages and mixed up in some free-for-all fights that would have done your heart good.”
“’Tis a glimpse into the fog, Johnny. Maybe this rapscallion of a Paddy Blake would know poor old Bill if he had a description of him. We can guessat some of the rest of it. Bill went up a Chinese river somewhere and got in black trouble ashore. It had to do with a temple and a joss.”
“One of them big carved wooden idols, Cap’n Mike, painted all red and yellow and white.”
“And it looks to me as if he stumbled into a headquarters of this bunch of thugs that has been dealing out sudden death to prominent Chinese citizens, Johnny. Anyhow, he ran afoul of some kind of a ‘head-devil,’ as he calls it, and was left for dead.”
“Then it’s possible that Bill knows the secret of this organization of cock-eyed murderers,” excitedly cried the engineer.
“The same notion is in me own mind,” replied O’Shea.
A dusty man just then rode a bicycle into the door-yard and dismounted to give the shipmaster a yellow envelope.
“I guess you’re Captain Michael O’Shea,” said he. “The station agent got this telegram for you and asked me to stop and deliver it, seein’ as I was passin’ this way. How are you, Mr. Kent? Seen anything of that pesky firebug? I see you’ve got a new hired man in the garden.”
“I’m thankful to say the firebug is letting me alone,” gravely answered the engineer.
“I cal’late he heard the selectmen had offered a reward for him and he lit out of this neighborhood.”
The messenger departed, and Captain O’Shea, glancing at the telegram, crumpled it in his fist and vouchsafed with a laugh:
“’Tis from the man in New York, the agent in charge of that voyage to the Persian Gulf. For political reasons the job is postponed a matter of six months or so, and maybe it will be declared off altogether. The charter is cancelled and my contract along with it.”
“I suppose you’re disappointed,” sympathetically began Johnny Kent.
“Not so I shed tears. Something else will turn up. And ’tis me chance to take a vacation, Johnny. Thanks to our salvage job with theAlsatianliner, I have more money than is good for me.”
“Now’s your chance to buy that next farm and get it under way,” and the portly mariner was elated.
O’Shea eyed his comrade as if suspecting that he shared the melancholy affliction of Bill Maguire.
“You mean well, Johnny,” said he, “but you are subject to delusions. I will enjoy a vacation after me own heart. With the money that burns holes in me pockets, I will go frolickin’ out to China and do me best to find out what happened to Bill Maguire. I suppose I cannot coax ye to go with me.”
“Pshaw, Cap’n Mike!” and the honest farmer looked surprised. “I’ve engaged a gang of men to begin cuttin’ my hay next week. And who’s to look after poor old Bill? I can’t seem to beat it into your head that I’ve turned respectable. The wilder the job, the better you like it.”
“I have taken quite a fancy to this one,” and O’Shea’s eyes were dancing. “It has been haunting me, in a way, ever since I caught sight of thecruel brand and listened to the yarn of those Chinese gentlemen. As one seafarin’ man to another, I will do what I can to square the account of Bill Maguire.”
“It’s the first time I ever laid down on you,” sighed Johnny Kent.
“I do not hold it against ye,” warmly returned Captain O’Shea. “And maybe you ought to stand watch over Bill. It would be cruel to lug him out to China, for the sight of a pigtail gives him acute fits. And he would turn crazier than ever. Well, I will go it alone this time, Johnny. ’Tis a most foolish adventure, and by the same token it pleases me a lot.”
Steamers flying the flags of many nations were anchored in the Woosung River off the water-front of Shanghai. High-pooped junks tacked past them and cargo lighters manned by half-naked coolies drifted with the muddy tide. In a handsome, solidly fashioned perspective extended the European quarter of the city, as unlike the real China as London or New York. Turbanned Sikh policemen, tall and dignified, in soldierly khaki and puttees, strolled through the clean, well-paved streets. English, French, and German merchants clad in white were spun around corners in ’rickshaws pulled by sweating natives muscled like race-horses. Tourists lounged on the piazzas of the Astor House or explored the shops filled with things rare and curious.Unseen and unperceived was the native city of Shanghai, incredibly filthy and overcrowded, containing a half-million souls within its lantern-hung streets and paper-walled tenements.
