[pg 328]
"Cogan, with eyes only for Torellas and the Rocas, did not see the beginning of what happened next. He first heard a cry, then a loud voice or two, then a hundred, a thousand voices. He turned. The gate which held the next bull in confinement had been opened or else it had burst out. The gateman was there, but with despairing hands on high, and across the ring the fresh bull was coming. Torellas was standing with his back to the gate, and not twenty feet from it, almost in the spot where he had killed his bull, and wiping the sword blade in a fold of Cogan's cape, which he was now holding loosely. He was looking up at the Rocas and seemed at first not to hear the cries. He turned—slowly, with horrible slowness, Cogan thought, when he recalled how fast he could move when he wanted to.
"He turned too slowly. The bull caught him sideways, and when he came down, it was astraddle of the bull's back, from which he fell to the sand beside the bull, who had wheeled and was waiting. He must have been stunned when he landed, for the sword and cape had fallen from him, and he lay motionless. The bull lunged like lightning. The horn went into the left thigh, just above the knee, and, not done then, the bull ripped on upward with that same horn until it came out under the matador's left breast.
[pg 329]
"The white tights turned red. The bull was lowering his head to gore him again, but Ferrero had leaped from his place of refuge. Cogan was with him. Ferrero picked up the cape and flouted it in the bull's eyes. The bull lifted his head from Torellas, looked at the cape, and charged. And as he did, Cogan snatched up the matador's sword and waited. The bull charged past Ferrero, then, wheeling quickly, made again for Torellas, and his head was lowered to gore again. Ferrero got desperate and threw the cape from him, and it caught on the horns, and while the bull was entangled and enraged afresh, Cogan stepped close, picked out the little spot the size of a fifty-cent piece at the head of the spine, stood on his toes and came down with all his force. It wasn't any approved matador's stroke, for Cogan, standing behind instead of in front of the bull's horns, drove home in just the reverse fashion, but it wasn't a bad stroke at that. The knife went home. The bull rolled over, and Cogan stood there and looked and looked. Nobody was more surprised than he. Not once in ten times he was saying to himself could he have done it in cold blood. Only when Ferrero pulled him by the arm did he think to turn and bow with the banderillero to the cheering audience, especially to some blue-jackets who had now recognized him as an old shipmate and were calling him by name—hundreds of them.
[pg 330]
"In the middle of the excitement he looked up to see how Valera was taking it. She and her father were both leaning far over the rail toward him—he with both arms extended and yelling, she with her handkerchief pressed to her lips. Her eyes met Cogan's, and Cogan was satisfied. His little Valera of the beach was on deck again. No matter about the rest. That must have been a full minute after it happened and after the surgeon had called out 'It is well. Torellas will live!'
"But the bull-fighters in the ring did not believe that all was well. 'Torellas! Oh, Torellas!' they were saying, and some were shedding tears, as they carried him to the dressing-room. Torellas was now conscious. He smiled at Ferrero, and he was smiling while they were undressing him, and he took Cogan's hand and held it while the others were telling him how it was. Not until the surgeon said, 'You will live, but your bull-fighting days are done,' did he lose his nerve. He had been pale, but he went paler then. The globes of sweat collected on his forehead. 'Oh, no, no, doctor!' he cried and fainted.
"That night Cogan slipped away from a party of American blue-jackets who wanted to paint Lima in high colors for him, and went down to see Torellas, who had been taken to his home, a fine, large house on a wide street. A crowd was in the street, waiting for word of his condition.
[pg 331]
"Ferrero met him at the door. 'They wait for you, good friend.'
"'They? Who?'
"'Oh, you shall see.' And he led Cogan to the second floor, to where a fine suite of rooms opened from the wide hall. Her father and Juan were in the outer room.
"These two clasped him to their bosoms. 'You brave one,' said her father—and 'Bueno Americano!'—said Uncle Juan, and patted him on the head as if he were a son. 'He will live—Oh, be sure of that. But never will he fight bulls again. Never, never. And that is sad. But we have him. Let us not mourn. And you'—Juan raised both hands high—'you and Torellas—I love you both.'
"Cogan thought he heard her voice, the voice which never in his life he had heard, and hesitated. 'Proceed,' said her father, and pushed him toward the door of the middle room. 'She is there. And Tina—you remember Tina—that night in Colon? She is also there. The señora'—he looked at Juan and Juan smiled back at him—'she is too fatigued to come, but Tina came.'
"Cogan softly crossed the second room, but paused on the threshold of the inner room. He saw a great, stout woman back to. He knew her—Tina. He looked further, and under the half light saw the face of the matador. She was beside the[pg 332]bed. He could not see her face, but he heard her voice, and it was over her shoulder that he saw the matador's face.
