“You called me a scoundrel. I am, maybe, but not the way you meant. Right away from the first you said to yourselves, the whole three of you, that this fellow Candon had let you down, gone off with the ship and boodle. You asked me had I gone aboard for those pistols, and I said I had. You asked me had I sailed off and left you and I said I had. You asked me had I any reason for going, meaning, in your left-handed way, was I a blackguard or not, and I said I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I was took.“I’ll tell you. When I left the beach that night and got the Chinks to row me aboard for those automatics, I found the cabin on board lit, the bunk bedding all pulled about and everything upside down and Charlie down there putting things to rights. I said to myself, that’s Hank’s work, the Chinks have nosed the diamonds and been on the search, and got them, to judge by the mess they’ve made. I saw it was serious but said nothing, went to the locker for the guns and whilst my back was turned, Charlie slipped on deck. The guns were there, the Chinks had been too busy to hunt for them. I took one of the automatics and saw it was loaded. As I was handling it, I heard the door of the cabin hatch shut and knew at once I was bottled and cursed myself for being such afool and not getting on deck quicker. I remembered the galley hatch and made for it, nearly killing myself against the foc’sle bulkhead. The galley hatch was shut. I made back for the cabin and tried to burst the door. It was held like a rock by the bolts and something shoved against it. I thought of firing an automatic out of one of the ports for help, till I remembered you had no boat. If I’d once dreamed that you’d have suspected me, I’d have fired the lot, but I could not think that and it never entered my mind.”
“You called me a scoundrel. I am, maybe, but not the way you meant. Right away from the first you said to yourselves, the whole three of you, that this fellow Candon had let you down, gone off with the ship and boodle. You asked me had I gone aboard for those pistols, and I said I had. You asked me had I sailed off and left you and I said I had. You asked me had I any reason for going, meaning, in your left-handed way, was I a blackguard or not, and I said I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I was took.
“I’ll tell you. When I left the beach that night and got the Chinks to row me aboard for those automatics, I found the cabin on board lit, the bunk bedding all pulled about and everything upside down and Charlie down there putting things to rights. I said to myself, that’s Hank’s work, the Chinks have nosed the diamonds and been on the search, and got them, to judge by the mess they’ve made. I saw it was serious but said nothing, went to the locker for the guns and whilst my back was turned, Charlie slipped on deck. The guns were there, the Chinks had been too busy to hunt for them. I took one of the automatics and saw it was loaded. As I was handling it, I heard the door of the cabin hatch shut and knew at once I was bottled and cursed myself for being such afool and not getting on deck quicker. I remembered the galley hatch and made for it, nearly killing myself against the foc’sle bulkhead. The galley hatch was shut. I made back for the cabin and tried to burst the door. It was held like a rock by the bolts and something shoved against it. I thought of firing an automatic out of one of the ports for help, till I remembered you had no boat. If I’d once dreamed that you’d have suspected me, I’d have fired the lot, but I could not think that and it never entered my mind.”
George paused for a moment.
“That shows you what jumping at conclusions too quickly, comes to. Here’s the best fellow on earth, seems to me, and we—at least I did—yes, I did, I wrote him off as a scoundrel right from the beginning—almost.”
“We didn’t,” cried Tommie. “I didn’t, I know I felt there must be something that took him away. I never gave up hope till I saw you all standing on the deck of theWear Jackand that you were scarcely speaking to him, and that he didn’t seem to be explaining things—I don’t know if I even quite gave up then—oh, dear!”
Her agitation made Hank blaze up.
“Why in the nation,” he cried, “couldn’t he have explained.”
“You called him a scoundrel,” said George. “He saw we’d marked him down without trial, and he was that sort.”
“Which sort?”
“The sort that will kill you if you hit its pride, even if it has to kill itself. I expect that time in the foc’sle with Jake was pure hell’s delight to him, feeling he was making us miserable and being miserable himself. I expect he’s gloating at this present minute over us reading this letter and being unable to get at him to make things up. Gloating with pleasure, yet in hell all the time.”
“Why, Bud,” said Hank, “you’re talking as if you knew the man’s mind inside out.”
“Maybe, I do,” said Bud. “Maybe I’m not such a fool as I look, but I take him as a discontented man who’s made a mess of his life, and nicking on him and calling him names like that just at that moment, finished the business.”
Tommie nodded. All the same she guessed the case to be a bit more complicated than that.
“Go on reading,” she said.
George went on.