Near the river, at the end of the English quarter farthest removed from the parks and pretentious hotels, was a row of small, shabby brick buildings which might have belonged in Wapping or the Ratcliff Road. There was nothing picturesquely foreign about them or their environment. Two or three were sailors’ lodging-houses, and another was the tumultuous tavern ruled over by Paddy Blake. Here seafarers swore in many tongues and got drunk each in his own fashion, but Paddy Blake treated them all alike. When their wages were gone he threw them out or bundled them off to ships that needed men, and took his blood-money like the thorough-going crimp that he was.
On this night the place was well filled. A versatile cabin steward off a Pacific liner was lustily thumping the battered tin pan of a piano. Six couples of hairy seamen, British and Norwegian, were waltzing with so much earnestness that the floor was cleared as by a hurricane. Cards and dice engaged the attention of several groups seated about the tables by the wall. In blurred outline, as discerned through the fog of tobacco smoke, a score of patrons lined the bar and bought bad rum with good coin. For the moment peace reigned and never a fist was raised.
Captain Michael O’Shea sauntered in during thiscalm between storms. The dingy room and its sordid amusements had a familiar aspect. It was precisely like the resorts of other seaports as he had known them during his wild young years before the mast. The bar-tender was a pasty-faced youth who replied to O’Shea’s interrogation concerning Paddy Blake:
“The old man has stepped out for a couple of hours. He had a bit of business aboard a vessel in the stream. Will you wait for him? If you’re lookin’ for able seamen he can find ’em for you.”
“I have no doubt of it,” said O’Shea, “and he will bring them aboard feet first. Fetch me a bottle of ginger-ale to the table in the corner yonder and I will wait awhile.”
The wall of the room was broken by a small alcove which made a nook a little apart from the playful mariners. Here O’Shea smoked his pipe and sipped his glass and was diverted by the noisy talk of ships and ports. At a small table near by sat a man, also alone, who appeared to be in a most melancholy frame of mind. Discouragement was written on his stolid, reddened face, in the wrinkles of the worn gray tweed clothes, in the battered shape of the slouch hat.
O’Shea surmised that he was a beach-comber who had seen better days, and surveyed him with some curiosity, for the man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, his lip quivered, and once he was unable to suppress an audible sob. To find a sturdily built man of middle-age weeping alone in a corner of asailor’s grog-shop led one to conclude that alcohol had made him maudlin. But he did not look intoxicated, although dissipation had left its marks on him. O’Shea conjectured that he might be suffering the aftermath of a spree which had broken his nerves and left him weak and womanish. In such a pitiable plight, the contemplation of his own woes had moved him to tears.
Tactfully waiting until the man had recovered his self-control, O’Shea nodded with a cordial smile and indicated a chair at his own table. The stranger shifted his place with a certain eagerness, as if he were anxious to be rid of his own miserable company. His tremulous hands and the twitching muscles of his face prompted O’Shea to say:
“Will you have something with me? I dislike sitting by meself.”
“A small drink of brandy, if you please. I am trying to taper off. God knows I welcome the chance to talk to somebody that is clean and sober.”
The man’s heavy, morose eyes regarded the shipmaster approvingly. Presently he began to talk with fluent coherence, in a kind of headlong manner. He felt that he had found a kindly listener and seemed afraid that O’Shea might desert him before the tale was done.
“I am on the beach and all to pieces again, as you may have guessed,” said he. “My name is McDougal, late of the American Trading Company, but I couldn’t hold the job. This time I went to smash in Tientsin. It was queer how it happened.I had been sober and making good for nearly six months. Ever see a Chinese execution? Well, this was an extraordinary affair. A high official of the province had been condemned for treason, and the government decided to make a spectacle of him as a sort of public warning. The place was the big yard of the governor’s yamen. I joined the crowd that looked on. First came a covered cart with black curtains. A strapping big Manchu crawled out of it. He was the executioner, and a dingy apron covered with dark-red blotches hung from his chin to his toes.
“Then came a second cart, and in it rode an old gentleman who climbed out and walked alone to the cleared space in the middle of the yard. He was bent and feeble, but he never flinched, and his dignity and rank stood out as plain as print. A guard said something to him, and he took off his long, fur-trimmed coat and knelt on the filthy flagging and the wind whirled the dust in his face. He knelt there, waiting, for a long time, motionless except when he put his hand to his throat and pulled his collar around it to keep off the wind.