"There were murmured words in Spanish which he did not understand, and then a phrase at which he could guess, then words which there was no mistaking, and which were not for him or any other man to hear. He backed out.
"Juan, Ferrero, and her father were still at the outer door of the outer room. They were not looking. He saw that from this middle room a window led on to a balcony. He stepped through the window, found a post, dropped to the ground, made his way through the garden in the rear, and so on to a back street. He ran on—one street, another, a dozen, and then uphill to a wall which he seemed to know. He looked about, and saw that near by was the monastery where he had been given his first breakfast in Lima. It was the same old wall.
"He climbed the wall and sat there. He had been sitting so that morning when the pretty flower girl had tossed him the blue flower—blue as the sky. Only now it was night and no one to see and smile. He looked up to the sky, the night sky of the tropics. The twisted Southern Cross shone on him. He turned and faced the north.
"Somewhere he could hear a band playing. In one of the parks probably, and there would be leaves[pg 333]rustling there, and the scent of flowers, and the señoritas walking with their mothers, while the young men hung around the edges, striving to get a word, a look. And there would be the arched jets of a fountain playing under colored lights, and back in Portland, Oregon, by this time was perhaps Tommie Jones married to his plump waitress.
"It was a good band—playing something he had never heard before, but something very soothing. He looked toward the Pacific. He knew where the harbor of Callao should lie, and in the middle of the harbor he could see them, one great cluster of lights, the lights of the battle fleet. And there were the fleet's search-lights playing on the great stone pier.
"The band was playing again—something fine.
"And then the monastery bell tolled. And presently he heard a chanting—a slow sad chanting! And then the chanting also died away.
"He had been lying on the wall with his hat in his hand and staring up at the sky. Now he sat up, put on his hat, took another look to the lights in the harbor, and hummed softly the Philippine service song—
"It's home, boy, home, it's home you ought to be."
"It's home, boy, home, it's home you ought to be."
"It's home, boy, home, it's home you ought to be."
"And you've no kick coming. Dreams dreams, always dreams, but you've had your hour, too.' He took another look at the lights of the fleet—another[pg 334]to the lights of the city below him—'Good night, Lima,' he whispered, and dropped off the wall."
The pump-man had begun his story this evening while sitting with back to the rail and feet stretched out on the deck before him. He finished while lying on his back, hands clasped under the back of his head, and wide eyes on the sky.
The passenger leaned on the rail, studied the stem of the ship, and listened to the surge of back wash against the ship's bow as she drove on. Abeam, the young moon drooped.
Kieran said nothing more. The passenger nothing for a long time. Then it was:
"And they were married?"
"I don't know—Cogan didn't wait to see—but of course."
"Of course," echoed the passenger, and in silence resumed his study of the ship's bow cutting through the little seas.
The passenger turned inboard. "But Cogan—where is he?"
"There was no Cogan."
"No Cogan."
"No, no Cogan."
"And no bull-fight, and no Valera, and no Torellas, nor Juan, and it never happened?"
[pg 335]
"Why, of course it happened, and just as I've told it. But not to anybody named Cogan. There was no Cogan, or rather"—Kieran rolled over on his side and rested his head on his elbow—"I'm Cogan."
"Oh-h-h. Oh-h-h. And you're Campbell, the old champion athlete?"
"Yes, I'm Campbell. And I'm Cogan. And I'm Kieran, pump-man on this wall-sided oil-tanker at fifty-five per month."
"But why?"
"Why, why?" He sat up. The passenger could see the thick, dark eyebrows draw together. "Why? Why anything? What would you do?"
"Forget it."
"Forget it. But can you?—everything? No—you betcher you can't. And it's every man to his own cure. Some I know get drunk and fight. And some I know who get drunk and cry. Some worry their friends to death, and some others beat their wives. Every man to his way. I have no wife"—he laughed softly—"and I want to keep my friends. So I run my heart out in races and beat up bully bosons, and fight bulls—when I can."
"But when you can't?"
"When I can't? Why, when I can't, I lay out on the fo'c's'le head and bay up at a two-horned moon."
[pg 336]
The passenger turned and looked down. "Thank your God, Kieran," he said, "you can laugh when you say that."
The pump-man's smile died away. "Maybe I'm thanking God," he said softly, "for more than that."
BOOKS BY JAMES B. CONNOLLY
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
OPEN WATER
Illustrated. $1.20 net. Postpaid $1.30
A collection of new stories of the same type—breezy, fresh, vigorous—as those in his earlier books.