“I sat down on one of the couches thinking what to do and I heard the Chinks pow-wowing away on deck. Talking maybe of how to get rid of me. Time went on and the clock went round to twelve, that’s two hours after I boarded her, then Charlie came to the skylight and hailed me. He said they’d taken the ship and had got the stuff we were digging for. He asked me would I navigate her if they let me out. I told him to go to hell. He went off and time went on and then I heard themhandling the halyards and getting in the hook. They didn’t shout at their work, went silent as cats. Then I felt the ship under way.
“Morning came. I daren’t sleep or they’d have been down on me, but I had food from the lazarette and there was water in the swinging bottle.
“Charlie came again that day to know if I would help work the ship. He said they meant to beach her on the Panama coast at a place they knew and offered me a share in the boodle. I told him I’d fire the ship first and he went away.
“That night, about three hours after dark as far as I could guess, for the clock had run down and I hadn’t bothered to wind it, and they’d taken the chronometer with the charts on deck, a smash came and I knew the fools had piled her. I heard them shouting and pow-wowing. The sea was smooth and I knew they could easy get away if they didn’t foul the boat in lowering her. They got her over all right and I heard them putting their dunnage in, grub and water, too, if they weren’t crazy. Then I heard nothing more. They’d gone.
“The lamp was still alight. I’d put it out in the day time and lit up before dark; all the same, there wasn’t much oil in her. So I set to on the cabin hatch working with my knife. I left off to get one of the automaticsto see if I couldn’t smash up the wood by firing, when, just taking it, I felt a draught of air blowing towards the skylight. I’d thought of getting out by the skylight, but the Chinks had thought of it too, and they’d overlaid it with ropes, but that draught blowing towards it gave me a jog and I made down along to the galley. The galley hatch was open.
“The Chinks must have opened it before running away, reckoning that if anything turned up and they were caught it would be lighter for them if they hadn’t killed me.
“I got out on deck, couldn’t see the boat. Then I opened the cabin hatch and let the air in.
“Then I had some grub and laid down and went asleep. I dreamt I heard a boat coming alongside. I tumbled out and came on deck and found my pals.
“You know the rest.”
“Bob Candon.”
CANDON with his bundle under his arm walked from the stage where George had landed him to the ferry wharf. He did not intend staying at Tiburon, he wanted to lose himself, put himself beyond possible reach of Hank and George. He was waiting for the San Francisco ferry.
He felt uplifted, light-headed, full and satisfied with the knowledge that George Du Cane and the others would be reading his letter by now. He had revenged himself on himself, on society, and on his companions. Right from his first joining in with Hank and George, under everything had lain the fact that he was an outlaw, coupled with the fact that he had joined theWear Jackthrough subterfuge. His confession at San Nicolas had seemingly cleared the slate, yet the fact remained; you cannot confess a fact away. He had been forgiven by Hank and Bud, and Tommie had declared her opinion that he would be all right with the Almighty when he’d prayed himself out of the hole he was in by hard work and therestoration of the jewels. Just so. Yet the fact remained that he had run crooked.
It had been like a grit in the eye. Sometimes he did not feel it, other times he did, but it had been there all the time.
It was his sense of inferiority always fretting his pride, his pride always fretful that had, perhaps, brought about the end of everything.
A lesser man or a greater man might have defended himself, explained or tried to explain.
He took his place in the ferry boat, crammed with the usual crowd. At it drew off from the wharf, he saw theHeart of Irelandas she lay at anchor. There was a figure on deck, it was Jake, the others were evidently down below. What were they saying, what were they doing? He watched the old schooner as she dimmed away into the distance across the breezy water, then he turned and looked at San Francisco standing before him in a blaze of light, the Palace Hotel, the hills veined with streets, the docks and shipping, all so vast, so indifferent, brilliant, self-possessed and cruel.
Nature in her worst moods has made nothing more daunting than a city. Candon had never felt this as he felt it now. TheWear Jackhad been a home and he and his companions almost a family. In all the city he had not a friend. That is the worst of a sailor’s life; unless he rises to the command of a ship and keeps it, the end of each voyage often means a break-up andseparation from the men he sails with and the best friends part never to meet again. The sailor has no time ashore to make friends and the friends he makes at sea he loses.
Candon landed at the wharf and made for Essex Street where he had put up before. No. 12 was the house, an humble enough place, but clean and respectable, kept by a widow whose husband had been captain of one of the Oakland ferry boats.
He obtained a room, left his bundle and started out making up town. He had no object in view. In the old days he would most likely have drifted into a tavern, met companions and maybe friends under the freemasonry of drink; but those days are done with. Drink he could have got, poison, swallowed in a corner at five or ten times the price of the old stuff, but, though several touts spoke to him, recognising a man from the sea, he turned them down. Passing from street to street without caring where he went, the fact of his own isolation was borne in on him by every sight and sound. All these people had businesses, friends, acquaintances. He had none. If he were to drop dead not a soul would care.