“A pompous official read the death sentence, but that wrinkled old face showed never a trace of emotion. Then a pair of the executioner’s understrappers leaped on the old gentleman like wild-cats. One jumped on his back and drove his knees into him, while the other tied a bit of cord to the end of the trailing queue and yanked forward with all his might. It stretched the old man’s neck like a turtle’s. Thenthe big Manchu with the bloody apron raised his straight-edged sword and it fell like a flash of light. The head flew off and bounced into the lap of the fellow that was tugging at the queue.”
McDougal paused for a gulp of brandy. His voice was unsteady as he resumed:
“I guess my nerves were none too good. A man can’t go boozing up and down the coast of the Orient for a dozen years without paying the price. That sight was too much for me. I had to take a drink, and then some more, to forget it. The old man was so patient and helpless, his head bounced off like an apple; and what broke me up worst of all was seeing him pull that coat up around his throat so he wouldn’t catch cold—up around his throat, mind you. It was a little thing, but, my God, what did it matter if he caught cold? And the way they hauled and yanked him about before his neck was—well, I wish I hadn’t seen it.
“Once started, the old thirst took hold of me and I wandered down the coast until I came to, sick and broke, in a dirty Chinese tea-house in Che-Foo. There I lay until one day there came from the street a long, booming cry that crashed through the high-pitched clatter of the crowd like surf on a granite shore. By Jove! it stirred me like a battle-chant. It sounded again and again. I knew it must be a pedler shouting his wares, you understand, but it surged into my poor sick brain as if it was meant for me. It was buoyant, big, telling me to take heart in the last ditch. The words were Chinese, ofcourse, but the odd thing about it was that they came to me precisely as though this great, deep voice was booming in English: ‘Throw-w all-l regrets away-y.’
“I presume I was a bit delirious at times, but this was what I heard very clearly, and it helped me wonderfully. As soon as I got on my legs I looked for the pedler until I found him, and followed him through the streets. Even at close range his call seemed to be telling me to throw all regrets away. It was summoning me to make a new start, do you see? He was a giant of a fellow in ragged blue clothes, a yoke across his broad shoulders with many dangling flat baskets. When he swelled his chest and opened his mouth the air trembled with that tremendous call of his. I trailed him to his tiny mud-walled house, and we got quite chummy. I could speak his dialect fairly well. He earned ten or fifteen cents a day and supported a family of nine people by selling roasted watermelon seeds. He sang loud because he had a big voice, he said, and because his heart was honest and he owed no man anything. He did a lot to help me get a grip on myself, and some day I mean to do something for him.
“I had somehow hung on to my watch, and I sold it and beat my way to Shanghai in a trading steamer, and here I am, shaky and no good to anybody, but I still hear that cheerful pedler thundering at me to throw all regrets away. One has some curious experiences on this coast, and I have had many ofthem——”
A hand gripped McDougal’s shoulder, and he turned, with a nervous start, to confront a hale, well-dressed mariner with a yellow beard, whose eyes twinkled merrily as he loudly exclaimed:
“It vas mein old pal what I haf last met at Port Arthur. Ho, ho, McDougal, how goes it mit you?”
The speaker drew up a chair, pounded on the table to summon a waiter, and told him:
“A bundle of trinks,schnell, or I bite you in two.”
“I’m delighted to see you again, Captain Spreckels,” stammered McDougal, at which O’Shea introduced himself, and the mariner explained with a jolly laugh:
“McDougal vas a king among men. We haf met only one hour in Port Arthur when I haf told him things what was locked so deep in my bosom dot they haf never before come up. Perhaps we vas not so sober as now, so? What you do with yourself, McDougal? American Trading Company yet already?”
“I am on the beach, Captain Spreckels, and not fit to work at anything for a while.”
The skipper appeared vastly disturbed. Stroking his beard, he reflected for a moment and then shouted:
“My bark,Wilhelmina Augusta, sails for Hamburg to-morrow morning early. She is now at the mouth of the river. I vas come up in a tug to find if Paddy Blake haf three more men for me. McDougal, you comes mit me. It vas the great idea, eh? The sea-voyage will do you so much good you will not know yourself. I vish to haf your goodcompany. My cabin is as big as a house. It will cost you noddings. If you want to come out East again, I can bring you back next voyage. Listen! Give me no arguments. You vas seedy and down on your luck.”