Some are of Gloucester fishermen, some of the men of the navy, some of the smugglers—in all such is the smack of the salt-laden wind; the rattle and creak of ships' tackle; the dull boom of pounding surf, or the hissing crash of the breakers. But there are the other stories of sport and adventure ashore of which Mr. Connolly has shown his complete mastery.
THE CRESTED SEAS
Illustrated. $1.50
"Tales of daring and reckless deeds which make the blood run quicker and bring an admiration for the hardy Gloucester men who take their lives in their hands on nearly every trip they make. There are Martin Carr and Wesley Marrs and Tommy Clancy, and others of the brave crew that Connolly loves to write about."—Chicago Post.
"The author knows how to make them real and how to carry them through moving and thrilling scenes with unconscious heroism and often with equally unconscious dry drollery."—The Outlook.
[pg 354]
OUT OF GLOUCESTER
With illustrations byM.J. BURNSandFRANK BRANGWYN12mo, $1.50
"Mr. Connolly has a touch of gay humor in his narratives. He knows his sea and his sailors well. He understands how to bring dramatic power and effect into a story."—Congregationalist.
"This new volume of six stories of ocean adventure will strengthen Mr. Connolly's reputation as the best delineator of the actual life of our New England deep-sea fishermen that has yet appeared."—BostonJournal.
"His book gives graphic descriptions of life on board of a fisherman, and has the genuine salt-water flavor. Mr. Connolly knows just what he is writing about, from actual experience, as his book very plainly indicates, and as such it is a valuable addition to sea literature."—GloucesterTimes.
"That all the romance and adventure has not gone out of New England seafaring is easily demonstrated by Mr. Connolly in this volume of roaring good stories about Gloucester fishermen.... They are capitally told and they put you right into the life they tell about."—ProvidenceNews.
"Mr. Connolly really knows the sea and the men that sail it, and his love for it is apparent on every page."—Leslie's Weekly.
"A collection that for all-round excellence and interest will be hard to duplicate."—ChicagoRecord-Herald.
[pg 355]
THE DEEP SEA'S TOLL
With illustrations byW.J. AYLWARDandH. REUTERDAHL
12mo, $1.50
"Sea stories of the kind you can't help liking. Stirring, heart-moving yarns of the Gloucester fishermen who brave death daily in pursuit of their calling."—ChicagoRecord-Herald.
"No teller of sea tales can put the passion of the sea into his stories more forcibly than Mr. Connolly."—BrooklynEagle.
"The very breath of the ocean blows in these thrilling stories of deep-sea adventure."—AlbanyJournal.
THE SEINERS
With frontispiece byM.J. BURNS
12mo, $1.50
"It carries the sails easily. In Tommy Clancy he has created a veritable Mulvaney of the sea."—Collier's Weekly.
"Full of vigor and song and the breath of the sea."—St. James Gazette.
"A real tale of the sea which makes one feel the whiff of the wind and taste the salt of the flying spray—such is Mr. J.B. Connolly's new book, 'The Seiners.' ... Certainly there is not a lover of the sea, man or woman, who will fail to be delighted with this breezy, stirring tale."—LondonDaily Telegraph.
[pg 356]
AN OLYMPIC VICTOR
With illustrations by A. CASTAIGNE
12mo, $1.25
"His story of the straining, gruelling struggle, the heart-breaking efforts of the runners over those twenty-four miles of country roads, is soul-stirring."—PhiladelphiaPress.
"The reality of the atmosphere created makes this story compare favorably even with the great chariot race of 'Ben Hur.'"—The Westminster.
"A fascinating story of the Olympic games. The long grind over the historic course is well portrayed and the excitement at the great finish is intense."—The Independent.
JEB HUTTON
The Story of a Georgia Boy
Illustrated. $1.20 net
"Will rank beside 'Captains Courageous.'"—New YorkGlobe.
"A bright, dashing story, sure to charm boys who love the strenuous life."—The Outlook.
"'Jeb Hutton' is a boy's story from beginning to end; clean, wholesome, spirited, and calculated to do good."—BostonJournal.
BOOKS BY JAMES B. CONNOLLY
Wide Courses. Illustratednet$1.25Open Water. Illustratednet$1.20The Crested Seas. Illustrated $1.50The Deep Sea's Toll. Illustrated $1.50The Seiners. With frontispiece $1.50Out of Gloucester. Illustrated $1.50An Olympic Victor. Illustrated $1.25Jeb Hutton. The story of a Georgia Boy. Illustratednet$1.20