He found himself amongst the sharp-faced hustling crowd of Market Street and drifted with it, scarcely seeing it, looking in at shop windows but scarcely noticing the goods. He was not walking alone now; the wraiths of Hank and George and Tommie were with him, walking on either side of him, and now in some extraordinaryway his anger and enmity against them, against himself and against circumstances had faded. It was as though they were dead.
The loneliness of the great city, the very atmosphere of it had seized upon him, cut him off from those past few brilliant weeks of adventure and stress. He could no longer feel as he felt then. He tried, remembering how they had pre-judged him, to work up his feelings of only a few hours ago, but the old anger would not come. He had left it behind him on theHeart of Irelandor, maybe, on the ferry boat. Anger would not come, because the way was barred by a new-found sense of reason that kept saying to him, “Well, suppose they did? Look at the facts—they made a mistake—you were furious because you were innocent, but were you made of glass so that they could see your innocence? Not you; why you were Vanderdecken. You had already done a shady trick by getting on board theWear Jackunder that contract; you were no white lamb. Facts were against you and you were too proud to explain—that’s the truth—and you had a grudge against everything. Well there it is and no more to be said.”
He went into a picture house and sat for ten minutes and came out again and had some food.
It was evening now and the lamps were springing alight. He wandered down towards the docks, Hank, Bud and Tommie still clinging to him, and Reason, refreshed with a porter-house steak,clearing her throat to say something. Then in Tallis Street where the crimps abide, she said it.
“Swab!” Then she began to rub it in. “You wrote that letter. Every line you wrote, down there in the foc’sle of theHeart, was pure joy. You said to yourself, ‘When they read this they will suffer.’ That’s what you said and what you felt. You didn’t write to explain, you wrote to hit.”
That was the truth.
They were the best people he had ever met and he had wounded them all he could. Done all he could to make them feel mean and small.
If they had not been the best people, the letter would have had no effect; if he had not loved them, the odious pleasure of writing it would not have been there. If he had not loved them, he would not have struck them, struck them with the feverish anger of the child that breaks and destroys the thing it cares for.
He walked on, making towards the water side, reviewing himself and his futilities.
Impulse and a volcanic nature had been his ruin right along from the first—and pride. And the devil of it was his impulse had always been—or nearly always—towards the good. Why, look away back to the time when he commanded a ship and had been fired for a volcanic letter to the owners for supplying his crew with “grub that a dog wouldn’t eat.” And he had chucked a good chance to go and fight in a war that had nothingto do with him, just because the Lusitania had been torpedoed. Look at the McGinnis business. Look at everything.
A man rarely sees himself in the glass of mind. When he does the image is rarely quite true. Candon saw a reflection uglier than the reality. At all events it was a good thing that he saw it. Then he went home and tried to sleep and could not.
At ten o’clock next morning, he found himself in Pacific Avenue, asking his way. At five minutes past ten, he was coming up the steps of a residence with Purbeckian marble pillars to the door-way.
He rang and Farintosh opened. Farintosh did not know if Mr. du Cane were in; he would see. He returned in a minute and ushered Candon into a library where Bud, in his shirt sleeves, was re-arranging some books. Bud had a pipe in his mouth.
Farintosh shut the door and the two men were left alone.
“Sit down,” said Bud. There was no warmth in his tone. He seemed a different man from the Bud of theWear Jack, older, more serious. Old Harley du Cane with his rose in his coat and his air of aflaneur, could sometimes crystallize into awful and icy seriousness, the man of pleasure suddenly becoming the man of affairs, cold, logical with something of the touch of the judge.
“I’ve come to say I haven’t treated you people well,” said Candon. “I’ll never see you again, soI wanted just to say that. I couldn’t sit down under it any longer. Couldn’t sleep to-night without saying what I wanted to say. I shouldn’t have given up that letter.”
“You shouldn’t,” said Bud. He was standing with his back to the fireplace now, with his pipe in his mouth. “I’m not wanting to rub it in, but you’ve crumpled Tommie up. Steady on, and let me talk. I’m the man you ought to have a grouch against, for when theWear Jackwent off, I was the first to say you’d taken your hook. I had to kick Hank to make him believe. Hank’s a good sort, much better than me, much better than you, much better than any of us. He believed in you, so did Tommie. Well, now, see here, B. C., I’m not going to apologise to you for being mistaken and for writing you down worse than you were, for the facts were all dead against you, and it was no pleasure to me to think you’d hooked it. It cut me bad. Let’s forget it and come to the point. I guess the Almighty sent you here to-night for me to deal with and I’m going to deal with you straight. One moment.”