McDougal lacked the will power to resist this masterful mandate. And perhaps here was a fighting chance providentially offered. On the sweet, clean sea, far from the dissolute ports which had wrecked his manhood, he might build up health and strength and throw all regrets away. A fit of nervous weakness made the tears spring to his eyes, and he faltered unevenly:
“You quite bowl me off my feet, Captain Spreckels. I haven’t thought of leaving the East. But I will go with you and I can never thank you enough. About clothes and an outfit,I——”
“I haf more clothes than a plenty for two of us, McDougal. There is beer but no whiskey in my vessel. I do not trink liquor at sea. Come. Paddy Blake haf left word mit his man here dot my sailors vas already sent to the landing mit a boarding-house runner. We will go aboard the tug.”
With this, the energetic master mariner tossed down a gin rickey, said adieu to Captain O’Shea, and whisked McDougal out of the place with an arm across his shoulders. The episode made O’Shea feel slightly bewildered. The unfortunate McDougal had appeared and vanished with an abruptness that savored of unreality. His confession was the sort of thing that might come to a man in a nightmare.McDougal had painted the scenes with a few broad strokes, and yet as O’Shea sat musing, they seemed astonishingly vivid: the aged Chinese official pulling his coat about his neck just before his head bounced off like a bloody ball—the ragged colossus of a street pedler flinging afar his resonant call—McDougal, wretched and forlorn, huddled in the tea-house and fighting off the horrors. He had opened the book of his life and let O’Shea read a page of it, but there must have been many more worth knowing.
These reflections were interrupted by a violent dissension in the vicinity of the bar. A British tar smote a Scandinavian over the head with a bottle and stretched him on the floor. Somebody plucked the piano stool from under the musical cabin steward and hurled it at the aggressor. The missile flew high and swept the bar-tender into his glassware with a most splendid crash. Then hostilities became general.
The combatants were too busy to observe the entrance of a wizened, clerical-looking little man in a black frock-coat and a rusty tall hat. With a shrill whoop, he pulled a slung-shot from his pocket and pranced into the thick of the scrimmage. He was as agile as a jumping-jack, his coat-tails seemed to be flying in a dozen places at once, and whenever his weapon landed a seaman promptly lost all interest in the row and made for the street with his head tenderly held in his hands. In the wake of the active little man peace hovered like a dove.
With magical celerity the floor was cleared of disorder, and the promoter of harmony calmly assisted the damaged bar-tender to clear away the wreckage. Captain O’Shea accosted him when the task was finished.
“Paddy Blake is me name,” the little man replied in a jerky, rasping voice, cocking his head to one side. “The boys will have their fun and I hope they didn’t annoy ye. The place will be quiet for a bit. What can I do for ye?”
“’Tis a matter of private business,” answered O’Shea.
“Then come into the back room, where we can be sociable. I take ye for a shipmaster.”
“Right you are; but I have no ship at present. You might call me a tourist.”
Paddy Blake briskly led the way to a cubby-hole of a room with a very strong door, which he made fast with a bolt. There was a window whose shutters were of iron. O’Shea suspected that fuddled seamen might be tucked in here for safe-keeping when the occasion required. The two Irishmen studied each other with a kind of cheerful, candid appraisement. Each recognized in the other certain qualities to be admired. Paddy Blake was a hardened old ruffian, but he was a two-fisted little man with the courage of a terrier.
“I have come a long way to find you,” said O’Shea. “And it was imparted to me that the business that has brought me to China had best be discussed in whispers. ’Tis a mighty queeryarn——”
“Ye need not fill and back. Steam ahead. I like your looks,” broke in Paddy Blake. “Whatever passes bechune us stays inside the door. Are ye in throuble?”
“Not me. This is about a friend of mine. Tell me, Paddy Blake, and think hard. Do ye recall a strappin’ big man with red hair and blue eyes and a deep voice that used to roll the dice in your place? Hold a minute; I have not done with him. One front tooth was broken so you would notice it when he talked. And he had a crooked little finger that must have stuck out when he held a glass or waved his hand about.”
Paddy Blake puckered his brows and pinched his long upper lip between a grimy thumb and forefinger.
“What was he—a Yankee?” he asked, sitting straighter in his chair and gazing at the shipmaster with puzzled, groping interest.
“He was an American seafarin’ man—a mate most likely. You could not forget him if you cast eyes on him only once. Yankee sailors are scarce in deep-water ports. This one should stick out in your recollection like a light-house in a fog.”
“A whale of a man with a red head and an eye as blue as a bit of the Inland Sea!” vehemently exclaimed Paddy Blake. “And when was he in me place? How long ago was it?”
“’Tis yourself that must answer that question. At a guess, it was more than a year ago.”
The spry little man bounded to his feet andclutched the tails of his coat with both hands as he bent forward with his face close to O’Shea’s and rasped out:
“He has popped into me head like a flash. And a mushy-brained dunce I was not to know him at once. Eldridge ye mean—Jim Eldridge, that was mate in the China Navigation Company’s steamerTai Yan, chartered to run coastwise. A whoppin’ big beggar he was, but mild-mannered and good-hearted, the quietest red-headed man that iver I saw in me life.”
“Are you sure of that?” demanded O’Shea. “Could you swear to it?”
“I remimber him as plain as I see you,” testily returned Paddy Blake. “He was not in me place often. ’Twas too rough for him.”
“And did you ever chance to hear what had become of him?”
The little man tapped O’Shea’s arm with an eloquent finger and replied in lower tones:
“It comes back to me that there was a yarn about him. ’Twas gossip, ye understand, nawthin’ that ye could put your finger on. Shanghai is a great place for wild stories. The Shanghai liar is a special breed, and he is famous all over the world. Annyhow, there was a voyage of theTai Yansteamer when he didn’t come to port in her. Shortly after that she broke her back on a reef in the Formosa Channel and all hands was lost, so I never heard anny news from her people about this Jim Eldridge.”
“That was most unfortunate,” said O’Shea; “butI am in great luck to get track of the man at all. And have you anybody in mind that might have known Eldridge when he was sailing on this coast?”
The volatile Paddy Blake who saw so many mariners pass through his place during the year was mentally sifting his recollections which were many and confusing. The big red-headed man had steered clear of rum and riot and was no steady frequenter of this unholy resort. Obviously he had made no more than a passing impression on Paddy Blake, but the old man was honestly anxious to splice the broken ends of the story, and after painful cogitation he broke out again:
“There is one man that ye should find by all means. He may be dead by now, for the liquor had harrd hold of him. I have not seen or heard of him in a long while, but he wint north from here. I mind the last time he come in me place. Pretty well pickled he was, and some o’ the lads were yarnin’ with him, and there was talk of this Jim Eldridge. Be gob! ’twas then I heard the queer gossip, in bits, d’ ye see? There had been a ruction somewheres up beyant”—and Paddy Blake waved a hand to the northward—“and this man I mintion had been mixed in it with Jim Eldridge. But when they would urge him to unwind the story he would turn ugly and shut up like an oyster, half-seas-over though he was. He was a great one for messin’ about among the Chinese, and could patter two or three dialects. A scholar and gentleman was McDougal.”
“McDougal!” roared O’Shea, taken all aback by the coincidence. “Why, man alive, this same McDougal was in your place to-night and left not an hour ago. He has just come down the coast, from Tientsin and Che-Foo.”
“’Tis a pity ye let him get away. If he wanders into the Chinese city amongst some of thim native friends of his ’twill be the divil and all to find him again. So he’s still alive!”
“I sat and talked with him and he discoursed nightmares.”
“He has lived thim,” said Paddy Blake.
“I had him and I lost him,” was O’Shea’s melancholy exclamation. “An oakum-whiskered Dutchman by the name of Spreckels breezed in under full sail and welcomed this McDougal like a long-lost brother, and carried him off to sea before ye could blink. It was comical. And I sat there like a wooden figure-head and let him go.”
“In theWilhelmina Augusta—four-masted steel bark bound out to Hamburg. It was a lucky stroke for McDougal.”
“And most unlucky for me,” sighed O’Shea. Then he pulled himself together, and spoke in his hearty, masterful way. “Come along, Paddy Blake, and find me a tug. We will chase McDougal down river for the sake of a conversation with him.”