He left the room, and Candon heard him calling for Farintosh and giving some directions, then he returned, took his place on the hearth rug and went on.
“Yes, I guess he did. What are your plans?”
“Foc’sle.”
“Yes, the foc’sle of some wind-jammer, fine time and fine prospects. Well, I’ve made differentplans for you, made them long ago, dropped them when that beastly business happened, but I’ve picked them up again, right now.”
“I reckon a dive into the harbour would be the best plan for me,” said Candon. He was seated with his arms folded, wilted, miserable. He was thinking of Tommie and what Bud had said about her.
“It would,” said Bud, “if you are an ass and don’t fall in with what I want to do.”
“Yes?”
“You’ve got to take my money, work and pay me back—fruit farm or ranch. Quit the sea, the sea’s no use to you, B. C., and I tell you that straight.”
“It’s good of you,” said the other shaking his head. “It’s darn good of you, Bud du Cane—you said that before. It’s not my pride. I reckon I’ve no pride left, but where’s the good? I guess I’m too far gone for any man to help me. I’ve lost clutch of myself in the last two days. I tell you it’s as if I’d been boiled and my back-bone taken out of me. I’m changed, that’s a fact. All my life I’ve never lost confidence in myself till now. You remember how I took theWear Jackout of harbour that night? I could no more do that now than I could fly—I’ve lost confidence in myself.
“And maybe a good thing, too,” said George.
“I don’t know,” said Candon, “maybe it’s good or bad, but there’s the fact. A while ago I was aman who could lead things, now I feel all I want is to take orders.”
“Good,” said George, “and now you’re talking like a man. What do you think a man is, anyway? Why, till he learns to take orders, he hasn’t got the makings of a man in him. And now I’m going to give you your orders, B. C. You’ve got to make a home for a girl that cares for you. She’s got money enough of her own, but you can’t take a woman’s money, but you can take mine as a loan, and if you don’t make good, why you aren’t the man I think you are.”
“Cares for me?” said Candon, as though he were a bit deaf and not sure that he had caught the other’s words.
“Yes, unless I have no sense or judgment left. But she’ll tell you herself in a minute. I’ve sent for her.”
He left the room.
Candon got up and walked to and fro for a long time, his hands behind his back. Then he lifted up his chin and gazed before him with those clear eyes trained to look over vast distances.
The manhood had come back to him with the call to a greater adventure than any he had ever undertaken.
He heard an automobile drawing up in the street—voices. Then the door opened and Tommie stood before him. It closed, leaving them alone.
That is the story of Vanderdecken as told tome by Hank Fisher. The story of a man of temperament saved from himself by a woman. I met George du Cane at Pasadena a little while ago and he corroborated the tale giving me a few extra details left out by Hank. George said Tyrebuck collected his insurance all right on theWear Jack, also that McGinnis and his crowd managed to escape from the Mexicans, and, making down the coast, were rescued by a tanker which had put into Santa Clara Bay owing to a defect in her machinery. They returned to San Francisco, but made no trouble, or only with Mrs. McGinnis, who had sold theHeart of Irelandand invested the money in a laundry, thinking McGinnis dead.
Hank married his girl quite recently and Candon and Tommie are happy, but the thing uppermost in George’s mind in connection with this business was the treasure.
He took an old press cutting from his pocket book and showed it to me. It gave news of a boatful of dead Chinamen found and sunk by the British cruiserHesperiadown by the Galapagos Islands.
“They’d have sunk it maybe with a shell,” said George; “it would have given them fine target practice for one of their small guns and they’d never have overhauled it for jewelry.
“It’s a hundred to one it was the boat of theWear Jack. TheWear Jack’swhaler had no name on it, and it’s just the position they’d have been in by drifting. You see the Kiro Shiwo wouldhave brought them down past the line and then they’d have met Humboldt’s current; that would have pushed them back, and there they’d have been drifting and messing about when theHesperiacame along. Anyhow,” finished George, “whatever’s become of those jewels, they’ve never been seen since, and it’s my opinion, they’ll never be seen again.”
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes:The original spelling, hyphenation, accentuation and punctuation has been retained, with the exception of apparent typographical errors which have been corrected.The transcriber has added a table of contents.
Transcriber’s Notes:
The original spelling, hyphenation, accentuation and punctuation has been retained, with the exception of apparent typographical errors which have been corrected.
The transcriber has added a table of contents.