“Captain Spreckels had theArrow, and she’s fast,” said Paddy Blake. “He has a good start of ye, and his bark will be ready to sail as soon as he boards her.”
“Then we’ll chase him out to sea. I have come too far to lose McDougal by letting him slip through me fingers,” and the demeanor of Captain Michael O’Shea discouraged further argument.
Paddy Blake jammed the tall hat on the back of his head, unbolted the door, and whisked through the bar-room with such speed that the shipmaster’s long strides could hardly keep up with him. They turned into the street that led to the water-front and hastened to a lighted corner of the bund where stood several ’rickshaws. Paddy darted at the drowsy coolies who were squatted on the pavement, cuffed a couple of them, and gave an order in pidgin English. They jumped into the shafts, the passengers climbed aboard, and the vehicles went spinning along the thoroughfare.
As they drew abreast of the lights of the anchored shipping, Paddy Blake looked along the landing-berths of the smaller steamers and exclaimed with an explosion of profane surprise:
“There’s a tug in the pocket where theArrowties up. I can’t see to make her out in the dark, but we will stop and take a look. Something or other may have delayed Captain Spreckels. I hope to blazes thim seamen I sint him has not hooked it before he got ’em safe aboard the bark.”
Leaving the ’rickshaws to wait orders, they footed it down to the wharf and were convinced that they had found theArroweven before she could be clearly made out. The darkness was shattered by the troubled accents of Captain Spreckels, who was proclaiming to the skipper of the tug:
“By Gott, I cannot wait for McDougal no longer. The tide ist turned already. My wessel must go to sea mit the morning flood. It gives me sadness to lose dot scalawag, but he has runned away mit himself.”
O’Shea climbed over the guard-rail and cried:
“How are you again, Captain Spreckels? What’s this I hear about McDougal? I am after finding him meself.”
The master of theWilhelmina Augustaswung his arms and made answer:
“McDougal was a slippery customer, so? I haf a immense fondness for him. By the landing here he left me to go in a ’rickshaw,sehr schnell, to a room what he haf hired for to-night und fetch some little t’ings what belonged to him, mostly books und some papers mit writings on ’em. He haf come to Shanghai, he tells me, mit a small bundle which he never loses, drunk or sober. While the tug is makin’ steam und haulin’ her lines aboard he will do his errand. It vas an hour ago. I do not understand, but I must not wait.”
“Changed his mind,” suggested Paddy Blake. “Sorry ye are shy a shipmate, but the news will please me friend Captain O’Shea here. You lose. He wins.”
The hull of theArrowwas trembling to the thresh of the screw, and her skipper was bawling the order to cast off. Captain Spreckels shouted farewell as the two visitors jumped ashore, and the tug moved astern into the fair-way. As they walked toward the ’rickshaws O’Shea remarked:
“’Tis no use to go rummagin’ around to-night in search of McDougal, I suppose.”
“No, but I will find him for ye to-morrow,” replied Paddy Blake. “If he has a room in the English quarter ye can gamble he will drop into my place. If he don’t I will sind a bright lad to round him up. ’Tis easy findin’ him as long as he is not livin’ in the native city. What do ye suppose become of him, annyhow?”
“Maybe he flinched from the notion of quitting the East. When it gets in the blood of these tropical tramps, the grip of it is not easy to break.”
“And he lost his nerve at the last minute,” said Paddy Blake. “I’ve seen cases like it. I’m that way meself.”
Declining a cordial invitation to have a “nightcap,” O’Shea told his ’rickshaw cooly to take him to the Astor House. It seemed extraordinary that his quixotic pilgrimage should have so soon disclosed the identity of the derelict who had drifted into the comfortable haven of Johnny Kent’s farm. This, however, did not greatly astonish O’Shea, who knew that the steps of sailormen in alien ports are not apt to stray far from the water-side. The singular feature of the business was that he should run across the sodden beach-comber, McDougal, who was the needle in a hay-stack of prodigious size. The hand of destiny was in it.
At breakfast next morning Captain O’Shea enjoyed overhearing the talk of a party of American tourists at a near-by table. In their turn theyounger women did not fail to observe with interest the clean-cut, resolute shipmaster smartly turned out in fresh white clothes. After they had left the dining-room he picked up a copy ofThe Shanghai Mercuryand carelessly turned to the shipping news where these lines caught his eye: