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 THE ROMANCE OF THE MARTIN CONNOR
 
 THE KOMANCE OF 
 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 BY 
 
 OSWALD KENDALL 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFL1N COMPANY 
 
 (Cbe Rtoetaibe pres* Cambridge
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY PERRY MASON COMPANY 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY OSWALD KENDALL 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October igib
 
 TO 
 EDGAR F. CYRIAX, M.D. 
 
 A GOOD DOCTOR AND A SPLENDID FBIEND
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. INTRODUCES SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP ... 1 
 
 II. DEPARTURE 27 
 
 HE. A TEST FOB SHIP AND SEAMANSHIP .... 51 
 
 IV. A DIFFERENT WORLU 71 
 
 V. UP THE AMAZON 96 
 
 VI. TROUBLE . . . . . . .......... .124 
 
 VII. THE COMPLETE ANGLERS , 144 
 
 VHL THE BLOWQUN INDIANS 168 
 
 IX. IN WHICH THE MARTIN CONNOR RETREATS STRATE- 
 GICALLY 19? 
 
 ' X. A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS . . . . . 217 
 
 XI. THE GREAT DISCOVERT . . . . . . . 240 
 
 XII. DISAPPEARANCE OF CAPTAIN HAWKS . . s. . 259 
 Xm. A RAID BY NIGHT . . . ..." .^ % 287 
 
 XIV. Two AND THREE QUARTERS MILLIONS IN GOLD . . 809
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE ALLIGATOR WAS IN THE Am (page 158) . . Titie-Page 
 "'ERE, MISTEB MATE, WHERE'S THIS SEA COMIN' FROM?" 46 
 
 A TELL CAME FROM THE GALLEY 58 
 
 "D' TO' WANT TO DIE RIGHT OFF?" 74 
 
 "YOU DID IT TO SAVE MT LIFE" 138 
 
 HE RAN HIM WITH GREAT SPEED INTO THE LAMP LOCKER . 192 
 HE BLEW A SHARP BREATH INTO THE GUN .... 262 
 THE WATER GREW ROUGHER 282 
 
 The illustrations are by George Varian
 
 THE ROMANCE OF 
 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCES SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 
 
 As I finished winding the chronometers, Captain 
 Matthew Hawks entered the charthouse of the 
 Martin Connor and slapped some papers down 
 upon the desk. 
 
 "I'm through with the whole bunch," said he 
 with a restrained emphasis that marked an en- 
 deavour to keep his temper, as he glared at me 
 with keen, cold, grey eyes. "I tell you, Grum- 
 met, I'm through with the whole bunch!" 
 and he hit the pile of papers a smack with his 
 open hand. 
 
 I glanced down to see if he had cracked the top 
 of the desk and said: "Yes, sir," sympatheti- 
 cally. 
 
 "I want coal," continued my 'commander. 
 
 "Yes, sir, certainly." 
 
 " Coal in bunkers, Grummet, and coal in num- 
 ber two hold." 
 
 " Yes, sir. Are you going to " 
 
 "Yes, I am!" he replied. "I'm going to start
 
 * THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 right now. Just as soon as I can get under weigh. 
 I'll wait no longer. I'll fool around no longer. 
 And I'll spend no more good money in graft." 
 
 "What's the fresh trouble, sir?" I inquired. 
 
 "Ever hear of the Rio Maranon Rubber Com- 
 pany, Grummet?" 
 
 "There has been a good deal about 'em in the 
 papers, lately, sir, and some one has written a 
 book in which he calls them some very hard 
 names." 
 
 "He has my sympathy, though he couldn't 
 call 'em any harder names than I have. I scared 
 their representative, anyway. I scared him stiff. 
 He came to see me here in Galveston." 
 
 I grinned, for my commander was a large man 
 with a large-featured, sunburned face, capable of 
 scaring a good many people if he did but try. In 
 fact, I have seen him scare a whole ship's crew 
 into semi-hysteria more than once, and I con- 
 sidered it likely that the agent for the Rio 
 Maranon Rubber Company had been through a 
 pretty bad time. 
 
 "Was he a Dago, sir?" I asked. 
 
 "No, American, from New York. One of these 
 smart business men with nose-glasses and pretty 
 finger-nails. I made him jump. I kept him jump- 
 ing. Grummet, he's jumping now! He came 
 down here thinking I was just a Westerner, a 
 Calif ornian, the captain of a small cargo tramp.
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 3 
 
 So I am. But I 'm not the kind he thought I was. 
 I pretty near made him cry! I told him that the 
 company he represented had got eighteen hun- 
 dred dollars out of me all for nothing, and I was 
 careful to explain to him that what money I had 
 I have made for myself. I was quiet enough at 
 first and I let him talk. Always open negotia- 
 tions by making the other man talk, Grummet." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " He threw dollars and technicalities at me, and 
 tried to be kind to me and explain what he 
 meant, because I am only a shipmaster and could 
 not be expected to know all the rank rotten in- 
 side workings of stock markets and finance gen- 
 erally. When he had finished I had my say. I 
 said: 'Look you here, Mr. Man, your company is 
 a company of rogues, robbers, and thieves, and 
 you are a fit representative for such a crowd.' ' 
 
 "Did you open up on him that way, sir?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I did, Grummet; that's when he started to 
 jump ! I asked him in several different ways why 
 the Rio Maranon Company had first granted me 
 a concession to trade in the Upper Amazon coun- 
 try and had then withdrawn the concession. I 
 asked him why the reports from my partner, 
 Colonel Ezra Calvin, who is on the spot, had 
 been stopped for the last six months. And then 
 I asked him plumb out what the Rio Maranon
 
 4 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 had done to or with Ezra, and he could n't or 
 would n't say a thing. He just put me off with a 
 stream of words! Say! Grummet! These busi- 
 ness men sure can talk and say nothing! So I 
 said [here my commander hit the charthouse 
 desk another ringing blow]: 'Quit making that 
 noise and listen to me! When I applied to the 
 Government of Peru and the Government of 
 Colombia for a trading concession, they referred 
 me to your company. When I applied to your 
 company, they referred me back to the Govern- 
 ments of Peru and Colombia; and so it went on 
 for months, during which time I have spent, in 
 all, eighteen hundred good American dollars for 
 
 what! I get my concession, finally. In con- 
 sequence I buy my trade goods more money 
 spent and then when all is ready you withdraw 
 your concession ! Now, I don't mind the money, 
 
 I can stick that, and I don't so much fret 
 over all the bother. But what does trouble me is 
 this silence of my partner, Colonel Ezra Calvin.' 
 Then, after a lot more talk (I was doing the 
 talking then), I explained just what I was going 
 to do, for I have no intention of going round 
 behind 'em, or of playin' 'em any mean tricks 
 whatever they may have done to me. I told him 
 
 that business man with the nose-glasses 
 that I had, already, a charter from the Rio 
 Maloca Rubber Company (which company, I
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 5 
 
 guess, is just about owned by the Rio Maranon 
 people) for the due conveyance of certain goods 
 to their up-river headquarters. I explained that 
 I was going to carry that out as an ordinary mat- 
 ter of business. But afterwards, and I made 
 , this clear to him, afterwards I intended to 
 hunt for and find my partner, Colonel Ezra Cal- 
 vin, and when I had found him I intended trad- 
 ing upon my own account." 
 
 "Was it well to say that, sir?" I asked. 
 
 "Why not, Grummet? Snakes alive! Am I an 
 infant that needs a nursemaid? Are you and the 
 rest of the crowd on this ship infants? They 
 can't eat us, can they? This is an American ship, 
 ain't it? There's an American flag at her stern, 
 is n't there? Well, what they goin' to do, 
 eh?" 
 
 "It's a long way from home, up that river, 
 
 sir." 
 
 "It sure is. But what's that got to do with it? 
 I guess you and I have been a long way from 
 home before, Grummet, you and I and that little 
 man in the galley. Theoretically, I should go to 
 Washington, and I should say: * Please, who owns 
 this up-river country anyway? Is it Peru? Is it 
 Colombia? Is it Ecuador? Is ( it Brazil? Or is 
 it this Rio Maranon Company? For there's a 
 patch of land up there about the size of Texas 
 that every one claims and which nobody rules,
 
 6 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 and there ain't a man living that I can find who 
 knows where the frontier is.' Then Washington 
 would get busy, and in about ten years I 'd hear 
 all about it. Meanwhile, what's to become of my 
 partner in the deal? He went prospecting for 
 trade up the Amazon River eighteen months 
 ago, and at first I got his reports regularly 
 enough, considering the difficulties. Wherever 
 he went he met with opposition and trouble ar- 
 ranged by this Rio Maranon Company, while the 
 last two letters I had from him warned me that 
 he was liable to find himself at any moment in a 
 really serious fix. As they have already robbed 
 him of his goods and threatened his life, the seri- 
 ous fix he speaks of must mean something!" 
 
 "And you have n't heard from him for six 
 months, sir?" 
 
 "Not a word, Grummet." 
 
 "What kind of a man is he, sir?" 
 
 "A piece of New England granite with all the 
 hard corners left sticking out for the wrong kind 
 of man to bump up against. Except that he is a 
 landsman he 's a regular Down-Easter of the old 
 sailing-packet type not one of these soft mod- 
 ern business men with nose-glasses that live in 
 a cage near the sky and get round-shouldered 
 shouting through a 'phone all day and hah* the 
 night! You'd like Calvin. He's what Wilfred 
 would call a * little bit of All-Right.' Not that
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 7 
 
 he's small. He's several yards high, in fact, and 
 he's got a voice on him like the sirens at Cape 
 Race." 
 
 "And you think that he has fallen against this 
 rubber trust and that they have bottled him, sir? " 
 
 "Looks like it to me. Moreover, that part of 
 the world is less explored than the middle of 
 Africa, and where we are going is some hundreds 
 of miles beyond. I have been busy learning, but 
 I can't learn much. The latest maps print 'La 
 Montana' over a stretch the size of the Western 
 States, and to fill in the gaps the geographers 
 throw in a river or two the size of the St. Law- 
 rence, rivers which may or may not be there. 
 The main Amazon stream is all right, so is the 
 main Negro, Madeira, Yapura, and Putumayo, 
 and so on. The tributary streams, however, are 
 a different story; they are just wherever you like 
 to put them, and it's up a tributary of a tribu- 
 tary that we are bound." 
 
 Captain Hawks paused and drummed his 
 fingers upon the desk before him, looking out 
 through the heavy plate-glass charthouse win- 
 dows down upon the sun-bathed main deck of 
 the Martin Connor. A great silence filled the 
 empty ship "asleep upon her iron," a silence 
 hardly broken by the soft humming of the trade 
 wind in the funnel stays and wire rigging of our 
 stumpy masts. A smell of boiling ham floated
 
 8 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 upwards from the galley, and very occasionally 
 came the voice of our cook raised in song. 
 
 "The fact," continued Captain Hawks, "that 
 I have here this bona-fide contract with the Rio 
 Maloca Rubber Company to carry goods to their 
 up-river headquarters, which are within a few 
 hundred miles of where I want to go; and the 
 fact that, though I am willing to pay for a conces- 
 sion, it is neither refused in an official manner 
 nor granted because I am butting into the Rio 
 Maranon rubber trust, have decided me to go 
 ahead and do my trading and pay for my con- 
 cession afterwards since they won't let me 
 pay for it now." 
 
 "Meanwhile they will drop upon us as poach- 
 ers, sir." 
 
 "Grummet, don't croak. When I had that 
 contract with the Liverpool firm, and we did six- 
 teen trips across the Atlantic up and down Wa- 
 tery Lane, you were as sick of it as I was. You 
 likened us to the Cunard ! Well, Mr. Mate, some 
 years ago, before I went into steam, you and I 
 and Cert'nly Wilfred in the Galley, mighty near 
 froze to death in the Arctic. 1 We are now going 
 to be baked and boiled and stewed to death by 
 way of a change." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 1 See Captain Protheroe't Fortune. A. C. McClurg & Co., 
 Chicago.
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 9 
 
 "Nothing like variety, Grummet." 
 
 "No, sir. What's the cargo for this Rio Ma- 
 loca Rubber Company?" 
 
 "Portable buildings, firearms, ammunition, 
 groceries, drugs, wines and spirits, machetes, 
 chemicals, sewing machines, and a variety of 
 oddments for the resident manager and his 
 friends. The resident manager is a German, 
 Eichholz by name, and we shall pick up a di- 
 rector of the company at Para, a Dago with the 
 adopted English name of now, listen, Grum- 
 met Alonzo Makepeace Massingbird." 
 
 "Thunder and lightning!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Just so. The rest of the cargo will be similar 
 in character and will include phonographs, look- 
 ing-glasses, and articles of adornment for the 
 person calculated to make the wearer both proud 
 and happy. These last are for my own private 
 trading, which trading, Grummet, need not be 
 published in the newspapers." 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 "Meanwhile coal, Mr. Mate; coal in bunk- 
 ers and coal in number two hold." 
 
 I stepped out on to the bridge-deck to issue my 
 orders, leaving Captain Hawks to lock away his 
 papers in the ship's safe. To riorth and west- 
 ward, blue in the distance, was the row of piles 
 marking the Government Ship Channel, and on 
 the left, the beacon on Edward Point, while all
 
 10 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 about us stretched the vast bay of Galveston 
 shimmering in the early morning light. I ran 
 down the ladder and sought our chief engineer, 
 a large-boned Scotchman named Andrew Kin- 
 naird McLushley, a man who possessed a su- 
 preme knowledge of reciprocating machinery, a 
 bitter and sardonic humour, a red-rimmed fight- 
 ing eye, and a passion for the poetry of Mrs. 
 Felicia Hemans. I found him seated in an oil- 
 stained canvas deck-chair cleaning out a black- 
 looking briar oipe that had seen much service. 
 
 "Have you any steam, Mr. McLushley?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I have an* I have not, Mr. Grummet," re- 
 plied the Scotchman with all the caution that 
 marked his most trivial utterance; "there 's 
 plenty in the winches for the last twa days, 
 awaitin* ye'r orrd'rs that did not come." 
 
 "We are going inshore to coal," said I. 
 
 "Then I '11 have ye enough to move her wi* 
 inside the hour." And he rose stiffly, removed 
 his steel-rimmed spectacles from his battered 
 nose, pocketed his pipe, and clattered down into 
 the warm, echoing deeps of the ship, where I 
 heard his harsh, rasping voice calling his second 
 and his third assistants. 
 
 Captain Hawks returned ashore in a launch, 
 leaving the ship to me. I got our temporary crew 
 to work laying out wire hawsers, and in less than
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 11 
 
 an hour Mr. McLushley whistled up the bridge- 
 tube and delivered the concise and cryptic mes- 
 sage: "Can do." 
 
 "Thank you, Mr. McLushley," I replied, and 
 replaced the whistle. "Mr. Hanks," I contin- 
 ued, to our young New England second mate, 
 "Mr. Hanks, get the hook up." 
 
 The Martin Connor was as easy to handle as 
 a perambulator. She would sometimes actually 
 seem to wriggle her ugly little hull into places 
 without orders once she understood what it was 
 you wanted. I brought her over and under the 
 coal tips as though she had been a canoe. She 
 was a small iron tramp steamer, as unlovely as a 
 factory and as sound as a bell. As well as being 
 the means by which Captain Hawks (her sole 
 owner) made his living, she was also his pride 
 and his hobby, and he yearly spent upon her up- 
 keep a sum of money that would have opened 
 the eyes of some of these owners of six- and 
 eight-thousand-ton tramps in the Western Ocean 
 trade. And this was not because such a sum was 
 imperatively necessary, but because it was Cap- 
 tain Hawks's positive joy to have an absolutely 
 sound ship beneath him. 
 
 "Efficiency is my religion,"' he used to say, 
 "and it's not a bad religion either." 
 
 The Martin Connor was an eighteen-hundred- 
 ton tramp, two hundred and ten feet long, by
 
 12 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 twenty-nine feet ten inches in beam, by twelve 
 feet three inches in draught, with an average 
 speed of fourteen knots at sea. You will note from 
 these figures that she was no Aquitanial But 
 she possessed an equipment of labour-saving de- 
 vices and working conveniences seldom found in 
 ships five times her size. Amongst these must be 
 ranked a most modern and complete set of en- 
 gine-room auxiliaries, a searchlight (of a com- 
 mercial pattern) upon her upper bridge, sub- 
 marine signalling apparatus that alarmed us 
 greatly until we got used to it, self-trimming 
 hatches, electric light throughout, cold storage 
 for ship's food, steam steering gear, of course, 
 with screw gear aft, a direct steam windlass, a 
 horizontal multi-tubular donkey boiler, some 
 steam derricks for working cargo, a patent suc- 
 tion-working ash ejector that made a sound like 
 a young earthquake and which was the pride 
 of Mr. McLushley. But over the excellences of 
 her engine-room I will not pause, as being too 
 technical, though Mr. McLushley, whose every 
 wish was gratified, would dissertate profoundly 
 upon his latest acquisition, which was, if I re- 
 member, some single-action furnace fronts that 
 "Gave a maxeemum o' pow'rr wi' a meenimum 
 o' coal consumption, a larrge airr-cooled passage 
 afforrd'n* a high furrnace eeffeeciency." 
 
 Somewhere in the business section of Galves-
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 13 
 
 ton Captain Hawks was tempestuously at work, 
 and the results of his activity arrived in a con- 
 tinuous stream of articles to be prepared for and 
 received by me. Nor were inanimate objects 
 all. For shortly before midday there arrived on 
 board a certain Captain Alexander Esterkay, 
 an old friend of my commander's. He was com- 
 ing with us, apparently, and he strolled aboard 
 as though all eternity lay unruffled before him, 
 followed by a very small boy who, in turn, was 
 followed by two negro porters carrying dunnage. 
 Captain Esterkay bowed to me with the utmost 
 politeness (he was a Southerner of the most 
 Southern), paid the negroes more than they were 
 entitled to, and giving a bunch of keys to the 
 very small boy (whom he called "Twocents") 
 he bade him unpack the trunks. 
 
 The next arrival on board the Martin Connor 
 after Captain Esterkay and Twocents, was a 
 thirty-five-foot light-draught power boat, and 
 with her came many barrels of liquid fuel. I had 
 known nothing of this launch until she was on 
 the wharf and a negro teamster was asking me 
 where I wanted her, much as though he had 
 brought a sewing machine or a typewriter. This 
 evidence of hurry was no new thing with Cap- 
 tain Matthew Hawks, who, being shipowner as 
 well as shipmaster, hated demurrage twice over. 
 
 "A motor boat?" I asked the negro, "for us?"
 
 14 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Yes, sab," replied the teamster with the 
 cheerful air of one who finds joy in presenting 
 problems for other people to settle. 
 
 Had it been a giraffe stuffed and mounted, I 
 would have accepted it and made preparations 
 for its reception. So in due course the launch 
 a long, elegant, canvas-covered craft was 
 stowed away. Then came the liquid fuel and 
 trouble in the shape of a hawk-eyed insurance 
 official who quoted section A- this from sec- 
 tion B-that with regard to the shipment of 
 petroleum, paroid roofing, ferro-silicon, me- 
 tallic sodium, and nitre cake. Apparently he 
 was paid by the amount he talked, and I could 
 have cheerfully heaved him over the side into 
 the dock. But at length I stowed the fuel even 
 to his satisfaction and we parted without un- 
 necessary ceremony. 
 
 Few landsmen realize the amount of work 
 which is entailed by the departure of a ship from 
 harbour bound upon a long voyage. There is an 
 endless procession of detail to be attended to 
 that must be attended to at once. The larger 
 half devolves upon the mate, usually a much- 
 harassed man who carries round with him a sheaf 
 of papers in his hand, an indelible pencil behind 
 one ear, and imperfectly concealed wrath in his 
 bosom. My subordinate, Timothy Hanks, the 
 second mate, was a concentrated product of
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 15 
 
 New England, a serious, conscientious young 
 man without a grain of conscious humour in his 
 composition. He was a splendid worker and 
 never knew when he was tired or, at least, he 
 never let me know it, and I worked him hard 
 enough ! But final decisions must come from me, 
 while there was the knowledge that I, in turn, 
 was responsible to the captain. So I do not sup- 
 pose that I was in a particularly good temper. 
 What I might describe as a "ramping bustle" 
 pervaded the ship, and, as a minor ill, there was 
 a humming southerly breeze that swept all the 
 litter and dust from the wharf on board and 
 which smarted in the eyes and gritted between 
 the teeth and was a continual source of petty 
 aggravation. 
 
 All the same, when our new crew arrived, 
 shepherded by their boatswain, the latter the 
 most gigantic man I have ever seen, I had 
 time to note, with a roving and preoccupied 
 eye, how instantly, almost ferociously, they fell 
 to work. Pausing a moment I wondered greatly 
 where my commander had found such men. 
 These were no sailors' boarding-house produc- 
 tions, mutinous and incapable, and with the 
 single exception of the negro' carpenter they 
 were Anglo-Saxon to a man. Then I recollected 
 the far-off and formidable Rio Maranon Rubber 
 Company, and I smiled to myself. Such men
 
 16 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 as these were just precisely what a shipmaster 
 would wish for when embarking upon an uncer- 
 tain enterprise. 
 
 With such material to work with, a frenzy of 
 industry possessed the second mate. Used to 
 the necessity of driving his men, I remarked, 
 with inward amusement, his puzzled and em- 
 barrassed air when all his orders were carried out 
 with a clattering rush. He was even disconcerted 
 as a man might be who, expecting to lift a weight 
 finds no weight at all. 
 
 There was, of course, the small army of credi- 
 tors to settle with, and I, owing to my long inti- 
 macy with my commander, was empowered to 
 deal and dispute with them. Three dollars and 
 seventy-five cents due for the privilege of warpr 
 ing a shore-line across somebody's frontage, 
 somebody who saw in this the possibility of a 
 gross financial gain; four dollars and eighty cents 
 for a drum of particular paint; eight dollars for 
 this; two dollars for that; ten dollars for the other; 
 and one irascible individual who affirmed that 
 the noise of our winches had frightened his horse 
 which in consequence had run away and smashed 
 up a new buggy, for which he was going to law 
 to claim damages unless he got five dollars, cash 
 down, on the spot in settlement. It did not take 
 long to see him over the side, where he remained 
 on the wharf shouting insults until our cook
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 17 
 
 drove him away with lumps of coal delivered 
 with remarkable accuracy of aim. 
 
 In the background of my absorbed perturba- 
 tion was Captain Alexander Esterkay, a placid, 
 bland, rotund figure, with a straw-coloured, 
 sun-bleached, flowing mustache, soft Southern 
 speech, and a never-failing politeness. He effaced 
 himself with the great effacement of a ship- 
 master in a vessel other than his own. He was a 
 calm influence in that turmoil, an oasis of peace 
 to turn to, a gently emphatic and positive proof 
 that all was really well with the world in spite of 
 misleading appearances. He gave me a most ex- 
 cellent cigar which soothed my spirits and which 
 pleased the palate; which gave me a moment 
 while puffing it to think before answering the 
 never-ending inquiries. That is the practical 
 assistance of a cigar! 
 
 Captain Esterkay was, in most respects, the 
 laziest man on earth, and he was, also, one of 
 the nicest. Throughout that cruise, even while 
 piloting us in the Amazon, he sprawled away the 
 hours in a deck-chair, a large, unbuttoned figure, 
 blond and weather-stained. Somewhere hidden 
 behind his misleading exterior there lurked an 
 artistic appreciation for contrasts. This, per- 
 haps, had more than a little to do with his un- 
 premeditated adoption of Twocents, who was 
 the very antithesis of himself. There had been
 
 18 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 generous motives at work as well, and an ami- 
 able vagueness of purpose. He had considered, 
 no doubt, in an indefinite sort of way, that the 
 boy would be useful to fetch cigars from the cabin, 
 or his large green-lined umbrella which he used 
 to protect himself from the disintegrating feroc- 
 ity of a tropical sun, or just to sit about and 
 listen while he talked, for that elderly and cor- 
 pulent mariner was drawlingly garrulous to a 
 degree. A malady of inertia had beset him in 
 early middle life, when he had discovered it too 
 much trouble to wear his false teeth, and the 
 years spent in extra-tropical regions had but 
 emphasized a strong natural tendency to sit in 
 the shade between meals. Thus Twocents would 
 be valuable to fetch and carry. 
 
 The boy was fifteen years old, and when he 
 first came aboard he was incredibly thin and 
 slight. His connection with Captain Esterkay 
 had been effected through the medium of Cap- 
 tain Esterkay's peculiarly high-crowned straw 
 hat which a lively trade wind had flicked from 
 his pink bald head and set rolling down the 
 street. Twocents happened to be near, and, 
 hearing the captain's open offer of a nickel for 
 his hat, had set off at once in chase, swoop- 
 ing upon the headgear as a hawk swoops upon 
 a dove, returning with the captain's hat in the 
 twinkling of an eye. This agility had so much
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 19 
 
 impressed Captain Esterkay, who found loco- 
 motion an irksome problem upon all occasions, 
 that the germ of an idea had come to him as he 
 changed the promised nickel to a ten-cent piece. 
 
 " Yo' kin move lively, s-o-n," he had remarked, 
 taking his hat from the boy and offering the 
 dime, while, with his kindly, watery blue eyes, 
 he had gazed downward over the horizon of his 
 rotundity and observed the fact that behind the 
 boy's street-bred alertness there had lurked a 
 nice expression. 
 
 "An* yo' look as though a meal'd do you no 
 harm," he had added. " Yo'a Galveston k-i-d?" 
 
 "No, sir, N'York," Twocents had replied, 
 looking very straightly up and grinning, while 
 the captain, with methodical force, had jammed 
 his high-crowned straw hat upon his head. " Yer 
 wants a string to that hat." 
 
 "I do," Captain Esterkay had agreed with 
 complete gravity; "but if yo' are a Noo York 
 kid, h-a-o-w " 
 
 " Alston Seal's," had replied Twocents proudly, 
 but still grinning merrily, for it is possible for 
 some natures to grin with even an empty stom- 
 ach beneath it. "The show broke up at Vicks- 
 burg," added the boy. 
 
 " O-h ! Circus ! " the captain had replied; "yo* 
 are a kid from a circus?" 
 
 "You got it," Twocents had answered, nod-
 
 20 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 ding his head briskly a number of times to drive 
 the point home, and still smiling brightly. 
 
 "An* when the show broke up, did they just 
 turn a kid like yo' loose to starve?" 
 
 "Yessir," Twocents replied cheerfully. 
 
 "Well, I gaise some folks jus' deserve all that's 
 coming to 'em later on," was the captain's com- 
 ment as the germ of the idea that had come to 
 him grew towards hatching point. 
 
 "An' yo' folks all 'way, 'way off in Noo York? " 
 
 "Ain't got no folks," had replied Twocents, 
 as though such were the happiest of circum- 
 stances. 
 
 "Are yo' lyin', k-i-d?" had enquired the cap- 
 tain with unmoved placidity, his blue eyes fixed 
 upon the boy. 
 
 "Sure not." 
 
 "What was yo' in the show?" 
 
 "Number Two, Belsize Trio, Trapeze Art- 
 ists," Twocents had answered with pride. 
 
 "Which means just acrobat, I s'pose. And 
 ain't yo' got no place to go, s-o-n?" had then 
 enquired the captain as the idea in his head 
 hatched itself and came into being. 
 
 " Me and de gang sleeps around de wharves, 
 mostly." 
 
 "I see, an* yo' will sleep in jail by 'nd by," 
 was the captain's imperturbably calm reply as 
 the idea in his mind now steadily approached
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 21 
 
 the resolution stage. "Want something to eat, 
 s-o-n?" 
 
 "Sure!" 
 
 "Then yo' come right along with me," was 
 the captain's order as he got himself, in his high- 
 crowned straw hat, his crushed linen suit, and 
 his waistcoat of robin's-egg blue, in motion, and 
 the boy, still looking upward and still grinning, 
 trotted at his side. 
 
 Captain Esterkay marching, and Twocents 
 trotting, thus made then* way to an establish- 
 ment where meals could be had for twenty-five 
 cents, and full meals too. The place was called 
 "The Mercantile," and it contained a free- 
 spirited negro waiter, a reek of food, and a great 
 buzzing multitude of flies. Twocents crowded 
 in behind the captain, for owing to long intimacy 
 with pitiless circumstances the boy entertained 
 profound misgiving of ever receiving anything 
 for nothing, and he therefore stuck close to his 
 new-found friend and hoped for the best. 
 
 "Now, s-o-n " had begun the captain, se- 
 dately revolving, while Twocents, anxious to 
 follow wherever he might lead, revolved with 
 him. 
 
 "Where th* mischief is ... oh, here yo' are!" 
 and the captain had laid a fat, sun-tanned, 
 bleached-haired hand upon the boy's shoulder 
 and had thereupon whistled loudly.
 
 22 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Have yo' got no meat on yo' bones at all?" 
 he had exclaimed. Then, with sudden energy he 
 had thrust the boy down upon a wooden bench 
 facing a table stained with food. 
 
 "Sit and eat!" had commanded the captain, 
 then looked round with quick authority for the 
 free-spirited negro waiter. 
 
 To be confronted with evidences of privation 
 had made that placid mariner oddly angry, and 
 he hailed the waiter in a " maintop " voice. When 
 the negro arrived and was inclined to be imper- 
 tinent, the captain had promptly reduced him 
 to a simmering state of nervous obedience by a 
 full-toned blast of speech that must have pro- 
 claimed the captain's presence and profession 
 both within and without the building. 
 
 Twocents, in his own way, was an instinctive 
 judge of character, and after some years' lamen- 
 table experience in a third-rate circus his opin- 
 ion of mankind could not be of the highest. But 
 in Captain Alexander Esterkay he had become 
 instinctively aware of a difference from the men 
 he was accustomed to, and this difference had 
 made the boy respectful, though hitherto Two- 
 cents had only been respectful through fear. 
 
 The captain, lighting a powerful cigar to save 
 himself a little from the reek of cooking, had 
 then seated himself with tender deliberation and 
 much caution upon an inadequate stool, and had
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 23 
 
 watched the boy eating while a new gravity came 
 to his kindly eyes. From the negro, who had by 
 then learned that it was best to hover at the 
 captain's elbow, he had ordered one dish after 
 another, and had thrust them across the table 
 to Twocents who had speechlessly absorbed the 
 food. Being by nature an easy-going man, this 
 spectacle of real necessity in a boy so young and 
 slight had caused the captain positive discom- 
 fort, and it had not been until Twocents paused 
 to breathe that the elderly man's attention had 
 relaxed. Then briskly demanding a fresh sup- 
 ply he had arranged the dishes in a tempting 
 semicircle and had coaxed in his soft, drawling 
 voice 
 
 "Yo* eat some more, k-i-d. Don' yo* stop. 
 Keep right along now. This wedge o* pie? " 
 
 And Twocents, with his eyes fixed in solemn 
 resolution, had begun afresh, and the captain 
 had continued to watch with almost breathless 
 interest and anxiety. 
 
 But finally, the laws which ordain that the 
 finite capacity of any vessel is limited in propor- 
 tion to its size, and that two or more objects 
 cannot occupy the same space at one and the 
 same time, had brought Twocents to a gasping 
 stop, and the captain, looking happy, had paid 
 the bill. 
 
 Outside in the clean wind and bright sunlight,
 
 24 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Captain Esterkay had breathed deeply. He was 
 a man who appreciated more than a little the 
 great culinary art, and he must have suffered 
 considerably in that cheap eating-house. He 
 had then looked down at Twocents, who, walk- 
 ing silently barefoot at his side, was experiencing 
 for the first time in a considerable period the 
 sensations of satiety. Something in the boy's 
 obedience, in his taking for granted that where 
 the captain led he must follow, and something 
 too in his extreme slenderness, had affected the 
 elderly man in a curiously emotional way. Cap- 
 tain Esterkay had never married; he was without 
 kith or kin, and the possessive instinct within him 
 had never been satisfied and was then aroused, 
 almost assaulted, by the evidences of implicit 
 trust hi one whose whole appearance was youth- 
 fully pathetic. 
 
 "In five years' time he'll probably be no kind 
 o' good to himself or any one else that is 
 likely," had thought the captain, "unless " 
 and the idea in his head had then arrived at the 
 point of resolution with a rush. 
 
 Though I believe that Twocents spoke the 
 exact truth when he said that he was without a 
 home, the captain, with a large experience and 
 a still larger tolerant understanding of human- 
 ity, had considered the statement open to doubt. 
 But even if he had a home somewhere, the cap-
 
 SOME PEOPLE AND A SHIP 25 
 
 tain considered that its evidences were such as 
 to justify the step which he was about to take, 
 for with him, at any rate, the boy would be 
 properly clothed and fed. 
 
 He would also be taught to work. 
 
 As clothing was the next item to be consid- 
 ered, the captain had then backed his tops'ls 
 before an emporium where machine-made cloth- 
 ing festooned the front like banners in prepara- 
 tion for a civic procession. With unhurried pre- 
 cision he had purchased six small cotton shirts 
 and three pairs of overalls, which last were of a 
 comprehensive nature, having an upper exten- 
 sion and shoulder straps, the ingenious device, 
 I believe, of a gentleman in Virginia. A warm 
 jacket was added, and a pair of gum boots, some 
 shoes and socks, and two canvas hats were 
 added to the jacket, the whole being then made 
 into a parcel and given to Twocents to carry 
 in round-eyed silence, his usual street-bred 
 glibness of tongue and quick impertinence sud- 
 denly deserting him before the captain's unruf- 
 fled, uncondemning, and irresistible authority of 
 
 manner. 
 
 M 
 
 Now," had concluded Captain Esterkay, as 
 he paused for the last time, "d* yo' want a job 
 with me? Two dollars a week an* yo' keep?" 
 
 "Yessir!" had been Twocents's prompt reply, 
 and less than an hour later they had come
 
 26 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 aboard the Martin Connor, followed by the negro 
 porters carrying the captain's dunnage as I have 
 described. 
 
 That is how Twocents came among us, and 
 he stayed to win our affection and to lay for 
 himself the foundations of a fine man and a 
 sailor.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 DEPARTURE 
 
 IN the trying and intricate business of preparing 
 the Martin Connor for sea, I had been greatly 
 assisted by our cook, a cook for princes and a 
 prince of cooks. He was a very old friend and 
 attended to the stores himself. There was, 
 therefore, a lot taken off my shoulders, for I 
 knew that Wilfred Gee, or "Cert'nly Wilfred," 
 as he was called, was more than capable of deal- 
 ing with any victualling firm in Galveston or 
 elsewhere. There are few firms, indeed, supply- 
 ing the large orders given by ships for frozen 
 meat, groceries by the ton, and other commis- 
 sariat details, that can be implicitly trusted to 
 give full measure in every particular of a list 
 running into hundreds of dollars. A sack or two 
 of flour, a pound or two of coffee, salt, sugar, or 
 tea, is easily missed when these are ordered in 
 the large quantities necessary to feed thirty- 
 eight or forty men for a period of four or six 
 months. In fact, though it may not be apparent, 
 the victualling of even a small ship for a lengthy 
 voyage, where no fresh supplies can be had with 
 any certainty, approaches the region of science,
 
 28 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 and requires experience, accuracy, and thought. 
 Beyond signing the necessary cheques, Captain 
 Hawks never worried himself with this depart- 
 ment, for my commander's method was to pro- 
 cure the services of the best men he could find, 
 pay them well, feed them well, and shovel work 
 and responsibility in full measure upon their 
 shoulders. 
 
 It is a good system. 
 
 Before starting upon a cruise, Captain Hawks 
 would summon Cert'nly Wilfred to the cabin, 
 where the little man would arrive with notebook 
 and pencil and a certain dry ceremony of man- 
 ner; the proceedings then opened with the pres- 
 entation of a cigar which Wilfred would adjust 
 delicately behind his right ear to be smoked at a 
 later date. With such necessary information as 
 the probable duration of the forthcoming cruise, 
 the probable risks of the cruise taking longer 
 from unforeseen circumstances, and the possi- 
 bility or otherwise of replenishing stores upon 
 the way put down in his book, Cert'nly Wilfred 
 would then retire to his own domain to work out 
 his requirements. This done, the little man, in 
 shore-going clothes and a hard felt hat, would 
 sally forth to invite tenders and spend a merry 
 day. He displayed the greatest acumen in setting 
 one firm against another, in obtaining still fur- 
 ther reductions in contracts, and in the minute
 
 DEPARTURE 29 
 
 and particular examination of every detail sent 
 aboard. The stores were always right to the cent 
 and the ounce, or, at least, the ship benefited 
 by any error and never the contractor. And if 
 any dispute arose, Wilfred would not come to 
 me to settle it for him; he would settle it him- 
 self with the galley poker or anything else that 
 was hard and handy. 
 
 Cert'nly Wilfred first saw the light of day in 
 Hack Street, Tidal Basin, North Woolwich, 
 London, E., and from an early date he was con- 
 nected with the alimentary world. As first assist- 
 ant to a cousin in the shrimp and winkle trade 
 he developed a profound sagacity in the prepara- 
 tion and improvement of matter for human con- 
 sumption, and at seventeen he owned and ran a 
 coffee-stall just off the Shadwell High Street. It 
 was here that he first saw the wide possibilities 
 afforded by the culinary art, and in less than a 
 year he sold his coffee-stall and pitch at a fifty 
 per cent profit as being altogether unworthy of 
 his talents. He could do better; he knew it, and 
 he did. 
 
 As all persons of all ages and both sexes who 
 reside and have their being in that district, of 
 which Tidal Basin is but a particle, are con- 
 nected either remotely or directly with the sea 
 and ships, it was only natural that Cert'nly Wil- 
 fred's career should be flavoured by a strong
 
 30 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 marine influence from the first. A distant rela- 
 tive upon his mother's side (his mother was a 
 large and generous-souled woman who never 
 left London from the day of her marriage to the 
 day of her death, fifty years of prolific and vol- 
 uble life) owned and ran a collier brig from New- 
 castle, and hi his humble coaster Wilfred, just 
 eighteen, assumed his first position of sea cook. 
 In a little under two years he dropped this, too, 
 knowing this, as he had known the coffee-stall, 
 to be unworthy of his talent. 
 
 Being by temperament one who makes either 
 violent enemies or close friends, and being in- 
 stinctively drawn to the sea, he next took charge 
 of the galley in an ocean-going tramp, and made 
 his acquaintance, at a larger salary, with the 
 larger world. After a year and a half of this em- 
 ploy, during which time his natural gift for cook- 
 ery had grown naturally and without effort, the 
 ship fell in with the yacht of an American who 
 owned more miles of railroad than he could hope 
 to remember. The yacht had suffered during a 
 prolonged gale, was in a sinking condition, and 
 the immediate transhipment of her people was 
 imperative. The transhipment was effected, and 
 the family and friends of the millionaire suffered 
 considerable discomfort in the rough surround- 
 ings of an English cargo boat. Not so the mil- 
 lionaire himself. It is a fact that men of resource
 
 DEPARTURE 31 
 
 and calibre, no matter what their nationality, 
 religion, or manner of living, can always meet 
 upon the common ground of their own strength 
 of character, and the man of railroads found 
 himself more thoroughly happy in that cargo 
 tramp than he had been in his palatial yacht. 
 The ship was real, her people were real, the mil- 
 lionaire was real they understood one another. 
 Being more than usually dyspeptic the railroad 
 magnate, therefore, came in direct contact with 
 the cook, who, being the artist he was, set him- 
 self to prepare nourishment which was not only 
 digestible in quality, but was appetising as well. 
 When the ship arrived at a South American port 
 whither she had been bound, the man of railroads 
 promptly offered Cert'nly Wilfred a prince's 
 ransom in the shape of a yearly salary to con- 
 tinue preparing his food, which offer, of course, 
 Wilfred as promptly accepted. 
 
 "Cert'nly," replied Cert'nly Wilfred with his 
 usual familiar friendliness, and from thence on- 
 wards for three and a hah 5 years the little man 
 saw a strange and wonderful life. Wherever the 
 Prince of Railroads went, there also went the 
 Prince of Cooks. But three and a half years of 
 this employment was as much 'as Cert'nly Wil- 
 fred could stand. He must get to sea again, not 
 in yachts and liners, but in the common mer- 
 chant ships that wait not for fine weather, that
 
 32 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 are to be found in every quarter of the globe, that 
 seek adventures upon deep waters, that acquire 
 adventures in strange rivers, that have adven- 
 tures thrust upon them. Those two, Cert'nly 
 Wilfred and the railroad millionaire, bade each 
 other almost a tearful farewell in private, and 
 armed with credentials that would have gained 
 him the position of chef in any hotel had he 
 wanted it, and with a considerable sum in the 
 bank, Cert'nly Wilfred wandered westward, 
 seeing life. He chanced across a Texan with 
 blue eyes, a large mustache, with a cattle ranch 
 the size of a European kingdom and a forty-four 
 calibre revolver hanging low down upon his right 
 hip. Here again that subtle understanding that 
 enables men of widely different birth and at- 
 tainments to come together formed the basis of a 
 friendship that was responsible for an invitation 
 to see Western life on a cattle ranch in Texas, 
 and Wilfred enjoyed himself immensely. It mat- 
 tered not that he could not ride, it mattered not 
 that he misplaced his "h's," it mattered not that 
 he was small and undersized. For he had that 
 which it is essential that all real men should 
 have. As it happened that during his stay the 
 Chinese cook inadvertently exposed his person 
 in the track of a chance bullet, Cert'nly Wilfred 
 readily filled the gap so caused, and though the 
 materials which he had to work with were
 
 DEPARTURE 33 
 
 mostly of the canned variety, he executed mir- 
 acles that endeared him for ever to those hap- 
 hazard men of the West. It was here that he first 
 became known as "Cert'nly" Wilfred, from his 
 amiable habit of reply, and it is a remarkable 
 fact that, though he was prevailed upon to stay 
 over a year in the West, he never once bestrode 
 a horse ! He affirmed that he would be made sea- 
 sick by the motion. 
 
 But in the end the sea must have him, and he 
 was escorted to the nearest railroad by twenty- 
 five men-at-arms who presented him with a 
 brace of revolvers and a cartridge belt that were 
 not bought for a hundred dollars. In San Fran- 
 cisco he chanced across Captain Matthew 
 Hawks and settled down for life, a life that was 
 as varied and unexpected as all things must be 
 that are even remotely connected with that for- 
 midable Californian, a life, as Wilfred puts it, 
 where "things 'appen." Wilfred here found the 
 world wherein it suited him to dwell, and where 
 it suited the world he should be. Vociferous 
 and shrill, he guarded his employer's interests 
 and lived a life that continually demanded of 
 him his best. Despite his delicacy of health, he 
 possessed a high and singular courage; irrepres- 
 sible and bland, he was wholly without fear of life 
 and without dread of death; with a keen intelli- 
 gence, a generous soul, and with real artistry
 
 34 THE MARTIN .CONNOR 
 
 in his profession, he was an intrepid and re- 
 markable little man. No community of persons 
 could but be enriched by his presence, for he 
 enjoyed a sound philosophy; no atmosphere so 
 bleak but could be warmed by his disrespectful 
 humour, and no situation so tense but could be 
 partially relieved by his undaunted remarks. 
 Such was Cert'nly Wilfred our cook, a great- 
 hearted little man. 
 
 It was toward five o'clock in the morning be- 
 fore the Martin Connor was finally ready for sea. 
 Captain Hawks arrived about midnight in one 
 of his rather brutally cheerful moods, shoulder- 
 ing his way through those upon the wharf with 
 a truculent disregard for those he bumped into. 
 Clad in blue serge, his white-topped cap and 
 white collar contrasting vividly with his leather- 
 like complexion, he looked the large and vigorous 
 man that he was, and one destined and equipped 
 to force himself a place wherever he might be. 
 
 The clatter of our winches echoed loudly along 
 the water-front as we swung out from the wharf; 
 the perspiring stevedores scrambled ashore after 
 eighteen hours' consecutive work despite the 
 unions, while a lonely policeman stood yawning 
 and watching our departure. It was a fine and 
 merrily tempestuous summer morning, the Gulf 
 wind already blowing steady and warm, a river 
 of air streaming northwards to the hot plains
 
 DEPARTURE 35 
 
 of Texas and Arizona. The streets of Galveston 
 appeared and disappeared like the spokes of a 
 revolving wheel, and across the great arch of 
 sky were hurrying clusters of brilliant clouds 
 bowling swiftly inland, trailing after them their 
 flying shadows that patched the sunny land- 
 scape. The fresh breeze rippled the tightly 
 stretched awning above the bridge, and the even 
 song of the happy engines running sweet and true 
 under Mr. McLushley's fiercely loving eye came 
 through the open skylights. 
 
 In company with a fleet of Gulf Fishery Com- 
 pany's vessels we swung down the Bolivar Chan- 
 nel. Beyond, the Gulf stretched dappled and 
 glittering, windy, clear, and spacious, a sea of 
 infamous memories. As time passed and we 
 gained the open, the warm wind increased to 
 half a gale, a roaring, tepid draught rushing in- 
 land to equalise pressures. Every stay, wire, 
 and line upon the ship thrilled and vibrated, 
 while the bridge awning rolled and rattled like a 
 drum, and the brilliant sun deluged the flashing 
 scene. Right into the eye of this fine breeze 
 snored the Martin Connor, pitching and lifting 
 rhythmically to the foam-patched seas, her heav- 
 ing wake swinging out behind her beneath a 
 fan-shaped spread of smoke, while a great con- 
 course of birds followed for some distance out, 
 twinkling and soaring in the bright sunlight.
 
 36 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 A ship's course from port to port is a mathe- 
 matical problem that bristles with technical 
 terms such as "apogee" and "opogee," "loxo- 
 dromic curves" and "diurnal parallaxes," "pre- 
 cession of equinoxes" and "equiangular spirals," 
 all of which irresistibly suggest to my mind 
 strange and highly eccentric animals ! However, 
 there are persons, mentally incomprehensible to 
 me, who find the keenest joy in these regions, 
 and my commander was one of those persons. 
 Nearly all his spare tune was absorbed in the 
 compilation of technical works of reference for 
 the mariner. 
 
 Hour Angles of Sun, Moon, and Stars; An In- 
 troductory Hand-book to Nautical Astronomy; The 
 Adjustment of Compasses; A Manual for the De- 
 viation of Compasses in Iron Ships, and The Re- 
 duction of Lunar Observations, represented the 
 outlet which Captain Hawks found necessary 
 for his restless intellect. It is, therefore, not 
 to be wondered at that he took his departure 
 from the beacons at the entrance to the Bolivar 
 Channel, and laid his course and corrected it 
 ("the course made good," as sailors call it after 
 the adjustment of deviation and the variation of 
 the compass and the computation of ocean cur- 
 rents and wind pressure upon the ship) with an 
 accuracy that made it as mathematically correct 
 as the longitude of Greenwich.
 
 DEPARTURE 37 
 
 Had he kept this lust of figures to himself, I 
 should have regarded his strange passion with 
 detached and respectful interest, but, whenever 
 the proofs of his books came in, and whenever 
 he laid a course, my commander would ask me 
 to "run" over his calculations and check them 
 independently. As my "run" was at best a 
 halting crawl, I would discover at intervals 
 (while thus floundering in his wake) some detail 
 concerning the ship which would call me away 
 with a spinning brain to draw breath. In self- 
 defence I must state that for all practical pur- 
 poses my navigation is as sound as another's, 
 and that I possess a "Master's Extra"; but I am 
 content to leave my conclusions without carry- 
 ing them out to ten points in decimals, and I can 
 be assured of my own accuracy without proving 
 my totals by half a dozen geometrical designs 
 upon the chart like an overgrown cobweb. 
 
 In Mr. McLushley, our chief engineer, Cap- 
 tain Hawks found a kindred spirit, and though 
 the regions of their investigations lay in separate 
 departments of sea life, they yet met upon the 
 common ground of accuracy accuracy carried 
 to an inhuman point. Mr. McLushley was ap- 
 proaching the age of sixty years; and until he en- 
 tered the employ of Captain Hawks, he had never 
 been long in one ship. He had passed a robust 
 and stormy career making enemies and collecting
 
 38 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 all manner of certificates for super-competency. 
 He was on most occasions, outrageously rude, 
 and shipowners who expected big dividends from 
 unseaworthy ships, engined by machinery that 
 should have long since been scrapped, were not 
 likely to retain his services when Mr. McLushley 
 did not hesitate to state, in rasping Scotch and 
 with the greatest emphasis, the precise condi- 
 tion of their property, their base attitude of 
 mind, their dishonourable methods of business, 
 and what he sincerely hoped would be their 
 personal future in this world and in the world 
 to come. There are some things which it is not 
 prudent to say, and Mr. McLushley said them, 
 for he was one of the few men I have ever known 
 who literally feared no one on earth excepting 
 always a minister of the Free Kirk of Scotland. 
 His usual manner was provocative of a breach of 
 the peace, hence he was, in time, blacklisted by 
 shipowners the wide world over, and he was 
 found practically starving by Captain Hawks, 
 one day, in San Francisco. Now, my commander 
 is known and respected in that metropolis of 
 the West; moreover, his size and general appear- 
 ance gain him respect in most places. He was 
 therefore not the least offended, but instead, 
 very interested, when a tall, threadbare Scotch- 
 man, with whom he dropped into a casual con- 
 versation, contradicted him flatly six times in
 
 DEPARTURE 39 
 
 five minutes. Captain Hawks was not accus- 
 tomed to being contradicted in just that manner 
 and said so, whereupon the Scotchman had re- 
 marked that it was time he should be, whereat 
 my commander had grinned friendlily and had 
 said to himself, "Verily, this is a man." 
 
 Their remarks had concerned some machinery 
 awaiting transhipment from the wharf; and even 
 though the machinery in question was of a marine 
 order, and though Captain Hawks certainly 
 knew more about a ship's engines than most 
 master mariners, he could not be expected to 
 have an almost infinite knowledge and instinct 
 of what was, after all, not the primal department 
 of his profession. Furthermore, the mechanism 
 under discussion was of a new and complicated 
 nature, and as the casual stranger had demon- 
 strated his points in long, carefully punctuated, 
 broadly Scotch, and highly technical sentences, 
 Captain Hawks had not taken long to realise 
 that he had been wrong, that the stranger was 
 right, and that the stranger knew a very great 
 deal about his subject. Like most clever and en- 
 lightened men, Captain Hawks had at once ad- 
 mitted his error, and had then promptly asked 
 the ill-clad Scotchman aboard to breakfast, com- 
 menting mentally, "I want this man and I am 
 going to have him." The Scotchman had re- 
 fused the invitation and had turned away with
 
 40 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 the air of one who has been asked for a loan. 
 That was my commander's first meeting with 
 Andrew Kinnaird McLushley, of Dunoon, Ar- 
 gyll, in the Kingdom of Scotland; and in the end, 
 of course, Captain Hawks got his way. 
 
 There now existed an odd friendship between 
 these two highly efficient, taciturn, and formid- 
 able men, a friendship that was not marked by 
 any affectionate terms of speech or even un- 
 common civility. They seldom sought each 
 other's society except upon the occasions when 
 they would revel together solemnly in the regions 
 of higher mathematics. For the most part they 
 would actually seem to avoid each other, my 
 commander never entering the engine-room of 
 his own ship, and Mr. McLushley only mount- 
 ing to the bridge when technical and official eti- 
 quette demanded, when his stay would be of the 
 briefest, and when his manner would be particu- 
 larly repellent. They never addressed each other 
 by then* Christian names, a certain unapproach- 
 able ceremoniousness always marking then* inter- 
 course together. Yet had they been separated 
 by half the world, and had one of them needed 
 assistance, the other would have come, at all 
 cost, full speed to the rescue, when their meet- 
 ing would have appeared anything but affec- 
 tionate! 
 
 Nor was much geniality introduced into our
 
 DEPARTURE 41 
 
 social atmosphere by Timothy Hanks, our sec- 
 ond mate. Coming of a maritime ancestry from 
 an austere New England stock, his dark hah- and 
 ripe-mulberry-coloured eyes an inheritance from 
 his mother, a woman from the mountains of 
 Auvergne, he was used to the very hardest con- 
 ditions. Though he was one of those happiest of 
 created things, a man living for his work and 
 not just working for his living, his counte- 
 nance bore an expression of foreboding doom, a 
 besetting seriousness that is peculiar to youth 
 in certain temperaments. Ever since he had first 
 blinked his mulberry-coloured eyes at a New 
 England winter day, life had been a stern real- 
 ity. He had fought his way through the ills of 
 infancy with a roaring voice; he had struggled 
 through a few years of schooling and heroic dis- 
 grace for innumerable combats; and at the age 
 of fourteen he had run away to sea in a New 
 Bedford whaler where boys are cheaper than 
 food. But in spite of disadvantages, or perhaps 
 I might say with the aid of disadvantages, he 
 had done well with himself, and now, at the age 
 of twenty-two years, he was a second mate in 
 steam and a first-rate sailor, albeit a solemn 
 young man. 
 
 As I am approaching middle age, and am one 
 not temperamentally hilarious, the sombre at- 
 mosphere was in need of relief, a relief generously
 
 42 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 supplied with inexhaustible vigour by Cert'nly 
 Wilfred and Twocents. But no ship could re- 
 main a place of gloom with Captain Alexander 
 Esterkay on board. These three formed an ad- 
 equate counterpoise to Captain Hawks, Mr. 
 McLushley, Timothy Hanks, and well, yes, 
 perhaps myself! 
 
 From the first moment aboard, Twocents had 
 been consumed with curiosity concerning every 
 detail of the ship, as all right-minded boys would 
 and should be, and it had not been long before 
 he had discovered Cert'nly Wilfred tempestu- 
 ously at work in the galley. That these two 
 should be friends was a foregone conclusion, 
 though for a time the little man's cockney dia- 
 lect was somewhat incomprehensible to Two- 
 cents. 
 
 "'Ere, Tiddlediwinks!" hailed Wilfred, and 
 fell at once to cross-examining with shrill ques- 
 tions. And Twocents, by no means emanci- 
 pated from his street life, had not unnaturally 
 answered back with some impertinence, only to 
 receive a sharp reprimand from the cook that 
 was physical in character, amiable in impulse, 
 and most successful in effect! 
 
 Twocents was startled. 
 
 In the wretched and sordid circumstances that 
 had encompassed him in the circus, he had often 
 both received and avoided a blow delivered with
 
 DEPARTURE 43 
 
 ill-tempered ferocity, at which times, as could 
 only be expected, he had made liberal use of such 
 speech as he heard habitually used around him. 
 But never before had he received a clean, flat 
 smack, delivered open-handed, without malice, 
 and in such a location that only a considerable 
 stinging and no possible injury was the result. 
 The chastisement had been accompanied by a 
 cackle of laughter from the cook which had 
 robbed the proceeding of all suggestion of over- 
 emphasis, and for the first time in his short life 
 Twocents realised the possibility of justifiable 
 punishment, sane, tempered, and even affection- 
 ate. 
 
 It made a world of difference in Twocents! 
 
 I think we were all, in our different ways, un- 
 consciously grateful to that boy. In spite of the 
 cheerful influence of Cert'nly Wilfred and Cap- 
 tain Esterkay, there would have been lacking, 
 but for Twocents, that elusive element that only 
 youth can afford. A collection of adults, of 
 work-a-day adults, is all the better for that ele- 
 ment, and whether Twocents was getting ami- 
 ably spanked in the galley by Wilfred, or explor- 
 ing the ship with a restless, pup-like energy and 
 a hair-raising nimbleness due to his acrobatic 
 training, he was generally in the back of our 
 minds. From the truck of our stumpy masts to 
 the stoke-hold Twocents possessed the ship like,
 
 44 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 as Wilfred said, "a cat on 'ot bricks." He al- 
 together defeated Mr. McLushley's forbidding 
 grimness, and with the unerring instinct of a 
 child beheld the man beneath, for though Mr. 
 McLushley was feared by men, children and 
 dogs gambolled about him. 
 
 But some forty-eight hours out from Galves- 
 ton we began to forget Twocents, as a more 
 serious matter arose out of the south and east 
 to engage our attention. 
 
 There was, in the first place, what I might 
 describe as a hesitancy in the usual trade wind, 
 which finally ceased altogether some hours before 
 it should have done, followed by an odd rise in 
 temperature. As any departure from the usual 
 in the weather, in the Gulf, especially at cer- 
 tain seasons of the year, is regarded by sailors 
 with suspicion, this change was quickly noted 
 by Captain Hawks, who, with his usual alertness, 
 at once commenced a table of half-hourly ob- 
 servations. To add to our suspicions there be- 
 gan to come out of the south and east a percep- 
 tible cross-sea with no wind from that quarter 
 to warrant its presence. This was toward mid- 
 night about fifty hours out from Galveston. I 
 had risen to take my watch and had gone first, 
 according to my custom, to the galley for some 
 supper (or breakfast, whichever it might be 
 called) which I knew would be ready and wait-
 
 DEPARTURE 45 
 
 ing. The night was placid and still, the black sky 
 strewn with a multitude of stars, and in the wind- 
 less space the smoke from the funnel hung about 
 the ship, giving the night a reek of unswept 
 chimneys. A certain stillness pervaded the at- 
 mosphere, what I might term an unhealthy 
 stillness, and so warm was the night that I de- 
 cided to stand my watch in my sleeping-suit 
 without troubling to dress, only taking with me 
 an oilskin coat for possible showers. Wilfred 
 had not turned in; he never seemed to go to bed, 
 and he was engaged upon the construction of a 
 wooden cuckoo clock, for clock-making was one 
 of his pastimes. 
 
 " 'Ere, Mister Mate," said he, with the affable 
 familiarity that marked our intercourse when 
 alone together, for we were very old friends, 
 " where 's this sea comin' from?" 
 
 "From the south and east," I replied stolidly, 
 
 and blinking in the bright light cast from the 
 
 electrics that made the iron galley as bright as 
 
 day, and which was reflected from row upon row 
 
 of copper pans graduated nicely according to size. 
 
 "An* what may be down theer?" 
 
 "Some kind of a breeze, I should judge." 
 
 "Feel 'er pitch ter thet, now?" said the little 
 
 man, pausing in his work, his head meditatively 
 
 upon one side, as though he were listening to the 
 
 faint echo of some far-off sound. The ship took
 
 46 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 three successive dives, not deep ones, but quick 
 ones that were peculiar in their motion, and not 
 unlike a smooth-running sledge that rocked 
 suddenly and sharply over three ice-embedded 
 logs. The movement suggested a very peculiar 
 wave formation. 
 
 "I knows thet lift, I do," said Wilfred, contin- 
 uing with his clock-making; "I've felt it before, 
 oncet in the Formosa Channel"; and he turned 
 and grinned at me exposing a lonely tooth. 
 
 I was hard at work upon my bacon and ta- 
 males and the kind of tea one drinks when one 
 has a good digestion. 
 
 "I 'aven't bin goin* to and fro on this 'ere 
 world an' walkin' up and darn wiv my heyes 
 wide open wivout learning a thing or two, I 
 'aven't," resumed Wilfred, holding up to the light 
 a small piece of wood he was shaping. "Nor 
 'ave I bin at sea for a good many lively years 
 wivout becomin' acquainted wiv the motion of 
 ships, Mister George 'En-ery Grummet." 
 
 "We'll know all about it by and by," said I, 
 comfortably aware of a sound ship, a sound crew, 
 and a highly skilled commander. 
 
 "I think we will, even though there ain't no 
 'Ong Kong Water P'lice Station in the immeejit 
 neighbourhood to send up fireworks * by way of 
 
 1 Three bombs and a black cross at the masthead is a signal 
 given by the Hong Kong Water Police Station indicating the 
 immediate approach of a typhoon.
 
 "ERE, MISTER MATE, WHERE'S THIS SEA COMIN' FROM?"
 
 DEPARTURE 47 
 
 a gentle 'int to the mariner to shift 'isself over 
 th' nearest 'orizon. The one I alluded to jest 
 now, in the Formosa Channel, was full-powered 
 enough fer me, I can tell yer. The velocity of 
 the wind tetched a hundred and twenty odd, so 
 I learned, arfter which it blew the wind-gedge 
 away and went on increasing. Yer need a string 
 to yer 'at in a breeze like thet." 
 
 The ship entered upon a series of short, high, 
 sawing pitches, and for a time we said nothing, 
 Wilfred at his bench and I at my meal both 
 keenly aware of the movement. 
 
 "It's odd, y' know, jes' odd," remarked the 
 little man thoughtfully without looking up; 
 "it's an odd sea"; and I grunted hi reply. 
 
 The galley, for cleanliness, would have done 
 credit to a man-o'-war, though there was a 
 homeliness foreign to warships that made the 
 apartment characteristic of its occupant. Every- 
 thing had a hook or a batten or a ledge or a 
 wedge to hold it firm and prevent it from rattling 
 or slipping in a seaway, and what free spaces 
 there were were filled by photographic enlarge- 
 ments for Wilfred was an excellent photog- 
 rapher in frames bolted and screwed to the 
 bulkhead. To one side a door opened to the little 
 man's living quarters with "OFFICE" neatly 
 painted upon it, the light through the doorway 
 revealing a shelf full of account books above a
 
 48 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 locked desk. Here was to be found an exact 
 record, in a sloping and laborious handwriting, of 
 every ounce of food purchased for and consumed 
 within the ship. At one side of the desk was 
 Wilfred's bunk, with a set of drawers beneath 
 it. The photographs in this apartment were of 
 a more personal nature, being mostly family 
 portraits, and several views of Hack Street, 
 Tidal Basin, North Woolwich, London, E. Thus, 
 above his bunk was a painfully enlarged por- 
 trait of Wilfred's mother, smiling down, large 
 and amiable from the stern of a waggonette with 
 a background of Epping Forest. And about both 
 the galley and his living quarters there was a 
 great ticking of clocks that chimed, struck, and 
 cuckooed uproariously together at every hour 
 and half -hour. 
 
 I finished my meal and nodded to Wilfred. 
 
 " Good-bye, darling," said he; "what a won- 
 derful thing it must be ter stand on the bridge at 
 midnight an* control the workin's o* " But 
 by that time I passed out of hearing. 
 
 I found Timothy Hanks marching up and 
 down, vigilant, solitary, perspiring, and gloomy. 
 He paused at the ladder-head and looked about 
 him as though now that his watch was over he 
 discovered himself to be a human being. 
 
 "It's very warm, sir," he remarked in even 
 tones.
 
 DEPARTURE 49 
 
 "It is, Mr. Hanks," I agreed. "You might 
 even call it hot," said I, lighting my pipe, and 
 for a moment or two we both watched the flame 
 of the match that fluttered only slightly with 
 the movement of the ship. "And there's no 
 wind," I added, flicking the match over the 
 side. 
 
 "No, no wind," he repeated thoughtfully. 
 Then after a pause he added more briskly as he 
 turned to go: "Good-night, Mr. Grummet; I 
 think I'll sleep in my clothes." 
 
 Throughout my watch the conditions steadily 
 worsened. Before daybreak I noted that the 
 stars no longer shone with their usual clear 
 metallic brilliance, but with a distorted sheen, 
 like lights beheld through a smeared window 
 pane, with long points emanating from their 
 centres. The heat was extraordinary and most 
 oppressive; the sea grew higher and changed its 
 course slightly toward the east. The sunrise 
 came late, masked by a heavy bank of cloud 
 that lay like solid land upon the southern hori- 
 zon. Even when the sun rose clear of this, its 
 direct rays were veiled, as by a film that painted 
 the dome of sky a pale blue. And the quality of 
 the heat was that of an enclosed' space, as though 
 the world were roofed by a semi-transparent 
 substance which, while permitting the sun to 
 pierce it, prevented all wind from penetrating.
 
 50 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 The calm was more than a calm; there seemed to 
 be actual absence of air, and the entire atmos- 
 phere impressed one as hanging poised, await- 
 ing some cataclysmic happening.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 A TEST FOR SHIP AND SEAMANSHIP 
 
 TECHNICALLY, a typhoon, hurricane, or cyclone 
 is known as a "revolving," or "circular," storm, 
 and the handbooks in their cold, unimaginative 
 fashion dissertate in measured tones upon their 
 construction and cause much as medical works 
 will discuss some ravaging sickness. 
 
 These storms have, in addition to a motion 
 round a centre of low barometer, blowing more 
 or less a circular course, a progressive move- 
 ment along a straight or curving track. They 
 revolve against the watch hands in the northern 
 hemisphere, but with the watch hands in the 
 southern; and the indications of their approach 
 are the threatening appearance of the weather, a 
 heavy swell not due to the wind then blowing, 
 and above all to a falling barometer, "or even if 
 the regularity of its diurnal variation be inter- 
 rupted, danger may be apprehended." 
 
 There you have a technical description of the 
 conditions in which a West Indian hurricane 
 may be expected, and it is strikingly inept. One 
 is led to picture the mariner, manual in hand, 
 regarding his coming extinction with a detached
 
 52 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 spirit and an observant eye, coldly in search of 
 self -improving knowledge. 
 
 It was not in this admirable spirit that Cap- 
 tain Hawks and myself regarded our conditions, 
 the conditions surrounding the Martin Connor 
 at that moment entering the Straits of Yucatan. 
 We had closely examined a small scale chart of 
 the Gulf of Mexico and the table of figures com- 
 piled with care and accuracy by my commander 
 throughout the preceding hours. The ship was 
 stripped of her awnings, and everything move- 
 able was lashed and counterlashed, fixed, stayed, 
 and bound in every way that ingenuity and ex- 
 perience could suggest. The heat was tremen- 
 dous, and out of the south and east came those 
 great walls of water, unbroken, and growing 
 steadily larger as time went on, moving silently 
 immense, and sweeping the steamer up and 
 down with a swinging motion so great and so 
 steep that it was next thing to the impossible 
 for a man to move without hanging on to some- 
 thing. Yet there was no breath of wind. The 
 sea had the appearance of cod-liver oil; it 
 seemed almost sticky; and its weight and im- 
 petus, and its smooth, vast, oily-silk undulations 
 were unlike anything I have seen. It was no 
 longer like water; one could imagine it the liquid 
 substance of some other world, strangely con- 
 vulsed by some wholly unearthly commotion.
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 53 
 
 The surface was unbroken and showed neither 
 ripple nor foam, and the waves came moving 
 swiftly sedate in a silence that was most discon- 
 certing; it was, as Captain Hawks said, a wicked 
 sea. 
 
 Our study of the chart was interrupted by a 
 whistle from Timothy Hanks down the bridge- 
 tube. I answered it. 
 
 "A British man-o'-war a few points off the 
 port bow, sir," said he, "and she is flying some 
 signals. But as there's no wind I can't make 
 them out." 
 
 I repeated this to the captain. 
 
 "Step out with the glasses," said he, "and as 
 soon as you can read me out what she's saying "; 
 and he reached for the bookshelf above the desk, 
 his legs spread wide to steady himself. 
 
 I hooked my elbow round a funnel stay and 
 raised my glasses. Out of the curious haze that 
 hemmed our horizon to the limits of a few miles, 
 I beheld a great grey war- vessel flying the White 
 Ensign. She was heaving prodigiously, the cen- 
 tre of a vast acreage of white foam; for she was 
 cutting athwart the seas which climbed all over 
 her, giving her the appearance of a half-tide 
 rock. The flags she had mounted hung limp and 
 undecipherable, only shaking out a little as the 
 ship rolled. I called Captain Hawks to come 
 and look at her, for she was a fine sight.
 
 54 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Big lump of a ship, that," said he; "I won- 
 der what she can want with me." 
 
 Just then, the Britisher, to attract our atten- 
 tion, shrieked mournfully on his siren. As we 
 approached closer to each other I made out the 
 patches of bunting. 
 
 "Two red flags, sir," said I, "two red flags 
 with blue or black no, black centres and a red 
 pennant. She has two black cones up, the cones 
 are base to base." 
 
 While the captain was turning the pages of the 
 signal book I shifted the glasses to the warship's 
 upper bridge. She, like us, was stripped of her 
 awnings, and all over her main-decks the sea was 
 streaming in white cascades amid the compli- 
 cated litter of polished accoutrements. Her 
 strange deck-fittings would appear and disappear 
 like rocks upon a beach in a heavy surf, and even 
 her big guns would sometimes dip out of sight, 
 for they had been lowered as much as possible 
 to diminish the roll. 
 
 "Two red flags with black centres," said Cap- 
 tain Hawks, " displayed one above the other, in- 
 dicates the immediate approach of a hurricane. 
 The red pennant displayed with the flags gives 
 the direction; red means easterly to south. That 
 is American. The cones are British," and I 
 heard him slap another book down and run over 
 the pages. "Two black cones mounted base to
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 55 
 
 base means the immediate approach of a ty- 
 phoon. He'll have got that by wireless from 
 Havana, Grummet, and he's making dead sure 
 that I '11 understand and so puts it up in Ameri- 
 can and British. Onto the bridge with you and 
 Morse him, ' I understand,' on the whistle. Then 
 run up the Stars and Stripes and dip them, for 
 I am much obliged for his politeness." 
 
 The moment I whistled (a long and a short, a 
 long and a short, a long and a short, a long and 
 a short) the flags came down smartly, man-o'- 
 war fashion, but the cones remained up. When 
 the Stars and Stripes dipped, he Morsed, "Give 
 the girls my love," and so we parted. 
 
 "Well," remarked my commander, "he's con- 
 firmed my suspicions. That little show of bunt- 
 ing of his, translated literally, means: 'If you 
 ain't a criminal lunatic you '11 get hence and out 
 of this,' which is just precisely what I '11 do. He 's 
 got the reliable information that this thing is 
 coming out of the south and east, and it'll be a 
 full-dress cyclone when it arrives. It is travel- 
 ling at any rate you like in a northeasterly direc- 
 tion; and it will, at a point we can't determine, 
 incline east'ard again, according to its habits and 
 customs. Our new course is therefore westerly, 
 south of Yucatan, for ten or fifteen hours' steam- 
 ing. That '11 put this sea abeam and we '11 roll like 
 our British friend. Better let McLushley know."
 
 56 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 I followed Captain Hawks onto the bridge 
 and I blew down the engine-room tube, then 
 placed my ear to the mouthpiece. There came 
 the heavy, irregular song of the engines, strangely 
 concentrated in the narrow confines of the tube. 
 Then the whistle at the other end was removed, 
 the sound grew louder, and then was thrust 
 aside, as it were, by the voice of Andrew Kin- 
 naird McLushley. 
 
 "Well?" asked the Scotchman irritably. 
 
 "The course is to be changed," said I; "this 
 sea will then be abeam. She '11 roll, Mr. McLush- 
 ley, she'll mighty near roll the funnel out of her. 
 The captain wanted you to know." 
 
 "Did the captain think I'd be seasick?" was 
 the answer, and the whistle was jammed back 
 with such violence that it was like a slap in the 
 ear. 
 
 All the same, I heard his warning cry, hoarse 
 as a crow, to his second, who was doubtless ly- 
 ing prone or hanging acrobatically, oil can in 
 hand, amid a maze of flying machinery. 
 
 Captain Hawks had stepped to the binnacle 
 and was only waiting until I had finished speak- 
 ing to the chief. 
 
 "All right, sir," I said, and the captain's eyes 
 turned to the swaying compass card, while the 
 man at the small steering wheel, with his bare 
 feet planted far apart upon the grating, had the
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 57 
 
 expression of one who is about to be tried for his 
 life. For it is nervous work to be within a few 
 feet of so august a personage as your captain, 
 who narrowly examines your work, that, in it- 
 self, depends upon a circular plate of mica with 
 a ruby in the middle and a tendency to swing 
 right round with the violent motion of the ship. 
 Your "average" may not agree with the cap- 
 tain's and there is no talking back or explaining 
 at sea. The Martin Connor's compass card was 
 graduated in degrees at the edge to obviate any 
 reference to points and to simplify the applica- 
 tion of deviation. In giving the new course, 
 Captain Hawks gave it in points, and the man, 
 repeating the order as the rule demands, pushed 
 the wheel over. The ship took a dive like a man 
 casting himself down upon his shoulder, while a 
 half-humorous, half-surprised yell came from 
 the galley where Cert'nly Wilfred made frantic 
 efforts to save a pile of plates. The ship rose 
 streaming with water from her fore-deck and 
 heeled over prodigiously, and another yell and 
 another tinkling crash of crockery came from 
 the galley followed by the voice of Wilfred raised 
 in disrespectful enquiry as to what we on the 
 bridge were trying to do with the ship. But the 
 following moment all sounds were obliterated by 
 a second wave that came over our bows in great 
 solid masses of water. For some seconds I lost
 
 58 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 all sight of the ship forward except for the fore- 
 mast, while the tepid water swept ankle-deep 
 over the bridge itself. The sea drained off and 
 the ship rose again, and Captain Hawks him- 
 self steadied the wheel with one mahogany paw 
 upon the spokes. 
 
 To change your course in such a sea requires 
 skill and some nerve. The man at the wheel had 
 his mouth shut like a trap and his bulging eyes 
 fixed upon the card. With controlled frenzy he 
 instantly obeyed the captain's second command, 
 a command voiced in a quiet tone as though he 
 were navigating a river, and once more the little 
 ship went down by the head under countless tons 
 of water. But this time there appeared to be 
 two waves, one practically on top of another, or 
 rather just behind, and therefore hidden. 
 
 "Look out, sir!" I yelled, and grabbed the 
 sturdy, pillar-like stem of the engine-room tele- 
 graph. 
 
 That sea swept the ship, it was a monster, 
 and I do not know just what damage I ex- 
 pected. But as the ship cleared herself, there 
 came the reassuring and distant vibration of the 
 engines as before. And that sea had done us a 
 service, for we were now right round upon our 
 new course. Captain Hawks, wet to the middle, 
 took half a dozen running steps like a slack-wire 
 artist and whistled down the engine-room tube,
 
 A YELL CAME FROM THE GALLEY
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 59 
 
 bringing himself up with an arm about a stan- 
 chion. As he did so we commenced a series of 
 rolling wallows that cast the bridge from thirty 
 degrees one way to thirty degrees the other. 
 It was tremendous rolling, and we were going to 
 roll worse. 
 
 "How much is she doing, Mr. McLushley?" 
 enquired my commander politely, then clapped 
 his ear to the tube. 
 
 "I want all that you can give me," was his 
 next remark; and the water, for the moment 
 being free from the decks, and with the entire 
 absence of wind, his voice had the odd effect of 
 echoing, as though from a low, roof-like sky. 
 
 "Do just as much as you dare," he continued; 
 "I'm going to run for it if I can. Yes. Very 
 good. What? As you say. Perhaps. Yes, came 
 a mucker changing course. Yes, bad sea." 
 
 Almost at once a feather of steam appeared 
 at the escape in answer, representing Mr. Mc- 
 Lushley's power in reserve, though had that 
 white plume appeared under ordinary circum- 
 stances there would have been words of a per- 
 sonal nature in the engine-room. 
 
 Timothy Hanks arrived, though it was his 
 watch below. He appeared round-eyed but calm. 
 He took up a position at the end of the bridge 
 with his lips tight shut, and a memory of days 
 gone by returning to me I drifted down to Tim-
 
 60 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 othy, beginning, as circumstances permitted, a 
 desultory conversation upon technical matters; 
 and his face relaxed a little, under the influence 
 of human intercourse. I was a young second 
 mate myself once, and I had not forgotten my 
 own sensations when I was, for the first time, 
 in a ship in great peril. 
 
 Wilfred, dripping wet and cheerful, arrived 
 to report (according to custom) much havoc hi 
 the galley, and a vast quantity of crockery 
 smashed to little bits. As there were others 
 present, the little man made his report to the 
 captain with precise, official solemnity, but his 
 antics in keeping his balance were delicately 
 exaggerated, and as he departed he made way 
 for Captain Esterkay with a deference that was 
 just a fraction extravagant. The rotund and 
 elderly Southerner, for once agile and swift in 
 his movements, inclined his head slightly in 
 reply to Wilfred's bow, and a most unofficial 
 wink passed between those two widely different 
 men. For Captain Esterkay knew by instinct 
 with whom he could be familiar. Having locked 
 away a very seasick Twocents he came to give 
 us the moral support of his presence a master 
 mariner well used to these regions and not alto- 
 gether unacquainted with hurricanes. 
 
 The sweat stood upon our faces from the heat 
 and the exertion of endeavouring to remain up-
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 61 
 
 right. Wandering flaws of oven-hot wind came 
 eerily out of the gathering dusk with a sighing 
 moan that startled the nerves already painfully 
 stretched. The sea began to lose its wave for- 
 mation, and in the early afternoon it was heav- 
 ing up and down in pyramidal masses that shook 
 one's faith in the ship, for the ship was hustled 
 about like a child in a crowd. The scene was 
 most sinister. It was like a picture of the end of 
 the world. It was alarming by all tokens and 
 strangely unnatural. 
 
 We were doing our best to get out of the track 
 of the approaching avalanche of wind, but we 
 could not have been very far from it, as was 
 evident from the condition of the sea. Follow- 
 ing a curving course, this storm of madly gyrat- 
 ing wind set up a tremendous sea, first in one 
 direction and then in another, as it pursued its 
 way. These different seas conflicted with one 
 another, which is, I presume, the explanation 
 of the conditions we were then in, for I have 
 never seen the sea behave in that startling man- 
 ner before (or since) , though Piddington speaks of 
 a similar sea having occurred once to his knowl- 
 edge in the Indian Ocean. The heaviest North 
 Atlantic gale, or the severest conditions that I 
 can recall while running the easting down, are 
 nothing compared to that sea just south and 
 east of Yucatan which we experienced. For in a
 
 62 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 gale, no matter how strong, there is sanity and 
 reason in the ferocity of the sea, a ferocity which 
 a full-powered, well-found steamer is equipped 
 to meet. But that hurricane sea was essentially 
 extraordinary in so much that there was no 
 wind to blow it down. It was prodigious and 
 startling, and none of the recognised formulas 
 held good. The water toppled aboard us from 
 all sides and sometimes from all directions at 
 once. There was no meeting it, no avoiding it; 
 it thundered down haphazard as a building col- 
 lapses, all ways at once, as though intent upon 
 sinking the ship by sheer weight. 
 
 We on the bridge could do nothing; our fate 
 was in the hands of Mr. McLushley and the 
 good men with him. All the engineers were on 
 watch together and there was a double crew in 
 the stoke-hold. At rare intervals Captain Hawks 
 communicated with Mr. McLushley and the 
 chief's answers were short and to the point. 
 He gave his reports in an irritable manner, tech- 
 nical and very Scotch, as though the strain of the 
 moment had carried him back to his boyhood, 
 and he were once again in a ragged kilt and with 
 bare legs in that robust land of cold rain and 
 rushing, porter-coloured mountain torrents. 
 
 The engines were behaving " sweetly " and 
 true was ever the gist of his communications. 
 He could keep this up indefinitely:
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 63 
 
 "Though Glide kens this is no ordinair sea, 
 an* the coal consumption is awfu'!" 
 
 "Never mind the coal, Mr. McLushley, 
 please," replied Captain Hawks, always cour- 
 teous and almost blandly calm. "You have got 
 it there to burn, and I guess my General Aver- 
 age policy should cover the undue consumption 
 anyway. It's a shocking sea." 
 
 "An' the glass, captain?" came up the tube. 
 
 "Both of 'em as low as I have ever seen and 
 going lower, Mr. McLushley." 
 
 "Cree-ation!" 
 
 "Unless I can get out of the way we are in for 
 something big." 
 
 "Wharr d'ye calculate is the centre o' this 
 thing?" 
 
 "Forty miles or so sou'east, travelling nor'- 
 west. I figure on it being well abaft the beam 
 now." 
 
 "That '11 put these seas astairn, by 'nd by, eh? " 
 
 "It should, but they are coming every which 
 way now." 
 
 "Ye can feel them strikin' her doon here as 
 though she warr landin' her forrefoot on a rock. 
 She'll draw something. These are no ordinair 
 condeetions. Are ye getting smashed up much?" 
 
 "No, nothing considerable. No more than a 
 few hundred dollars worth of deck-fittings. But 
 I can't see much of my ship."
 
 64 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Very likely! Any one gone overboard?" 
 
 "No. Any one hurt with you?" 
 
 "Na, not yet, but they are fearin' a coal-slide. 
 They are a wee bit jumpy, ye ken, no' mutee- 
 nous, but just uneasy; ma second had to do some 
 hitting foreby they answered back, but they are 
 right enough at bottom. It's the heat, an' the 
 heat in the stoke-hold is prodeegious, it's bad 
 enough in the engine-room. One man 's sprained 
 his wrist, but he's shovelling awa' all the same." 
 
 "Whatman?" 
 
 " Yon rough tyke from the East Side, Carter." 
 
 "I '11 remember." 
 
 I caught occasional glimpses of our gigantic 
 boatswain. He resembled some powerful, slow- 
 moving, heavily agile and semi-amphibious 
 creature as he clambered about the ship labori- 
 ously upon the alert. He was several times com- 
 pletely submerged, but he was always there 
 when the sea drained off, and in the calm perti- 
 nacity of purpose he impressed one as being the 
 embodiment of some invincible force that would 
 win, and which was bound to win in the end, 
 no matter what happened now. 
 
 He was a fair-complexioned man, almost an 
 albino, and at all times he moved with a meas- 
 ured, unhurried competency. He was dressed 
 in much-washed overalls that now, soaking
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 65 
 
 wet, clung tightly to his splendid limbs. He was 
 a gigantic man, and his muscles moved like 
 oiled machinery, precisely, accurately, inevi- 
 tably; without apparent effort, springing into 
 being or sinking into quiescence beneath a 
 tanned skin of polished rosewood. He wore a 
 small, neatly trimmed mustache which he some- 
 times fingered with a massive hand. His eyes 
 were china-blue, and his expression was that of a 
 nice though rather stupid child. He was an Eng- 
 lishman, and in tune every one in the Martin 
 Connor copied his method of speech when ad- 
 dressing him. This had come about humorously 
 at first, but soon became an established custom. 
 It was characteristic of the two men that we 
 should amiably poke fun at the boatswain's 
 speech, though he was the largest man in the 
 ship, and never so much as dream of doing so 
 with Cert'nly Wilfred who was the smallest. 
 The boatswain was known as <: 'Any Ketch- 
 old," for, in giving orders or instructions all 
 that was necessary was to point and say, " 'Arry, 
 ketch 'old," and whatever it was that 'Arry 
 caught hold of was bound to come away or break. 
 He was as handy to have about as a portable 
 steam winch or a dockyard crane, and though 
 he moved slowly he worked with a sustained and 
 untiring industry, and with the same irresistible 
 appearance as an elephant. He spoke in a soft,
 
 66 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 sing-song voice that was pleasant to the ear, and 
 like many large and powerful animal organisms 
 he was of a mild and gentle disposition. That 
 he never took offence at the mimicking of his 
 accent or at the practical jokes that were played 
 upon him was due to his innate sweetness of 
 disposition and as well to his size and extraor- 
 dinary muscular development, for he had little 
 need to care for his own dignity. A blow from 
 his fist would have been like the kick of a horse; 
 he knew it and every man in the forecastle knew 
 it, and therefore 'Arry Ketchold had never 
 need for a blow, and blows, I fancy, were not 
 unknown in our forecastle, our crew being what 
 they were. 
 
 The watch were clustered about wherever they 
 could find a comparatively safe perch, and, as 
 is the habit with physically fit men well used 
 to a dangerous life, they were as uproariously 
 merry as a picnic party, and were betting their 
 wages on just how long the ship would float after 
 the hurricane had overtaken us. There was not 
 a distraught nerve among them, and well paid, 
 well fed, and well worked, sound in wind, limb, 
 and digestion, they would have been equally 
 unabashed on Judgment Day. 
 
 Captain Hawks, grave and alert, with slightly 
 corrugated brow stood clutching the bridge rail 
 thoughtfully watching his ship. At intervals he
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 67 
 
 swung himself ape-like down to the charthouse 
 to consult the barometers, and a slight shake of 
 his head to me when he returned would mean 
 that low as they were they were still dropping. 
 We were playing tag with a cyclone, and the 
 game was becoming long-drawn-out. The course 
 was changed slightly to the southerly, yet the 
 conditions remained the same so far as the sea 
 and the absence of wind were concerned. No one 
 thought of meals, of course, though Wilfred, 
 with his heavy weather doors shut, had pre- 
 pared coffee and a hot stew for any one who 
 chose. 
 
 The little man paid frequent visits to the 
 bridge-deck below us, and he took his life in 
 his hands every time he did so. He remained 
 wet and cheerful and vastly interested, as in- 
 deed this was an uncommon experience for any 
 man. The ship behaved as well as she could be 
 expected to behave. The conditions were such 
 that one felt that no ship could continue to live 
 long, no matter how well built, nor how skil- 
 fully handled. And then, toward five o'clock in 
 the afternoon we approached our nearest to the 
 cyclone. The wind came away suddenly. We 
 heard it coming before it arrived, and the sound 
 of its cataclysmic approach was awe-inspiring. 
 It was a combination of a deep, booming note 
 in which was discernible a high, penetrating
 
 68 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 whistle and a great hissing. Its onslaught 
 was the swiftest I have ever known. One mo- 
 ment it was a dead calm, and the next the air 
 had come upon us like a landslide, and the bare 
 steamer heeled over like a sailing vessel struck 
 by a ferocious squall. Yet this was only the out- 
 side shell of the real hurricane, a mere flick of 
 wind, as it were. It was at this moment that the 
 barometers touched then* lowest. 
 
 With the coming of the wind we five men 
 upon the bridge lost touch with one another. 
 The night descended soon after with a blackness 
 of black velvet and added to our isolation. 
 Savage daggers of lightning raked the southern 
 sky, illuminating a really terrific scene. The sea 
 was now one mass of white and roaring like 
 Niagara. Our helplessness upon the bridge was 
 now complete. We might have butted end on 
 into a continent, a reef, or another ship. The 
 spray was not spray, but solid sheets of water 
 that drove across us and high over the ship in a 
 manner no man could face. Crouched and cling- 
 ing, we could not even communicate with the 
 engine-room. At times the bridge was swept, 
 and the weather cloths, long since gone to rib- 
 bons, gave no shelter from the sustained on- 
 slaught of the wind. There was nothing left for 
 us to do but continue to persist, to persevere, 
 and to trust to the good men in the engine-room,
 
 A TEST FOR SEAMANSHIP 69 
 
 to good materials and good construction. I hung 
 on in a not altogether unpleasant state of semi- 
 coma. It was an unnatural weariness, but $iot 
 precisely distressing; I found no great objection 
 to drowning, at that time, for our circumstances 
 were so overwhelming that drowning appeared 
 a relief. No landsman can realise the effect of 
 over-exposure in such conditions; it leaves one, 
 in time, after many hours, without any particu- 
 lar desire to live or dread of death. 
 
 Dully I wondered how the others were getting 
 on. Mr. McLushley and his engineers would be 
 hard at it as they had been hard at it for the last 
 twelve hours. In the stoke-hold they would be 
 shovelling as they had been shovelling coal for 
 the last twelve hours, and occasionally Mr. Mc- 
 Lushley would make his dangerous way from 
 the engine-room to the stoke-hold and demand 
 more steam, and he would probably have a 
 spanner in his hand to emphasise his demands, 
 for the men would be dog-weary and perhaps 
 a little mutinous and dazed. 
 
 I wondered idly where the watch had got to, 
 and I wondered what Cert'nly Wilfred was doing. 
 As a matter of fact, as I learned later, the little 
 cook was seated in his "Office'' smoking, and, 
 wedged tightly, was listening to the insane tu- 
 mult without and wishing that there was some- 
 thing to do.
 
 70 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 At some indefinite time later, I became aware 
 that Captain Hawks had left the bridge. He 
 announced his return by yelling in my ear: 
 "We have done it! The glass is rising!!" 
 
 We had dodged the hurricane.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 
 
 IT is only to be expected that a mathematical 
 maniac such as Captain Hawks should exercise 
 the greatest nicety in making his landfalls. He 
 prided himself upon being able to say, toward 
 the end of a voyage, "At two-fifteen to-morrow 
 morning we will raise the Leghorn Light and 
 bring the island of Gorgona abeam"; or, "By 
 three bells this afternoon Trincomali will be two 
 points on the starb'd bow"; and I have seldom 
 known him wrong. There are a few occasions, 
 however, such as any sailor, no matter how 
 skilled, can call to mind with a shudder down 
 his spine, when an odd combination of circum- 
 stances, such as currents not marked upon the 
 chart nor mentioned in sailing directions, and 
 a faulty taffrail log, together with a persistent 
 fog, has, sometimes, a really astonishing result, 
 a result undreamed of by the underwriters of 
 ships. These incidents a shipmaster keeps to 
 himself, but he cannot keep them from his mate ! 
 Thus, one time, on a voyage from Bahia to New 
 York, Captain Hawks and myself were com- 
 pletely lost (as it afterwards turned out) for over
 
 72 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 twelve hours! It is just as well that landsmen 
 should realise that the captain who loses his 
 ship is not necessarily incompetent, and to rec- 
 ollect Lincoln's remark that a man who could 
 not make mistakes could not make anything! 
 At the end of long and carefully compiled cal- 
 culations, worked out independently of one an- 
 other, we pricked the ship off within range of 
 Cape Henry Light. Then the fog lifted and we 
 found ourselves inside the Diamond Shoal Light- 
 vessel off Hatteras. We said nothing on account 
 of the man at the wheel, but, like the parrot in 
 the story, we thought a good deal! 
 
 The town of Para is sixty miles from the mouth 
 of the Tocantins, by which the Amazon is en- 
 tered, and the Tocantins Estuary is, roughly, 
 two thousand miles and some odd hundreds 
 from Galveston, U.S.A. The trip should have 
 taken from seven to nine days, one way or an- 
 other, but the hurricane upset our calculations, 
 and it was not until the dawn of the seventeenth 
 day that a smudge upon the horizon denoted a 
 tree-smothered island and proclaimed us to be 
 a good forty miles up the river. With the sight- 
 ing of that island, Captain Alexander Esterkay 
 heaved himself from a deck-chair and took 
 charge of the Martin Connor. 
 
 On the forecastle-head, beneath an awning, the 
 watch below and the watch on deck sat about
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 73 
 
 more or less unclothed. From time to time a 
 man would pull off what few garments he hap* 
 pened to be wearing, and a friend would lowel 
 a bucket over the side, and, after examining the 
 water minutely, would pour it over him, then 
 the man would try and find a draught to sit in. 
 We had double awnings over the bridge with a 
 foot space between them, and large canvas ven- 
 tilators, swaying slightly from side to side and 
 oddly resembling immense, dead, white sharks, 
 communicated what air there was to the stoke- 
 hold. 
 
 The island drew nearer and was a dull-green 
 solid substance at rest upon a mud-coloured 
 ocean, and another island took its place ahead. 
 Except for those two spots and the colour of the 
 water, which last had been fresh and more or 
 less poisonous for the last twelve hours, the ship 
 might have been in the middle of the South 
 Atlantic. Twocents, in his comprehensive over- 
 alls and a shirt, raced about with bare feet and 
 got smacked by Captain Esterkay for not wear- 
 ing a hat in that murderous sun. 
 
 "Don't yo* go round without a hat, s-o-n. 
 D' yo* want to die right off?" he enquired with 
 some emphasis. 
 
 Captain Hawks, in a thin linen suit, reclined 
 in the deck-chair vacated by Captain Esterkay. 
 Timothy Hanks was below trying to sleep, and
 
 74 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 I strolled leisurely up and down the bridge 
 glancing automatically ahead. On the after 
 main-deck Cert'nly Wilfred had fitted himself 
 up a carpenter's bench for clock-making pur- 
 poses, outside the galley and beneath his own 
 particularly private strip of much-patched awn- 
 ing. 
 
 Our deck-fittings, though guaranteed for 
 North Atlantic winter weather, showed unmis- 
 takeable signs of what the ship had been through, 
 though the engineers, under the direction of 
 Mr. McLushley, and with the assistance of An- 
 drew Jackson Jefferson Davis, our negro car- 
 penter, and 'Any Ketchold, the boatswain, had 
 worked miracles. If you turn loose a highly 
 skilled and qualified engineer, with materials, a 
 forge, steam power laid on in pipes like water, 
 with clever assistants and a gang of muscular men 
 well used to handling weights at the word of 
 command, you will see iron and steel worked 
 and moulded like so much putty; you can, in 
 fact, stand back and behold wonders. The job 
 had appealed to Mr. McLushley; he had fallen 
 upon it with a cold, glittering lust hi his red- 
 rimmed, fighting eyes while Captain Hawks and 
 myself had, so to speak, taken a back seat. Bent 
 and twisted iron had become straight, fractured 
 steel had been collared and bolted at cunning 
 angles and served with wire, and wherever a
 
 "D' YO' WANT TO DIE RIGHT OFF?"
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 75 
 
 wound had been, a skin of healing red paint 
 covered the repair. During this process the ship 
 had rolled over tropic seas vibrating loudly to 
 the music of beaten metal. But there was a 
 legacy left us by the tornado that Mr. McLush- 
 ley could neither remedy nor even discover. 
 The Martin Connor was taking in a good deal 
 of water. 
 
 Now, all ships leak more or less, and the Mar- 
 tin Connor was no exception. The leakages, or- 
 dinarily small, found then* way to the bilge, 
 which was pumped out every so often by the 
 pumps connected with the engines. But this 
 was no infinitesimal inflow and was a matter for 
 consideration. The violent handling which the 
 ship had undergone had strained her somewhere. 
 At first we had thought little of the water, as 
 we had imagined that she had taken it in from 
 her decks, and Mr. McLushley had promptly 
 pumped her dry, only to find, next day, that 
 there was again an unhealthy amount of water 
 swilling round between her skins. Where, pre- 
 cisely, the leakage was situated, it was impos- 
 sible to say, though the chief, in a shocking bad 
 temper, spent most of a day "man-holing" with 
 an electric torch. He had emerged dripping with 
 sweat and bilge, scratched, bruised, and bleed- 
 ing, and he made his report to the captain in a 
 manner which my commander would not have
 
 76 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 allowed from any one else on earth. But the busi- 
 ness of examining a ship's bottom from within, 
 while at sea and in tropical regions, is almost a 
 desperate undertaking. It means hours spent 
 in the dark, in a suffocating temperature, with 
 the possibility of getting drowned like a rat in a 
 drain. It means frequent and complete immer- 
 sion in evil-smelling waters, and all the time it 
 requires skilled and vigilant observation. Mr. 
 McLushley would send no one but himself, 
 though he had three highly qualified assistants, 
 and that success did not crown his efforts did not 
 make him any more pleasant to deal with. The 
 social atmosphere of the engine-room was, so to 
 speak, tense. The lithe and muscular assistants 
 went about their work with silent alacrity and 
 with only partially concealed nervousness. When 
 he had carried his explorations as far as it was 
 humanly possible to do, Mr. McLushley ap- 
 peared from the black depths that had swal- 
 lowed him for so many hours, where warm, oily 
 waters rushed with hollow, booming echoes, and 
 sat himself down, grizzled and dripping, on the 
 edge of a yawning hole and wiped his face with 
 a lump of cotton waste handed him in sympa- 
 thetic silence by the first assistant. Official eti- 
 quette would have allowed Captain Hawks to 
 remain upon the bridge, the coolest place in the 
 ship with the exception of Wilfred's refrigerator,
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 77 
 
 but no one knew better than my commander 
 just when and how to unbend from the exalted 
 position of shipmaster. The subtle compliment 
 and courtesy paid him by the captain's personal 
 visit to the engine-room was not lost upon Mr. 
 McLushley, but the chief was too Scotch to be 
 over-polite in return. 
 
 "Ye'r a fine man an' a sailor, Captain Mat- 
 thew Hawks," said he, gazing upward grimly, 
 "an' it's ye'r meesforrtune to ha' been born a 
 Yankee instead o' Scotch." 
 
 Captain Hawks waited with shut lips and 
 with a smile somewhere in the background of 
 his expression. 
 
 "We are takin* in watter to the disgraceful 
 tune o' some ten to fifteen gallons perr hour, an' 
 the leakage will, in a' probabeelity, increase to 
 an enorrmous extent. Wharr it is I canna' say; 
 how caused I dinna' ken; an' to put it precisely, 
 I know no more than I did this morn, an' neither 
 do you." 
 
 Captain Hawks nodded. "Have a cigar?" 
 said he. 
 
 "Ah!" replied the chief, and with a begrimed 
 thumb and second finger (the first had long since 
 been missing at the joint) he picked a cigar 
 delicately from the captain's extended case. 
 The first assistant offered a match with zealous 
 attention, and for a moment Mr. McLushley
 
 78 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 smoked in silence while the grimness of his ex- 
 pression relaxed slightly under the soothing in- 
 fluence of really good tobacco. Then, rising, he 
 began to divest himself of his shirt and trousers, 
 his sole articles of clothing at the time. 
 
 "I have," said he, his head on one side to keep 
 the smoke out of his bloodshot eyes, "some 
 pumps that will throw a sizeable stream. There 
 is no eemmeediate cause f'r alarrms." 
 
 He was, by now, standing a picture of thin, 
 hard, rust-streaked bone and muscle turning 
 black and blue from bruises. He was, as Cap- 
 tain Hawks said afterwards, no drawing-room 
 ornament, but he was all of a man. 
 
 "I'll go an' have a bath," said he, "an*, Mac- 
 Phail, you tell yon oiler to cast this dunnage o' 
 mine overside. When I am clean, Captain 
 Hawks, I will make ma full report in pairson. 
 But at present I stink like a polecat that has 
 been living doon a sewer, an' I am no fit com- 
 pany for myself, let alone ither folk." 
 
 So much for the leak, and it remained to be 
 seen if it would develop into anything serious. 
 It was just one of the many difficulties that as- 
 sailed us upon that cruise, a cruise that will 
 always remain in my mind as one beset by the 
 unexpected. For, looking back, I now realise 
 how greatly we had underrated the vindictive 
 power and malignant attention of the Rio Mara-
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 79 
 
 non Rubber Company, and that so essentially 
 sound a ship as the Martin Connor should be 
 damaged by a hurricane en route seemed a gra- 
 tuitous blow of ill-fortune. 
 
 As the day progressed, a haze upon the south- 
 easterly horizon told of the river bank. Now, in 
 regarding the Amazon, or Amazonia, as all 
 that vast country that is alternately flooded 
 and drained by the Amazon River is called, 
 it is necessary to clear the mind of all previous 
 ideas concerning rivers. The navigation of the 
 Amazon is unlike all other river navigation on 
 account of the scale in which Nature has chanced 
 to plan things, and as well the proceeding is 
 accompanied by incidents that are bizarre, to 
 say the least. Thus, you will have an ocean- 
 going steamer porting her helm to avoid a float- 
 ing island populous with monkeys, or a four- 
 thousand-ton tramp from New York, Liverpool, 
 or Antwerp a thousand miles inland from the 
 sea, with alligators rubbing against her anchor 
 chains. 
 
 No one in the Martin Connor, with the excep- 
 tion of Captain Alexander Esterkay, had ever 
 been up the Amazon before, and for us there 
 was a continual entertainment, and an endless 
 procession of daily incidents that were interest- 
 ing, if not always of a pleasant nature. Captain 
 Esterkay knew "the stream" as far as Achual
 
 80 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Point, twenty-seven hundred and eighty-six 
 miles from the sea. And he had been higher, 
 penetrating, in fact, right into the remote inter- 
 Andean plateau toward Lake Titicaca in Southern 
 Peru. How so lethargic a man had accomplished 
 such really prodigious journeys, accompanied, as 
 they must have been, by all manner of bodily 
 risks and extreme discomforts, I was, at first, 
 at a loss to understand. And then, even before 
 we arrived at Para, I understood. Captain 
 Esterkay, whom I had considered the laziest 
 man on earth, had a strange and passionate in- 
 terest for and understanding of Amazonia and 
 all it contained, much as a man can have a pas- 
 sionate interest in, say, oceanography or extinct 
 civilizations. And certainly he knew a very great 
 deal about the country in an instinctive way. 
 He could tell you things that are not written or 
 writeable in books; he told us things that would 
 not be believed by the people who have never 
 been more than a hundred miles from a street 
 lamp, a barber shop, or a policeman. But we 
 believed what he said. We just sort of knew he 
 was right. 
 
 By daylight upon the following morning we 
 raised Para, or, to give it its full name, Santa 
 Maria de Nazareth de Belem do Grao Para, and 
 shortly after sun-up we dropped anchor and 
 awakened the echoes with our whistle. A launch
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 81 
 
 flying the Brazilian flag came fussing out to us, 
 and the customs authorities boarded us with 
 the lust of piracy in their eyes, while Wilfred, 
 who knew a thing or two, went round locking 
 doors. From the ship Para appeared quite a 
 town, with street-cars and public buildings. A 
 closer look with the glasses showed up an avenue 
 of mangoes and a lot of narrow streets beyond. 
 It appeared a flat spread of dilapidated houses 
 with here and there a palm tree in their midst. 
 Gaily painted boats came out plying for hire, 
 but we had the launch swung out and down which 
 caused what Wilfred called "'ard feelin's" and 
 some remarks until a few well-aimed lumps of 
 coal from the jeering cook taught them better 
 manners and that discretion is sometimes the 
 better part of commercial enterprise. 
 
 We were to be joined here by the official direc- 
 tor of the Rio Maloca Rubber Company, to the 
 up-river headquarters of which we were con- 
 signed. I remained in charge of the ship, so I 
 cannot describe Para from personal inspection, 
 though Timothy Hanks, who went ashore to 
 send picture postcards to a girl in New England, 
 had little to say concerning the place except that 
 it was very unlike Boston! But from those who 
 went ashore unpleasant news began to sift 
 through the ship concerning fever, and there 
 were some really preposterous stories: stories of
 
 82 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 cargo boats rotting at their anchors up-stream 
 with a forecastle full of the dead and dying. To 
 these stories we paid as little attention as we 
 could, though some of them had an unpleasant 
 substantiality which was inclined to affect the 
 crew until a large English steamer, one of a 
 regular Liverpool line, came slam-banging past 
 us, bound a thousand miles up-river, with a 
 "time-is-money" appearance, and due back hi 
 Liverpool upon a schedule as fixed as that of the 
 New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. 
 Captain Hawks was away early on business; 
 Captain Esterkay, accompanied by a restless 
 and excited Twocents, went later; and in the 
 afternoon Cert'nly Wilfred went ashore to buy 
 a hat. The launch was here manifesting its use- 
 fulness and playing ferryboat over the two-mile 
 stretch of coffee-coloured water to the shore 
 under command of 'Any Ketchold and a deck- 
 hand. Wilfred returned toward evening, not 
 only with a new hat, but with a shocking black 
 eye and a large medium-sized dog of no known 
 breed. The dog had rough, short, wiry red hair, 
 an exceptionally intelligent face, a very service- 
 able mouthful of teeth* a torn ear, and a tail 
 that was neither short nor long. Wilfred had 
 christened him "Stadger" and had acquired him 
 from his former owner by violence. From what 
 I could gather, and from what I could surmise,
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 83 
 
 a considerable dust-up must have occurred, and 
 in this wise. 
 
 Wilfred, promenading affably in a new hat of 
 vast dimensions, heard the high-drawn scream 
 of a dog in pain. Now that is a sound which no 
 decent man can hear without protest. Wilfred 
 protested. He protested with his right thumb 
 under the left ear of the former owner of Stad- 
 ger, who was vigorously engaged in beating the 
 dog to death for having stolen some meat, a 
 costly luxury in Para. Portuguese as spoken in 
 Para was incomprehensible to Wilfred, who knew 
 only emphatic cockney English, but he gathered 
 from the group of men surrounding the dog that 
 the punishment of being tied to a post and beaten 
 to death was mild enough as judged by the 
 natives of Para, since dogs have no souls and 
 since their bodies are cheap. Cert'nly Wilfred 
 is a very small man; he is small and delicate; but 
 rage filled him as he projected himself like a 
 missile and smote the dog-owner as I have inti- 
 mated with much force and scientific accuracy. 
 It is a paralysing blow, that of the thumb under 
 the ear, when correctly administered, and the 
 assault being unexpected, confusion ensued; 
 confusion that attracted the ' wandering atten- 
 tion of an American seaman who was ashore 
 from an American tramp at anchor in the roads. 
 At that the dog showed its unusual intelligence,
 
 84 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 and perhaps he had a long bill against his mas- 
 ter. At any rate, Stadger seems to have realised 
 that rescue was at hand and that his rescuer was 
 that most subtle being, a dog-person, or person 
 understanding of and understood by dogs, for 
 Stadger did not hesitate to throw in his forces 
 with Wilfred, as soon as Wilfred had cut the 
 cords that lashed the dog to the post. The for- 
 mer owner of the dog had folded up on the 
 ground, but his friends surrounded Wilfred with 
 drawn knives in a threatening ring. At this 
 juncture the American sailor arrived, a large 
 and effective man quite disposed for a row on 
 general principles. Wilfred, with his back to 
 a wall, and with the dog at his side snarling at 
 their enemies, was hopelessly outclassed, but 
 the little cook was guying the crowd in the 
 highly personal fashion of East London. The 
 American was not slow in realising the situation 
 and that another white man was in for real 
 trouble, though apparently wholly unabashed. 
 He came to the assistance of his blood-brother 
 in a silent and business-like manner, and began 
 hitting in a ding-dong, unhurried way with a 
 full-sized pair of fists at the end of a full-sized 
 pair of arms. At that the situation became 
 more or less acute. Wilfred, the American, and 
 Stadger were, as the little cook put it, "all in." 
 But they got out, and Wilfred, the American,
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 85 
 
 and Stadger thoroughly enjoyed themselves in 
 doing so. The end came with the arrival of 
 some municipal guard, or police, and the three 
 had to run to avoid getting locked up. They 
 arrived in the central part of the town, where, 
 having outdistanced the pursuit, they sat down, 
 drew breath, shook hands, quenched their thirst, 
 and licked their wounds respectively. That is 
 how Cert'nly Wilfred acquired Stadger, and how 
 it was that Stadger became a responsible and 
 much appreciated member of the ship's company. 
 Captain Hawks returned after dark, and with 
 him came the director of the Rio Maloca Rubber 
 Company, who was coming up-stream with us, 
 and my commander did not seem quite at his 
 ease. The director, who rejoiced in the name of 
 Alonzo Makepeace Massingbird, struck a false 
 note in our company; I was aware of this from 
 the first, and it explained the constraint in the 
 captain's manner. Mr. Alonzo Makepeace Mas- 
 singbird was a small man, suspiciously dark in 
 complexion and fundamentally flashy. He be- 
 longed to an altogether different world. He 
 reeked of cities and doubtful commercial under- 
 takings, and he wore on and about his person 
 some jewellery of no mean 'order. There was 
 about him an assumed suavity, and his mobile 
 mouth was scored about by betraying lines that 
 suggested a "ready-to-wear" and shark-like
 
 86 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 smile. In the midst of this sham and pretence his 
 tired eyes looked forth infinitely weary, wholly 
 disillusioned, and perpetually suspicious. 
 
 Speaking metaphorically, Mr. Massingbird 
 deluged us in rubber and financial matters 
 generally. He ate rubber, drank rubber, and 
 breathed rubber. He was one of those maniacs 
 with but one idea, possessed by but one object 
 in life, which all his thoughts, aspirations, and 
 actions obeyed. And his object in life concerned 
 rubber and rubber shares. Never have I met a 
 man more destitute and blind and deaf. All that 
 has gone to make this world and universe, and 
 all that this world and universe are going to 
 make were as nothing to Mr. Massingbird. Even 
 the rubber itself was nothing to him; it was only 
 the money he could get from rubber and the 
 manipulation of rubber companies that engaged 
 his life and what may have stood for his soul. 
 Nor did he mind how he got the rubber, that was 
 the trouble, and with the advent of Mr. Massing- 
 bird I became gradually aware of trouble some- 
 where vaguely ahead. Had I known how terribly 
 he was to affect my own life, I would have left 
 the ship at Para. To get rubber, or rather to 
 make other people get rubber for him, and to 
 sell it at a huge profit for a steaming six months 
 of the year, then spend his outrageous profits in 
 Paris, was Mr. Massingbird's reason for existence,
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 87 
 
 and he could not understand us, who, in a very 
 short time, could see no definite reason for Mr. 
 Massingbird's existence at all. At first I lis- 
 tened to him with some awe. Such terms as 
 "first mortgage debentures," and "cumulative 
 preference shares," "bank bills," and "brokers' 
 deposit rate," and such like incomprehensible 
 things fell as easily and glibly from his lips as 
 a man might speak of upper-topgallant braces, 
 as though they were everyday matters, which, 
 I suppose, they were to Mr. Massingbird. He 
 could not, in the least, understand Captain 
 Hawks's attitude to us, nor our attitude to the 
 captain. To Mr. Massingbird any one in com- 
 mand must necessarily be hated. The smart 
 discipline of the ship, the independent, uncivil, 
 and prompt obedience of Mr. McLushley, the 
 genial familiarity of Cert'nly Wilfred, the subtle 
 give-and-take between Captain Hawks and Cap- 
 tain Esterkay, were utterly incomprehensible 
 to the director of the Rio Maloca Rubber Com- 
 pany. The noble idea that is behind real sea 
 discipline, that robs servitude of all servility 
 and which dignifies command, was as the fourth 
 dimension to that mixture of South American- 
 ated Goth, Semite, and Vandal known as Alonzo 
 Makepeace Massingbird. He may, of course, 
 have been a very acute business man, but I don't 
 like business men.
 
 88 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 So the first meal on board the Martin Connor 
 in which Mr. Massingbird participated was 
 rather a stiff and formal affair. He endeavoured 
 to dominate until he caught Captain Esterkay 
 yawning behind his sunburned hand which dis- 
 closure caused that amiable Southerner (who was 
 the soul of politeness) much embarrassment. 
 But Mr. Massingbird was no fool, in many ways, 
 and perhaps I should not criticise him consider- 
 ing what happened, but he made us all uncom- 
 fortable, for, after the discovery of Captain 
 Esterkay's yawn, and it was such a whole- 
 hearted yawn, too, Mr. Massingbird real- 
 ised that he was not appreciated and so dropped 
 into a sudden and suspicious silence, with his 
 head, no doubt, full of all manner of absurd 
 reasons for our lack of interest in financial af- 
 fairs ! 
 
 The meals in the cabin were usually happy 
 and jovial. Wilfred, as I have said elsewhere, 
 was a cook for princes. There was always a 
 steady flow of conversation and generally an 
 argument, and the arguments extended over a 
 wide field and might concern the heeling error 
 of compasses or the best method of growing 
 pomegranates. 
 
 There was some complication over the matter of 
 pilotage which was handled by my commander 
 in his usual rather sweeping manner which did
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 89 
 
 not endear him to authorities. Certain Brazilian 
 regulations demanded Brazilian pilots, but Cap- 
 tain Hawks would have nothing to do with either, 
 snapping his fingers at both, and rather un- 
 wisely wagging the Stars and Stripes in the face 
 of the river authorities. But at that time we 
 none of us had any real notion of the full power 
 of the Rio Maranon Rubber Company, nor 
 how minutely they were watching us. Voluble 
 torrents of language flowed from the authorities, 
 and Captain Hawks chose, with great delibera- 
 tion, a fresh cigar. The authorities danced and 
 waved their arms, and the captain lit his cigar. 
 The authorities pirouetted in extreme agitation, 
 and the captain laid his heavy hand upon the 
 bridge telegraph and swung it clattering down 
 to "Stand By." The authorities left, fulminat- 
 ing, when we were under weigh, and the disturb- 
 ance of our passage through the water and 
 their own clumsiness nearly capsized them, to 
 our grinning entertainment. A freshly peeled 
 onion, aimed by Wilfred, called down upon him 
 an official rebuke from the smiling captain, but 
 the onion caught a Brazilian in the eye, all the 
 same, and must have hurt, too, judging by the 
 smack of impact and his loud, explosive yell. 
 Thus we left Para, in no very good case to ask 
 for protection from the Rio Maranon Rubber 
 people, had we wanted it.
 
 90 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 The Amazon River is not entered by its nat- 
 ural mouth, but by the Tocantins Estuary. This 
 is because of a vast expanse of sand that has 
 heaped itself in the mouth of the Amazon and 
 over which there sweeps a bore wherever the 
 soundings are not more than about four fathoms. 
 This wave, at the precise instant when the in- 
 flowing tide overcomes the river current, ad- 
 vances at the rate of from ten to fifteen miles an 
 hour, and varies in height, reaching as much as 
 twelve and fourteen feet in places. As the Ama- 
 zon is about one hundred miles wide at its mouth, 
 this wave must be worth seeing and hearing, and 
 is quite in keeping with the general scale and 
 character of things in that part of the world. 
 
 It was therefore not until some time after 
 leaving Para that we were genuinely in the 
 Amazon proper, though Amazon conditions soon 
 made themselves apparent. The first of these 
 was the sudden descent upon the ship of myr- 
 iads of insects that hummed, buzzed, piped, 
 droned, stung, crawled, walked, hopped, and 
 flew in uncounted multitudes, in your bunk, 
 clothes, books, food, and, worst of all, about 
 your person. First one, then another of us would 
 start and clap his hand to himself with a crack 
 like the report of a pistol and with a little re- 
 mark that needs no repetition; or would start 
 rooting beneath his clothing with one or both
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 91 
 
 hands while an expression of growing alarm 
 would spread across his face. The first creature 
 to arrive was a monster with many legs, a spiked 
 helmet like a German soldier's, a fully equipped 
 stinging outfit which he manipulated with great 
 skill, and the greatest conceivable energy. This 
 thing arrived droning like a biplane and ac- 
 cording to Wilfred barking like a dog. 
 
 There were others! 
 
 Wilfred ceased making clocks in his spare time 
 and started collecting these creatures, and the 
 larger and more deadly the captive the greater 
 and shriller was his joy. From the captain he 
 obtained some insect-killer, and with this on cot- 
 ton waste in a pickle jar he made a killing-bottle. 
 Thus armed with this engine of death and ac- 
 companied by Stadger, he busily stalked big 
 game about the ship at all hours of the night and 
 day. By some miracle of dexterity he was not 
 only highly successful in his hunting, but, for 
 the most part, he escaped unstung. In forty- 
 eight hours he collected a nightmare series of 
 the most shocking-looking insects I have ever 
 seen. Later on, when we were really up-country 
 and where wild animals abounded, the little 
 man endeavoured to collect what he was pleased 
 to call a "mangery," by which I think he meant 
 menagerie; but he was reluctantly forced to 
 desist in obedience to a strongly worded pro-
 
 92 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 test, delivered personally, from every man in 
 the ship from the captain downwards. By some 
 odd chance his usual ill-health, his bronchitis 
 and asthma, from which he suffered continu- 
 ally in temperate and healthy climates, seemed 
 to improve in the most intemperate and un- 
 healthy climate of the Amazon. It is sometimes 
 the way with small and delicate men, and so it 
 was with Wilfred, though his well-known cough, 
 which sounded so like a man beginning to sing 
 into a jug, remained as much a part of the ship's 
 sounds as, for instance, the song of the engines 
 or the rattle of iron shovels from down the stoke- 
 hold ventilators. 
 
 The Amazon is connected with the Tocantins 
 by a maze of incredibly deep, natural canals, 
 and it was a new experience to go swinging down 
 these narrow water lanes at full speed with the 
 trees almost brushing our sides. And the trees 
 were immense. They were not, of course, like 
 the giant redwoods of California or the giant 
 gums of Australia, but the uniform height of the 
 forest was twice that of any forest I have seen 
 elsewhere. As I have said before, the Martin 
 Connor was as easy to handle as a canoe, and, in 
 fact, Captain Esterkay twisted the ship about 
 very much as though she had been one. There 
 was no break in the forest wall except where 
 other waterways branched off, and over some of
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 93 
 
 the more narrow of these the trees stretched in 
 leafy tunnels. The verdure rose straight from 
 Ijie water, the water as often as not disappear- 
 ing into the forest, the waves cast up by our 
 progress breaking and swirling in and around 
 the huge tree-trunks. Thus one got no sight of 
 the earth itself; the earth was covered and 
 smothered beneath tepid water and chaotic 
 vegetation. Occasionally a snowy heron or cyg- 
 nus would be disturbed by our approach and 
 would rise and fly on ahead and settle down, only 
 to rise again as we drew near. It would take a 
 far better man than I am with a pen to describe 
 the first impression of the Amazon. We all 
 exhausted our vocabulary of exclamations in a 
 very short time. We had imagined a larger river, 
 or, rather, we had imagined the largest river 
 we had ever seen magnified two or three times. 
 We were therefore surprised and perhaps dis- 
 appointed when we emerged finally into the 
 Amazon proper to discover it no bigger than 
 the Mississippi. The reason for this was that we 
 did not see it all, its full width being masked 
 by countless thousands of islands. 
 
 There were canoes and river schooners and 
 wood-burning steamers, most unsea worthy-look- 
 ing craft and most clumsily handled and laden 
 to the water's edge. The languid, half-clothed 
 men on board them did not seem to mind what
 
 94 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 we said to them through a megaphone when they 
 did their best to be run down, but then, per- 
 haps, they did not understand. It was here that 
 we first encountered the real Amazon smell, a 
 smell that was to remain in our nostrils long 
 enough to plant itself in our memories for the 
 rest of our lives. It was a smell that was not 
 unpleasant; it was subtly attractive, strangely 
 reminiscent, and exceedingly sinister. At a re- 
 mote period of time our ancestors must have 
 known that smell well enough, that thick odour 
 of primeval rot ! Doubtless our forebears sniffed 
 it and found it good. Or more likely they never 
 noticed it as they swung gaily from tree to tree. 
 It is therefore a matter for nice conjecture how 
 and why it was that the Amazon smell seemed 
 vaguely reminiscent and familiar! Its subtle at- 
 traction may also have been due to an un- 
 conscious awakening in us of a long-forgotten 
 sensation of the nose ! Its unpleasantness at times 
 was due to our delicate and super-refined mod- 
 ern nostrils, and as for its sinister quality, per- 
 haps, again, it awakened within us the rapid 
 flights of fear, the knowledge of perpetual dan- 
 ger, the low cunning and alert suspicions of the 
 little monkey men and women of the coal age! 
 But these may be fantastic imaginings. I yet 
 maintain, however, that the Amazon smell does, 
 indeed, affect a man of any perception in an odd
 
 A DIFFERENT WORLD 95 
 
 way, which, I am convinced, strange as it may 
 sound, has more than a little to do with the shock- 
 ing change that creeps over a man, almost any 
 man, after a prolonged residence in Amazonia; 
 which is, to a certain extent, responsible for 
 the iniquitous individual engaged in collecting 
 rubber there. This statement may sound pre- 
 posterous, but if any one laughs too loudly at 
 these remarks, be he a minister of the Gospel, 
 a scientific man with reasons for everything, or 
 just an ordinary kind of a man, let him go and 
 live for a few years in the upper Amazon region. 
 Unless he is a man in ten thousand, such a period 
 of residence will work in him a truly diabolic 
 change.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 UP THE AMAZON 
 
 IT was I who enjoyed the undignified and un- 
 pleasant distinction of being the first to go down 
 with fever, and Amazon fever is a particularly 
 violent and pernicious edition of ordinary mala- 
 ria. Standing in the charthouse writing up the 
 log, I had occasion to look at the clock and I 
 was surprised to find that I could not read it. 
 I stared at the well-known, bald, white face 
 and thought confusedly. I could not remember 
 which way the hands went round. My head 
 'ached severely, and I felt as though I had swal- 
 lowed a steam radiator and a lump of ice; the 
 two seemed to be fighting for supremacy. I stood 
 and stared at the clock and was aware of a 
 gradual darkening about me, as though the sun 
 had been obscured by the passage of thick smoke. 
 I glanced out of the thick, plate-glass charthouse 
 windows and observed that the river tilted up- 
 hill at a surprising angle. 
 
 "Something wrong," I commented; "rivers 
 should n't do that sort of thing. Better tell the 
 captain." And forgetting all about the half- 
 written log, I mounted to the bridge one step at
 
 UP THE AMAZON 97 
 
 a time and there stood swaying and clutching the 
 rail. 
 
 Captain Hawks was, I think, deep in a game 
 of chess with Captain Esterkay. He was always 
 playing chess with Captain Esterkay and al- 
 ways getting beaten, which fact gives, to a nicety, 
 the two temperaments of the men in question. 
 My commander glanced up and stared emphati- 
 cally while some one who had borrowed my 
 voice shouted from a long way off that the river 
 was running up-hill. The captain rose hurriedly 
 and appeared swaying before me. 
 
 "You go and turn in, old man," he said; "go 
 at once, and I '11 mix you one of my special qui- 
 nine mixtures." 
 
 The sky turned black and the trees turned 
 white and I found myself being embraced by 
 the captain. There then followed vast journey- 
 ings in space. I visited the outer stars, I rose to 
 prodigious heights, and like Tomlinson, I dropped 
 sun by sun to abysmal depths. My steering 
 gear gave me constant trouble; I found it fran- 
 tically difficult to answer my helm, and only by 
 the very hardest work did I manage to miss 
 hitting some terribly large stars. I worked till 
 the sweat rolled off me in rivers while I yet 
 shivered in absolute zero. When I awoke wea- 
 ried out, I was aware of great distress a vague 
 and terrible mental distress and a sound of wild
 
 98 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 tears and horrible anguish. But the distress 
 vanished before the old and reassuring familiar- 
 ity of my cabin and the sight of Cert'nly Wilfred. 
 No angel could have appeared sweeter than he, 
 to me, at that moment. He was bathing my face. 
 
 "'Ello!" said the little man briskly; "Grum- 
 met's come back! Wheer yer bin, George?" 
 
 "Just there and back," I answered weakly, 
 "but it's a long way. Give me something to 
 drink." 
 
 He handed me a glass of tepid water which I 
 swallowed at a gulp. 
 
 "Like soapsuds goin' darn a drain," com- 
 mented the cook. 
 
 "Some more," said I, "and put some ice in 
 it." 
 
 "No hice fer you, me boy. Hice is ag'in' or- 
 ders. What abart a drop of tea, old dear?" 
 
 Gradually I got better, but I was five days 
 doing it, and I returned to duty to find the ship 
 well up-stream. 
 
 There was no alteration in the scene. It was 
 the same immense river that in places widened 
 to great lagoons. We were still steaming along 
 the left bank, the right or northerly bank being 
 often but a thin blue line upon the horizon, and 
 there was the same maze of islands fringing the 
 shore. 
 
 To a man who endeavours to describe the
 
 UP THE AMAZON 99 
 
 conditions prevailing in the Amazon Basin, 
 there arise almost insurmountable difficulties 
 of language. A man might possibly experience 
 the same trouble did he try to describe a per- 
 sonal visit to the moon. Unless the reader is 
 ready and prepared to accept certain fantastic 
 facts for granted and is fully aware that the re- 
 gion under discussion is a preposterous enormity 
 of Nature, mere words are inadequate. The 
 Amazon is out of scale with this world; it belongs 
 to a much bigger place than this pill of a world 
 of ours. At some incomputable period of time, 
 ages and ages and ages ago, it is thought that 
 the Amazon Valley was an inland sea rather 
 smaller than the Mediterranean, or, to bring it 
 home, about as large as from Chicago to New 
 Orleans one way and from New York to Omaha 
 the other. Into the western end of this sea 
 flowed a river that rose amid the Andes, and the 
 Andes were probably much higher then. They 
 have been whittled away, so to speak, by rain 
 and melting snow. Through countless ages that 
 river, laden with a rich deposit, formed an ever- 
 widening delta. This delta in time there was 
 no hurry in the process levelled up the de- 
 pression in which lay this great inland sea, and 
 while doing so the river cut a passage for itself 
 through its own deposit. Thus, so it is thought, 
 was the Amazon Basin formed. Now, however,
 
 100 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 the Amazon is not a river, it is a vast body 
 of water extending for thousands of miles over 
 an almost level floor of ooze. This area, three 
 quarters the size of the United States, extends 
 and contracts according to the seasons. At times 
 it overflows and spills out into the unexplored 
 forests for unknown distances, and covering 
 this region, alternately flooded and partially 
 drained, there extends a matted tangle of veg- 
 etation that defies description. Hundreds of 
 thousands of channels, ditches, and waterways 
 cut and wind in every direction, and in this de- 
 batable area, half land and half water, darkened 
 to a deep and steamy gloom, there dwells, in a 
 state of perpetual warfare, a swarming multi- 
 tude of animal, insectile, and reptilian life. And 
 all this is bathed, soaked, and permeated by a 
 dripping malarial climate that waters the very 
 heart out of a man and which rips to pieces his 
 moral and nervous system. Seldom is there an 
 inch of earth revealed to the eye, and to move 
 from one place to another a man must go in a 
 boat. One seldom ventures into the forest; Na- 
 ture forbids it; and a few yards from the river 
 it remains as unknown to the white man as it 
 was in the days of the Pyramids. 
 
 Timothy Hanks, an industrious young man 
 ever in search of information, had been at some 
 pains to discover the different names and na-
 
 UP THE AMAZON 101 
 
 tures of the plants that composed that ocean of 
 vegetable growth. I fear that I am more indo- 
 lent, or perhaps I care more for the forms of 
 things than for the names given them by man, 
 though it is true that I got to know a tree fern 
 from a silk-cotton tree, and I learned what a 
 Brazil-nut tree looked like, but the latter was 
 owing to happy memories of Charley's Aunt. 
 
 The sense of sinking deeper and ever deeper 
 into this strange, mysterious, and wholly sinis- 
 ter country was oddly insistent, and affected 
 a man with a feeling of growing remoteness 
 which the very infrequent settlements did noth- 
 ing to dispel. The traffic on the river was grow- 
 ing less day by day, yet the forest and the river 
 remained ever the same, as unaltered and gigan- 
 tic as the sea. 
 
 The captain was pursuing a diligent enquiry 
 for some news of his partner, Colonel Ezra Cal- 
 vin. At Para he had heard nothing, though an 
 interview with the American Consul there had 
 added to my commander's fears for his partner. 
 The up-river country, according to the Consul, 
 was entirely in the hands, official and unofficial, 
 of the Rio Maranon Rubber Company, and any 
 man, no matter of what nationality, was as good 
 as dead if he made an enemy of the all-powerful 
 Rubber Trust. In such a country there are many 
 ways of killing a man, either by an arranged
 
 102 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "accident," or by deliberate shooting; while, 
 at the best of times, any man might disappear 
 through perfectly natural causes. Just in what 
 way the colonel had got on the wrong side of 
 the Rio Maranon people was a mystery, though 
 I gathered from what I had heard of the colonel 
 that diplomacy was not his strong point; while 
 the sight and knowledge of injustices provoked 
 him to the openest of open speech. And we were 
 beginning to realise that "injustice" was too 
 mild a word for certain conditions existing in the 
 rubber districts far up-stream. As yet, how- 
 ever, these were only rumours, unpleasant to 
 hear or contemplate. But the fact remained 
 that the very worst spot in the whole wide world 
 for a cantankerous, strong-willed American to 
 visit was probably the Upper Amazon country, 
 especially if his avowed intention was to open 
 up a trade route in competition with the Rio 
 Maranon Rubber Company. 
 
 One of the most essential accomplishments for 
 a sailor to acquire is that of sleeping at any time 
 and of being able to wake at any moment. As 
 the navigation of the Amazon by seagoing ships 
 is possible only in daylight, all hands, with the 
 exception of a watchman, turned in at night on 
 board the Martin Connor. Yet I do not think 
 that the majority of us slept very well. I would 
 lie in the thick hot darkness, counting the pas-
 
 UP THE AMAZON 103 
 
 sage of the night by the regularly recurring bells 
 struck by the watchman on the bridge-deck, 
 and by the simultaneous uproar from Wilfred's 
 collection of clocks in the galley; these last were 
 surely strange sounds to be echoing through those 
 Amazon nights. Between-whiles I would listen 
 to the multifarious and sustained hum of count- 
 less insects, the shrill treble of the mosquito 
 being accompanied by a great variety of un- 
 known basses. These flying pests had outra- 
 geously venomous notes, formidable and vindic- 
 tive, and there was always the lively possibility 
 that one or more would, with diabolic ingenuity, 
 wriggle and squeeze himself through the mos- 
 quito curtains that surrounded the bunk. At 
 intervals the darkness palpitated ominously 
 from sheet lightning that flickered in the black 
 depths of the sky. 
 
 Then there was the unnatural stillness to dis- 
 turb one. There was no sound of wind, no har- 
 bour sounds, no sound or motion of the sea; it 
 was fantastically as though the ship were afloat 
 in empty space. Then, to shatter a rather 
 pleasant fancy, would come an entirely un- 
 known sound from the forest close at hand. 
 Now, a sound is often not disturbing when it is 
 familiar, or when the cause is known; but when 
 both sound and cause of sound are wholly un- 
 known and strange, and often of a most tragic
 
 104 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 suggestion, then your eyes flick open to wide- 
 awakeness and sleep kicks up her heels and runs 
 away. 
 
 Those night sounds from the forest were 
 strangely disturbing. They were peculiar and in- 
 tense; they suggested the turmoil of war, of life 
 preying upon life in a never-ending series of 
 horrible and fatal surprises in the unwholesome 
 darkness of that rank, rotting world of stran- 
 gling vegetation. They sounded oddly wicked; 
 they played upon the nerves; they got hold of 
 that remnant of the frightened child that there 
 is in every man and basely attacked his reason- 
 ing faculties; and that Captain Esterkay, who 
 had travelled far in this country, could not ex- 
 plain the cause of half of them, added greatly 
 to their power to disturb. I read far into those 
 Amazon nights, and all that I read has re- 
 mained in my mind mixed with the stagnant 
 strangeness of that wicked river. 
 
 Wilfred also was a poor sleeper; moreover, as 
 I have said before, he never seemed to go to 
 bed. As every door was hooked back for better 
 ventilation, a light from within shone out as a 
 beacon offering the possibility of companion- 
 ship to the sleepless. Thus, after a time, I would 
 hear a soft tread in the alleyway, and the little 
 cook, bland, thin, and amiable, clad in pyjamas 
 and smoking a cigarette of strong, rank tobacco,
 
 UP THE AMAZON 105 
 
 would stand smiling at the door, and, owing to 
 the intervening folds of mosquito curtain, robed 
 in a certain stage-like mystery like the ghost of 
 Hamlet's father! 
 
 Gradually the iniquitous night would pass, 
 and toward morning there would rise a thick 
 malarial mist. Its coming would be unnoticed 
 until, glancing up from the pages of my book, 
 I would see the grey masses drifting down the 
 alleyway past the door. At five o'clock the 
 man on watch would ring the bell violently, 
 perhaps in joy that his duties were over, and 
 really I did not envy that lonely man, and 
 yawns and mutterings would come from open 
 doors, together with the cheerful crackle of 
 burning wood from the galley. A little later 
 and the odour of coffee and frying bacon would 
 drift through the ship, and with the lights turned 
 on we would sit down to breakfast in the 
 cabin. 
 
 Breakfast over, it would be light enough to 
 get under weigh, and Captain Esterkay, fol- 
 lowed by my commander, would mount the 
 bridge-ladder while I went forward onto the 
 forecastle-head. The mist at that time was 
 usually rising from the river as steam rises from 
 boiling water, the growing daylight half -reveal- 
 ing the banked mass of foliage that marked the 
 wall of forest.
 
 106 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Break her out," would come the captain's 
 quiet voice, non-personal in its official intona- 
 tion. 
 
 Instantly the roar of the steam capstan 
 would shatter the morning stillness to little bits. 
 Leaning over the rail I would watch the cable 
 come up dripping link by link, while a man with 
 a long pole would disengage from it the festoons 
 of derelict growth, and while strange, excited 
 fishes would swim round in consternation at the 
 phenomenon. Those fishes held a strange fas- 
 cination for me. They suggested, as indeed was 
 so, a world of blood-warm water teeming with 
 voracious life, rank, poisonous and dangerous. 
 I would not, for worlds, have fallen into that 
 river! As the anchor appeared, heavy, cov- 
 ered with grey sticky mud, untroubled by the 
 stinging death around it, a foreign thing forged 
 in the cold, inevitable North, I would sign 
 with my hand, and the uproarious capstan 
 would cease its triumphant song of power, and 
 while the forest flung back the echo I would call, 
 "All clear for'ard, sir!" and the engine-room 
 bell would ring out loudly, hurriedly com- 
 manding, from the open engine-room skylights. 
 The reply to the bridge would come; a shudder 
 would pass through the ship that became, in 
 a moment, the accustomed vibration, and the 
 iron bows, festooned with the anchor awash,
 
 UP THE AMAZON 107 
 
 would part the sluggish stream. Thus the day's 
 work began. 
 
 Our progress was a zigzag. Captain Ester- 
 kay would take the ship from one side of the 
 river to the other, often without apparent rea- 
 son, while Captain Hawks would stand or sit at 
 his side an interested spectator. There could 
 be no complete or definite knowledge of such a 
 river. The navigation of the Mississippi is con- 
 ducted in much the same fashion, though, of 
 course, upon a smaller scale. 
 
 As gradually the great Amazon engulfed us, it 
 became more and more apparent that wherever 
 the romance of our destinies had taken us before, 
 we were now in a world of extravagant incident. 
 Perhaps the most conservative thing extant is a 
 ship, clinging as she does to the early Norsemen 
 in her very nomenclature; but apart from this, 
 she is intended to meet and compromise with 
 the heavy violence of the seas, while every de- 
 tail of her construction speaks eloquently of her 
 readiness for combat with the unstable waters. 
 Therefore there was something humorous in 
 the Martin Connor, with her stout iron and 
 steel fittings, with her compact solidity, with 
 her staid and robust utilitarian character, dis- 
 turbing somnolent alligators with her wash, or 
 anchored amid a field of water-lilies and sur- 
 rounded day after day by an impenetrable forest
 
 108 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 festooned with priceless orchids, populous with 
 monkeys, and the home of the wildest life. It 
 was like going to Central Africa in a street-car. 
 
 The fact that we clung to the ship as though 
 she had been in mid-Atlantic was also part of 
 the extravagance. We continued steaming as 
 long as it was light; there was therefore no 
 chance to go ashore by day, and not even Wil- 
 fred suggested a trip ashore by night. There- 
 fore we made no closer acquaintance with the 
 low-lying "igapo," or flood lands, for some 
 time. Here, in the gloom of the forest, lurked 
 various forms of unpleasant death. In these 
 flood lands, often inundated to a depth of fif- 
 teen feet in the rainy season, and for the most 
 part bottomless morasses in the dry season, was 
 a swarming world of reptiles, and some of the 
 snakes were credited with appalling length and 
 power. 
 
 Quite unexpectedly, as far as appearances 
 are concerned, we came upon a mud-brick, bam- 
 boo town standing between the river bank that 
 was here raised a few feet, and a low line of 
 bluffs about fifty feet high a little way back from 
 the river. Behind the bluffs was a line of low, 
 rolling hills, the first land we had seen that was 
 more than a few feet above the uniform dead 
 level of that gigantic valley. The river also 
 narrowed here to a mere creek a mile wide, but
 
 UP THE AMAZON 109 
 
 was, in consequence, of tremendous depth. We 
 passed on, greeting this ramshackle town of 
 Obidos with a friendly blast of the whistle. The 
 forest took up the sound and flung it contemp- 
 tuously back at us as we steamed on into the 
 great wilderness. Surely a strange experience 
 this, for an ocean-going ship. 
 
 It was about this time that Cert'nly Wilfred 
 began his commissariat negotiations with the 
 river Indians, negotiations which, unknowingly, 
 were to exercise a profound influence upon us 
 all. After we had anchored at night, and if 
 there were Indians about, Wilfred, with one or 
 two men in the launch, and armed with an odd 
 assortment of articles to barter with, would go 
 in search of a canoe and then give chase. To give 
 chase was necessary and revealed in unmis- 
 takeable terms just how the Indians regarded 
 white men and just how the alleged white men 
 of the Amazon Valley regarded the Indians! 
 Wilfred's companions upon these occasions were 
 usually four in number ; first of all was Twocents, 
 then one of the engineers in charge of the launch 
 engine, a very hefty young Calif ornian known as 
 "Rocks," an astonishingly vigorous, bounding 
 youth, and, of course, Stadger. Off they would 
 go in the gloom, the little cook, tiller in hand, 
 very much in command of the expedition in 
 spite of the fact that any engineer ranked higher
 
 110 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 upon the ship's papers than he. But upon 'the 
 absorbing subject of personality one could dwell 
 at length if space afforded. They would mark 
 down a canoe that looked, in the distance, as 
 though there had been good hunting and fishing 
 for its owners, and then the chase would begin. 
 Of course there were nights when there were no 
 Indians. 
 
 The chase would end in a tragi-comedy. The 
 Indians would fly for their lives as a matter of 
 course, and would endeavour to dodge the 
 launch, but as the launch bore down upon them 
 they would surrender with abject faces and 
 frenziedly offer their cargo of fish or turtle 
 eggs or tapir or manatee meat as the price of 
 their lives. And it would sometimes take quite 
 a time and almost force before the Indians were 
 able to realise that exchange, and not murder 
 and robbery, was intended. Then, in a pitiful, 
 dazed manner they would accept the brightly 
 coloured calico, hand-axes, beads, and tobacco 
 thrust upon them. But their state of terror, no 
 less than their incredulous astonishment when 
 they found that they were to receive something 
 in return for their wares, made a profound im- 
 pression upon us all, forecastle and after guard 
 as well. 
 
 Gradually, in the wholly mysterious way in 
 which news has of spreading up and down the
 
 UP THE AMAZON 111 
 
 Amazon, it became known among the river In- 
 dians even far ahead of us that there was 
 a steamer flying a striped flag with stars on it 
 that paid for what the Indians had to offer in 
 the way of fresh food, and that this was even 
 so when dealing with, perhaps, an old Indian 
 woman and a girl who could have offered no 
 resistance anyway! But more than this be- 
 came known; something infinitely subtle and 
 hard to describe; and Wilfred's expeditions in 
 search of fresh food became less difficult until, 
 finally, fresh food was offered for sale from 
 canoes that came alongside the ship as soon as 
 we had anchored at night. 
 
 Cert'nly Wilfred conducted his negotiations 
 not only in a strictly honourable manner, but 
 with a keen eye to getting his legitimate money's 
 worth on behalf of the ship, and and here is 
 where the subtlety comes in with a certain 
 affable and sympathetic understanding that had 
 yet the reserve of the dominating white man. 
 He did not treat the Indians as his equals; far 
 from it; he treated them as very much his in- 
 feriors, as, of course, they were; but he treated 
 them as inferiors who had rights and privileges, 
 ideas and customs entitled tp all respect and 
 consideration much, in fact, as he treated 
 Stadger, and had Wilfred died Stadger would 
 have died also. Wilfred was an Englishman,
 
 112 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 and it is just this strange, instinctive ability 
 which Englishmen possess that has made the 
 British Empire an empire of four hundred mil- 
 lion souls. All over the world men of all condi- 
 tions, stations, and nationalities long for sympa- 
 thetic understanding. Men often marry for no 
 other reason, and it is the basis of all friend- 
 ship. It is the keynote of real charity; it is the 
 gift of the gods, the dominant force of real gen- 
 ius, the excellence of true judgment, and is, in 
 short, divine. Could some superman, as greatly 
 above the white man as the white man is above 
 the Indian, offer the white man his sympathy 
 and understanding, the white man would lie 
 down and worship. So it was with the Indians. 
 They became pathetically desirous of our no- 
 tice, though just how the news concerning us 
 was circulated was, as I have said, a mystery. 
 
 One evening as we anchored, there appeared, 
 out of the shades of evening and the great 
 shadow of the forest that was preparing for its 
 nightly concert of strange sounds, a canoe 
 laden with fresh fish, and among her people a 
 man with a shockingly broken leg. Wilfred went 
 down the ladder to do his bartering from the 
 bottom grating, and after a moment or two we 
 saw him push the canoe along and minutely 
 examine an Indian lying in the bows, while the 
 other occupants of the canoe, three women and
 
 UP THE AMAZON 113 
 
 two men, endeavoured to explain something 
 which we, hanging over the side above, could 
 not make out. Wilfred turned to us and called 
 up that the Indian's leg was shattered and in 
 an advanced gangrenous state, and that the 
 Indians wanted us to attend to it. The cook 
 added weight to his communication by an apt 
 description of the injury which I will not re- 
 peat here, but which was, all the same, strictly 
 accurate. Captain Hawks, with lanterns, and 
 with Captain Esterkay as interpreter, went down 
 to investigate, and I gathered from my com- 
 mander's sudden, bark-like exclamation that 
 Wilfred had not overstated the case, for Cap- 
 tain Matthew Hawks was not afflicted with a 
 delicate stomach. He called me down. I went; 
 and I was glad that I had had my dinner. The 
 leg was rotting from the knee down, and I 
 readily agreed that unless the leg was removed, 
 and removed quickly, the Indian would have no 
 chance of living another week. How it was that 
 the Indian was still alive was a mystery. The 
 man was a stoic of the first order, and he must 
 have suffered the most shocking agony for days; 
 but he and his friends and relations positively 
 refused the captain's offer to rush the patient 
 down to Obidos in the launch. In this they were 
 backed up by Captain Esterkay. 
 
 "Besides the delay," said that excellent
 
 114 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Southerner, "there is no guarantee, suh, that a 
 doctor will cut off his leg for him when he does 
 arrive. Yo' see he 's an Indian ! " 
 
 "Then I'll cut it off for him," replied Captain 
 Hawks briskly; for there was something infi- 
 nitely moving in the attitude of these Indians, 
 who had come to us in then* trouble because we 
 treated them as human beings and paid them 
 for our fish and vegetables ! 
 
 Captain Hawks ran up to the deck and into 
 his cabin and returned with a hypodermic syr- 
 inge, an instrument without which he never 
 set out upon a lengthy voyage. 
 
 "I've got no use for pain, real pain," he used 
 to say to me, "either for myself or for other 
 people. I don't see what it's for." And more 
 than once have I known that hypodermic of his 
 bring ease to a poor human frame shattered and 
 mauled by some sea accident. But it is an en- 
 gine that must be kept under lock and key! 
 
 With complete trust the injured man sub- 
 mitted to what must have been a very strange 
 proceeding to him, and in a very short time his 
 attitude became more relaxed as the merciful 
 peace stole over him and the great power of 
 opium took him in charge. The memory of the 
 change that took place in that Indian's expres- 
 sion will always remain vividly in my mind 
 it was magical. By this time the night had
 
 UP THE AMAZON 115 
 
 descended with its diabolic sounds from the 
 forest. The entire ship's company was intent 
 upon the business in hand; the ship herself was 
 strangely quiet now that the engines had ceased, 
 and was ringing metallically to every footfall. 
 
 "We have just got to go through with this, 
 Grummet," said Captain Hawks privately to 
 me, "though I'm not sure that I wouldn't 
 rather face another full-dress typhoon. But 
 there 's no way out. It must be done and we are 
 the only people to do it." 
 
 "Yes, sir," I nodded; and I confess that I 
 was full of dread, for I knew that I must help. 
 
 "A white man," continued the captain, 
 "would have been dead days ago, especially in 
 this climate, with such an injury." Then, turn- 
 ing, he called the little cook. " Wilfred ! " said he. 
 
 "Sir? "said Wilfred. 
 
 "Shift everything moveable out of the cabin. 
 Get mosquito curtains ready to cover all doors, 
 ports, and the skylights. Hump yourself!" 
 
 Wilfred vanished. 
 
 "Now," continued the captain to me, "who 
 in this ship has the strongest stomach and the 
 best nerve?" 
 
 "You, sir," I answered promptly. 
 
 "Quite so," admitted Captain Hawks simply; 
 "but I must have at least three helpers and you 
 have got to be one. Esterkay?"
 
 116 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 I shook my head. "He has other virtues," 
 said I, "and Hanks is a bit young. Mr. Mc- 
 Lushley, sir, I should say has the stomach and 
 the nerve of a steel bollard steeped in re-en- 
 forced concrete. And Wilfred, sir, though maybe 
 he has a delicate stomach " 
 
 "Wilfred's afraid of nothing on earth," 
 chuckled the captain, "not even of me! Very 
 good; then it'll be you, McLushley, Wilfred, 
 and myself. Meanwhile get the patient aboard 
 while I start on my preparations." 
 
 I arranged four lines over the side, passed 
 them beneath the canoe, and by means of our 
 extensive cargo tackle I swung the injured man 
 aboard without a jar and without removing him 
 from the canoe, which we placed in chocks upon 
 the after mam-deck. The Indian's friends and 
 relations came up the ladder greatly excited and 
 much entertained with everything. The patient 
 himself lay passive and mute, free of pain and 
 blinking slightly at the lights. He was clad in 
 the dirtiest shirt I have ever seen, and what 
 had once been his leg was retained and collected 
 in a blanket. We had a hair-raising job remov- 
 ing that blanket, too! He put out his hand, and 
 smiling slightly murmured, "Terbac," and at 
 least a dozen well-filled pipes and as many 
 cigarettes were instantly thrust at him. The 
 only man in the ship who remained antipathetic
 
 UP THE AMAZON 117 
 
 was Mr. Alonzo Makepeace Massingbird. He 
 displayed some contemptuous astonishment at 
 our action, and was obviously puzzled to under- 
 stand our motive. 
 
 "He's not your Indian, is he?" he enquired 
 finally. 
 
 This question was overhead by some of the 
 men and uncomplimentary mutterings answered 
 him. Mr. Massingbird looked angry and I be- 
 came uneasy. Our crew were excellent men, but 
 meekness and gentleness were not their particu- 
 lar virtues. For two pins they would, then and 
 there, have pitched Mr. Massingbird over the 
 side to the alligators, and Mr. Massingbird, who 
 was no kind of coward, glared back at them 
 angrily. 
 
 "I think you are fools to bother over the 
 Indian at all!" he remarked calmly; and right 
 then I was prepared to fight for Mr. Massing- 
 bird's life, for as mate I represented law and 
 order. 
 
 But Mr. McLushley, who was standing gaunt 
 and sardonic among us, and who appeared 
 equally unmoved either by the Indian's plight 
 or Mr. Massingbird's remark, made answer, and 
 the crew, knowing that something pretty nasty 
 was thus guaranteed to come, remained quiet. I 
 think that this was only the second time that the 
 chief had addressed Mr. Massingbird; the first
 
 118 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 time had been to inform him that the engine- 
 room was private and that "passengers werre no* 
 admeetud." 
 
 "Mr. Massingwail," said the Scotchman with 
 great clearness of utterance, "there was once a 
 gr-rand Scotch poet that ye '11 no' have heerd of 
 called Robbie Burrns. An' Burrns, the eemorrtal, 
 once said wi' th' wisdom o' the gods: 
 
 ' O wad some power the gif tie gie us, 
 To see oursels as ithers see us.' 
 
 It is a great peety, Mr. Massingale, ye have no* 
 that geeft ye'self, though, creeation, man, it'd 
 be an aufu' shock!" 
 
 I went forward to see how matters were pro- 
 gressing and found the cabin thick with smoke 
 from a pan of burning disinfectants that cleared 
 the place for once of all the countless insects 
 that used the cabin as a sort of ballroom and 
 meeting-house combined. Captain Hawks, in 
 his cabin, was collecting basins of antiseptics 
 and the instruments to be used in the coming 
 event, and at the sight of his preparations my 
 stomach turned over. 
 
 All shipmasters engaged in "blue- water" 
 traffic are astonishingly handy with doctors' 
 tools. They have to be, and it was in keeping 
 with my commander's general character that 
 he was more handy than most. In fact, while
 
 UP THE AMAZON 119 
 
 on this subject, I am tempted to paraphrase a 
 well-known quotation as follows : 
 
 " Oh, ye doctors in hospitals, who operate at ease, 
 How little do you dream upon the dangers of the seas! vf 
 
 But the amputation of a leg is a serious mat- 
 ter, though Captain Hawks could lop off a 
 finger, pull a tooth, or put an arm in splints with 
 any man. The captain moved with a steady 
 deliberation. He was not going to forget any- 
 thing. 
 
 "I would n't do it," said he, finally, to me, "if 
 I thought that there was a chance of any one 
 else doing it, or if I thought that there was a 
 chance that the man would live if it was n't 
 done. But, as far as I can see, the man will die 
 unless I cut off his leg, eh, Grummet?" 
 
 "That's undoubtedly so, sir," I answered, 
 and he nodded. 
 
 "Very good; then I must cut off his leg, even 
 if I kill him in doing it, eh, Grummet?" 
 
 "Yes, sir. I see no alternative." 
 
 "Neither do I, but I wanted your assurance." 
 And he continued with his methodical prepara- 
 tions in the same unhurried manner as though 
 he had forced himself into a state of calm tran- 
 quillity. 
 
 As soon as the smoke cleared from the cabin 
 and everything moveable was gone except the
 
 120 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 table, all the lights were turned on and a bunch 
 of lights on an extension from the sleeping-cabins 
 was arranged right over the table, and on the 
 table itself was placed a tray of thin planking 
 over which was drawn a sheet of rubber-silk. 
 The whole place was sprayed and sprayed again 
 with disinfectants until it reeked like a dozen 
 hospitals. Captain Hawks, Mr. McLushley, 
 Wilfred, and myself then bathed and put on 
 clean pyjamas and were then ourselves sprayed 
 with disinfectants until we choked. Mr. Mc- 
 Lushley, Wilfred, and myself had our most pre- 
 cise instructions, and both the little cook and I 
 were by no means happy. 
 
 "I wish it was this 'ere Messybird's leg wot 
 we was goin' ter whittle orf, I do!" muttered 
 Wilfred petulantly, and for the first time in all 
 the years I have known him I saw fear in his 
 expression. 
 
 Only Mr. McLushley appeared wholly un- 
 moved, and his habitual expression of sardonic 
 contempt for everything remained unaltered. 
 But he trod as softly as a cat, with a swift alert- 
 ness in all his movements. 
 
 Then the patient was brought into the heavily 
 curtained cabin that was, for once, free of all 
 insects. He was semi-comatose from his first 
 dose of morphia, while his implicit trust in us 
 greatly added to his chance of life. In fact, he
 
 UP THE AMAZON 121 
 
 alone among us appeared to enjoy complete ease 
 of mind! The captain injected another dose of 
 morphia while I washed, antiseptically, the leg 
 and arranged the tourniquet, which, however, I 
 did not screw up until the second dose of mor- 
 phia had had time to work upon him. Wilfred, 
 with compressed lips and a fiercely attentive 
 expression, attended to the basins and the boiled 
 bandages. Mr. McLushley stood by the Indi- 
 an's head, with one eye upon the Indian and 
 the other on the captain, or so it seemed, ready 
 to anticipate any gesture. For me there was a 
 worse oh, far worse job ! 
 
 It was difficult with such a patient to know 
 just how much and how little morphia to give, 
 and we passed some awful moments watching 
 the Indian's wide-open eyes as the pupils con- 
 tracted to pin-points in size. So odd was his 
 change of expression and so great our suspense 
 that even Mr. McLushley was startled. 
 
 "Man!" said he, to the captain, though usu- 
 ally he addressed the captain with his full name 
 and title, "I'm thinkin' he's deed. Yon morr- 
 phia's potent stuff. Na!" he added, with his 
 battered fingers on the Indian's pulse, "he's 
 alive so far." 
 
 We waited yet another moment to make sure. 
 
 "He'll do," said the captain; then glanced 
 upward through the mosquito curtains at the
 
 122 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 skylight, where, with the exception of Mr. Mas- 
 singbird's, were the collected heads of every man 
 in the ship. 
 
 "Now, not a sound, up there," said Captain 
 Hawks in a quiet voice, "or God help you when 
 I get through with this." 
 , His order was obeyed. 
 
 I tightened up the tourniquet; it was a silk 
 scarf and a brass curtain rod. When I had fin- 
 ished all was ready. 
 
 Captain Hawks began, and whatever he might 
 have felt, his large, powerful, capable hands were 
 steady as a rock. No doubt doctors and nurses 
 may laugh at us and consider that we cut sorry 
 figures, but this was not our business, this busi- 
 ness of amputating a leg, and the same doctors 
 and nurses that laugh might cut no better figure 
 did they try to navigate a ship. 
 
 The sawing was accomplished in six motions, 
 and the sound of it bathed me in sweat. Wilfred 
 snatched at that which was severed and stowed 
 it out of sight, while the captain and I fell to 
 work upon the arteries with linen thread. We 
 were not sailors for nothing, and the knots we 
 used were swift and sure. And once I fell ac- 
 tively to work, my nervousness left me. Nat- 
 urally one was intent upon the job which done 
 well would mean so much to another man. The 
 worst was for Wilfred who had to stand by and
 
 UP THE AMAZON 123 
 
 hand things, and for Mr. McLushley who had 
 to watch for any sign of returning conscious- 
 ness in the patient, for remember that we had no 
 proper anaesthetics. To find the small arteries we 
 had to release a turn or two of the tourniquet; 
 there was then no doubt where they were dis- 
 posed ! Then followed the kneading and pulling, 
 and the angle of the cutting having been just 
 right, the elastic flesh came handsomely (to use 
 a sailor's expression) over the bone stump, and 
 all the time the Indian never moved or made a 
 sound. Then followed the stitches, the boiled 
 bandages, and the lint. The last wrapping fin- 
 ished, drawn tight and true as though we had 
 been serving the gear of a dandy sailing ship, 
 and we carried the Indian upon the thin plank- 
 ing into a cabin and laid him in a bunk. 
 
 The operation was over, but, as the captain 
 said, it remained to be seen if the patient lived. 
 
 We stood a moment dazed with the effort. 
 
 "Gee-mima!!" gasped Wilfred explosively; 
 "I'm goin' ter be sick, I am, like a bloomin' sea- 
 sick passenger!" And sick, indeed, was he. 
 
 But the patient lived!
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 TROUBLE 
 
 WHEN a ship starts upon a voyage, for instance 
 across the Atlantic, her people know, when they 
 have dropped the land, that so many days and 
 nights will elapse before the ship arrives at her 
 destination. The mind accepts the situation 
 and instinctively adjusts itself to the distance 
 that it is necessary to cover to get across the 
 ocean. In other words, you measure the dis- 
 tance in units of time. But in the navigation of 
 rivers one has to become accustomed to measure 
 distances, not in days, but in hours, and however 
 long it may be, it will be but a trifle compared 
 to the days and weeks at sea. By the above I 
 do not mean the precise measurements necessi- 
 tated by the exacting art of navigation, but the 
 instinctive processes of the mind. 
 
 But in ascending the Amazon the ordinary 
 order of things is reversed, and I was inclined 
 to consider our run from Galveston to Para as 
 the trifle, and that the real voyage began at 
 Para. Of course, the distance up the river ap- 
 peared greater on account of the nightly inter- 
 ruptions and by comparison with other rivers.
 
 TROUBLE 125 
 
 Before the days of steam, sailing vessels are 
 reported to have taken five months to ascend 
 from Para to the junction of the Rio Negro, 
 and five months more to reach the Peruvian 
 frontier. Beyond the Peruvian frontier the 
 river continues for some fifteen hundred miles 
 into the heart of the Andean regions through a 
 series of wonderful gorges and over innumerable 
 falls and rapids that are, for the most part, quite 
 incorrectly charted. You will see from this that 
 the Amazon is what might be called a good- 
 sizeable river, and I therefore took some time 
 before I could get out of the habit of peering 
 ahead in expectation of seeing the forest give 
 way to the buildings of man; to realise, in fact, 
 that here man was but a trivial influence upon 
 such primeval surroundings. He did not belong 
 in such a place; he was out of scale. It was 
 monotonously vast and never changing, smoth- 
 ered with vegetation, and always unbearably 
 humid. 
 
 "I never don't want to see no tree again, I 
 do," said Wilfred, with his usual involved cock- 
 ney. "I'm not 'arf fed-up wiv trees, I ain't. 
 I'd like to see a hiceberg. I'd like to sit on a 
 hiceberg. I'd like to be frozen stiff hinside a 
 hiceberg like a sort of crystallised cook, fer 
 that 'ere galley is sompthink chronic, with the 
 stove goin' full, in this climate."
 
 126 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 And, indeed, the only people in the ship who 
 did not seem to mind the heat, the continuous, 
 ever-present, damp, velvety heat, were the two 
 Chinese stewards and Mr. Massingbird. The 
 two stewards, lank, slim, and silent, each clothed 
 in but two garments, did their work in a Chinese 
 isolation that invited no Christian intrusion. 
 And over these remote Orientals Wilfred held 
 sway, minutely inspecting their work with the 
 hawk-eye of a housewife, and with a ready 
 tongue no housewife (I hope) ever possessed. 
 
 In our zigzag course up-stream we dodged 
 acres of floating islands, and some of these were 
 of such dimensions as to deceive the eye into 
 believing them to be solid land until our wash 
 set these tree-entangled masses visibly undu- 
 lating. By day that ever-continuous, slightly 
 varying wall of green; dark, indescribably som- 
 bre and silent, treacherous and mysterious; sug- 
 gested some inscrutable Sphinx-like spirit that 
 regarded us forebodingly with ill intent. The 
 sense of remoteness took hold of us all, a feeling 
 of loneliness and immeasurable distances. We 
 were strange, foolhardy little creatures thrusting 
 our way with vain temerity, and the spirit of 
 the forest seemed to be watching us, as though 
 we were going to our doom. We were going back, 
 back, back in the ages of time, and it was not 
 our surroundings that were extraordinary, but
 
 TROUBLE 127 
 
 ourselves, with our compass, our steam power, 
 our regular, cooked meals, and our concerted 
 discipline. We should have been creeping about 
 with a club torn from the nearest tree and with 
 fear in our hearts, wholly intent upon the 
 difficult problem of somehow keeping alive for 
 the sake of the sheltered generations to come. 
 Widely separated into warlike, unreasoning 
 bands, we should, when not tracking down our 
 dinner and eating it raw, or bellowing strangely 
 at the strong scent of some unknown male, have 
 been sleeping the cautious sleep of wild ani- 
 mals. Or, if awake and not hunting or eating, 
 we might, perhaps, have been scratching our 
 thoughts upon bone, making meanwhile the in- 
 articulate noises that were the forerunners of 
 man's eloquence. It seemed no wonder, I 
 thought, that men deteriorated shockingly into 
 savages and worse hi such surroundings, and 
 this brings me to the trouble with Mr. Alonzo 
 Makepeace Massingbird. 
 
 The incident was an eye-opener to us, but 
 was not so to Captain Esterkay, who knew well 
 the region and the "white men" living in it. 
 It was a most emphatic reminder that we, in our 
 little sane and ordinary world composed by the 
 ship and her company, were passing ever far- 
 ther and farther into a strange and unknown sur- 
 rounding that we could not hope to understand.
 
 128 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 The difficulty came about over the negro car- 
 penter. 
 
 I think that I have already referred to him. 
 His name was no less than Andrew Jackson 
 Jefferson Davis, and in most ways but one, An- 
 drew was like any other rather tough old negro 
 of the marine order. His one startling peculi- 
 arity was that he was dumb. He could make, 
 when he chose, rather ghastly and partially 
 comprehensible sounds; but articulate speech 
 had gone from him one day with his tongue 
 when he had brought upon himself the ferocity 
 of some negro secret society in New Orleans. 
 
 Andrew was engaged in repairing the mos- 
 quito bar in Mr. Massingbird's cabin, and in 
 doing so he upset a bottle of ink. In a blaze the 
 real Massingbird showed himself , and the sight 
 must have been particularly ugly. That Iberi- 
 anated Amazonian had the usual and shocking 
 attitude to men of colour, be they Indian or 
 negro, that prevails throughout Amazonia. 
 Now, my commander had no false notions con- 
 cerning negroes; he did not regard them as 
 equals as do those people who have never really 
 come in contact with them, but the negro has 
 his place in the order of things, a place which he 
 must keep and where he has every right to be, 
 and a skilled negro carpenter, sober, industrious, 
 and honest, is entitled to just treatment and
 
 TROUBLE 129 
 
 respect. But Mr. Massingbird regarded all men 
 of colour as well, I do not know just how he 
 regarded them; for, on entering his cabin and 
 beholding Andrew trying to mop up the ink 
 with a clean towel, he struck him a very violent 
 blow on the head from behind with the 
 butt of a six-shooter which he habitually car- 
 ried about with him. Andrew, hi spite of his 
 negroid skull, went down as though pole-axed. 
 It is difficult to say precisely what would then 
 have happened had not Cert'nly Wilfred hap- 
 pened by at the moment and to have observed 
 the blow. Possibly Mr. Massingbird intended 
 to use his feet to the prostrate negro. I do not 
 know. I do not understand those persons who 
 are engaged in the rubber industry of the Ama- 
 zon, and I do not want to. 
 
 Wilfred stood stock-still with sheer amaze- 
 ment at the baseness of the action, and then, as 
 was the little man's habit on most occasions, he 
 opened his mouth in speech. He said just pre- 
 cisely what was in his mind as was also his 
 habit and what was in his mind was just 
 what would have been in any other decent man's 
 mind after witnessing such an action. I do not 
 expect that Mr. Massingbird' understood one 
 word in ten of the little man's vitriolic cockney, 
 for, when really roused, words streamed from 
 Wilfred as water streams from a fire hydrant.
 
 130 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 No man, not even a Latin, can beat the real 
 cockney in wealth or diversity of epithet, and 
 where the Latin is inclined to lose point by 
 picturesque (artistic ?) exaggeration, there is a 
 cutting aptness in the true Londoner's tirade 
 that bites like an acid. Mr. Massingbird may 
 not have grasped the detail, but he understood 
 the general trend of Wilfred's remarks, and, in 
 consequence, advanced upon the cook, sliding 
 his revolver back into his pocket, for Wilfred 
 was a white man and could not be shot down 
 there and then. 
 
 Nothing could have pleased Wilfred more than 
 Mr. Massingbird's advance, and according to 
 the cook's account he * 'it that 'ere Messybird 
 a smack in the starboard light," and Mr. Mas- 
 singbird went backward over the still prostrate 
 negro with his right eye swelling rapidly. Wil- 
 fred is a small man, but he can hit a smart blow, 
 I know that, for he once hit me and tried 
 to go on hitting while I sat on him, so Mr. 
 Massingbird, unused to any form of rough-and- 
 tumble, "saw red." At that moment Timothy 
 Hanks, aroused by the considerable uproar, 
 came out of his cabin and arrived upon the 
 scene in a hurry. Taking in the situation at a 
 glance, he ordered Wilfred out. In the face of 
 such authority as the second mate, the little 
 cook had, of course, to withdraw; but he with-
 
 TROUBLE 131 
 
 drew slowly, remarking loudly upon Mr. Mas- 
 singbird's past, present, and probable future, 
 upon his probable origin and upon his personal 
 appearance, in which he alluded in unmistake- 
 able terms to the fact that Mr. Massingbird's 
 finger-nails were tinted violet. He also en- 
 treated Mr. Massingbird to rise in order that 
 he might have the great pleasure of knocking 
 him down again. It is possible that Timothy 
 Hanks, that grave young New Englander, con- 
 sidered that Mr. Massingbird deserved all he 
 got, for he did not silence Wilfred, but, on the 
 contrary, he stood listening and eyeing Mr. Mas- 
 singbird with a sardonic grin. When, however, 
 the little cook was forced to pause for breath, 
 Timothy jerked his thumb over his shoulder, 
 and, glancing at Wilfred, said, "Get," and Wil- 
 fred, partially appeased, and mistaking not the 
 official order from a superior, departed. 
 
 By that time Mr. Massingbird had regained 
 his feet and he was filled to the brim with puz- 
 zled rage. Timothy Hanks turned his atten- 
 tion to the carpenter, and quelling Andrew's 
 natural desire for retaliation with a sharp order, 
 he examined his head, and finding that the negro 
 was not much the worse for the crack he had 
 received, he told him to go and take a spell 
 below. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Massingbird had seated him-
 
 132 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 self, with one hand to his eye. But it was not 
 the pain of his eye that was absorbing Mr. Mas- 
 singbird's thoughts, but the oddity of his sur- 
 roundings. Very abruptly he had discovered 
 himself in an unknown world, where, apparently, 
 you must not hit even negroes from behind with 
 the butt of a revolver even when they spill 
 a bottle of ink all over the prospectus of a rubber 
 company as yet not actually in existence. More- 
 over, he, the director of many companies, had 
 received a very sharp blow in the eye from a sea 
 cook, a menial, and Timothy Hanks, the 
 second mate, had not even hit the said sea cook 
 in punishment. That a white man should take 
 the part of a negro against him bewildered Mr. 
 Massingbird. Then his bewilderment gave place 
 to rage, and, brushing past Timothy Hanks, he 
 went in search of Captain Hawks upon the bridge. 
 I was on the bridge at the time, and the cap- 
 tain and Captain Esterkay were playing chess, 
 a game at which Captain Esterkay was a mar- 
 vel. Therefore my commander was beaten nine 
 times out of ten. But it so happened that upon 
 that particular occasion, Captain Hawks was 
 winning, and he had just remarked, "Mate 
 Alexander, I've got you frazzled," when Wil- 
 fred arrived to report, with official regret, but 
 with a grin on his face, that he had "bashed that 
 'ere Mister Messy bird a clip in the peeper."
 
 TROUBLE 133 
 
 "What for? Why? When?" demanded Cap- 
 tain Hawks with a frown. 
 
 Wilfred explained the situation and the cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 "All right, that will do," replied the captain; 
 and the little man finished his speech, knuckled 
 his forehead, kicked out his leg astern in true 
 nautical fashion, wheeled about, winked at me, 
 and departed. In his galley I could hear him 
 singing: 
 
 " With a ladder and the glarses 
 You could see the 'Ackney Marshes 
 If it wasn't fer the 'ouses in bertween. . . ." 
 
 "This is serious," said Captain Esterkay, ris- 
 ing. 
 
 "It is," agreed Captain Hawks. "I don't 
 allow passengers to knock my crew about, and 
 I am delighted that Wilfred punched him." 
 
 "That's not what I mean!" gasped Captain 
 Esterkay. "Say, Matthew, yo' just don't know 
 where yo' are! Massingbird is " And at that 
 moment Mr. Massingbird arrived. 
 
 In the short distance between his cabin and 
 the bridge, Mr. Massingbird's anger had risen 
 to an extraordinary pitch. Such maniacal anger 
 is seldom known in more temperate climes; it 
 is a product of fevers, of nerves shattered and 
 abused, and of the lack of healthy exercise. Mr. 
 Massingbird arrived two steps at a time, and
 
 134 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 there were bubbles upon his lips. Now, usually, 
 a man in a rage is one of three things. Either he 
 is dangerous, or impressive, or he is just ridicu- 
 lous according to the kind of man that he hap- 
 pens to be. Mr. Massingbird was dangerous. 
 He was so angry that, for the moment, he was 
 not sane, and he had an automatic pistol in his 
 pocket. 
 
 Captain Hawks at once began to apologise 
 for the conduct of his cook. It was not, I must 
 admit, an apology very heartily given; but it 
 was an official apology, nevertheless, and Mr. 
 Massingbird was assured that the cook would 
 be logged for gross insubordination. 
 
 "But I must ask you, Mr. Massingbird," 
 concluded Captain Hawks, "to report any inci- 
 dent to me in which my men have behaved care- 
 lessly, when I or my mate will handle the er 
 situation. In other words, we are quite cap- 
 able of bashing a man if such should be neces- 
 sary. Still, it was no business of my cook's to 
 interfere, and I hope that you will accept my 
 apology." 
 
 Mr. Massingbird did not accept the apology; 
 he foamed at the mouth instead, and in his in- 
 sane behaviour I saw, for the first time, what 
 we, in the Martin Connor termed "Amazonitis." 
 In other words, I saw, for the first time, the 
 effect of a prolonged residence in the Upper
 
 TROUBLE 135 
 
 Amazon country upon a man when that man 
 gets angry. Mr. Massingbird, to all intents 
 and purposes, went temporarily mad. He was 
 not at all ridiculous in his madness, as a man 
 may be when mad with rage in our sane and 
 ordinary world. His rage was startling and hor- 
 rible, and was a direct and lucid explanation of 
 how it is that the things that happen among the 
 rubber dealers in the Upper Amazon come to 
 pass. I understand that in some parts of the 
 Congo you will also find "Amazonitis," and 
 from just the same causes. That which controls 
 us, and which prevents us, even in the worst 
 moods, from doing certain things, becomes 
 wilted and destroyed in such a place and climate. 
 As a man in a passion may slam a door, a man 
 in a passion in the Amazon Valley will shoot 
 another, preferably an Indian. 
 
 Mr. Massingbird whipped out a revolver and 
 levelled it at my commander with a trembling 
 hand! 
 
 I happened to be nearest him, and as he pulled 
 the trigger I hit him squarely beneath the ear. 
 It was a hard blow, but the time was not one 
 for nice discrimination, and Mr. Massingbird 
 dropped in a heap. 
 
 "The sarpentile insect!" exclaimed Captain 
 Esterkay, for the bullet had narrowly missed 
 him, having passed between him and Captain
 
 136 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Hawks. For a moment we stood astonished, 
 with Mr. Massingbird lying tragically insignifi- 
 cant like a bundle of white clothes. Then the 
 same thought occurred to us all three, for there 
 was something odd in Mr. Massingbird's atti- 
 tude, and in a panic we leaned over the pros- 
 trate man. 
 
 Mr. Alonzo Makepeace Massingbird was 
 dead! 
 
 The deck seemed to take a half -turn under 
 me at the discovery, then righted itself; yet I 
 had the vivid sensation of having passed through 
 a doorway through which there was no return. 
 Mr. Massingbird was dead and I had killed 
 him. He, a moment before, had been a living 
 thing with thoughts and aspirations, temporarily 
 clouded, it is true, with what amounted to homi- 
 cidal mania; yet he had been a man, a separate 
 entity, a creature capable of independent action 
 good or bad. And now he was a pathetic, small, 
 crumpled pile of white clothing, with feet turned 
 inwards, the upturned soles exposing a hole in 
 his left shoe, while a wrist-watch still ticked on 
 his brown left wrist. It was the biggest and most 
 horrible shock I have ever had in my life, for 
 there was a sense of blind, helpless impotency, 
 as though I had been forced into a cruelly false 
 position. And there was, amidst all the tragedy, 
 an appalling futility. A man was dead; another
 
 TROUBLE 137 
 
 man had killed him because a third man had 
 spilled a bottle of ink! 
 
 At that moment Captain Hawks demon 
 strated just why he was in command of a ship. 
 He stood up, put a whistle in his mouth, and 
 brought the boatswain and two men aft. 
 
 "Mr. Massingbird is dead," said he, to 'Any 
 Ketchold, as though issuing an ordinary sea 
 order; "help me to carry him to his cabin be- 
 low." 
 
 At the report of Mr. Massingbird's revolver 
 shot, an expectant shudder had gone through 
 the ship. They had heard it even in the engine- 
 room, and then a quietness fell upon the ship 
 which continued its uninterrupted journey as 
 the forest continued, as the river continued, 
 unchanged, yet suddenly changed for me. The 
 man at the wheel, who had seen it all, had never 
 moved the ship one foot off her course, and his 
 eyes again rested upon the spot last pointed out 
 to him by Captain Esterkay, beneath which he 
 unswervingly kept our iron bows. And then 
 the thought possessed me that, considering the 
 state that Mr. Massingbird had been in, there 
 had been little chance of his hitting any one and 
 that I had probably killed him for nothing. 
 There was, of course, his intention to kill. But 
 should a man be killed under such conditions? 
 
 Captain Hawks returned to the bridge and
 
 138 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 put his hand upon my shoulder. "You did it 
 to save my life, Grummet," said he. 
 
 "I did, sir," I replied, "but " 
 
 "No 'huts' about it, Grummet. If he had n't 
 been as rotten as an egg he would n't have died." 
 
 "You you examined him, sir?" 
 
 The captain nodded grimly. "Neck snapped 
 like a carrot." 
 
 "He shouldn't have been so brittle, suh," 
 remarked Captain Esterkay in his suave voice 
 as smooth as velvet. "And to hit the animal " 
 
 "Hush, he's dead!" I cried. 
 
 "He's no more respectable dead than alive, 
 suh," replied the Southerner politely and with 
 wisdom. "To hit him was the most reasonable 
 thing to do under the circumstances." 
 
 "I'll go down to my cabin, sir," said I to the 
 captain, and he nodded and smiled. 
 
 "Don't you get jumpy and leery, now," said 
 he, as I left the bridge. 
 
 I cannot give an exact description of the hours 
 that followed Massingbird's death, yet certain 
 more or less trivial impressions will always re- 
 main in my memory. Chief among these is the 
 picture of Massingbird's cabin door, shut and 
 locked by the captain upon the mortal remains 
 of that unhappy man. While I yet regarded 
 that varnished teak door with its white china 
 doorknob, Wilfred appeared silently at my side.
 
 'YOU DID IT TO SAVE MY LIFE"
 
 TROUBLE 139 
 
 " 'E 's dead, pore bloke," remarked the little 
 cook in a matter-of-fact voice, as though refer- 
 ring to the weather; " 'e did n't ought to 'ave 
 been so 'asty wiv 'is gun, 'e did n't, butt end or 
 business end. But 'e'll learn better by 'nd by, 
 like most of us, but 'e 'as an awful long way to 
 go ! And if I could do anythink for 'im now, I 'd 
 do it, seein* as 'ow bygones is bygones. But 
 maybe they'll learn 'im quicker wheer 'e's gorn 
 to than wot 'e learned 'ere. Leastways, that's 
 'ow it seems to me. So don't you feel bad about 
 it, Grummet. You could n't 'ave done less than 
 what you did do, hunder the circumstances." 
 
 What precisely would be the results of my 
 action I did not know. Captain Hawks wrote 
 out the matter in the log and Captain Esterkay 
 and the man at the wheel signed it as being a 
 true and impartial statement; and all the time 
 the ship's business continued, as life continues, 
 no matter what happens. 
 
 It was necessary, however, since we were not 
 at sea, to communicate with some form of 
 authority ashore, and that as soon as possible. 
 Massingbird had been a person of importance, 
 and, though we did not know it at the time, had 
 been practically a spy in the pay of the Rio 
 Maranon Rubber Company, which company was 
 none too friendlily inclined to us at any time. 
 And, to put it definitely, we were a very long
 
 140 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 way much farther than the actual distance 
 in miles from the United States of North 
 America. There seemed to be an evil genius at 
 work. Looking back I marvel at the strange per- 
 versity of the fate that never left us during that 
 portion of the cruise, when everything should 
 have been in our favour, but which left us as sud- 
 denly when, according to the "doctrine of prob- 
 abilities," we should have been slaughtered to a 
 man. 
 
 The Government of Brazil is divided and sub- 
 divided and divided yet again into departments, 
 sections, and districts; and to the less-favoured 
 districts go the less-favoured governors, and the 
 worst of all, districts and governors, are found 
 in the Upper Amazon country. Here, in the 
 very home of the Rio Maranon Company, any 
 official who wishes to remain alive will work 
 hand in hand with the company that practically 
 owns a stretch of country more than a quarter 
 the size of the United States. At Para there is 
 an American Consul, but at Manaos there was 
 when we were there an American Agent 
 who was a Brazilian; a fat man who knew just 
 upon which side his bread was buttered; and 
 it is enough to say that he knew that it was 
 not buttered on the American side ! At Manaos 
 there was also a British Agent; an Englishman 
 with a chequered career, a "hobnailed" liver,
 
 TROUBLE 141 
 
 and a very great knowledge of Brazilian offi- 
 cials in the Upper Amazon, and a still greater 
 knowledge of the Rio Maranon Company. He 
 had, that British Agent with the liver (so we 
 learned later), written out a very lucid descrip- 
 tion of the character and actions of the Rio 
 Maranon Rubber Company and had mailed a 
 copy to the British Foreign Office in London. 
 His account had concluded with the gentle hint 
 that if his death should occur, no matter how 
 reported, the circumstances of his exit should 
 be enquired into by his own Government; and 
 his own Government had replied, thanking him 
 for the document, which would be kept for pos- 
 sible use in the future and assuring him that 
 all details concerning his death, if such an event 
 were to take place, would be enquired into at 
 once by the commanding officer of the near- 
 est British man-o'-war. The British Agent had 
 then sent a copy of the entire correspondence, 
 including his own report, to the Rio Maranon 
 Company. The net result of this action had 
 been that the British Agent at Manaos went 
 where he pleased, said what he pleased, and did 
 what he pleased. 
 
 To the Brazilian American Agent at Manaos, 
 Captain Hawks made his report concerning 
 Massingbird's death, and sought advice. The 
 Brazilian was friendly in the extreme and ar-
 
 142 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 ranged to receive the remains of Mr. Massing- 
 bird. He also gave my commander instructions 
 as to where to go and whom to see; and it was 
 to be arranged (with much waving of hands 
 and many high-sounding phrases) that Captain 
 Hawks, Captain Esterkay, the man at the wheel, 
 and myself should appear before some form of 
 local magistracy the following day, when only a 
 formal matter of enquiry should be made or 
 so said the Brazilian. My commander came 
 away from his interview very much worried and 
 puzzled. It was, apparently, the most usual 
 thing in the world to hit a man under the ear 
 and kill him. The matter seemed simple enough, 
 and the more that the captain thought of it the 
 more he became convinced that it was altogether 
 too simple, or that it sounded too simple. And 
 then he had an inspiration. He went to see the 
 British Agent just for advice. 
 
 Now, an American and an Englishman may 
 be two very different men, belonging to two 
 very different nations when in New York or Lon- 
 don, but there is remarkably little difference 
 between them when they meet in the wilds of a 
 country foreign to them both. My commander 
 and the British Agent evidently got along splen- 
 didly together, and when Captain Hawks came 
 away he was no longer puzzled but he was in 
 a hurry. For the advice he had received was
 
 TROUBLE 143 
 
 simple and to the point. It was: "Send the gen- 
 tleman, who died suddenly, ashore to our friend 
 the Brazilian, just as he said. Give me a written 
 copy of your account in the log book, which I 
 will transmit to your American Consul at Para 
 (nice fellah, known him for years), and get out 
 of this up-stream. Don't attend any court here 
 or elsewhere except at Para, and be careful who 
 you let on board your ship from now on!" 
 
 It may seem strange that Captain Hawks 
 should take the advice of the representative of 
 a foreign country in place of the advice given 
 him by the representative of his own; but the 
 circumstances were peculiar, as were the rep- 
 resentatives in question. Moreover, my com- 
 mander and the British Agent spoke the same 
 language (or nearly so), and, with the exception 
 of a few minor details, their ideas, their thoughts, 
 and their lives revolved upon the same funda- 
 mental principles. In short, they understood 
 each other. From the British Agent, also, Cap- 
 tain Hawks heard the first definite news of 
 Colonel Ezra Calvin. 
 
 That evening we were proceeding full speed 
 up-stream, taking advantage of a bright moon 
 to continue under weigh throughout the night!
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 
 
 IN one instant our voyage, which had been an 
 ordinary, humdrum, commercial affair, seemed 
 to have changed into something very different, 
 and our departure from Manaos amounted to 
 little more than flight. 
 
 "I guess that British Agent knew what he was 
 talking about, Grummet," said Captain Hawks 
 to me, as the ship made her way over a river of 
 black and silver, while the forest stood like an 
 ebony silhouette on the port side. "I have sent 
 the statement to the American Consul at Para, 
 telling him when we shall probably be back in 
 Para, and asking him to make the necessary 
 arrangements for me. At present we are buried 
 at the back of beyond, and we are about as far 
 from Rio as New Orleans is from San Francisco, 
 and I guess that any politician who finds a 
 change of air wholesome for his political health 
 applies for a job somewhere west of Obidos." 
 
 "Just so, sir," I answered; "and we'd be in a 
 nice fix if they really got a hold on us up here." 
 
 "That's what the British Agent said. He 
 showed me conclusively that this country up
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 145 
 
 here don't belong to Brazil, but to the Rio Mara- 
 non Company. And the very least that they 
 would do, if they had the chance, would be to 
 hang the ship up indefinitely on some techni- 
 cality by putting you or me or both of us in jail; 
 and I don't hanker any after an up-country 
 jail in these parts. But as long as we stay by the 
 ship I don't see what they can do, for it is not 
 Brazil we are dealing with, but this pesky Rub- 
 ber Trust." 
 
 "I understand that the Rio Maranon people 
 have a private army of their own," I began. 
 
 "They have," answered my commander 
 grimly; "some few hundred men and one or two 
 shallow-draught steamboats with a gun or two. 
 But are we such chickens?" 
 
 "No, sir; but if it comes to an out-and-out 
 scrap with them, what will Brazil say?" 
 
 "Brazil will say" joined hi Captain Ester- 
 kay amiably, "will say to the Rio Maranon 
 Company: *I wisht yo' would manage yo' little 
 troubles quieter. Yo' will mix us up with the 
 United States if yo' ain't careful!' But that is 
 all they will say, and the Rio Maranon Com- 
 pany will take the hint and try and kill us 
 quietly in the dark. But this is a big country. 
 There are many miles of it that neither Brazil 
 nor the Rio Maranon know anything about. We 
 are a needle in a haystack, Matthew, though
 
 146 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 I expect that there will be trouble somewhere 
 for some one before long." 
 
 "What did you hear of Colonel Calvin, sir?" 
 I asked; and Captain Hawks laughed. 
 
 "He's in trouble too!" he answered. "The 
 Rio Maranon found him prospecting for rubber 
 and told him to get off the earth. He's still on 
 the earth, and he replied by hammering one of 
 the Rio Maranon officials with a tin dipper, and 
 he has had to take to the woods!" And the cap- 
 tain flung out an expressive arm toward the 
 forest ! 
 
 "What d' yo' mean, Matthew?" asked Cap- 
 tain Esterkay quickly. 
 
 "What I say," replied my commander. "Cal- 
 vin arrived at Para about eighteen months 
 ago, hired a wood-burning steamer and started 
 up-stream. He did n't ask permission, why 
 should he? I guess this river 's big enough for 
 every one, ain't it? He had his first tilt with the 
 Rio Maranon at Serpa. They wanted to know 
 all about him, and he, an American citizen, 
 did n't see any necessity to publish an auto- 
 biography and said so; whereupon I gathered 
 that there was trouble, for that is where he 
 rubbed the fear of death into the Rio Maranon 
 official with the tin dipper. He showed up next 
 at Manaos, flapping the Stars and Stripes in 
 the face of every one, and there ran across our
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 147 
 
 British Agent, who, I guess, was mighty glad to 
 see a white man between steamer times, for they 
 seem to have been friends on sight. That rather 
 put a check on the Rio Maranon Company, 
 for the British Agent swore blind that Calvin 
 was a friend of his childhood, that they had 
 stolen apples together, and that any inconven- 
 ience which his life-long friend suffered was 
 therefore a slight to him, the British Agent, 
 who had never seen Calvin before in his life, 
 and as there was a British Dreadnought coming 
 up-stream fishing for turtles' eggs, they had 
 better turn kind. Well, that saw Calvin out of 
 Manaos all right, but a day's run up the river 
 saw him in No-Man's-Land, or rather, in the 
 Rio Maranon Company's land, and a launch 
 overtook him and demanded his papers. They 
 told him pretty plain (so the British Agent 
 thought) that he was a poacher poaching rub- 
 ber, and that he'd better go home. The crew of 
 the river boat which Calvin had hired were n't 
 going to put up a scrap naturally; so it was my 
 partner against every one, and I guess that he 
 had a lively time. He had no intention of being 
 arrested, knowing what that would mean, so he 
 took the wheel of his river boat and ran the Rio 
 Maranon launch under and laughed at 'em as 
 they scrambled ashore." 
 "Good man! "said I.
 
 148 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "He is a good man,'* continued the captain, 
 "but he's not a wise one. He was now a recog- 
 nised belligerent, and the crew of his river boat 
 mutinied. They said and I see their point 
 that the trouble was none of their making, 
 and that, please, they would like to get back to 
 Para. Well, Calvin quelled their desires, and 
 however much they may have been scared of the 
 Rio Maranon Company, Calvin so fixed it that 
 they were still more scared of him. But he 
 seems to have got on well with the river Indians, 
 same as we have done; for the Indians smuggled 
 letters for him through to our British friend 
 at Manaos, who said, by the by, that Calvin's 
 letters were most entertaining. In this way 
 Calvin sent his letters to me at home, the Brit- 
 ish Agent giving them privately to the skipper 
 of one of the Liverpool boats to post in Para. 
 In the last of these he said that he was liable to 
 find himself in serious trouble. Serious trouble! 
 Why, he was then, at the time of writing, prac- 
 tically an outlaw, with the crew of his river boat 
 ready to murder him if they got a chance. 
 Meanwhile, he was getting to know a whole 
 heap about the country, and had discovered, 
 'way, 'way off, a regular forest of the finest kind 
 of rubber, situated in a patch of country claimed 
 by Peru, by Colombia, by Ecuador, by Brazil, 
 and by the Rio Maranon Company. He also
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 149 
 
 discovered a river about the size of the Ohio at 
 Cincinnati that is n't on the map." 
 
 "He seems to have been busy," breathed 
 Captain Esterkay. 
 
 "He has been," replied Captain Hawks; "he 
 usually is busy, but by this time his exploits had 
 sifted down-stream to the local headquarters 
 of the Rio Maranon Company which now made 
 a real effort to bottle him. They sent out a river 
 steamer with forty men, so our friend hi Manaos 
 told me, with instructions to bring Calvin back 
 alive or dead; but preferably dead, for there 
 was a rumour floating round that he was inciting 
 the Indians to revolt against the tyranny of 
 the rubber dealers. Well, they found him, 'way 
 beyond the back of everything, and there was 
 no doubt that this time the Rio Maranon Com- 
 pany meant business. So he quietly slipped 
 ashore with some dunnage, and he has been lost 
 in the jungle for six months ! " 
 
 Captain Esterkay whistled long and emphati- 
 cally. 
 
 "Then he is dead, Matthew," he pronounced 
 softly; "requiescat in pace!" 
 
 "No more dead than you are," replied Cap- 
 tain Hawks. :< You don't know Ezra Calvin; 
 he comes from New England." 
 
 "I know the up-river country, though," said 
 Captain Esterkay with the quiet assurance
 
 150 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 which knowledge gives; "that is where the Blow- 
 gun Indians are, and no one, not even the Rio 
 Maranon, can do anything against them and 
 their blowguns. The blowgun, Matthew, makes 
 a Winchester rifle look foolish; and in the hands 
 of an expert it is the most deadly weapon in the 
 world at a short range. The Indians that use it 
 are stark naked heathen that just laugh at fire- 
 arms, and no wonder!" 
 
 "Well, that's where Calvin is, and, when I 
 have discharged my cargo at the Rio Maloca set- 
 tlement, that is where I am going to find him." 
 
 Work is a great soother of troubled times. In 
 three days the steady influence of discipline had 
 lessened my constant and all-pervading memory 
 of Massingbird's death, though I would come 
 back to the recollection with a horrible shock. 
 But a ship demands of her mate continual and 
 active examination; one can be continually 
 busy, and do no more than is necessary. 
 
 Whatever effect our sudden departure from 
 Manaos may have had in that place, we trav- 
 elled too far and too quickly for the news to 
 overtake us in any official form. We were, in- 
 deed, getting into the heart of the wilds, and 
 beyond a very occasional Indian canoe we saw 
 no sign of man for days. But even here the 
 Indian form of wireless telegraphy had preceded 
 us, and we had as much fresh food as we wished.
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 151 
 
 Our patient, whose leg we had amputated, 
 had been removed to the forecastle, and his 
 chilled-steel constitution was manifesting itself 
 in the healthy way in which he healed. His 
 Indian name was unpronounceable, but it 
 sounded something like "Maryjane," so Mary- 
 jane he became, thenceforth and always. He 
 was carried out daily and he sat in the shade 
 smoking ship's tobacco and thus gradually as- 
 sumed his place in our lives, as Stadger had done, 
 and we should have missed him had he not 
 been there. For he was what one might call an 
 effective person in his way; he had character, 
 and he made miraculous carvings for us all and 
 wept tears of pure emotion to the music of the 
 forecastle accordion. Thus Maryjane became a 
 fixture. 
 
 The river was now distinctly narrower, or 
 rather, its average was so; and by the narrow- 
 ing of the river we came into more intimate 
 touch with the forest. Moreover, the land, for 
 the most part, was lying at a slightly higher 
 level and there was frequently quite a high bank. 
 The river had become a river as we know it, and 
 though the forest remained as thick as ever it 
 was not such a primeval swamp. The wealth 
 of detail confused the eye, the shapes and shades 
 of green distracted the attention, yet the coun- 
 try was assuming a more reasonable, a more
 
 152 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 realisable form. Once Captain Esterkay got 
 us aground, and I spent a happy morning han- 
 dling kedges and warps; I say "happy," for my 
 efforts were successful, and any sailor will recog- 
 nise what I mean when I speak of the strange 
 exhilaration in dealing with powerful forces and 
 immense weights. 
 
 The rain squalls in this upper country were 
 excessively violent. The pearl-grey water came 
 sluicing down in such tremendous volumes as 
 to threaten the awnings that covered the ship. 
 The rainfall was accompanied by a roaring sound 
 like that heard when standing under an iron 
 railroad bridge when a train passes overhead. 
 But, for the most part, during the daytime 
 there was a silence like deafness, broken only 
 by the welcome noises of the ship. 
 
 There was a marked increase in the number of 
 alligators, and the forest sounds at night were 
 louder and more insistent. Strips of sandy beach 
 would sometimes line the bank, and upon these 
 were invariably to be seen one or more alliga- 
 tors or crocodiles, we did not know which 
 looking for all the world like tree-trunks. Wil- 
 fred was devising an angling apparatus for 
 catching one of these saurian monstrosities; 
 and he gave forth the astonishing information 
 that an alligator's eye-teeth, when ground to 
 powder and applied as a hot compress, were
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 153 
 
 an infallible cure for rheumatism; whereat Mr. 
 McLushley affirmed that an alligator's eye- 
 teeth, when not ground to powder but in full 
 working order, were an infallible cure for all the 
 ills that man is heir to. In speaking of these 
 creatures do not think that I mean anything 
 like the caymans of Florida. The Amazon edi- 
 tion is in strict proportion with the size and 
 ferocity of the country, and once hooked would 
 need a steam winch and a wire warp to shift 
 him. They were the most repulsive-looking 
 objects, and they existed in such swarms as to 
 make the river bank a place of great danger. 
 The Indians, with whom we were in frequent con- 
 tact, went in continual dread of the monsters, 
 which, according to them, knew no fear. It was 
 their fearless reputation, I think, that inspired 
 Wilfred with his idea. For it was not the lit- 
 tle cook's intention to kill an alligator; he pro- 
 posed to capture one alive and take it home with 
 us in a cage on deck. The scheme was ambitious. 
 
 "D'you want one as a sort of pet, d'you 
 mean?" enquired Captain Hawks with a grin. 
 
 The captain and Wilfred and myself hap- 
 pened to be alone on the bridge, so we dropped 
 back to the familiar attitude toward one another 
 born of many long years of friendship. 
 
 "Well, I don't s'pose I'll be able to lead 'im 
 round wiv a string like a Fido dorg," said Wil-
 
 154 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 fred, "but we could fix 'im up in a cage on the 
 harfter main-deck oncet we'd got 'im." 
 
 "And how d' you mean to get him?" asked 
 Captain Hawks, "put salt on his tail or just 
 whistle?" 
 
 "You let me 'ave the use of a few men, a boat, 
 one of them theer arfter shore-lines and a winch 
 and Hi will get 'im aboard," answered Wilfred, 
 with emphasis. 
 
 "All right, I will," replied the captain, "just 
 to see how you will do it ! " And he grinned down 
 at the little Englishman with the affection of 
 long intimacy. 
 
 As a matter of fact, my commander's reasons 
 for giving his permission were threefold. He 
 wanted to oblige Wilfred, for whom he enter- 
 tained a sincere respect; he wanted, out of curi- 
 osity, to see how Wilfred would manage it; and 
 none knew better than he the necessity for some 
 recreation among a community of hard-working 
 men penned up in a ship in a murderous climate. 
 
 So a cage capable of retaining a mad elephant 
 was forthwith constructed upon the after main- 
 deck by the carpenter and 'Arry Ketchold, Wil- 
 fred giving shrill advice. Then a running noose 
 was fashioned in a stout manila line which, in 
 turn, was bent to a short strip composed of a 
 hundred strands of the best hemp cord, not 
 twisted together, but placed in juxtaposition,
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 155 
 
 and bound at intervals of a few feet. These thin 
 lines would thus so it was thought slip 
 between the alligator's teeth when he tried to 
 bite the line. The thin lines in turn were bent 
 to a ring to which was made fast the sister-hooks 
 at the end of a long wire cable running to one 
 of the cargo derricks. The appliance was sailor- 
 like and efficient and would have lifted fifty 
 alligators once it was attached to them. 
 
 The affair was strictly Wilfred's. He was in 
 command of the operation, and the entire ship 
 trembled with excited expectation. There was 
 no difficulty hi finding an alligator; the difficulty 
 was, once we started, to prevent the alligator 
 finding us. Within a hundred yards of the ship 
 at anchor was a sandbank upon which four large 
 alligators lay prone and half regarding us with 
 the unfearing insolence of savage wild animals 
 that have only regarded the infrequent men 
 they have encountered as possible food and 
 not as worthy enemies; for the Indians had 
 no weapons capable of really dealing with such 
 creatures. This, of course, does not refer to the 
 Blowgun Indians; but we were many miles from 
 the Blowgun Indians' country. 
 
 A boat put off quietly from the ship contain- 
 ing Wilfred in the bows, in command, and with 
 his lariat paid out astern alongside the boat and 
 attached by the sister-hooks to the wire, the
 
 156 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 weight and pull of the latter being taken with- 
 out effort by 'Arry Ketchold. Timothy Hanks 
 steered, while I stood by Wilfred's side with a 
 rule for defensive purposes in case anything 
 miscarried. Softly and slowly we drifted down 
 to the alligators, Wilfred signing his commands 
 to the gravely smiling Timothy Hanks. He 
 picked out one that was reposing, or rather just 
 awakening, some forty yards from the others, 
 and which was lying at an angle, thus allowing 
 us to approach and avoid his tail as much as 
 possible. Hardly a man in the boat drew breath, 
 and the four men at the oars were ready to go 
 full astern with all the strength of eight muscu- 
 lar arms. We came so silently and so impercep- 
 tibly that the alligator either did not see, or did 
 not consider us worthy of his attention; for it 
 must be recollected that in that game-swarming 
 country man is at a discount. Suddenly, how- 
 ever, the alligator realised how close we were, 
 and the large ship's boat may have appeared 
 suddenly formidable to him then, for he whisked 
 round amid a great upheaval of sand and water 
 and presented an open mouth that was a shock 
 to behold. Then he came for us. 
 
 "Full astern and 'ard a-port!" yelled Wilfred, 
 and the boat slid round. " 'Old 'er!" he added 
 in a screech of delighted excitement. 
 
 The alligator was now within three feet of our
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 157 
 
 bows, but our sudden change of position dis- 
 concerted him, and he snapped together his 
 gigantic jaws with a crack like the shutting 
 of steel doors. It was at that precise moment 
 that Wilfred positively drew not threw the 
 noose over the beast's head, and he would 
 have toppled over had I not dropped my rifle 
 and snatched him back by the slack of his 
 patched pants. As he fell back into the boat he 
 clapped the whistle to his mouth and blew, 
 while I yelled to our men to go astern for all our 
 lives. 
 
 The boat shot backwards, and the waiting 
 donkeyman on board the ship had started his 
 winch the very second the whistle sounded, and 
 the line came tight round the alligator's neck 
 and just abaft the eight great lumps he carries 
 there for some mysterious purpose of his own. 
 
 He was both an astonished and a very angry 
 alligator, and to put it precisely, we had to get 
 out of the way. If you have ever seen a really 
 large alligator really angry and thoroughly sur- 
 prised, you will appreciate what I say when I 
 explain that we literally fled to the ship while 
 the most extraordinary commotion commenced 
 in the water. If you can imagine a torpedo mi- 
 raculously imbued with intelligence and filled 
 with appalled and devastating rage, you will 
 imagine a little of what we saw. The river A ma-
 
 158 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 zon was not half big enough for that alligator. 
 He went for the sandbank and the wire brought 
 him up with what must have been a nasty jar, 
 and the winch drawing him backwards raised 
 him high on his after legs for a moment. Then 
 he cast himself sideways, like a falling tree, and 
 quite illogically he went for his friends. But 
 again the wire brought him up sharp, and the 
 slack being now gathered in, he was drawn with 
 a sudden jerk off the sandbank and into the 
 river toward the ship. He darted up-stream, 
 then down-stream, and in a sudden mania of 
 rage fell to rolling round and round snapping 
 powerfully at the rope. But he could get no hold 
 on the hundred strands of twine, and whatever 
 he did the inexorable winch drew him swiftly 
 to the ship. 
 
 Meanwhile the evening air was filled with the 
 yells, shouts, and whistles of every man present, 
 punctuated by the heavy reports of the alliga- 
 tor's tail hitting the water. Provided that the 
 noose held and did not slip, he was ours, or 
 rather Wilfred's, and Wilfred whooped and 
 coughed, and cackled and crowed and danced 
 in the bows of our boat. As the inevitable wire 
 drew the alligator, rolling and plunging and 
 lashing, to the ship, our excitement grew posi- 
 tively painful. Then, for an indescribable space 
 of time, the alligator was in the air, rising sky-
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 159 
 
 wards, and doubling and twisting in a manner 
 that made him fearful to behold. The derrick 
 came clanking round with the same blind pre- 
 cision that would have marked its exact action 
 had the alligator been a grand piano or half a 
 ton of hay; and with the skilled neatness of long 
 practice the donkeyman deposited that raging 
 alligator in the roofless cage which had been 
 prepared for its reception. 
 
 We, in the boat, went aboard like monkeys, 
 and every man hi the ship crowded round the 
 cage, while a man poised above unshackled 
 the sister-hooks and endeavoured to disengage 
 the noose from the reptile below him. Our cap- 
 tive had not too much room, but we had given 
 him as much space as we could afford, and he 
 filled that space completely and almost simul- 
 taneously in mad rushes to get at us, snapping 
 his terrific jaws and pounding the iron deck with 
 his prodigious after parts in great ringing thuds. 
 He did not know what fear was, that alligator; 
 and the trying experience he had just gone 
 through and the surrounding number of his ene- 
 mies in no way dismayed him. 
 
 Wilfred went dancing round, butting into all 
 indiscriminately, extolling the virtues and beau- 
 ties of his pet in the high shrill whoops of great 
 exhilaration. He flung a large lump of pork into 
 the cage, but the alligator was not looking for
 
 160 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 food; his spirit and his body demanded red 
 revenge; and his implacable, unconquerable fe- 
 rocity gained, not only our respect, but almost 
 our affection. All through the night the alligator 
 snapped his jaws and refused even to look at 
 food that was offered him. On one side of the 
 cage was a wooden trough just deep enough for 
 him to lie in, while a short strip of hose from 
 a deck hydrant enabled Wilfred to keep his pet 
 in a healthy state of dampness. The reptile was, 
 of course, a great source of interest to us all, 
 and its refusal to take food at first caused much 
 anxiety throughout the ship, and a genuine sigh 
 of relief went up when Wilfred announced, two 
 days later: "Percy is able to sit up and take a 
 little nourishment. 'E's eat sixty-two pounds 
 of fresh manatee!" 
 
 "We are coming on," said Captain Hawks 
 to me. "We gathered in a dog at Para, then 
 an Indian minus one leg, and now a very well- 
 equipped alligator or crocodile; don't know 
 which. We should be a full ship's company by 
 the end of the cruise at this rate." 
 
 Otherwise our journey continued as before, 
 only with the difference that we were, as Cap- 
 tain Esterkay pointed out, minus a Massingbird 
 and plus an alligator. But by now the river was 
 noticeably smaller, while there had come a sub- 
 tle difference hi the forest that is hard to define.
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 161 
 
 There was the same interwoven jam of strenu- 
 ous growth, but there were occasional stretches 
 of forest that was forest as we know it in more 
 civilised lands; great tall trees standing straight 
 from solid earth, and not amid a matted tangle 
 of half-aquatic growth. One day Captain Es- 
 terkay "shot the sun." This, in itself, seemed 
 remarkable, and impressed me with the magni- 
 tude of our surroundings, especially as he found 
 the best map procurable in the United States 
 eleven miles in error! 
 
 A day later there was much excitement, for 
 we left the mam stream and turned into a south- 
 ern tributary, and the navigation of the ship 
 now became a matter of considerable care. 
 Heretofore there had been so much river and 
 so little ship that we had been able to take rather 
 "easy" courses from far distant points, but 
 we must now keep to the centre of the stream 
 in all its windings, and the stream resembled a 
 roadway through the forest that now seemed to 
 close in on us as a tunnel closes upon a train. 
 A marked change also came in the country, for 
 occasionally, above the trees, we beheld rolling 
 hills. At night we seemed to be actually hi the 
 forest, which echoed continually with strange 
 cries of abundant life. Tributaries of the tribu- 
 tary we were in branched off at infrequent inter- 
 vals, and few of these were marked upon the map.
 
 162 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Occasional bouts of fever visited us all, and 
 one day, when Captain Hawks was groaning 
 and shivering in his bunk, a turn in the river 
 revealed a shallow - draught steamer coming 
 down-stream and flying the flag of the Rio 
 Maloca Rubber Company. We instantly greeted 
 each other with prolonged whistles, and as I 
 was in temporary command of the ship, I moved 
 as much to one side as Captain Esterkay would 
 let me and rang off the engines, sending Timothy 
 Hanks onto the forecastle-head to be ready to 
 let go the anchor; for of all things I hate it is 
 the navigation of rivers in a seagoing ship. 
 
 "This will be Eichholz," said Captain Ester- 
 kay, with the glasses to his eyes; and Eichholz 
 it was. 
 
 Our interest was as great as though we had 
 met a ship at sea upon a long and lonely voy- 
 age, and every man who could do so crowded 
 the deck. The broad-beamed, waddling steamer, 
 spreading behind her a cloud of blue wood smoke, 
 came sidling athwart the current. She lay upon 
 the water like a dish, and as she was now ob- 
 viously aiming for our side I regarded her ma- 
 noeuvres with growing alarm. I rang down the 
 telegraph to "Stand by," and comforted myself 
 with the knowledge of Mr. McLushley's always 
 immediate responses. Along came that river 
 boat full speed, swinging merrily from side to
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 163 
 
 side as though undecided just where to ram us, 
 while emphatic criticisms were flung at her from 
 our decks. 
 
 "Fenders over the side!" I yelled, and rang 
 on, "Slow astern." 
 
 The crew jumped, and not only fenders went 
 over the side, but a six-inch manila a sudden 
 and excellent inspiration of Timothy Hanks's. 
 And as the men jumped, they addressed the 
 river boat in forceful United States, asking her 
 to "Come right inside and not to be bashful"; 
 to "Keep off the grass"; to "Ask mother to 
 come and help"; and to "Part her hair in the 
 middle." 
 
 "That'll do," said I; "shut your faces." 
 
 On the upper deck of the river steamer, con- 
 gregated round a shed-like wheel-house and be- 
 neath a dirty, slack-stretched awning, lounged 
 half a dozen alleged white men with the weari- 
 ness and extraordinary languor marking their 
 postures which seemed habitual with all men 
 we had seen in the Amazon country. What 
 these very dilapidated specimens thought of our 
 vociferating, almost naked, truculently cheer- 
 ful crew, swarming about us like apes, I do not 
 know. 
 
 The visitor came alongside with a creaking, 
 thumping jar that made the men by the wheel- 
 house stagger, and a raucous cackle of derisive
 
 164 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 merriment came from where Wilfred observed 
 events from abaft the galley. 
 
 "Wheer did you get that 'at?" demanded the 
 little man of a stooping individual on the river 
 boat who wore a home-made arrangement on his 
 head that was certainly remarkable. 
 
 "Go astern, sir!" I shouted to the man in the 
 wheel-house, as his craft went sliding and thump- 
 ing along our side like a travelling battering- 
 ram; "go astern hard! If you have no paint, 
 we have! Mr. Hanks! Heave that deaf, blind, 
 paralytic idiot a line, and some of you there get 
 over and make it fast. Jump ! " 
 
 Six of our swarthy crew dropped down into 
 the river boat with the end of a line, to the 
 considerable consternation of the "niggers" and 
 Indians and goodness-knows-whats upon her 
 upper deck who were swept aside in the frenzied 
 efforts which our men made to find something 
 to which they could make fast. 
 
 "She ain't got no bollards, sir!" howled 'Arry 
 Ketchold, and to try and stop the murderous 
 bumping, he clutched the manila line in one 
 terrific fist and hooked the other arm through 
 a window of the wheel-house. The window frame 
 and part of the wheel-house came away with a 
 rending of wood and a tinkling of glass, while 
 Wilfred cheered gleefully at the wreckage. 
 
 "Nothink like destruction!" he yelled; "I
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 165 
 
 loves ter see it ! Parse the line round 'er skipper's 
 perishin' neck, 'Any, 'im with the 'at! Oh, I 
 'ave n't larfed so much since father died!" 
 
 At length our men found an anchorage by 
 circumnavigating the deckhouse; and thus, by 
 tying up the river boat as though she had been 
 a parcel, they brought her to rest. 
 
 There was one man amid those standing round 
 beneath the awning who had shown neither in- 
 terest nor alarm during these proceedings, but 
 who had regarded us without a vestige of ani- 
 mation. He was the man with the remarkable 
 hat, and he came aboard us first and intro- 
 duced himself to me. 
 
 "My name is Eichholz," said he, gazing wea- 
 rily past me at nothing in particular; "are you 
 Captain Hawks?" 
 
 As my commander's representative, I did the 
 polite, and after ordering Timothy Hanks to 
 let go the hook, I explained that the captain 
 was down with a bout of fever. 
 
 "Jus* so," answered Eichholz, understand- 
 ingly, and took the chair I offered. 
 
 Eichholz I have placed permanently among 
 my gallery of human curiosities. He was in- 
 credibly thin and unusually tall. He moved, 
 spoke, and even seemed to breathe with calcu- 
 lated deliberation and with occasional lapses 
 of consciousness, as though he forgot to live.
 
 166 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Extreme caution marked his most trivial action, 
 while he possessed an odd mannerism that was in 
 some way disconcerting. In spite of his strange 
 lethargy he appeared to be in a state of nervous 
 tension, as though, for instance, he was momen- 
 tarily expecting to be shot from a long way off 
 as, perhaps, he was ! These two states of lethargy 
 and nervous tension sound, I know, impossible to 
 exist at one time, yet they seemed to exist in Eich- 
 holz who both bothered and puzzled me. I was 
 continually wanting to ask him what on earth 
 was the matter. His face was lined and warped, it 
 was seared as though by fire, or by some hor- 
 rible memory; and his eyes, quite round and dis- 
 playing the entire pupil, moved with reluctant 
 yet continual animation. Yet when he blinked 
 he would sometimes allow his eyes to remain 
 closed for a moment or so, as though dreading 
 the power of vision. I never saw him smile, even 
 the conventional smile which ordinary polite- 
 ness demands, and I had not observed him for a 
 quarter of an hour before I came to the conclu- 
 sion that Eichholz was more abjectly miserable 
 than any man I had ever beheld. He seemed 
 horribly, deeply, shockingly unhappy; he ap- 
 peared sodden with misery, without hope, and 
 though furtively alarmed, only automatically 
 alive. It seemed incredible that a white man 
 should get into such a state, and his state fas-
 
 THE COMPLETE ANGLERS 167 
 
 cinated me against my will. For there was noth- 
 ing abject about Eichholz, nothing cowardly 
 or contemptible. But it is useless for me to try 
 to describe him; though his astonishingly thin, 
 tall, stooping figure, in rather dirty, ill-cut white 
 clothing, his shaven, twisted face, wide eyes and 
 rather long, untidy grey hah*, his prominent 
 ears and pointed nose and chin, and above all 
 his strange atmosphere of utter despair will 
 remain always in my mind. And in the back- 
 ground of my recollection there will always be 
 that mysterious and abysmal forest; in fact, 
 the two seem inseparable, they seem to be cause 
 and effect. 
 
 "Mr. Massingbird?" asked Eichholz; "I un- 
 derstood that Mr. Massingbird was coming with 
 you." 
 
 For a moment I gazed at his inexplicable face 
 and the power of speech left me. It was the most 
 extraordinary thing I have ever had to say, and 
 with really an immense effort I said it. 
 
 "Mr. Massingbird," said I, "went temporarily 
 mad. He drew his revolver on Captain Hawks 
 and I hit him. I hit him with my fist behind the 
 ear and killed him. Mr. Massingbird is dead." 
 
 Eichholz rose suddenly from his chair.
 
 CHAPTER VHI 
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 
 
 EICHHOLZ walked the length of the bridge, and 
 leaning over the rail addressed the mulatto in 
 command of the river boat in a long, earnest 
 speech in some mongrel Spanish dialect. 
 
 I waited a little breathlessly until he re- 
 turned. 
 
 "I was thinking, Mr. Mate," said he, in his 
 easy, idiomatic English, "that it seems a pity 
 to waste time here, and that if my boat cast off, 
 we might proceed to Maloca eh?" 
 
 "Very good," I answered, with smothered as- 
 tonishment, and rose and issued my orders. 
 
 The casting-off of the river steamer was some- 
 thing of a business, and the operation was per- 
 formed mostly by our men. When this was 
 accomplished, we up-anchored and proceeded, 
 Eichholz's steamer following, and unable to 
 keep pace with us astern. Captain Esterkay 
 took charge, and I conducted Eichholz down 
 to dinner, and he ate with a sudden ravenous- 
 ness the good food placed before him. It would 
 seem that he had not tasted an appetising meal 
 for a very long time indeed, and it was not until
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 169 
 
 toward the end of dinner that he again referred 
 to Massingbird. 
 
 "So Mr. Massingbird died of fever," said he; 
 "well, the fever gets us all in the end." 
 
 I stared at him, and he, for a moment, looked 
 me back calmly in the eyes, and his look was the 
 look of a sage regarding a child. 
 
 "Mr. Massingbird, as I have told you "I 
 began. 
 
 "I know! I know!" he replied, and held up a 
 long and by no means clean hand with a quiet 
 and subtly superior gesture. 
 
 For a moment I was angry; then realising the 
 futility of anger and realising also that I was in 
 a very strange world, indeed, I shut my mouth 
 and grinned. It may not have been a very 
 pleasant grin. For the rest of the meal Eichholz 
 did the talking. He talked, of course, about 
 rubber and the rubber market, the labour diffi- 
 culties and the river world in general, and he 
 was interesting. Some men can speak of the 
 most trivial matters and attract one's attention 
 at once. Eichholz was one of these, for he had 
 great intelligence, and the more I saw of him the 
 more I wondered how and why such a man came 
 to be banished to this appalling, remote, and 
 savage country. He never asked one question 
 about the world of civilised men that he had 
 left and from which he was so terribly far re-
 
 170 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 moved, though it came out casually in conver- 
 sation that the last time he saw a newspaper was 
 four months before, and it was two months old 
 at the time. But he had heard of Colonel Calvin. 
 That intrepid American had, to use a useful 
 phrase, " painted the Upper Amazon red." Every 
 one knew all about him, or said that they did, 
 and the colonel was in a fair way of becoming a 
 legendary character imbued with almost Jove- 
 Jike powers. There seemed no doubt at all that 
 the colonel was, indeed, with the Blowgun In- 
 dians, and was, moreover, very much alive and 
 kicking. Yet the Blowgun Indians were regarded 
 by the white men and imported negroes with 
 far greater dread than was ever the Apache by 
 the early settlers in the West. And this was not 
 on account of their ferocity, for the Blowgun 
 Indians were not particularly ferocious, they, 
 in fact, only wished to be let alone, but it 
 was on account of their horrible weapon and 
 still more horrible ammunition. From Eich- 
 holz I got a very complete account of both the 
 Indians and their armament, and I fully con- 
 fess that I would far sooner be shot at any num- 
 ber of times with a modern rifle than once with 
 a blowgun. 
 
 The Indians, by all accounts, were a well-set- 
 up race of people, a light copper in hue and with 
 developed heads and intellects. They moved
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 171 
 
 about very much as they pleased, and though 
 strongly suspected of cannibalism there was, so 
 far, no direct evidence in this direction. The 
 "splendid isolation" afforded them, not only by 
 the nature of the country they inhabited, but 
 more by their shocking weapons, had enabled 
 them to remain practically undisturbed and 
 work out their own destiny along their own lines : 
 though of course any large amount of informa- 
 tion concerning them was not to be had, as they 
 made it a sort of matter of principle to shoot all 
 white men on sight. They were able to move 
 about through the most impenetrable forest 
 with easy, soundless speed, and usually the first 
 warning which a man had of having stumbled 
 inadvertently across a Blowgun Indian was a 
 sudden and swift difficulty in breathing. Then 
 a rapidly creeping paralysis caused him first to 
 stumble and then to fall, while he struggled for 
 breath like the drowning. From these symptoms 
 he might know that he had been shot by a 
 Blowgun Indian and that his inevitable death 
 would take place not more than four minutes 
 later. Such a death, I take it, was enough to 
 scare any man; it was certainly enough to scare 
 me! 
 
 The blowgun is from six to eight feet long, 
 with a most ingenious mouthpiece at the heavy 
 end. The darts used, and which the Indians
 
 172 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 can blow with complete accuracy up to thirty 
 yards (a longer range was unnecessary, any- 
 way, in such a country), were supposed to be 
 about five inches long, but Eichholz thought 
 that they were considerably shorter. These 
 darts, as sharply pointed as it was possible to 
 get them and hardly of a greater diameter than 
 a steel knitting-needle, revolve rapidly in flight 
 by means of a spiral twist of raw cotton, as an 
 arrow revolves in flight by means of the feathers 
 in its shaft. The discharge and passage of the 
 dart are, of course, soundless, and a man sur- 
 rounded by stinging insects, scratched and raked 
 by thorny branches, and tangled up in a mass of 
 resisting vegetation would, as like as not, never 
 notice the minute, needle-like puncture of the 
 dart through a thin cotton shirt, or in bare neck, 
 arms, or shoulders. And to puncture the skin is 
 all that is necessary. Once the blood is reached, 
 nothing on earth can save him, and he is doomed 
 to death by the most horrible form of suffoca- 
 tion. For the curare with which the darts are 
 tipped does not, strangely enough, affect the 
 heart. The paralysis it causes only prevents a 
 man from inflating and deflating the lungs, a 
 fate shocking enough to contemplate; yet, Colo- 
 nel Ezra Calvin, that amazing New Englander, 
 was apparently living amicably in the midst of the 
 Blowgun Indians and their wonderful weapons.
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 173 
 
 As that day passed and we continued up- 
 stream, there was abundant evidence of the 
 changing nature of the country. The current 
 of the river grew swifter and the banks higher, 
 rising even at times to low cliffs of clay, with 
 here and there an outcrop of stones. But there 
 was plenty of room for the Martin Connor, at 
 any rate, at that time of year, and toward sun- 
 set we opened out a clearing that marked the 
 up-country headquarters of the Rio Maloca 
 Rubber Company, one of the tentacles, as it 
 were, of the octopus-like Rio Maranon Rubber 
 Company. 
 
 The clearing was, perhaps, some ten or 
 twelve acres in extent, the forest surrounding it 
 on three sides. As the ultimate end of a consid- 
 erable voyage it seemed inadequate and hardly 
 worth a place on the map. The house of Eich- 
 holz, a six-roomed dwelling on stilts, stood apart, 
 with a flagstaff bearing the tattered remains of 
 a flag before it. Behind this there stood a 
 number of long buildings used as storehouses, 
 while a square thatched roof upon eight or ten 
 tree-trunk pillars gave shelter to the first process 
 which the newly gathered rubber underwent, 
 where, in fact, it was changed 'from the cream- 
 like substance produced by the trees to lumps 
 of soft consistency, worth about a dollar a kilo- 
 gramme in Maloca and worth twice as much hi
 
 174 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Para. The time that we were there was the time 
 of a rubber boom, and the rubber companies 
 and company promoters were rolling in money. 
 For an establishment of a rich combine, Maloca 
 was surprising; it suggested the results of costly 
 litigation and a fallen market. But we were new 
 to the Amazonian way of doing business, which 
 way is, perhaps, the most stupid and extraor- 
 dinary in the world. For years the people of the 
 Amazon Valley have sacrificed everything, in- 
 cluding the river Indians, to the collection of 
 rubber. They have planted nothing, not even 
 rubber trees to any extent, and they have wholly 
 neglected all cultivation of foodstuffs. Not only 
 have they no manufactures, but the customs 
 tariffs are of such a character that it is impos- 
 sible for them to manufacture anything in the 
 country with a profit. Everything, be it the 
 most trivial and everyday necessities like but- 
 ter or eggs or cheese, must be imported in sealed 
 tins and pay an enormous import duty, and life 
 in an Amazonian swamp is about as expensive 
 as life on Fifth Avenue or in Park Lane. Sur- 
 rounded by a profligacy of nature that amazes 
 the eye, Eichholz was living on canned meat 
 from Chicago, tinned butter and awfully pre- 
 served eggs from Denmark, eating off English 
 plates on English tables and drinking Scotch 
 whiskey, and doing so at a really stupendous
 
 cost this upon a waterway, long, it is true, 
 yet leading to all the ends of the earth without 
 necessary transhipment. I was inclined to agree 
 with Wilfred, whose economical domestic policy 
 was shocked at these conditions. 
 
 "These 'ere people," remarked the little man, 
 who had been making pointed enquiries, "are 
 mad or drunk. This country is fair rottin' wiv 
 money, or the prospec's of money, an' all they do 
 is to collec' their bloomin' old rubber and collec' 
 it in sech a manner as ter kill the trees. Wat's 
 the sense of it, fer the goodness sake? Hey?" 
 
 "Climate," said I. 
 
 And Cert'nly Wilfred intimated his doubts 
 of the accuracy of my statement. 
 
 " Yer a liar," said he, "it ain't. Hit's natural- 
 born wickedness, which is only another name 
 fer a particular kind of stupidity. Hi jes' don't 
 hunderstand it, no Hi don't. Hi ain't no com- 
 mercial man, though maybe Hi 'ave got a tidy 
 little sum put by in the London General. But 
 even Hi can see what could be done 'ere." 
 
 "Theoretically - " I began. 
 
 "Ain't got no use fer theories. Theories is one 
 of the things what people invent instead of 
 workin*. What's wanted 'ere is a practical hap- 
 plication of ordinary common sense along busi- 
 ness lines. Like what a frien' of mine in London 
 did and does. 'E's in the 'at-guard line."
 
 176 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Hat-guard?" I asked wonderingly. 
 
 "Yus, 'at-guard. You know, 'e sells strings 
 what yer farsten to yer 'at to keep it from 
 blowin' away. Got the point? Well, they costs 
 'im, my frien', these 'at-guards do, tuppince a 
 dozen all farstened ready to a card with a pitcher 
 of the King on it wearin' one. Now, my frien', 
 'e don't sell 'em at tuppince each on Ludgit '111 
 as most others do. 'E's got henterprise an* 'e 
 sells 'is bloomin' 'at-guards at sixpince heach 
 on the 'scursion boats sailin' from London 
 Bridge for Soufend, Clacton, and Ramsgit. 'E 
 goes aboard an' swears blind it's goin' ter blow, 
 puts on a jersey an' makes out 'e's a sailor, 
 though 'e's bin on nothink more than the Ser- 
 pintine. Well, it gen'rally does blow in Eng- 
 land, we ain't smooth-water people, and any 
 man that ain't a mug would sooner pay sixpince 
 f er an 'at-guard than lose a three an' ninepenny 
 Dunn. Theoretically, my frien' is makin' an 
 outrageous profit, but 'e ain't reely. 'Cause 
 why? 'Cause 'e 'as a right to 'is sixpince, not 
 because 'e jest can get it, not because 'e arsks fer 
 it, but because 'e's got the bloomin' sense to 
 take 'is 'at-guards wheer they are worth six- 
 pince of anybody's money. That's efficiency, 
 that is, an' no bloomin' theories see?" 
 
 "But I don't see how that applies "I be- 
 gan.
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 177 
 
 "'Ere!" broke in Wilfred; "I've got seven 
 joints of meat roasting in the galley an' you keep 
 me talkin' 'alf the day you the mate of this 
 ship! You should know better, George 'En-ery 
 Grummet!" and he hurried off to the galley. 
 
 The coming alongside the wharf at Maloca 
 was a delicate business, for the wharf was as 
 fragile as a frame house. As the captain was too 
 ill with fever, the job fell to me, and I had all 
 that I could do not to root the crazy structure 
 from its foundations. It was built for river 
 boats and not ocean-going steamers, and I had 
 profound misgivings whether it could hold us 
 when we were there. So I sent out a kedge and 
 warped in, holding to the river bed more than 
 to the wharf, and by nightfall we were tied up, 
 officially at our journey's end. 
 
 It was now, and for the first time, that we 
 came in actual and regular contact with the 
 shore, and there was much of astonishing interest 
 to a man with eyes in his head. The rubber grew 
 wild in the forest and was gathered in a liquid 
 state by the Indians, who, cutting the tree- 
 trunk in a certain manner, tapped and col- 
 lected the milky juice known as "latex." This 
 latex of the best trees and plants furnished from 
 twenty to fifty per cent of rubber, and what 
 precisely this juice is, or what part it plays in 
 the organism of the tree, nobody seemed to
 
 178 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 know, for it was not the sap of the tree, being 
 found just under the bark and outside the wood 
 proper. Though it appeared like milk it did not 
 taste the same, for Wilfred tried it. Yet its re- 
 semblance to milk is remarkable, for when left 
 to stand it produced "cream." This cream was 
 called "caoutchouc," if I remember right, pro- 
 nounced like a sneeze. This stuff gradually co- 
 agulated and became solid, the process being 
 facilitated by the introduction of certain chemi- 
 cals that vary according to the latex gathered. 
 When the latex began to solidify, it was rolled 
 into a more or less spherical shape, and was 
 added to by pouring fresh latex over it until the 
 mass arrived at a convenient weight and size 
 for handling. It was odd thus to see rubber 
 poured from a tin jug; and, as Wilfred said, it 
 seemed a long way off a taxicab! At the time 
 that we were there the settlement was almost 
 empty, as large quantities of rubber had come 
 in recently and the Indians had been forced to 
 go farther afield. Why precisely the Indians 
 consented to gather rubber we were at a loss to 
 discover. Their payment was a farce, and they 
 were, practically speaking, slaves, and atro- 
 ciously treated slaves at that. There was a gang 
 of negro overseers that gave both Captain 
 Hawks and myself some uneasiness. Clad in 
 tattered canvas trousers and wide-brimmed
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 179 
 
 hats, they strolled about armed with modern 
 rifles, and their manners, to put it delicately, 
 were not what they should have been. Their 
 constitutions were better fitted to stand the 
 climate than those of the alleged white men, 
 who, fever-racked, lonely, and debased, did 
 not show up to advantage. Moreover, it was 
 the duty of these negroes to drive the Indians, 
 and they drove them without mercy, pity, or 
 compassion. The bearing, therefore, of these 
 overseers was next thing to impossible, and a 
 conflict with our crew seemed inevitable. Once 
 the trouble began, unless we could stop it, 
 Maloca and its negro and possibly white popu- 
 lation would get wiped off the map. 
 
 Three days after we had arrived, and while 
 we were busy discharging cargo, a large buck 
 negro, clad in the usual ragged trousers and hat 
 and with the inevitable machete at his belt, 
 came lounging aboard as though he owned the 
 ship and discovered Wilfred at work in the gal- 
 ley. The negro spoke English (he, like the rest, 
 came from Barbadoes), and leaning easily at the 
 galley door, he observed the little cook break- 
 ing up a large piece of coal in order to get it into 
 the stove. Wilfred was busy and did not see the 
 negro at first, and Wilfred, clad in a shirt and 
 cotton trousers, looked very small, indeed. So 
 the negro laughed and remarked upon Wilfred's
 
 180 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 stature, and Wilfred, never slow at repartee, 
 turned about and replied with the iron hammer 
 in his hand at the moment, and the negro went 
 to sleep for a long time. This caused irritation, 
 and matters were not made better by a second 
 negro, engaged to assist us to land cargo, spit- 
 ting on the forward main-deck. Now, there was 
 an unwritten law in the Martin Connor that, 
 though you could spit if you wanted to, you 
 might not spit except overside. An altercation 
 followed, the negro was insolent, and Timothy 
 Hanks, who was in charge, hit him all over the 
 forward deck until he was carried ashore by his 
 friends. The following day a third negro ar- 
 rived, one chosen by his fellows, and demanded 
 to see Captain Hawks. He was interviewed 
 by myself. He demanded reparation on behalf 
 of his two friends, who appeared to be the worse 
 for wear. I answered that I thought no repara- 
 tion was necessary as, in the first place, a negro 
 had made an uncalled-for personal remark to a 
 white man, and in the second, a negro had in- 
 fringed a by-law of the ship and had been inso- 
 lent when rebuked. The negro who had come 
 to see Captain Hawks then became abusive, and 
 he was landed later by means of one of the for- 
 ward derricks at the moment engaged in hoisting 
 carboys of chemicals from the hold. That began 
 the trouble with the negro overseers, who, with
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 181 
 
 firearms, and machetes, and with no adequate 
 authority over them, were a distinct source of 
 danger. As our men were itching to "man- 
 handle" every darky in the place, Captain 
 Hawks, Timothy Hanks, myself, and the engi- 
 neers had all we could do to prevent really seri- 
 ous consequences. 
 
 But to keep the men aboard when work was 
 over not only was impossible, but would have 
 been unjust. They had every right to go ashore, 
 and ashore they went, but always in numbers, 
 and they brought back some astonishing things 
 to the ship. Whenever they chanced across 
 Indians who knew them to be off the Martin 
 Connor, whose favourable reputation had pre- 
 ceded her by means of Indian "wireless," a good 
 deal of trading took place, which trading was 
 strictly prohibited by the Rio Maloca Rubber 
 Company. But for my part I could not see why 
 our men should not trade if they wished. By 
 what right a certain body of men can assume 
 ownership over a vast tract of country which 
 they fail to civilise, survey, or even explore, I do 
 not know, neither did our men. I put the situa- 
 tion to the captain, who answered: "Let 'em go 
 ahead, Grummet; I'm sick to death of these 
 rubber trusts anyway." So the men went ahead, 
 and for the first time in their lives the Indians 
 had a chance of fair and just bargains, whereby
 
 182 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 every man in the forecastle and Wilfred in the 
 galley accumulated rubber that was worth con- 
 siderably more than their wages for the entire 
 trip; rubber which, however, was eventually 
 thrown overside. 
 
 The difficulties that arose over landing the 
 cargo at Maloca caused my commander to 
 make one of his rare speeches to the crew. He 
 explained that there was, apparently, no one at 
 Maloca to unload the ship. He admitted that 
 there were the negroes, but the negroes were 
 employed by Eichholz for the Rio Maloca Rub- 
 ber Company, and were not his Captain 
 Hawks's to order about. Although he knew 
 that the crew had signed on to work the ship 
 and not her cargo, her cargo would rot in the 
 hold unless the crew unloaded her. Therefore 
 he would be obliged to them if they would con- 
 sider the situation and decide to meet him in the 
 difficulty of their own accord; since, if they did 
 not, he would be under the unpleasant necessity 
 of making them. Each man should earn full 
 stevedore's wages for the period plus their ordi- 
 nary pay, and any negro that happened to be 
 knocking about and who the crew thought 
 might be useful in the hold why he left it 
 to them to decide what was the best thing to 
 do. But there must be no actual trouble, or he 
 would see to it personally he would come down
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 183 
 
 to the main-deck or into the forecastle if neces- 
 sary he would see to it personally that the 
 crew had as unpleasant a time as any man 
 "there among you" has had inside or outside 
 jail. 
 
 The crew stood and grinned; they were a joy 
 to behold. They all wore hats, for hats were a 
 necessity, but otherwise their clothing was not 
 of a ceremonious nature, though 'Arry Ketchold 
 wore a shirt as well as trousers in honour of the 
 dignity of his position as boatswain. They were 
 hairy and muscular, they were truculent and 
 cheerful, and they grinned at the captain with 
 real, genuine affection. This was man-talk and 
 they understood it. They also understood that 
 Captain Hawks could, there and then, did he 
 choose, thrash any three of them simultaneously 
 with his bare fists, let alone what he could do 
 with a belaying pin and a gun. He was the best 
 man in the ship; they were prepared to go ashore 
 and tell Maloca that Captain Hawks was the 
 best man in South America, in North America, 
 in the Western Hemisphere in the whole 
 world; and they intimated their willingness to 
 work cargo through the boatswain, who, thus 
 cast into sudden prominence, was stricken with 
 stage fright, and in consequence discovered his 
 voice in the top of his head. This caused a man 
 behind him to let out a laugh, whereby he re-
 
 184 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 ceived a back-handed blow from 'Arry Ketch- 
 old, delivered surreptitiously, that would have 
 felled an ox. 
 
 The next negro that strolled aboard vanished. 
 He was promptly and silently confiscated and 
 set to work in the hold, and we had no more 
 bother with them. Thus the cargo that came 
 aboard at Galveston was whipped out in record 
 time, and the cargo that was awaiting us in the 
 storehouses was brought down to the wharf by 
 Indians, ready to be put aboard. 
 
 Meanwhile our bill-of-fare was undergoing 
 some startling changes due to enterprising ex- 
 periments by Wilfred with the local productions. 
 Timothy Hanks was our sportsman assisted by 
 one of the crew, and the bag often contained a 
 variety that ranged from wild ducks in abun- 
 dance, turkeys, doves, and unknown birds to a 
 young tapir or two. This last, the tapir, is a wild 
 (very, very wild) hog, and when young is excel- 
 lent eating. Wilfred experimented in smoking 
 tapir meat, and built himself a smokehouse on 
 the after main-deck, and after nearly suffocating 
 us all he got his machinery in order and pro- 
 duced what was every bit as good as the best 
 Yorkshire hams, and Yorkshire, England, beats 
 any place I have ever been to, so far as pork is 
 considered. Then Wilfred tried smoking mana- 
 tee meat, but this was not a success, so he tried
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 185 
 
 pickling and nearly pickled himself, for he fell 
 into the vat. His pickling was an advanced sort 
 of pickling, almost scientific, needing changes 
 of flavouring at extraordinary hours of the night 
 and morning, and after a lengthy and compli- 
 cated process his production was not unlike 
 inferior beef with a strong medicinal flavour. 
 So he gave up experimenting in that direction 
 and the manatees went to Percy, the alligator, 
 who was now, if not tame, not quite so violently 
 disposed to man. But your real artist cannot 
 always be successful; a man who cannot make 
 mistakes cannot make anything, and Wilfred's 
 pickling and smoking operations were a source 
 of great interest to us all, for with these strange 
 and unknown animals one never knew what he 
 would produce. He never knew himself, for 
 though the Indians and the white men had 
 eaten most of these animals and birds with 
 which he experimented, their efforts had been 
 crude and devoid of that touch of genius which 
 Wilfred possessed and by which we all bene- 
 fited. 
 
 With the tapirs, however, he was uniformly 
 successful and happy in his results, and- inci- 
 dentally, so were we. As, at -length, he carried 
 his operations to such an extent as materially 
 to reduce the expenditure of ship's stores, Cap- 
 tain Hawks arranged with Timothy Hanks
 
 186 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 (an inveterate sportsman) that he should spend 
 more time with his gun, and should have two 
 men regularly to help him. The tapirs swarmed 
 in uncounted multitudes and averaged a good 
 three foot to the shoulder. They were as much 
 at home in the water as on land, and they would 
 gladly fight anything. When startled they would 
 career through the underbrush, their leathern 
 hides remaining unhurt by the worst thorns, 
 and as they generally came for you like a large 
 projectile, the hunting of the tapirs was not 
 without incident, for the tapir always meant 
 business. They were a light brown in colour, 
 had fighting eyes, and made sounds like other 
 pigs, though the sounds were more warlike than 
 is the voice of our homely porker. When we 
 arrived home, long after, I looked up "tapir" 
 in a well-known and highly respected encyclo- 
 paedia and read: "The tapir can be brought 
 under the subjection of man and is easily 
 tamed." This was not our experience, which 
 leads me to conclude that there must be a mis- 
 take somewhere, for the tapirs which we en- 
 countered would most certainly not come under 
 the subjection of man until they were very 
 dead, indeed; and would have charged a battle- 
 ship in the water, or a fifty-storied steel-con- 
 struction building on land. No, there were "no 
 flies" on the tapirs; we liked them, for they
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 187 
 
 seemed to be the only thoroughly sane and 
 healthy creatures in the Amazon Valley except, 
 maybe, the Blowgun Indians. 
 
 Then there was the manatee. As I had not 
 heard of this beast before I was up the Amazon, 
 perhaps I might be permitted to explain that the 
 manatee is one of the family rejoicing in the 
 generic name of Sirenia, and that the manatee 
 looks Teutonic in origin. It is, however, not 
 Teutonic in character. Ten or twelve feet in 
 length seemed to be the average size of the 
 manatee, and all the specimens which we saw 
 seemed to be affected with profound lethargy. 
 It lives in the water, and is in striking contrast 
 with the rest of the violent and intense life of 
 the Amazon jungle. All the other creatures re- 
 sent man's intrusion in unmistakeable terms, 
 but the manatee just sleeps when he is alive, and 
 is just dead when he is dead. A slumberous dis- 
 regard of danger that is half pathetic and half 
 unreasonably stupid has saved the manatee 
 from the fate of the more warlike and active. 
 And so the manatee lives on, not often awake, 
 never quite sure that he is alive; and that is 
 about all there is to say of the manatee. I have 
 met some people like manatees. 
 
 As for the birds, the pigeons, the turkeys, 
 the doves, and the many others which we could 
 not name, we had them in stews, in pies, on
 
 188 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 toast, and in casseroles. We lived like kings 
 and princes with a great variety of menu, which 
 no doubt had an excellent effect upon us, for 
 I am convinced that bad and monotonous food 
 plays no small part in the great Amazon tragedy. 
 In such a climate the most healthy appetite 
 fails and must be tempted by succulent fare, as 
 we found to be the case when Wilfred's turn 
 came to go down with fever. You just did not 
 want to eat, so you gradually ate less and less; 
 this was so with all of us; but when Wilfred 
 recovered and was up and about again, our 
 appetites miraculously returned. 
 
 And then there came a rude interruption to 
 our pleasant active life. A stern wheeler ar- 
 rived from down-stream flying the flag of the 
 mighty Rio Maranon Rubber Company, and 
 she was full and bulging with men. 
 
 We had, by then, been a week or ten days at 
 Maloca, and had discharged our cargo and were 
 an empty ship, a fact that played no small part 
 in the events to come. The stern wheeler 
 dropped anchor smartly enough in midstream, 
 and she showed in her management and general 
 condition a marked difference from the average 
 river craft and especially from Eichholz's steamer 
 that was moored to the river bank to give us 
 room at the wharf. 
 
 A flat-bottomed boat put off from the Rio
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 189 
 
 Maranon steamer and came punting across to- 
 ward us. Besides the men propelling the boat, 
 there were two men with rifles and a stout in- 
 dividual with an official bearing. 
 
 ''Ello!" remarked Wilfred, who was smok- 
 ing a cigarette near the gangplank, ' ; 'ere 's 
 Uncle Boffin from Palmer's Green!" 
 
 The boat came round our bows and up to the 
 wharf, and the stout man and the two men 
 carrying rifles climbed the short bamboo ladder, 
 gained the wharf, then marched aboard us with- 
 out invitation. 
 
 "'Ere!" expostulated Wilfred smartly, "this 
 'ere's private property, old dear!" 
 
 The stout man, who was followed closely by 
 the two men with the rifles, paid not the very 
 least attention to Wilfred's existence. 
 
 "Now, see 'ere, Willy," remarked the little 
 cook, "none o' thet, if you please, or you'll get 
 sech a masher in yer eye thet you'll wish you'd 
 never, never seen me!" And Wilfred promptly 
 laid a restraining though perfectly civil hand 
 on the stout man's arm, for the stout man was 
 briskly aiming for the port alleyway, as though 
 intent upon gaining the main cabin. The effect 
 of this action was instantaneous, The stout man 
 rapped out an order, and the two men with 
 rifles sent Wilfred skittling across the deck as 
 though he had been a child. Up till then I had
 
 190 ,* THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 been watching, but at that I interfered, and I 
 did so without loss of time, for I was more than 
 a little angry. But quick though I may have 
 been I did not arrive before the little cook had 
 planted a very sharp and nasty blow under the 
 chin of one of the men with rifles. He had aimed 
 for the man's eye, but could n't reach, and my 
 arrival was just in time to prevent the other 
 man from felling the cook with the butt of his 
 rifle. I hit that man, I hit him as hard as I 
 could, and meanwhile the stout man clapped 
 a whistle to his mouth and blew an echoing 
 screech and started running for the main cabin. 
 I turned after him and grabbed him by his white 
 coat collar, and to my considerable astonish- 
 ment he unhesitatingly drew a revolver. By 
 this time you can imagine that I was really 
 angry, more with the impudence of the proceed- 
 ing than with anything else. 
 
 "You idiot!" I cried angrily and wrenched 
 the pistol from his hand. The weapon went off 
 with a bang, a bang that summoned every one to 
 the spot. 
 
 "What" enquired the captain arriving in 
 a hurry, "what's this?" 
 
 "I don't know what it is, sir," I replied, hold- 
 ing my man tightly, "but it marched aboard 
 and tried to shoot me." 
 
 The stout man instantly burst into the most
 
 THE BLOWGUN INDIANS 191 
 
 rapid speech I have ever heard; it was like the 
 rattling of a machine, speech which none of us 
 except Captain Esterkay could understand; and 
 glancing over my shoulder toward the newly ar- 
 rived Rio Maranon steamer I noticed that two 
 boats full of men were putting off and aiming 
 for the shore. 
 
 Captain Esterkay whistled in astonishment. 
 
 "He's come to arrest Grummet!" cried the 
 Southerner in sudden alarm; "he's come to 
 arrest Grummet for killing that bug Massing- 
 bird! Say, Matthew, here's trouble!" 
 
 And then several things happened at once.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IN WHICH THE MARTIN CONNOR RETREATS 
 STRATEGICALLY 
 
 To begin with, our crew, deckhands and stokers 
 alike, raised up their voices and, in different 
 tones but with a common note of exultation, 
 cried: "Hooray! He's come to arrest the mate! 
 Let's go and wreck their mud-pusher! !" 
 
 Captain Hawks gave one glance at the two 
 boatfuls of armed men hurrying toward the 
 wharf, and grasping my prisoner by the slack 
 of his pants and the collar of his coat he ran him 
 with great speed into the lamp locker. During 
 his sudden, violent, and most undignified prog- 
 ress, the stout man's anger caused him to make 
 noises like the squealing of a pig, to the uproari- 
 ous merriment of the crew, who refused to be 
 silenced by a loud order from myself. There 
 was certainly a humorous side to the affair, but 
 they should not have laughed at an adversary 
 who was getting the worst of it. Into the oily 
 locker went that stout, self-important official; 
 he went with an impetus and rapidity that 
 must have startled him, and I have seldom seen 
 a man handled so completely. It was like a
 
 HE RAN HIM WITH GREAT SPEED INTO THE LAMP LOCKEB
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 193 
 
 conjuring trick, one moment the man was in 
 our midst, the next and he was in the lamp 
 locker, the iron door, which fastened outside, 
 slammed and bolted. 
 
 "For land's sake, Matthew!" gasped Captain 
 Esterkay, while angry bangs and screeches came 
 from within the locker, interspersed with the 
 splintering tinkle of broken glass which told 
 eloquently of the prisoner's state of mind; "for 
 land's sake, Matthew, that man is a command- 
 ant" 
 
 "I don't care who or what he is!" said the 
 captain savagely. " He tried to shoot my mate ! " 
 And then to the men " Draw in that gang- 
 plank!" 
 
 The crew, in a body, rushed to obey, just as 
 the armed men from the two boats began to 
 arrive upon the wharf. 
 
 "Now get under cover," was the next order, 
 and the men dropped behind the iron bulwarks 
 grinning broadly. 
 
 The ship was some three feet out from the 
 wharf, and owing to our empty holds some eight 
 or ten feet above it. To board her without 
 gangplank or ladder was impossible, and over 
 the bulwarks leaned Captain Hawks with a large 
 revolver in his hand. The men from the boats 
 arrived one by one and paused upon the wharf 
 uncertain what to do, though some of them
 
 194 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 fingered their rifles with practised and itch- 
 ing fingers. They were a hard-looking set, and 
 though ragged they had all the appearance of 
 ruthless self-assurance that marks the desperado. 
 Meanwhile, the two attendants who had come 
 aboard with our prisoner were being silently and 
 most efficiently bound up by our crouching crew. 
 
 "Ask them," said Captain Hawks to Cap- 
 tain Esterkay, "what they want, who they are, 
 and by what right they board my ship?" 
 
 Captain Esterkay turned to the wharf. Mean- 
 while the yells and thumps from within the 
 locker continued. Captain Esterkay finished 
 speaking and a man on the wharf made reply. 
 He was apparently second in command, and he 
 seemed both surprised and angry. 
 
 "He says," interpreted Captain Esterkay, 
 who was now as bland and as unruffled as ever, 
 "he says that it is on a charge of murdering 
 Massingbird that they wish to arrest Grummet; 
 that they represent the Rio Maranon Rubber 
 Company, which company holds itself respon- 
 sible for the law and order the law and order, 
 Matthew of this forgotten country; and I 
 gather that the gentleman inside the locker is 
 some one of considerable importance, though I 
 did n't catch his name. They say that unless 
 we let out their commander, and that quick too, 
 they will come aboard and arrest the ship."
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 195 
 
 "Ask 'em," said Captain Hawks, "to come 
 right aboard and do so if they can." 
 
 "You mean it, Matthew?" enquired Captain 
 Esterkay calmly; "just remember who you are 
 dealing with." 
 
 "Go ahead, Alexander." 
 
 And Captain Esterkay turned to the men on 
 the wharf. 
 
 "All the men aboard?" asked the captain 
 while Captain Esterkay was speaking, and as it 
 happened to be the dinner hour they were. 
 
 "Yes, sir," I answered, "all hands aboard." 
 
 "Steam?" asked Captain Hawks, and Mr. 
 McLushley, who stood smiling sardonically in 
 the background, answered softly: "Drawn fires. 
 Steam in an hour's time, not less," and vanished, 
 taking his three engineers with him and the 
 stoke-hold watch. 
 
 The effect of what Captain Esterkay said was 
 visible. The men on the wharf started promptly 
 looking for some method of boarding the ship. 
 There was nothing backward about those men. 
 
 "Ask them," said Captain Hawks, "whether 
 they would like their commander now, or if they 
 would like to wait until they get him." 
 
 "Hush, Matthew, don't yo' make bad worse. 
 The shootin* '11 start quick enough." 
 
 "Cast off those shore lines," said the captain 
 to me; " you will have to cut them. If any one
 
 196 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 on the wharf draws a bead on you while you are 
 doing so I'll drop him in his tracks." 
 
 I jumped at his bidding and with me jumped 
 the happy crew, who were deeply pleased with 
 everything, especially the prospect of a quite 
 uncommon scrap. And meanwhile the gentle- 
 man in the lamp locker had almost, but not 
 quite, screeched himself voiceless. 
 
 I have already explained that, fearing the 
 wharf was not adequate to hold the ship, I had 
 sent out a kedge to prevent us from pressing 
 too hard against the wharf. This kedge, there- 
 fore, was some distance out in the river. The 
 moment that the shore lines were parted the 
 winch was set going, and the ship glided out 
 and put a good ten yards between herself and 
 the wharf when we let go the port anchor. We 
 were now, practically speaking, impregnable to 
 anything short of artillery, for we were like a 
 castle surrounded by a moat, and the moat hi 
 our case swamped with alligators and a particu- 
 lar kind of fish that was more ferocious than a 
 rattlesnake. 
 
 "I guess we can come to terms," said the cap- 
 tain with a grin, and threw open the door of the 
 lamp locker. 
 
 The man inside was now silent. A colossal 
 pride of office, a soured, acid, and peevish tem- 
 per had been violently outraged in a tropical
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 197 
 
 climate, and the man looked shattered, as though 
 by an illness. 
 
 "Snakes!" exclaimed the captain, with sur- 
 prise; "say, Alexander, ask him to step out and 
 come to the cabin where we can talk this matter 
 over." 
 
 And a moment later the three men disap- 
 peared from view. 
 
 "Better unlash those two men," said I; and 
 the two disarmed men were set free. 
 
 Meanwhile the men upon the wharf had gath- 
 ered into a bunch and were evidently holding 
 a council of war. I watched them carefully. For 
 though it was not likely that they would fire 
 upon us while their commander and two of their 
 number were still our prisoners, they might; 
 and I sent Wilfred for his revolver, for Wilfred 
 was next thing to a miracle with a gun. 
 
 "If any man there shoots at us," said I, "let 
 him have it." 
 
 "I will!" answered the cook with great gusto, 
 proceeding to load his forty-four Smith and Wes- 
 son in a manner that bordered upon sleight of 
 hand. 
 
 The little man then sat himself upon a bollard 
 and watched the wharf intently, longingly, and 
 cheerfully, whistling softly 
 
 " We don't want to lose you, 
 But we think you ought to go!"
 
 198 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 There then passed a period of waiting, the 
 engineers and the stokers alone being busy. The 
 men on the wharf were joined by the thin, 
 stooping figure of Eichholz, who waved his hand 
 to me with an impartial gesture, as though he 
 wished to demonstrate that he, personally, had 
 nothing to do with this trouble, and I waved 
 back friendlily to him. I had a liking for Eich- 
 holz, he was so intelligent, and he was a pic- 
 turesque figure in a drab world of mediocre 
 villains. The time dragged on, and Eichholz 
 got himself into a dugout and letting down the 
 ladder, I awaited his coming. He climbed aboard 
 and shook hands with me. 
 
 "This is bad," said he, gazing vaguely about 
 the ship and hardly looking at me; "I'm afraid 
 that you are in for real serious trouble. You are 
 a very long way from Para," he added. And 
 then, after a pause, he continued, "I have just 
 received orders per the Maranon boat not to 
 supply you with your return cargo. This, in 
 itself, means a heavy financial loss to return 
 with an empty ship." 
 
 "But are agreements not worth the paper 
 they are written on?" I asked. "The return 
 cargo was guaranteed." 
 
 "Nothing 's guaranteed here. Nothing life 
 property or" and his face twisted sud- 
 denly "honour."
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 199 
 
 It was on the end of my tongue to exclaim, 
 "Skittles!" but I refrained, for the man's man- 
 ner was impressive, and quite suddenly I had 
 an inspiration. "Why," I asked, "do you stay 
 here, Eichholz?" And to my simple question 
 he turned upon me a startled gaze. 
 
 "Why?" he asked, as though my question 
 had been most extraordinary, "why? Because 
 I can't get away, of course!" 
 
 "Can't get away?" I repeated; "what d'you 
 mean?" 
 
 "Can't get away; can't do it. They have got 
 me tight!" he said. And just then Captain 
 Hawks came striding out of the cabin onto the 
 main-deck followed by our erstwhile prisoner. 
 They stood for a moment by the bulwarks while 
 the stout man hailed his men upon the wharf. 
 The men answered, and then, rather reluctantly, 
 they re-embarked in their boats and started 
 back to their river steamer. Captain Hawks 
 crossed the deck and shook hands with Eichholz 
 and invited him into the cabin, and with a nod 
 to me Eichholz followed the captain and the 
 stout representative of the Rio Maranon Com- 
 pany. 
 
 "This 'ere," remarked Wilfred, now relieved 
 from his position on guard by the departure of 
 the men from the wharf, "is jes* a bloomin' 
 frorst, thet's what it is! I thought there was
 
 200 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 goin' ter be a reel how-d '-y'-do an' instead it's 
 turned out a sort of Hague Peace Conference. 
 Lot o' silly rot, I calls it. Presumably, Mr. 
 Mate, I can retire, since them flat-'eads is gone? " 
 
 "You can," said I, grinning at the little man's 
 huge disgust. 
 
 "All I can say," he remarked over his thin 
 shoulder, as he strolled off, "is, that if any bloke 
 shut me up in a lamp locker there 'd be trouble 
 f er some one when I got out. I would n't take 
 it sweet an' kind like our friend Willy in the 
 cabin. An' as fer 'is crowd thet was on the 
 wharf, if I 'd been them I would n't 'ave jes* 
 stood theer and spat in the water, no, I would 
 n't!" And the little cook went off with a dis- 
 gusted and contemptuous glance at the two 
 boatloads of men that were now nearing their 
 ship. 
 
 "Ain't there goin' to be no scrap, sir?" 
 breathed a man deferentially in my ear. " Can't 
 we go across an' wreck their mud-pusher? " 
 
 "No, you can't," I answered, in no uncertain 
 tone; "you'll stay aboard, every mother's son 
 of you." 
 
 What was going on in the cabin I did not 
 know, but there seemed to be a deadlock, and 
 there then fell one of those trying times of idle- 
 ness when anything can happen and when there 
 is nothing to do. As night came on I wandered
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 201 
 
 about the ship restlessly watching the settle- 
 ment twinkle into being, and the river boat il- 
 lumine herself garishly with oil lamps that cast 
 out long, streaming reflections, and then, quite 
 suddenly, the conference in the cabin appar- 
 ently grew acute. Loud voices raised in anger 
 came from the four men within as though they 
 had all lost their tempers together, and Wilfred, 
 in his galley, laughed. 
 
 "Like a bloomin' monkey house!" he com- 
 mented. 
 
 Then the voices fell again and we continued 
 our restless waiting. Some Indians put out 
 from the bank in dugouts and canoes to fish, as 
 they did every evening; I counted six, and hav- 
 ing nothing else to do I leaned upon the rail and 
 idly watched them in the gathering gloom slid- 
 ing noiselessly over the lead-coloured surface 
 of the river. And then, imperceptibly, the six 
 canoes became seven, and where or how they 
 were joined by the seventh I could not tell. I 
 counted them afresh, for it was something to do, 
 and discovered that there were eight. I puzzled 
 in a half-interested fashion over this incident, 
 and counting them again I found that there were 
 ten. I became interested then. You must re- 
 member that the light was almost gone, but that 
 the surface of the river reflected the sky, and 
 was still a luminous expanse, fading toward the
 
 202 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 other bank, and each canoe floated upon its 
 perfect reflection. Moreover, when they chanced 
 to come together, it was not easy to distinguish 
 them, and they became one dark mass. Yet this 
 mysterious process of addition went on; and 
 at last, thoroughly puzzled, I called Timothy 
 Hanks. 
 
 "How many canoes do you see there?" I 
 asked him, and he counted them with difficulty 
 owing to the rapidly failing light. 
 
 "Eighteen, I make it," said he. 
 
 "Now, d' you mind counting them again?" I 
 asked, and he did so. 
 
 "Say!" he exclaimed, "what's the matter 
 with me! There's twenty-five now! Some must 
 have come down a creek to one side, but I did n't 
 see 'em arrive!" 
 
 "And now there's thirty-three," said I. 
 
 "No, forty! My! My! Those canoes seem to 
 come just the way the Apaches were said to 
 show up in the old days in the West! One min- 
 ute there was an empty landscape, and the next 
 the place was full of 'em. Now, ain't that just 
 remarkable? " 
 
 The river steamer was lit like a theatre and 
 was a spot of brilliance in the deepening night. 
 There came from her the multitudinous Babel 
 of many voices, and through an open doorway 
 upon her upper deck we could see four men
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 203 
 
 seated at cards. The canoes drifted down- 
 stream, silent and ghostlike, some passing on 
 the far side of the river steamer, others drifting 
 down between the two vessels, and from among 
 these last one canoe detached itself and came 
 with sudden swiftness toward us. I cannot tell 
 what was the precise difference between that 
 canoe and the many others which we had seen 
 at intervals on our journey up-stream, but a 
 difference there was, a difference that at once 
 caught my attention and held it. As an artist 
 will regard a foreign painting with understand- 
 ing discrimination, so will the sailor observe the 
 handling and character of a strange craft. That 
 canoe was longer, more narrow than those we 
 had seen the river Indians using, and the man- 
 ner in which that canoe was handled was some- 
 thing of a revelation. And at the approach of 
 that canoe, Maryjane, our one-legged patient, 
 now hopping about with the aid of a crutch (he 
 could not as yet bear his stump upon a peg), 
 showed sudden signs of great excitement not 
 unmixed with fear. It was then that I began 
 to have an inkling of who and what those In- 
 dians were, and I confess to an unpleasant catch 
 of the breath. The canoe came sweeping along- 
 side with an elegant ease that was good to be- 
 hold, and leaning out over the bulwarks I stared 
 down into her and beheld three naked men at
 
 204 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 the paddles, while a fourth, a fine, slim speci- 
 men, stood up in an attitude full of grace, hold- 
 ing aloft at arm's length a stick. In a cleft in the 
 end of the stick was a piece of folded paper. He 
 thrust it at me without a word, and to take the 
 paper thus offered was a natural impulse. 
 
 "Who are you from?" I asked, but without 
 answer of any kind the canoe shot off silently, 
 like a fish, into the night. 
 
 I took the paper into the light of the alleyway 
 and found it to be a page torn out of a pocket 
 diary, for at the top was a printed date some two 
 years old. The paper was folded, and as the 
 sender seemingly had no envelope the address 
 was written on the paper itself and the message 
 was directed to "The Master of the American 
 ship now at Maloca." That was all. 
 
 I felt that this was a matter of importance, 
 and so I put my head into the main cabin, the 
 door of which was open like all doors in the ship 
 for better ventilation, and I found therein some 
 kind of crisis. The occupants had risen to their 
 feet, and I discovered them in various attitudes 
 about the table. The captain leaned upon his 
 arms, his hands spread out upon the table, 
 frowning across at our erstwhile prisoner, who, 
 with folded arms and head thrown back, exhib- 
 ited (I could not help but think it, consid- 
 ering his circumstances) a rather gallant defi-
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 205 
 
 ance. Captain Esterkay, with a worried, pained 
 expression upon his usually urbane features, 
 was absently searching himself for a cigar; while 
 Eichholz, his high, narrow forehead corrugated 
 with parallel lines, gazed sorrowfully at the 
 middle of the table. It was ridiculously like a 
 scene from some rather cheap melodrama, yet 
 its intensity was obvious and I positively feared 
 the interruption I should cause, for it was plain 
 to the dullest that death lurked just round the 
 corner, and any interruption might hasten its 
 coming. Then the captain caught sight of me in 
 the doorway and the spell was broken. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked, and the four men 
 about the table moved, came out of their atti- 
 tudes as it were, as people do after standing to 
 be photographed. 
 
 "Can I have a word with you, sir?" I asked, 
 and the captain nodded and joined me in the 
 alleyway. I gave him the note, and he read the 
 inscription half aloud, and then unfolding the 
 message he glanced at the bottom for the sig- 
 nature of the sender. As he did so he slapped 
 his thigh with a crack like a pistol and twisted 
 the paper round for me to see. 
 
 I read: " Yours faithfully, Ezra Calvin." 
 
 "When and how did this come?" asked Cap- 
 tain Hawks, and while I told him he swept his 
 eyes through the letter, then returned to the
 
 206 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 beginning and read it slowly, thoughtfully, with 
 wide eyes of acute interest. Having finished 
 reading it a second time he looked at me with 
 tremendous animation in his expression, an 
 animation that was so exultant that I felt that 
 had he not been a man possessing great self- 
 control he would have shouted. Then he read 
 the note a third time with slow deliberation. 
 Then, putting it away in his pocket with care, he 
 stood a moment in thought. 
 
 "Have all ready to up anchor in ten minutes' 
 time," said he, suddenly, briskly, and turned 
 back to the cabin. As I hurried off I heard his 
 voice raised loudly, ringingly, as though offer- 
 ing an ultimatum. 
 
 The night was now fully arrived, and with it 
 had come a high fog that obscured the stars 
 and it was very dark. Considering the narrow- 
 ness of the river, to move at all from anchor 
 was a form of lunacy difficult to name, but orders 
 are orders, and I at once sent word of warning 
 to Mr. McLushley. I spoke to the chief myself 
 through the charthouse tube. 
 
 "Intends to get under weigh now?" enquired 
 the Scotchman, and I could hear his aston- 
 ished voice echoing in his silent engine-room, 
 -"man, he's daft!" 
 
 I then hauled short on the cable, and the 
 noise of the steam capstan seemed terrific in
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 207 
 
 that still night and brought about a sudden 
 activity on board the river boat which promptly 
 hailed us in some form of Spanish. They thought, 
 perhaps, that we were going to run off with 
 their valuable commander. 
 
 "Speak English!" I shouted back, but after 
 once hailing they were silent. 
 
 Captain Hawks, followed by the others, came 
 out of the cabin, and the representative of the 
 Rio Maranon Rubber Company hailed his river 
 steamer, which at once put off a boat with all 
 the clatter and fuss of the landsman when deal- 
 ing with the water, be it in rowing boats or 
 yachts. The stout man then went down the 
 ladder I lowered for him, followed by the two 
 men who had accompanied him aboard. He 
 said never a word, and he carried off this igno- 
 minious proceeding with his head up, whereat 
 we all thought the better of him. We had, ap- 
 parently, refused to be arrested! 
 
 Then Eichholz said farewell, and I recollect 
 that I was sorry to see him go, for I was still 
 longing to know just why he could *not leave 
 Maloca and in what way the Rio Maranon held 
 huii so tight. And the moment he had gone 
 every light went out in the ship, with the excep- 
 tion of those in the engine-room, one of the en- 
 gineers himself covering the skylights with a 
 tarpaulin. They must have suffered consider-
 
 208 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 ably from the heat so caused, but they made 
 no complaints. For every one in the ship was 
 aware of the captain's intention of getting under 
 weigh, and what I might describe as a strain 
 of exhilarating madness went through every man 
 aboard, giving each a stealthy energy. Those 
 were fine moments! 
 
 "Let that kedge go," came the captain's quiet 
 voice from the invisible bridge, "and up with 
 your anchor, Grummet." 
 
 "Aye, aye, sir!" I answered, and the roaring 
 of the capstan drowned all other sounds for some 
 moments. 
 
 "All clear, sir!" I called. 
 
 It was an odd experience and will remain 
 vividly in my mind, the experience of getting 
 an unlit steamer from her anchorage and pro- 
 ceeding up an unlit river a thousand miles from 
 the sea in a darkness that you could positively 
 feel. The wildest excitement prevailed upon the 
 river boat, and for a moment they were of a 
 mind to follow us. But they gave up the at- 
 tempt, and contented themselves with shooting 
 at where they judged us to be from the sound 
 of the engines and the noise that the slow-moving 
 propeller made hi the water. The bullets sang 
 merrily about us, or hit the ship with loud, 
 ringing reports when they hit iron or with sharp 
 thuds if they encountered rare wood. But they
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 209 
 
 had jumped to the conclusion that we intended 
 going down-stream, and so we moved, in time, 
 out of the area of their fire, though it was not 
 until some minutes had passed, and during those 
 minutes it was not altogether pleasant. 
 
 Standing right in the bows I stared ahead, but 
 stare as I would I could make nothing of the 
 darkness. I knew by the feel of the ship that the 
 captain was groping his way as a man gropes 
 with outstretched arms in a dark room. Not a 
 voice was raised above a whisper, that all orders 
 from the bridge might be instantly heard, and 
 the men, cheerfully subdued, went about with 
 bare feet, active, eager, and happy. There was 
 only the throb of the engines going dead slow. 
 
 One by one the scattered lights of Maloca 
 disappeared, obscured suddenly by intervening 
 masses of foliage. It was a period of suspense, 
 and my eyes, strained and staring, peopled the 
 night with phantoms. 
 
 "Can you see anything at all, Grummet?" 
 came Captain Hawks's voice from the bridge, 
 raised just enough to carry, and with a calm, 
 unhurried utterance. 
 
 "Nothing much, sir, I answered, "twenty 
 yards at most." 
 
 The lights of the settlement had now van- 
 ished; the night closed in upon us with palpa- 
 ble intensity, and an instinctive habit long
 
 210 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 acquired afforded me a mental chart of our prog- 
 ress. 
 
 The engine-room bell clattered loudly, and 
 the vibration of the engines ceased, followed by 
 a great aching stillness. The time passed, 
 how long I could not tell, and again the bell 
 clattered its emphatic command, and there fol- 
 lowed a deep rumbling as though of distant 
 thunder as the propeller bit the water. We were 
 going astern. The lookout man at my side 
 breathed a word or two of astonishment and I 
 felt that we were turning. Again came the en- 
 gine-room gong, rat-a-tang-tang-tang-tang 
 tang, and the engines paused a moment, then 
 continued in a different strain. 
 
 " Going ahead now ! " whispered the man at my 
 side, while I waited filled with that horrid dread 
 all sailors know, the dread of impact. But no 
 impact came, and I marvelled dumbly at a man 
 who could twist a ship about in this fashion, and 
 yet again the engine-room bell rang out. The 
 lookout man panted audibly. 
 
 "Shut your breathing!" I whispered, and the 
 man, with a gulp, was silent. We were going full 
 ahead, and gradually our stern way died. There 
 came a draught upon my face and the soft, silken 
 rustle of the parting water far down beneath me, 
 while the lookout man and myself were stricken 
 with the helplessness of the blind.
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 211 
 
 The stream of warm, damp air, laden with 
 forest smells, increased against our faces. A 
 violent splashing, from some large and startled 
 creature, probably an alligator, came from 
 our port hand, and following an old practice I 
 gazed upward, low in the sky, knowing that the 
 best way to see things on a dark night is never 
 to look directly at them. We continued thus for 
 some very long minutes and then rang down to 
 "dead slow." The night was vast and vague 
 and featureless; at times it seemed to close about 
 us like velvet curtains; at others it seemed to 
 recede unfathomably remote, and we moved in 
 the emptiness of space. This sensation of ap- 
 proaching and receding is a common experience 
 of strained eyes, and requires discrimination and 
 experience to decide between phantom and real- 
 ity. We struck some floating mass, and the look- 
 out man and I gulped in our efforts to restrain 
 our voices: then, unmistakeably, there loomed 
 before and over us a great blackness. We yelled 
 a warning in chorus as there came a rending and 
 crashing of tree branches, and next moment the 
 lookout man and myself were flung violently to 
 the deck! 
 
 I was up again in an instant, only to bring my 
 head with a nasty crack against something above 
 me. The experience was startling, for living 
 hands seemed to clutch me from all sides. The
 
 212 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 ship was backing away and suddenly we were 
 free, when the captain's cool and collected tone 
 came calmly through the night. 
 
 "All right, Grummet?" he enquired. 
 
 "Yes, sir," I replied, my hands to my singing 
 head. 
 
 "Ship trying to climb a tree," was his smooth 
 reply that had in it a trace of laughter, and again 
 the engine-room bell clattered. 
 
 "If any one had told me of this," I thought, 
 " I would have said that it was impossible. Why, 
 he can't see the bows from the bridge, and this 
 in a river!" 
 
 Seven times in the next hour did Captain 
 Matthew Hawks, one of the most skilled naviga- 
 tors and efficient of sailors, put his ship aground, 
 and seven times, by a miracle, we got off. Tree 
 branches raked the forecastle-head, and the look- 
 out man and I had a lively time, never know- 
 ing at what instant and from what direction we 
 should be brained as though by a club. Under 
 these conditions it was no longer humanly pos- 
 sible to be silent. Human intercourse was nec- 
 essary between us, and what we said to each 
 other need not be recorded against us. And then 
 the bows took something soft and gently resist- 
 ing, mounted upwards, and the ship came to a 
 stop. 
 
 "Done it this time," came the captain's com-
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 213 
 
 ment through the dark, "guess I'll wait for day- 
 light." 
 
 "Guess we will," remarked the man at my 
 side, and though his tone was low it was em- 
 phatic. 
 
 The cabin lights were turned on, and when I 
 came aft Wilf red caught sight of me and cackled 
 unfeelingly with merriment. 
 
 " 'Ello!" said he, "Grummet's been ashore!" 
 
 The first grey suggestion of dawn revealed us 
 with our bows embowered in leafage, and five 
 monkeys perched wonderingly upon the rail. 
 This in an ocean-going ship! 
 
 "We live and learn," remarked the captain; 
 "guess I was a child before I struck this country." 
 
 " Yo' have struck it too, Matthew," said Cap- 
 tain Esterkay placidly, a before-breakfast cigar 
 between his lips. "Did yo' think this hooker was 
 an airship?" 
 
 "And six months ago," continued Captain 
 Hawks, "I'd 'most have cried if I had put my 
 ship ashore. Now I am only wondering what 
 we'll have for breakfast!" 
 
 "It's climate, sir," said I. "There are five 
 monkeys on the forecastle-head; I should n't be 
 surprised to find an alligator snoring in my bunk. 
 In fact, I shan't be surprised again at anything 
 as long as I live. Shall I be getting out a kedge 
 astern, sir?"
 
 214 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 The captain nodded. "The Old Man put her 
 away and I got her off, eh, Mr. Mate?" said he, 
 smiling. " I remember saying that in my younger 
 days. Ah, there's breakfast." 
 
 Before sunrise the ship came off the mud with 
 a great clatter of winches, which caused some irri- 
 tation among at least a dozen alligators that had 
 come to anchor round her bows, and we pro- 
 ceeded up-stream. 
 
 And the matter of alligators and game gen- 
 erally now attracted our attention. The country 
 was positively swarming with life, while the forest 
 at night was in a continuous uproar that was 
 most impressive. Throughout that day we con- 
 tinued up-stream, the river becoming more 
 narrow, but remaining extraordinarily deep and 
 often winding most abruptly. We were now in 
 genuinely unexplored country, which fact was 
 not a little impressive, for we never knew what 
 a bend in the river might reveal. 
 
 For three days we continued, and the condi- 
 tions surrounding us seemed to change with 
 every mile of progress. We were getting out of 
 that evil valley of the Amazon, which had had 
 an indescribable effect upon us all. The land lay 
 no longer a stagnant swamp, but undulated with 
 hills that grew higher and steeper in the west. 
 After three days' journeying the captain took 
 the ship's position, and some two hours later he
 
 THE CONNOR RETREATS 215 
 
 blew a prolonged blast upon the whistle. Fancy 
 pictured that strange sound, bursting for the 
 first time upon the ears of the forest and startling 
 the very trees. And so wild and untouched was 
 this country that one could almost picture a 
 combined attack upon us by an army of wild 
 creatures amazed at our preposterous arrival. 
 For it must be remembered that we were actually 
 exploring in a seagoing ship. 
 
 We whistled long and painfully throughout 
 the day at intervals and the sound must have 
 carried far, and when we anchored that night we 
 got the searchlight going. I think, when I was 
 cataloguing the various conveniences of the ship, 
 that I have spoken of this light upon the bridge. 
 It was not, of course, a light such as is carried 
 by men-o'-war, but was powerful enough, and 
 one such as is carried by well-found commercial 
 vessels to assist in loading cargo in unfrequented 
 ports. This machine, being a deck-fitting, fell 
 under my charge, with all the rest. But as not 
 only man himself suffers woefully in that sinis- 
 ter climate of the Amazon, but all man-made 
 things, I had come to an arrangement with Mr. 
 McLushley, who knew all there was to know 
 about the bad effect of tropical climates on com- 
 plicated mechanisms. The result was that you 
 could not put your hand anywhere without en- 
 countering a particularly greasy kind of grease,
 
 216 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 which was stuck about with dead or still strug- 
 gling insects of all sizes and of variously poison- 
 ous natures. Therefore, though the searchlight 
 had not been used for a long time, it was in full 
 working order as soon as the hood was removed, 
 its universal joints working smoothly, and with a 
 grating, singing hiss the long shaft of cold violet- 
 white light sprang into being. And the moving 
 beam as it swung glittering over the forest was 
 followed by terrific crashes or ominous silences. 
 
 All this time none of us knew what was coming 
 or what to expect. 
 
 "This is a wicked country," remarked the cap- 
 tain, shooting a pillar of light up into the sky like 
 a gigantic flagpole, to mark our position for miles 
 round. Up went that line of light, up and up, 
 while the flying insects flashed in it like blowing 
 snowflakes; and then, for a time, he played it 
 upon the forest, enjoying the consternation it 
 caused amid that packed world of venomous and 
 deadly life. 
 
 And before morning, and from amid that 
 alarming darkness, the ship was hailed, hailed 
 loudly, by an American voice!
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 
 
 THE night was exceedingly dark and very hot. 
 To southward and westward the lightning pal- 
 pitated angrily, throwing into black relief the 
 rounded tops of the trees and emphasising the 
 pit-like blackness of the river. It might have 
 been the cumulative effect of the climate, but, 
 on that night in particular, I recollect feeling 
 very vividly our remoteness and isolation from 
 our fellows. Moreover, our departure from 
 Maloca, our present destination, which the cap- 
 tain alone knew, and the problem of how in the 
 world we were to return through such a land of 
 enemies, gave ample food for thought. I did not 
 know what had been in that mysterious note 
 so picturesquely delivered from Colonel Calvin. 
 There were times when my commander would 
 lay his plans very fully before me, and then 
 again there were times when I knew no more 
 than any stoker. Still, it was obvious that we 
 were now in actual search of the colonel, and the 
 loss of the stipulated return cargo did not seem 
 to worry Captain Hawks. The little ship 
 hummed cheerfully with the sounds of human 
 intercourse snatches of song, whistling and
 
 218 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 laughter, that free, ready merriment that comes 
 among men who are on good terms with one 
 another and with life in particular. The Martin 
 Connor was a happy ship. And then, in a mo- 
 mentary pause in the sounds aboard, and from 
 the impenetrable darkness about us, came, 
 without warning, a loud, strident, human voice! 
 I shall never forget the sound of that voice or the 
 effect it produced; coming as it did it set the 
 nerves jangling like a peal of alarm bells, and 
 every man that heard it did, literally, jump! It 
 was a rasping human bellow, and of such volume 
 and intensity as to have about it the shocking 
 quality that voices have in dreams, or when heard 
 while coming out from under an anesthetic. 
 
 "For 'Evink's sake!" piped Wilfred shrilly, 
 running out of his "Office," while Captain 
 Hawks shot from his chair and ran to the rail. 
 
 "American ship ahoy!" came the voice. 
 
 "Ahoy! Hoy! Hoy! Hoy! Oy! Oy . . ." re- 
 peated the echo in the forest. 
 
 "Hello!" yelled back Captain Hawks, and I 
 could hear laughter in his tone, the laughter of 
 pleasure. 
 
 "Is that the American ship that was at Ma- 
 loca?" enquired that truly staggering voice. 
 
 "Yes!" answered the captain, laughing out- 
 right, "don't you recognise my voice, Ezra? 
 There's no mistaking yours!"
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 219 
 
 "Matthew Hawks!!" was the answer, and 
 this time, raised to its fullest pitch, that voice 
 seemed to shake the very ship. 
 
 There was a powerful light arranged upon a 
 gooseneck forward of the midship structure which 
 we used when working cargo. This could be 
 taken from its stepping, and with a length of 
 wire could be carried about the deck, and was 
 switched on from the bridge. I turned this on, 
 and running down I carried the light to the side, 
 while others threw over the ladder. Into the 
 radius of light there shot a canoe; it slid over the 
 water and came round with extreme dexterity 
 to rest by the ladder. It did not arrive slowly 
 with diminishing way; it arrived full speed and 
 stopped dead. 
 
 "That's good!" I thought; "that takes a bit 
 of doing." 
 
 In the canoe were five practically naked men, 
 and the strong, uncompromising light I held 
 shone upon their muscles, their skin having that 
 beautiful silklike texture which the human com- 
 plexion takes when permanently exposed to the 
 open air. The man in the bow of the canoe un- 
 loaded himself with such poise and balance that 
 the frail vessel never swayed, and he started 
 climbing the ladder. He came up like some 
 agile ape, and I stepped back and to one side 
 to give room to my commander.
 
 220 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 When Colonel Ezra Calvin arrived, and I lev- 
 elled that pitiless light upon him, he presented a 
 picture that, for a moment, struck each and every 
 one dumb. He was a long, lank, gaunt New 
 Englander. He was cleanly shaved as though 
 fresh from a barber and getting rather bald 
 on the top of his head. Had you seen him in the 
 ceremonious costume of a Chinese mandarin, or 
 in the make-up of the Sultan of Turkey, or in 
 the sombre garb of a monk, or in the full-blown 
 kit of a British field marshal, you would still 
 have had no vestige of doubt that he came from 
 New England. And when he first burst upon our 
 breathless gaze like a lantern picture, his entire 
 costume was a sort of Masonic-apron-like ar- 
 rangement of native workmanship. Yet he ap- 
 peared the very heart and soul of prim respec- 
 tability, and New England to the hilt! 
 
 I do not know what we expected to see, but 
 I do know that we did not expect what we did 
 see. With the exception of the captain we were 
 all temporarily deprived of the powers of speech. 
 We just stood there and gaped at the incongru- 
 ity of the man and his costume. For a white 
 man, who has been living with savages, in some 
 savage costume is not startling as a rule, for he 
 usually takes on some subtle demeanour of the 
 savage. But when the white man remains a 
 white man and retains all the Christian virtues
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 221 
 
 and is palpably the pink of all respectability; 
 then, when he is seen in an almost negligible 
 native costume, you behold a concatenation of 
 the seemingly impossible. 
 
 Captain Hawks darted forward, and those two 
 men came as near hugging as the Anglo-Saxon 
 will allow himself, while we, as I have said, stood 
 and gaped. Wilfred broke the spell by retreat- 
 ing hurriedly with imperfectly concealed mirth. 
 As for myself I suffered severely, but I kept a 
 straight face, while, at the captain's introduc- 
 tion, Colonel Calvin shook me by the hand with 
 the ceremonious solemnity of manner befitting 
 a deacon of the church. Then with my com- 
 mander he strode away, grave, dignified, en- 
 tirely unabashed, and wholly unself-consciously 
 naked. A sense of humour is a splendid thing, 
 but it is trying sometimes to possess one. I 
 went away filled to the brim with laughter, but 
 the kind of laughter that filled me was in itself 
 a token of respect to that extraordinary man; 
 it was the laughter that any amazing incongruity 
 affords, and I state most emphatically that it 
 was not at the colonel, but at the humour of the 
 circumstances. 
 
 In a very short time, Ezra Calvin was arrayed 
 in a complete outfit of clothing, but as the gar- 
 ments were made originally for the captain, who, 
 though a big man, was not so tall as the colonel,
 
 222 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 and at the same time much broader, they did 
 not fit to perfection; but that did not matter. 
 
 On the bridge we sat for most of that night, and 
 I do not think that I have ever been more inter- 
 ested. That long, angular man, with his remark- 
 able voice now reduced to a suitable tone, talked 
 on hour after hour to the captain, Captain Es- 
 terkay, and myself; and what he had to tell, no 
 less than the manner of his telling it, was a rich 
 entertainment to the listener. 
 
 He had demonstrated his remarkable person- 
 ality from the first; for to appear as he had ap- 
 peared, attired as he was attired amid a crowd 
 of waiting men, all of them with but one excep- 
 tion total strangers, and show not by the flicker 
 of an eyelid a trace of nervousness or embarrass- 
 ment, requires no small measure of real charac- 
 ter. There was no diffidence in the man, nor was 
 there conceit; he was entirely sure of himself, 
 not in a boasting, top-lofty manner, but with a 
 placid, unworried knowledge of his own powers. 
 Doubtless, when the Rio Maranon Company at 
 length forced him to take to the death-haunted 
 jungle, he had done so in a quietly merry mood, 
 regarding it as an interesting and passing experi- 
 ence, when any other man would have decided 
 that he went, inevitably, to his death. All the 
 same, the colonel had had a very bad time, about 
 as bad a time as even he could stand.
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 223 
 
 For nearly three months he was alone in the 
 forest, a forest infested with terrors and reduced, 
 even at the brightest midday, to a deep sepul- 
 chral gloom. He was lost, utterly lost, or and 
 he admitted it he would willingly have given 
 himself up after six weeks and chanced the 
 Rio Maranon's worst. He very nearly lost his 
 reason, and he was apparently conscious of his 
 tottering mental faculties, for he described viv- 
 idly to us his sensations at that time. It was 
 like, so he said, slipping down the face of a slope 
 leading to a precipice. He knew that he was 
 going mad, and there were many days that he 
 did not remember. The clothes that he escaped 
 in were soon torn to ribbons, and one day, when 
 he awoke from a period of lost memory, he found 
 his arms and ammunition gone; and then, indeed, 
 things looked black for him. But even then he 
 did not despair not quite. 
 
 The Blowgun Indians had found him lying 
 apparently dead. The discovery, for them, must 
 have been remarkable, for there was no indica- 
 tion of how he got there. Nevertheless, he was 
 not dead, and they carried him home with them 
 as a curiosity, and in the hands of people reputed 
 to be implacably ferocious and cannibals to 
 boot, his amazing constitution recovered itself 
 bit by bit. Gradually, under the influence of 
 rest and frequent feeding his body mended itself
 
 224 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 and his reason gained a more stable equilibrium. 
 He no longer felt the appalling sensation of 
 slipping downwards to the sheer drop of insanity. 
 Weeks followed weeks and he was a long time 
 ill, and for weeks and weeks those naked heathen 
 nursed him in a manner no Christian could have 
 bettered. But one need not be a Christian to be 
 in possession of a rigorous code of honour, and 
 the colonel found that he was as safe amid the 
 Blowgun Indians as he would have been in New 
 York or London; perhaps even safer, since here 
 there was no chance of being run over or robbed 
 as there is in any large Christian city! He was 
 more than fed, he was positively stuffed with 
 food, and word by word he picked up a few frag- 
 ments of the Indians' speech. He could speak 
 their language now with some ease, for he pos- 
 sessed the linguistic faculty. Thus he was able, 
 before long, to explain to the Indians his precise 
 position and they were interested. They found 
 no difficulty in grasping what he said, for they 
 were of a high order of intelligence. They were 
 able to realise that he was of a tribe foreign to 
 the white men in possession of the main Amazon 
 stream and that he was at war with them. Being 
 a man of wide experience gathered from all over 
 the world, the colonel, not unnaturally, was able 
 to be of no little use and help to the Indians; yet 
 the New Englander made no blundering assump-
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 225 
 
 tion of superiority. He was too wise a man to 
 fail in realising that in a great many respects he 
 was not the superior of the Blowguns in their 
 native forests. He was at enormous disadvan- 
 tages, disadvantages that stripped him of many 
 of the privileges of being a white man. But he 
 set himself to learn, and such a man in almost 
 any community of persons would naturally rise 
 to a position of importance. He discovered that 
 the Indians were, without doubt, cannibals, and 
 that they had a remarkable custom of boning 
 hea,ds whereby the head shrank to about the 
 size of an apple without losing its likeness to the 
 original owner, retaining even its expression. 
 There were, he said, several erstwhile officials 
 of the Rio Maranon Company thus represented, 
 together with a German botanist and an Eng- 
 lish railroad engineer. This, and some other dis- 
 coveries, must have been a considerable shock 
 to that lonely white man amid those unknown 
 people, but Ezra Calvin could stand shocks; he 
 was made that way. At night, by himself, he 
 would argue out his position, and the advisa- 
 bility of lodging some protest against the can- 
 nibalism, the head-boning business, and one or 
 two other details; but, to put.it in no way too 
 strongly, his position was delicate, delicate in 
 many ways. It seemed, as he put it whimsically 
 enough himself, hardly good manners to inter-
 
 226 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 fere! Driven into the wilderness by his own 
 colour, or by what the Indians would naturally 
 consider his own colour, he had been found at 
 the edge of death by these people, who, with- 
 out thought of reward, had nursed him back to 
 sanity and life with the most extreme gentleness 
 and consideration. And they could always say, 
 "Well, if you do not like our ways you can go, 
 we won't keep you!" and the colonel, hard as he 
 was, had no intention of again facing the forest 
 alone. He did, however, at length lodge his pro- 
 test; as a white man he could not do less; and 
 the Indians were politely interested and just a 
 little amused ! 
 
 Split into tribes at variance with one another, 
 tribal conflicts were naturally not infrequent, 
 and upon one occasion, by the colonel's strategic 
 suggestions, his tribe gained an overwhelming 
 victory. From that moment Ezra Calvin became 
 a valued friend of the chief, a venerable old gen- 
 tleman who had eaten many dozens of his fellow 
 men! So the colonel's hopes revived of weaning 
 these otherwise excellent people from some of 
 their ways and of introducing them to Chris- 
 tianity. He was certainly a remarkable mis- 
 sionary, and he threw the full force of his power- 
 ful personality into achieving this end; not with 
 blunt demands, mournful entreaties, or hysterical 
 exhortations, or by threats and a veiled superi-
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 227 
 
 ority of manner, but by suggestions of Machia- 
 vellian subtlety. 
 
 "I wanted to see," said the colonel, with really 
 grand simplicity, "if I could n't do something in 
 return for all that they had done for me!" 
 
 He was much too big a man to boggle over 
 details. 
 
 "I wanted to give 'em the Idea," said he, "and 
 before six months was out I was speakin* their 
 language pretty freely. I did n't get side-tracked 
 on the subject of clothing or creeds like most 
 missionaries do. As for clothing, I had none my- 
 self, and clothing don't make decency anyway. 
 Besides, if a man looks like those Indians do, I 
 guess he don't need no clothing to cover him up 
 as we do who are like some fungus that's grown 
 white by living covered in darkness from the 
 sun. Also, clothing, once you have lived without 
 it, is unhealthy. No, I stuck to the main point." 
 
 With tact and knowledge and supreme deli- 
 cacy, with understanding sympathy and grati- 
 tude, the colonel set about his task undismayed. 
 The Indians were great lovers of ceremony and 
 of hero-worship. The heroic deeds of the great 
 ones who had departed were jealously guarded 
 and handed down from generation to generation, 
 and gradually, as their intimacy grew, the In- 
 dians, bit by bit, drew Ezra Calvin into their 
 inner life, acquainting him with their hopes and
 
 228 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 beliefs. An exchange of such confidences was 
 only natural, and so the colonel had his chance. 
 It must be remembered that he was an extraor- 
 dinary man who had, by then, as a result of 
 his desire, of his affection for and knowledge 
 of these people, gamed an ascendancy over 
 them, and knew just how, precisely, to reach 
 them and give his words the most effect. He 
 introduced them to Christianity through their 
 own language, by their own ideas, by getting at 
 their own most private point of view. Of how 
 many missionaries, I wonder, could the same be 
 said? 
 
 And in the end the colonel, in the main, won 
 the day ! 
 
 He won it without book or church or society 
 to help him, sitting clothed hi native fashion in 
 their midst, and he made no fatal mistake over 
 side issues. The cannibalism and the head- 
 boning stopped to a very great extent, and his 
 teaching held in other directions too. 
 
 So the months passed, and the colonel was 
 giving up all hope of ever again seeing his kind 
 or of reaching civilisation. While the tribe was 
 moving from one hunting ground to another, 
 having infrequent contact with the river Indians 
 who feared them, they heard, at intervals and 
 by means of the mysterious Indian "wireless," 
 that there was a steamer in the river with a
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 229 
 
 striped flag at her stern that the river Indians 
 spoke well of. A striped flag such as was de- 
 scribed could only be American, and a sudden 
 hurricane of longing and homesickness smote 
 that lonely and intrepid man. The steamer was 
 hundreds of miles away, yet, would not an 
 American ship help an American in such a posi- 
 tion as was he, who could not escape through 
 what was practically the one road out? More- 
 over, while living with the Indians he had made 
 a discovery that had positively taken his breath 
 away, and I have already said that he was a man 
 who could stand shocks. So he resolved to try and 
 in some way come in touch with the steamer with 
 the striped flag, and his copper-skinned friends 
 were willing enough to help him. The results of 
 these combined efforts were already known to us. 
 Apart from his personal idiosyncrasies, Colo- 
 nel Ezra Calvin was not unlike the great tribe 
 of wanderers that one comes across in odd cor- 
 ners of the globe. They are to be found usually 
 beyond the edge of civilisation, possessed by 
 an ungovernable restlessness and a spirit of 
 romance. They have no vices, these unofficial 
 explorers, and they combine an extraordinary 
 number of diverse abilities without either the 
 will or the desire to turn them to any great mate- 
 rial profit. They pass from country to country 
 and are of all nationalities, though they are
 
 230 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 usually either American or British. They are 
 never seemingly in want of money and always 
 appear to have enough for their simple needs. 
 They die, as like as not, in some foreign hospi- 
 tal of some obscure tropical ailment and leave 
 nothing but a battered trunk or two behind 
 them. They invariably talk well and easily, and 
 their vocabulary embraces technical and other 
 phrases in half a dozen languages and dialects in 
 which there is a strong flavouring of the sea. 
 They are patriotic and love their country, but 
 they never live in it, and they enjoy a surprising 
 grasp of world politics. They have no relations 
 and few friends and no real desire for either. 
 They are, in fact, detached eccentrics, capable 
 of the most appalling hardships, and though full 
 of amazing schemes they are wholly without a 
 plan in life. They feel no vestige of alarm at 
 any crisis, and would show no dismay at being 
 stranded without money in New York, Liver- 
 pool, or any other place, and they would some- 
 how get money, and get it honestly. Their 
 clothing is generally vaguely remarkable, com- 
 prising, as likely as not, a suit purchased in 
 Kansas or it might be Glasgow, a shirt bought 
 in Hongkong, shoes from Budapest, and a hat 
 acquired in Simla by means of a bet. They can 
 name all the principal lighthouses, bar-rooms, and 
 mountain peaks in the world, and they have met
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 231 
 
 and conversed intimately with South and Cen- 
 tral American presidents, Zulu chiefs, great ex- 
 plorers, American millionaires, English lords, 
 and the lesser German nobility. They are case- 
 hardened to all shocks, they know the inside 
 history of many an unlawful deal, and they are 
 usually aiming for some place which you would 
 go far to avoid. 
 
 To such a tribe belonged Colonel Ezra Calvin, 
 though he had, in addition to his tribal marks, 
 his own startling personality. As a prospector 
 for hidden wealth in almost inaccessible places 
 he would have been hard to beat; it was only 
 in the matter of diplomatic negotiations with the 
 all-powerful Rio Maranon Company that he had 
 failed; but then the real out-and-out, concen- 
 trated American never has been a diplomatist, 
 though it remains to be seen in the very near 
 future if he will be! There had been no diplo- 
 matic necessity in his dealings with the Blow- 
 gun Indians, for his relations with his rescuers 
 had been of the most cordial nature. As an 
 exploring partner of such a shipmaster and 
 owner as Captain Hawks, Colonel Calvin was 
 indispensable. But there could be no doubt at 
 all that the colonel's difficulty with the Rio 
 Maranon Company, when added to ours, was, 
 metaphorically speaking, enough to sink the 
 ship, and, speaking practically, enough to make
 
 232 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 it next thing to the impossible for us to leave 
 the country without international negotiations. 
 
 The captain had written to the American 
 Consul at Para, informing him fully on all details 
 concerning Massingbird's death, together with 
 the signed declarations of the three witnesses 
 of that event, and explaining that we should be 
 back in Para within a few months ready to an- 
 swer all questions, and, in fact, put ourselves 
 entirely in the hands of the authorities at 
 Para; but not in the hands of the paid authorities 
 of the Rio Maranon Rubber Company. This 
 the captain had done upon the advice of the 
 British Agent at Manaos, and also following that 
 advice we had departed hurriedly from Manaos, 
 and the Rio Maranon Company had unsuccess- 
 fully endeavoured to arrest me at Maloca. How 
 that endeavour failed I have already described, 
 together with the failure to arrest the ship, while 
 the details incidental to those failures were not 
 likely to better our case. So the Rio Maranon 
 Company held, as it were, a very long bill 
 against us, and when it became known that we 
 had Colonel Calvin aboard, Colonel Calvin 
 who had (1) refused with considerable direct- 
 ness at Serpa to give an account of himself; (2) 
 slipped through its toils at Manaos; (3) at some 
 point, not indicated, deliberately run down a Rio 
 Maranon launch when the officials therein had
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 233 
 
 demanded his papers; and (4) who was now 
 wanted "alive or dead" by the Rio Maranon 
 Company, which alleged that he was inciting 
 the Indians to revolt (which was a lie), and who 
 had come openly into competition with that com- 
 pany, and when it became known that we 
 had every intention of taking the colonel out 
 of the country with us, it was obvious that the 
 Rio Maranon Rubber Company, which owned 
 the lives of a great many men, and which was 
 responsible for the deaths of a great many more, 
 would make no half-hearted effort to prevent 
 us from escaping down the one and only road 
 which we could use, namely, the Amazon River. 
 Captain Hawks had already given me some 
 indication of what he intended to do in the 
 event of certain complications which had now 
 come about; he had suggested his probable line 
 of action before we sailed, when we were lying 
 at anchor in Galveston Bay. Captain Hawks 
 was not, I must admit, all that he should have 
 been (who is?); but, on the other hand, it is an 
 ethical problem that is altogether beyond me as 
 to whether he was right or wrong in his intention 
 to trade honourably with the original inhabitants 
 of a vast country which is claimed by four inde- 
 pendent states and a commercial trust, none of 
 which either governs, surveys, improves, or even 
 polices the land they all squabble over.
 
 234 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 At any rate, his intention held good. In our 
 hold were the trade goods purchased by and 
 belonging to Captain Matthew Hawks, though 
 at the time we loaded them he had no idea that 
 it would be with the mysterious Blowgun In- 
 dians that we should do business. Yet had he 
 seen at that time all the difficulties awaiting 
 us, and all the difficulties then surrounding his 
 lost partner, bold man though he was I think 
 he might have hesitated though perhaps not 
 Jor long to add to them by proceeding dead 
 against the expressed wishes of five dog-in- 
 the-manger opponents such as Peru, Colombia, 
 Ecuador, Brazil, and a ruthless commercial 
 combine such as the Rio Maranon Rubber 
 Company. But he had had no idea of such a 
 return cargo as had been intimated in Colonel 
 Calvin's mysteriously delivered note! All the 
 same, the situation was, in popular parlance, a 
 very tall proposition for one small cargo boat 
 to meet. But she was a tough little cargo boat 
 all the same! 
 
 The colonel's bodyguard of Indians were en- 
 tertained upon the forward main-deck by our 
 crew, who were supplied with the means of enter- 
 tainment. The difficulties of speech were no real 
 barriers, for extreme amiability characterised 
 the meeting, amiability tempered with marked 
 respect upon both sides. Ten other canoes also
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 235 
 
 came alongside, each canoe carrying a crew of 
 six magnificent men. They left their blowguns 
 in their canoes, moored to the bottom of the 
 ladder, as a token of trust and general polite- 
 ness, much as a policeman might remove his 
 helmet when entering the house of a friend. 
 That our crew and the Blowgun Indians would 
 be friends was likely, for both were real proper 
 men, though widely different in race. There 
 was little of "Lo the poor Indian ! " in these spare 
 and elegant savages, who could kill you in dead 
 silence with a puff of breath. They had, practi- 
 cally speaking, never come in contact with white 
 men before, and white men had never come 
 in contact with them and lived afterwards ! 
 They were therefore entirely unspoiled, un- 
 touched, unchanged, and there was not a man 
 among us who did not realise that it was an 
 extraordinary experience. In the wild parts of 
 the world, equality and inequality between peo- 
 ple are measured in terms of force and power, 
 and not by intellectual achievement except in 
 so much as intellectual achievement bestows 
 power in the shape of firearms, or, in other words, 
 the power to kill. And with regard to this last 
 consideration there was little doubt that we were 
 even or nearly so; any advantage lying with the 
 Indians and not with us. We might, and per- 
 haps could, defy four South American states and
 
 236 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 the Rio Maranon Company, but there was no 
 doubt at all that we could not defy the Blowgun 
 Indians! I moved about among our men with 
 watchful eyes, and put the nature of our sur- 
 roundings very emphatically to them. On no 
 account whatever, and for no reason, must there 
 be any trouble. It was true that the colonel had 
 much power with them, and that our reputa- 
 tion with the Indians was first class, but if a 
 quarrel were to arise, tough ship's company 
 though they might be, we should inevitably 
 cease to exist, and the manner of our exit made 
 one shudder to contemplate. But there was 
 never any suggestion of trouble, for everything 
 was nice and friendly. 
 
 The leader of the Indians who had accom- 
 panied the colonel was not the chief, but a sort 
 of secretary for foreign affairs. We could not be- 
 gin to pronounce his name, but Wilfred promptly 
 christened him "Alf," and so, to us, Alf he 
 remained. The little cook possessed an obscure 
 and subtle ability for giving people and things 
 names which, though seemingly illogical, yet 
 stuck by their very incongruity. Thus the alli- 
 gator that occupied much valuable space on the 
 after main-deck was always referred to quite 
 gravely as "Percy" by us all, including the cap- 
 tain and Mr. McLushley. That fourteen-foot 
 monstrosity, by the way, if not exactly a pet,
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 237 
 
 was becoming resigned to his captivity; a cap- 
 tivity brightened by a large and regular supply 
 of food. 
 
 Alf was truly a magnificent specimen, stand- 
 ing a good six feet one and with a slim and grace- 
 ful carriage that was a joy to behold. He was a 
 light sort of copper-bronze in hue with an un- 
 blemished skin. As Wilfred said: "Yer don't 
 need no clothes when you 'ave a body like our 
 friend Alf's." Alf's face was oblong, not squat 
 and Mongolian, with clean-cut features stamped 
 with the marks of intelligence and a good clean 
 stock of forefathers. Had his colouring been 
 white he would have made an extraordinarily 
 good example of our race, yet with an added 
 quality that would have made men fear him in 
 no uncertain manner. This quality I could put 
 no name to, though I was aware of its presence 
 in all, or almost all, the Blowgun Indians. Itfwas 
 an unknown, unplumbed abyss, and to use a 
 metaphor, was like an w/imoral and noble crimi- 
 nality. You felt that with all his real excellence, 
 Alf would, on certain occasions, logical enough to 
 him, but incomprehensible to you, do shocking 
 and awful things as a matter of course. If, for 
 instance, you fought him and you put up a real 
 good fight, and if he killed you, as he would with 
 his blowgun, he would be tempted to eat you as 
 a sort of token of respect to your departed spirit.
 
 238 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Well, there it was; there was no possibility of get- 
 ting that point of view, so it was no good trying; 
 it had to be accepted as one of the multitude of 
 mysteries that surround us in a primeval forest 
 of pagan America or in the crowded streets of a 
 Christian city. 
 
 I conducted Alf over the ship and we were 
 very polite to each other, you may be sure. He 
 was quite able to grasp the general idea of the 
 vessel's construction, though iron and steel were 
 new to him. Still, he realised that given such 
 metals and the power to work them, such a form 
 of gigantic canoe might be made, but he could 
 not in the least understand the engines, which 
 last Mr. McLushley himself endeavoured to 
 explain by sign and action. Ah* and the chief 
 engineer regarded each other impassively for a 
 moment, looking each other up and down and 
 finally unflinchingly in the eyes a long, search- 
 ing stare; then they nodded with complete 
 gravity as though each were saying to himself: 
 " Verily, here is a Man ! " But the principles that 
 govern reciprocating machinery not unnaturally 
 were beyond ALF. He was a little dazed and as - 
 tonished, though in no way alarmed, by the slo\* 
 and delicately ponderous, calculated, and or- 
 dained precision of movement that answered, so 
 exactly, Mr. McLushley's battered and capable 
 hands upon the little black wheel projecting from
 
 A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS 239 
 
 the large copper pipe that held in slavery that 
 vast array of gleaming metal. He caught on to 
 the fact that what he beheld was not magic but a 
 man-made thing, and suddenly turning to us as 
 representatives of the race that could create such 
 things, he made a movement that was a gesture of 
 respect that was superb in its simple dignity; it 
 made one blush! 
 
 So the night passed, full of interest and events, 
 in a social function that could only be called 
 profoundly odd. It was as though here, far be- 
 yond the boundaries of the white man's influence 
 and activity, we were received and measured at 
 the very entrance of the unknown by the un- 
 known inhabitants. 
 
 The following day, the Martin Connor, that 
 essential product of science and commerce, with 
 her electric light, multitubular boiler, her auto- 
 matic ash ejector and Kelvin compass, plastered 
 with insurance policies and legal agreements, 
 continued into the strange domain whose inhab- 
 itants, as strange and as unknown as their coun- 
 try, had, as it were, examined us and permitted 
 us to enter!
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 
 
 As soon as daylight permitted we were under 
 weigh next morning, to the vast interest of the 
 Blowgun Indians, who for some mysterious 
 reason seemed to find humour in the proceeding ! 
 Alf and his party remained on board, and we 
 hoisted on deck their canoe (a long and elegant 
 craft dug out from a single tree-trunk and 
 shaved to a thinness of sheet tin, then scraped 
 and polished until it had an outward surface not 
 unlike that of a meerschaum pipe). The steam 
 capstan startled them; they thought, and not un- 
 naturally, that we must have a gang of men they 
 had not seen concealed beneath the deck. We 
 managed to assure them, however, that this was 
 not so, and we took some trouble in the matter; 
 for we had every intention of remaining upon 
 the best possible terms with these people and 
 their terrible weapon. 
 
 It now became obvious that we were entering 
 a country that was altogether different from the 
 Amazon lowlands. This change, strictly speak- 
 ing, began somewhere about Maloca, but in that 
 place the change had been very gradual. Now, 
 every hour of steaming marked a difference.
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 241 
 
 The current of the river grew quicker, the banks 
 became higher and were often of a rocky nature. 
 The swamps seemed left behind us, and there 
 arose to the north and west a range of hills that 
 were bare of trees toward the top. The climate 
 also improved. The heat was less, and to our 
 great thankfulness the insects were no longer in 
 such uncounted millions. Occasionally the river 
 narrowed into a rocky gorge, and to take a sea- 
 going ship up such an uncharted stream was no 
 child's play. The colonel, however, with his inde- 
 fatigable industry, had taken soundings, and we 
 kept two men busy with the lead. The river, 
 you must understand, was still a big river accord- 
 ing to our standards, but was just a creek in com- 
 parison with the Amazon. Captain Hawks kept 
 on at full speed in order that he might have the 
 greatest possible command of the ship, though 
 had we run aground then upon the rocks that 
 fringed the banks we, or rather the ship, would 
 have stayed there for all time. The colonel knew 
 the river, so did the Indians, and the men with 
 the lead were busy on either side of the bridge- 
 deck. But to take accurate soundings from a 
 swiftly moving ship in a swiftly flowing river is 
 impossible, and it was, at best, but guesswork. 
 But from the manner in which the line ran out 
 it was possible to form some opinion of the water 
 beneath us.
 
 242 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 Here and there great masses of rock rose above 
 the forest trees draped in festoons of fern-like 
 plants, and occasionally an open glade showed 
 up amid the trees. This was beautiful country 
 and enchanting to the eye sickened of extra- 
 tropical regions. And the forest swarmed with 
 life. Droves, or perhaps I should say flocks, of 
 monkeys went sailing through the trees with a 
 rapidity and ease that suggested the flight of 
 birds, and their passage was accompanied by an 
 immense chatteration. The hour for the midday 
 meal went unnoticed. Every man who could be 
 was on deck gazing upon a country which, with 
 the exception of the colonel, had, in all probabil- 
 ity, never been seen before by white men. More- 
 over, the risks and dangers of our progress were 
 manifest to all, for it was rather like riding a 
 bicycle up a wheel track of a waggon; and only 
 the most prompt and immediate obedience of all 
 saved the ship from disaster several times that 
 day. When we anchored again that night a sigh 
 of relief went up from us all, including the cap- 
 tain, who had never left the bridge since dawn. 
 
 For three days of intense vigilance we con- 
 tinued, and by then the nature of the country had 
 altered very greatly. Mountains real moun- 
 tains rose high in the north and west, un- 
 named, unknown, and unexplored, for we were 
 too far south for any of the trails that led over
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 243 
 
 the Andes and into the Amazon Basin. The im- 
 provement in the climate was welcome to us 
 all, and though possibly a few months before we 
 should have considered it unbearably humid, it 
 was, by comparison with what we had been in, 
 almost temperate. The trees also changed, and 
 we saw many species we had not seen before; and 
 though, no doubt, they all had names, I am afraid 
 that we did not know them. The river divided 
 at a series of rocky islands, and then branched 
 off, and obeying the colonel's instructions we fol- 
 lowed the northerly branch through a fine gorge 
 of red rock that glistened with hundreds of 
 minute waterfalls that fell like rain through a 
 tangle of drooping ferns. Later, in the early 
 afternoon the gorge ceased abruptly and gave 
 place to a mile or two of low-lying lands; farther 
 on the banks receded and we entered a wide, 
 deep lake. 
 
 We were now some sixteen hundred miles in- 
 land from the Atlantic, and were, as a matter 
 of fact, considerably nearer the Pacific. Though 
 various statements are made concerning the dis- 
 tance which ocean-going ships can ascend the 
 Amazon, from our experience I am inclined to 
 think that some of the statements are travellers' 
 tales. The main stream is said to be navigable 
 for seagoing ships as far as Iquitos in Peru, about 
 twenty-three hundred miles from the Atlantic,
 
 244 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 while vessels of a less draught, but drawing four- 
 teen feet, can go as far as Achual Point, which is 
 four hundred and eighty-six miles beyond Iqui- 
 tos. Beyond Achual Point the stream is con- 
 sidered dangerous, though I saw myself some 
 steamers at Para intended for the navigation of 
 the stream above Achual Point, and they must 
 have drawn at least eight feet, though they were 
 bound for Pongo de Manseriche, which is many, 
 many miles beyond Achual Point. Therefore, in 
 comparison with these figures our distance inland 
 did not sound so much, though actually, and when 
 studying the chart, I remember that we seemed 
 a tremendously long way from the sea. As Wil- 
 fred said, "It seemed a long, long way to Tipper- 
 ary " ; and then the sudden discovery of this great 
 sheet of water which we entered that afternoon 
 was, considering our position, quite startling. 
 The shore lines stretched away upon either hand 
 until they became thin ribbons in the distance, as 
 do the beaches of an atoll appear to a ship enter- 
 ing a South Sea lagoon. But beyond the shore the 
 land rose high and distant. In places the sur- 
 face of the lake was clotted with forest wreckage 
 woven together into floating islands and popu- 
 lous with life. 
 
 " Could n't find a better place to strip a blade," 
 remarked the captain, and rang off the engines to 
 "dead slow" and then to "stop," allowing our
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 245 
 
 impetus to carry us a full mile, winding in and 
 out amid those floating islands. 
 
 I was standing on the forecastle-head with 
 Wilfred at my side. Suddenly the little cook shot 
 out a thin arm and pointed ahead, while aston- 
 ishment robbed him of speech. High above the 
 mountains to westward, at a great distance, and 
 at a positively staggering altitude, ethereal and 
 fairy-like in the sky, stood the faint outline of a 
 gigantic range of mountains. The mountains be- 
 yond the shore line had appeared high until that 
 moment, and undoubtedly they were high, but 
 the vastness of that ethereal range beyond so 
 distant that the summits seemed to be severed 
 from the earth, and yet, in spite of their manifest 
 distance so high, appearing thus mysterious and 
 remote was, literally, thrilling and dramatic. 
 The sight was, as the saying is, enough to take 
 one's breath away, and one's astonishment was in 
 no way lessened by the thought that here, indeed, 
 were the Andes, seen from the east, and from an 
 ocean-going ship! At that moment the bridge 
 also caught sight of them. 
 
 "Look ahead, Grummet! In the sky!" came 
 Captain Hawks's voice quickly. 
 
 "I have just this moment seen them, sir!" I 
 answered ; and the captain laughed and waved his 
 arms in a gesture more expressive than words. 
 
 "What next, I wonder!" he said.
 
 246 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 It was only for a moment or two that that 
 line of mountains remained visible, during some 
 chance balance of lighting; then they faded and 
 were not, leaving upon the mind of the beholder 
 an impression of something wholly unearthly, 
 and of something tremendously solemn. I had 
 never expected to see the Andes from the east. 
 Viewed from the west their whole extent is often 
 seen; but their eastern slopes are usually ac- 
 counted too gradual in character, and the crests 
 do not therefore appear until many thousand 
 feet have first been climbed. But there are great 
 portions of that continent that are still unknown, 
 where unknown sights may meet the eye of the 
 traveller; and certainly, from one place at least, 
 those great mountains, the second highest in the 
 world, can be seen from the east in their entirety, 
 for we saw them. However, we never saw them 
 again that way, though six men saw them at the 
 same moment, six men whose eyesight was not 
 only of the best, but trained and used to long 
 distances. Therefore, and as we were in a wholly 
 unexplored region, I have not the least doubt 
 that it was, indeed, the Andes we saw, vast and 
 remote, revealed for one extraordinary moment 
 by some chance of sunlight, and I, for one, shall 
 never forget the experience. 
 
 By using what open spaces there were in that 
 large inland lake, and by nosing our way upon
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 247 
 
 impetus through the slush of forest debris, 
 Captain Hawks got the ship across the ten or 
 fifteen miles to the opposite shore, while multi- 
 tudes of birds rose circling in alarm at our passage. 
 The trees fringing the western side of the lake 
 came into view with rapidly rising ground be- 
 hind them. Continually sounding, we got across 
 the lake, and, as we approached the shore, there 
 came gradually upon the ear a whisper that grew 
 more distinct as we progressed. It puzzled us 
 upon the forecastle-head for some time until the 
 sound, growing more pronounced, became finally 
 the sustained roar of falling water. 
 
 With infinite caution, and with all the knowl- 
 edge and apparatus of a ship making a landfall 
 off an unknown seacoast, we approached and 
 dropped anchor at nightfall. After watching the 
 iron fall clear and hauling short, I leaned on the 
 rail a moment and looked round, and in one silent 
 minute there were half a hundred canoes about us, 
 appearing as mysteriously as they had appeared 
 at Maloca. I do not know how it was done; it was 
 uncanny in the extreme, and was as though they 
 had risen from beneath the surface. Of course 
 the light was fading, as it had been at Maloca, 
 and of course there were many floating islands 
 and masses of forest wreckage surrounding us 
 and behind which, in the dusk, a canoe full of 
 men, if perfectly motionless, could hide. Yet
 
 248 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 there was clear water about us for several hun- 
 dred yards, and it was in this clear water that the 
 canoes seemed to make their first appearance. 
 And as each canoe was full of the deadly Blow- 
 gun Indians, the sight, even though they were 
 friendlily disposed toward us, was sufficiently im- 
 pressive. This was woodcraft of a superior kind, 
 and being aquatic in character earned our pro- 
 found respect. Ah*, upon the main-deck, greeted 
 his brethren with a guttural cry, and at once the 
 silence was broken by a cheerful uproar, and the 
 canoes came sweeping alongside. Every man had 
 with him his eight-foot blowgun, while slung at 
 his hip was a gourd containing his terrible am- 
 munition. The Indians were invited aboard, and 
 they came in crowds, and upon both sides an 
 attitude of affable friendliness and respect pre- 
 vailed. For the ship must have been full of the 
 unknown and possibly dangerous unexpected to 
 the Indians, while we, outnumbered twenty to 
 one, had no intention of being otherwise than 
 most polite. The fear of death was therefore not 
 absent from all our minds, Indians and whites 
 alike, and the fear of death promotes good man- 
 ners in a way not realised in a civilisation where 
 you can be as rude as you like and only be im- 
 prisoned or fined. 
 
 That night was somewhat extraordinary. The 
 ship positively swarmed with Indians, mostly of
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 249 
 
 a magnificent physique and wholly untouched by 
 any previous intercourse with white men. Their 
 shocking reputation also added to the strange- 
 ness of the situation, and even Wilfred carried 
 himself with a certain reserve and caution. As 
 for myself, I will admit at once that I was scared. 
 No man who was not a fool could be otherwise. 
 The Indians clustered and jostled at the galley 
 door, where Wilfred explained, by the medium of 
 signs, the mysteries of the white man's cooking 
 apparatus. They hesitated to enter doorways, 
 and would peer in at one unexpectedly with 
 friendly faces that yet bore the obvious possi- 
 bilities of an expression of the greatest ferocity. 
 I got some considerable shocks that night ! With 
 the fittings and appurtenances of the ship they 
 displayed the happiest interest not wholly devoid 
 of fear, and the ship, being, as she was, such a col- 
 lection of strange and wonderful contrivances, 
 kept them in a subdued mood that in time wore 
 off. That there should be a live alligator in a sort 
 of gigantic pig-pen on the after deck excited their 
 mirth, though Stadger, Wilfred's acquired dog, 
 and one of the most amiable of the ship's com- 
 pany, struck fear in their hearts, for he was a 
 wholly strange animal. They thought that 'Arry 
 Ketchold must be commander on account of his 
 size, and with all simplicity they dismissed the 
 engines and the electric light as miracles beyond
 
 250 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 their grasp, and which only these pale faced men 
 from a far distant tribe could possibly under- 
 stand or manage. The iron of which the ship was 
 constructed appeared to be most wonderful of all, 
 and in consequence of this, a surprise which the 
 captain was holding in store for us all came before 
 he had intended it. Wilfred was the accidental 
 medium. 
 
 After some hours had been consumed in explor- 
 ing the ship and in affable interchange, our crew 
 opened up negotiations for trade, and in a short 
 time a brisk business was in progress. Some time 
 after midnight the Indians departed, leaving be- 
 hind them a surprising medley of things, but not, 
 however, one blowgun or set of darts ! I could not 
 help but regard this fact as somewhat significant. 
 But the crew were pleased and so were the In- 
 dians, which, after all, was all that mattered, for 
 to establish pleasant social and business relations 
 with these people was what the captain wished. 
 Wilfred had also been trading, and he had not 
 confined his operations to what is termed 
 "curios" or "junk." While we were at a late 
 supper the little man marched in, and with the 
 light of a great emotion in his bright eyes he 
 planted down with a thump in the middle of the 
 table a granite-iron (I think it is called) sauce- 
 pan filled with smooth, water-worn, bean-shaped 
 pebbles of pure gold that varied in size from that
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 251 
 
 of a pea to almost a pigeon's egg! When I say 
 that this saucepan was filled with nuggets I mean 
 that it was full to overflowing, much as though 
 its contents had been shingle scooped up from 
 a beach. Moreover, this gold was in realisable 
 form; to the most inexpert it was obviously gold, 
 not partially hidden in dull lumps of un- 
 crushed, ore-bearing rock, but smooth, shining, 
 and yellow, like a five-dollar gold-piece or an 
 English sovereign. To Timothy Hanks and my- 
 self, who knew nothing of this surprise which the 
 captain and the colonel had in store for us, and 
 even to Captain Esterkay , who only knew of the 
 reported presence of gold in this unknown coun- 
 try, the sight of that ordinary cooking utensil with 
 its most extraordinary contents was as startling 
 as so much lyddite attached to a burning fuse. 
 
 Captain Hawks smiled and glanced keenly up 
 at Wilfred and asked: 
 
 "Whose?" 
 
 " Yours," replied Wilfred promptly, with a 
 bird-like briskness of manner. 
 
 "Explain," said Captain Hawks, still smiling. 
 
 "Sut'nly. A little while ago, when them Hin- 
 dians come round to my galley, I noticed one 
 old gent dressed in a pair of fine, pure gold hear- 
 rings. So, when the others had gone on to look 
 at something helse, I kep 'im, accidental, sort of, 
 talkin' by means of signs, you know. 'E says to
 
 252 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 me, in signs, "Ow much d' you want for that 
 theer knife?' pointin' to one of them three big 
 knives what I cut up fresh meat wiv. I'd seen 
 'is hear-rings some time back an' I hintennated 
 to 'im, like, that 'e could 'ave the knife fer a 
 pebble or two like what 'e was wearin' in place 
 of a full suit of clothes. 'E seemed to think me 
 soft in the 'ead, but I did n't mind thet, an' orf 
 'e goes an' comes back presently in 'is canoe with 
 that little lot" (nodding at the saucepan on the 
 table) "in one of them theer jourds. When I see 
 what 'e 'ad brought I was generous-like. 'You 
 can 'ave three knives,' I says, in signs, at the same 
 time ketchin' 'old of the jourd, not snetchin', 
 y' know, but jest takin' it perlite-like wivout 
 hundue waste o' time. I give 'im the three knives 
 an' hempties the jourd into the fust thing as come 
 'andy, which was thet theer saucep'n. The three 
 knives belonged to the ship, the ship belongs to 
 you, therefore the gold is yours!" 
 
 Captain Hawks grinned. 
 
 "Wilfred," said he, "Cert'nly Wilfred." 
 
 "Yus, sir?" 
 
 "Wilfred Gee, old friend." 
 
 "Thet's me, Capting 'Auks." 
 
 "I make you a present of those three knives, 
 and, in consequence, the gold is yours." 
 
 "Mine!" gasped the little man, "mother, what 
 '11 1 do wiv it!"
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 253 
 
 "I'll lock it in the safe for you," replied the 
 captain, "for, at a conservative estimate, there 
 are many thousand dollars which any bank in the 
 United States would hand you across the counter 
 in exchange. You might even retire from the 
 sea, if you wished." 
 
 "But I don't want to retire from the sea, least- 
 ways not from this ship. Are you givin' me an 
 intimation of the noble border of the sack? Are 
 you givin' me the boot? In pline Henglish, are 
 you droppin* the noddle on my boko?" 
 
 "Come again," said the captain; "what d' you 
 mean?" 
 
 "Well, it sounds as if you was dischargin' me, 
 or as if you was tellin' me as 'ow I could go at the 
 end of the cruise." 
 
 "Don't be an all-fired jackass. I'm giving you 
 many thousand dollars," said the captain, still 
 grinning; and Wilfred stared at him. 
 
 "It's unusual," said the cook. 
 
 "Admitted," remarked the captain; "but we 
 are in an unusual place. Are you too proud to 
 take it from me?" 
 
 "Of course I'm not, if you reely mean it," 
 answered Wilfred, still eyeing the captain in- 
 tently. ;< 'Ad n't you better leave it till the 
 morning?" 
 
 "D' you think I'm drunk?" asked Captain 
 Hawks.
 
 254 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Well I I not what Pd call drunk, but 
 careless-like." 
 
 The captain's grin grew until he threw back 
 his head and laughed. 
 
 "Have you ever seen me drunk?" he asked 
 finally. 
 
 "No; but I 'ave n't never seen you give away 
 a pot o' money like so much pebbles on the 
 beach." 
 
 "True," agreed the captain; "I guess I'd 
 better explain." 
 
 "Guess you 'ad," said Wilfred. 
 
 Captain Hawks turned to us, and though his 
 remarks were addressed to all, his eyes rested 
 upon me, for he and I and Wilfred had been to- 
 gether since he had taken his first command, and 
 it had been a long record of mutual struggle and 
 friendship. 
 
 "I guess," said he, "that this will be my last 
 cruise. The explanation is simple. The explana- 
 tion of why I left Maloca without putting up any 
 kind of fight, either with the Rio Maranon or for 
 my return cargo of rubber, is also simple. The 
 reasons for my actions were consequent upon that 
 letter I got from Colonel Calvin, which told me 
 that I could save him by coming up-stream a 
 certain distance. There was also news in his 
 letter of this gold. Who owns this country I 
 can't say, though I'm inclined to think the
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 255 
 
 owners are the Blowgun Indians, who are ready 
 and prepared to trade. The goods that I can 
 supply them with are cheap and common enough 
 with us, but, until we came, were unobtainable 
 for the Indians, and I guess the worth of a 
 thing is just according to how you can get it. It 
 has just been demonstrated that three knives, 
 worth about four dollars each in the United 
 States, are worth that pot of gold at the back 
 of the Amazon because the inhabitants have 
 more gold than knives. Sound economy, I think. 
 Gentlemen, the reason why this will probably be 
 my last cruise and your last cruise is, that, pro- 
 vided we manage to get out of the country, we 
 shall all be very wealthy men." 
 
 There was a moment's silence during which 
 Cert'nly Wilfred sat down heavily (for him) in 
 the nearest chair. 
 
 "Well, an* I don't think so much of the 
 prospec', neither," remarked the cook; "who 
 wants to be very wealthy?" 
 
 "Wait and see," said the captain. "It may be 
 said," he continued, "that I am poaching. But I 
 think that would be incorrect. Poaching neces- 
 sarily implies preservation in some form, and I 
 need not remind you that there is no preserva- 
 tion of any kind going on here. 'This is disputed 
 territory. It is quite unexplored, quite uncon- 
 trolled, and, to my thinking, still belongs to the
 
 256 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 original inhabitants whom it pleased God to put 
 here. Now these people have any quantity of 
 pure, alluvial gold. They don't have to dig for it, 
 or blast for it, or crush it when found. It comes 
 from reefs somewhere in the lower Andes, and all 
 they have to do is to pick it up out of stream beds. 
 It is of little use to them, because it is too soft 
 for most purposes for which metal is employed. 
 They use it for ornaments, but, as far as I can 
 find out from Colonel Calvin, I gather that its 
 cheapness renders it a poor sort of ornamenta- 
 tion, and it is, in fact, regarded by these Indians 
 much as we regard a celluloid collar ! Any sort of 
 mining operations in this country is impossible, 
 and until the alluvial gold has been removed is 
 unnecessary. It is only by a strange and unusual 
 set of circumstances that we are here, living un- 
 harmed amid these Indians that even the Rio 
 Maranon Company dare not take on, which fact, 
 incidentally, guarantees our safety for the time 
 being from our friends in the rubber business. 
 So, gentlemen, now is our chance. Here are we 
 in a full-powered steamship with a good supply 
 of trade goods that I invested in for trading pur- 
 poses; only, when I did so, it was rubber I was 
 after, not saucepans full of practically pure gold. 
 I will, later on, draw up a system of mutual 
 profit, a system that shall be based upon busi- 
 ness principles according to service rendered."
 
 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 257 
 
 Again there followed a silence which was due 
 to the simple reason that nobody knew what to 
 say. 
 
 For my own part I found myself unexpectedly 
 unmoved before the prospect of probable wealth. 
 Sailors, almost without exception, are not money- 
 makers. This is due to a great many reasons, 
 though principally because their energies and 
 character take other lines, and the average 
 sailor is simple in his wants, requiring only the 
 necessities for decent human existence. Thus I 
 found it with myself; I required a pleasant habi- 
 tation, and I had it; palatable food, and I had 
 it; decent raiment, which I already possessed; 
 good tobacco, which I also possessed; and enough 
 money to spend on necessary recreation, and this 
 I had too. I was not at all sure that I wanted to 
 retire from the sea, since I was as sure as one can 
 be of anything on this earth of a pleasant ship 
 and an old friend as commander. I discovered 
 Captain Hawks gazing at me with a whimsical 
 smile, and somewhat guiltily I assumed a brighter 
 expression and glanced at Wilfred, who, in de- 
 fiance of all etiquette, still sat in a cabin chair. 
 The little man's attitude and expression de- 
 picted solemn preoccupation. 
 
 "Well, sir," said Timothy Hanks, "for myself, 
 I am deeply grateful." 
 
 I hastily echoed these sentiments, while Cap-
 
 258 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 tain Esterkay glided in, as it were, with a neat 
 and courteous speech. 
 
 "I'll found a horphanage," said Wilfred, 
 "sailor's horphanage with pictures on the wall!"
 
 CHAPTER XH 
 
 DISAPPEARANCE OF CAPTAIN HAWKS 
 
 To those who have never experienced a walk 
 through a tropical jungle, it is almost impossible 
 to convey any adequate picture of an Amazon 
 forest. There were one or two Indian trails lead- 
 ing up from the shores of the lake to the hidden 
 waterfall that had at first puzzled us with its 
 sound. Upon either side and above the head the 
 verdure was compact and impenetrable; the trail 
 was not unlike a tunnel bored through solid rock, 
 and was almost as dark. On a full blazing noon- 
 day the light was here reduced to the darkness 
 of evening, though once through the undergrowth 
 that fringed the lake the trail entered the forest 
 proper, where a deep, church-like gloom prevailed. 
 On all sides, and as far as it was possible to see, 
 the great tree-trunks rose in regiments bearing 
 aloft a thatch of green so close and interwoven as 
 to permit no ray of sunlight to enter. The sound 
 of the frequent deluges of tepid rain crashing 
 downwards in a long-sustained roar was star- 
 tling, while the knowledge that upon all sides one 
 might come upon sudden and swift danger in 
 animal or reptilian form kept one keenly upon
 
 260 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 the alert. Thus, even upon the most casual ex- 
 pedition one carried a gun as a matter of course. 
 The forest thinned in places, and these areas 
 of light attracted the eye and steps, but for the 
 most part the gloom was even in its sombre in- 
 tensity, and would, I felt sure, have driven me 
 to insanity in a very short tune. 
 
 One of my first visits ashore was to the Indian 
 village, and I went there with Wilfred, who, 
 with the mysterious power some men have, was 
 already upon the best of terms with the inhab- 
 itants, and most particularly with the children. 
 The village was in a clearing and pleasantly 
 scented with wood smoke. The "houses'* were 
 but thatched roofs of palm raised upon bare poles, 
 with a complete and innocent lack of privacy. 
 Our arrival was the signal for a general stampede 
 of copper-skinned youngsters, who came shriek- 
 ing and laughing toward us, while their mothers, 
 busy over domestic matters, called peremptory 
 orders to then* offspring, who paid not the 
 least attention. And this total lack of fear in 
 the children 1 ] for strange men of another race 
 spoke eloquently, so I thought, of the formid- 
 able weapon which their parents used with such 
 deadly skill! Wilfred had come armed with 
 sugar candies of his own perfect manufacture, and 
 these he threw into the air, the children, with 
 immense chatteration and glee, catching them in
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 261 
 
 their little brown fists, as pretty a sight as one 
 could wish to see. Some were only staggering 
 toddlers, others were long-limbed as deer, and 
 upon them all was stamped the signs of a free in- 
 dependence the independence of the blowgun. 
 And when the candy was consumed, we moved 
 about festooned with children, who found us a 
 great joke. These were happy people, splendidly 
 naked and purely unashamed; here was law, 
 order, and decency I was glad for ourselves 
 that they could not see any slum in New York 
 or London ! 
 
 I discovered that an interchange of ideas was 
 possible by means of signs, and was thus shown 
 many matters of interest by the few men who 
 happened to be about while Wilfred played with 
 the children. Among other things I was spell- 
 bound by a sight of the blowgun in action. I 
 explained my desire in this direction, and a man 
 took me a little way into the forest carrying his 
 blowgun, which he first, with a polite gesture, 
 gave me into my hands to examine. The darts he 
 also showed me, but these I examined only out- 
 wardly, and I did not remove them from the 
 small gourd which was slung upon his hip. We 
 had not long to wait before a drove of monkeys 
 came flying through the upper branches, and the 
 Indian delicately inserted a dart into the mouth" 
 piece of his blowgun, raised the weapon, and with
 
 262 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 the same casual aim that an expert with a re- 
 volver or rifle seems to take, he blew a sharp 
 breath into the gun, rather after the manner of 
 a man sounding a sharp staccato note upon a 
 coach horn. The monkeys passed on, and we fol- 
 lowed, and in less than half a minute one of 
 them fell and was quickly dispatched by the 
 Indian, who carried it home for dinner, for 
 deadly as the curare is it is harmless as milk 
 unless the skin is broken. All the same, I would 
 not have eaten that monkey, though I was glad 
 that his poor little life had not been sacrificed 
 purely for my curiosity. But the sight of that 
 blowgun in action brought home very vividly our 
 peculiar position. To walk about unharmed amid 
 these remote people had an exhilarating effect 
 upon the nerves that is hard to describe. 
 
 As soon as it became definitely known that 
 we had axes, knives, machetes, brightly painted 
 calico, looking-glasses, tobacco of a new sort (the 
 Indians smoked a wild tobacco), beads, nails, 
 and some carpenter's tools, a great assortment 
 of small glittering objects such as the trimmings 
 used on Christmas trees, together with needles 
 and thread, and that we had these things ready 
 to exchange for the golden nuggets and float- 
 gold, the market opened in a brisk and lively 
 fashion. But the most valued of all, and that 
 which exchanged readily for the most gold, was
 
 HE BLEW A SHARP BREATH INTO THE GUN
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 263 
 
 a phonograph with a dozen records. This instru- 
 ment of torture actually fetched (at a rough esti- 
 mate) between seven and eight thousand dollars 
 worth of gold out of the hidden stream beds 
 of that extraordinary country! The scenes on 
 board the Martin Connor were startling and full 
 of humour. We had stumbled, by accident, upon 
 an inequality in the value of a scarce metal, and 
 we brought undreamt-of delights that were as 
 common to us as the gold was to the Indians. 
 The situation was so essentially bizarre, fantas- 
 tic, and extravagant that no one, not even the 
 captain, could remain wholly normal or re- 
 strained. We were making our fortunes in a 
 fairy-story manner while dealing with an un- 
 known race of people, and while handling the 
 commonest and most mundane of articles. Thus 
 the temptation to what might be described as 
 "playing the fool" was often too great to be 
 resisted, especially with such natural-born hu- 
 mourists as Wilfred and Captain Esterkay to 
 lead the way. We did a most tremendous busi- 
 ness, a business to turn giddy the most experi- 
 enced wheat operator in all the world, and this 
 upon the iron decks of a cargo steamer at anchor 
 amid alligators in an unmapped lake in a vast 
 and terrible, unknown country. 
 
 It was at this time that Wilfred and I began a 
 series of wandering investigations that were the
 
 264 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 outcome of curiosity and not in the least due to 
 any desire to kill. The fresh-meat supply was 
 most adequately attended to by Timothy Hanks, 
 and in our explorations of the forest there was no 
 necessity for Wilfred or myself to carry arms 
 except for self-defence. Armed with machetes 
 and repeating shotguns we spent many hours to- 
 gether, speaking seldom, moving slowly, and in 
 any direction which fancy directed. When we 
 seated ourselves and remained motionless for a 
 short time, the strange creatures that swarmed 
 in the jungle that was so unknown to man 
 would continue their ordinary life to our intense 
 interest and occasional alarm. For it is amazing 
 how oblivious to man a really wild animal is so 
 long as a man is to leeward and motionless. After 
 many experiments in photography, Wilfred was 
 forced to leave his camera behind, for the slight- 
 est movement and the click of the shutter would 
 either frighten the game or endanger ourselves, 
 while the gloom of the forest rendered any in- 
 stantaneous work practically impossible with an 
 ordinary camera. 
 
 This crowded mass of life was astounding. 
 Used as we were to the man-trodden lands, this 
 plenitude of creatures, living lives of intense 
 activity and dying almost invariably violent 
 deaths, was very extraordinary. Violence was 
 the predominant note. In the fantastic glades,
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 265 
 
 often draped with priceless orchids, there was 
 continual activity and poignant tragedy in an 
 unending struggle for existence. This will to live, 
 this insistence of mysterious forces amid such 
 difficulty and against such continual treachery 
 and violence, was bewildering and in some 
 ways rather shocking. 
 
 Along the shores of the lake we found water 
 and semi-water dwellers that scuttled, ran, 
 splashed, dived, or stood ready for battle accord- 
 ing to their natures, and Wilfred and I trod 
 warily. On the higher ground was another world 
 of life, and I could not give the names of the 
 creatures as we discovered them, or as they dis- 
 covered us, in rotation, for I was never one to 
 keep a journal, the ship's official log amply 
 satisfying any natural tendency I had at that 
 time for recording things on paper. Timothy 
 Hanks, on the other hand, kept a most minute 
 diary bristling with scientific names which he 
 was at pains to acquire, and to Hanks I am in- 
 debted that I can put a handle to the odd beasts 
 that we saw. 
 
 One day, seated upon a fallen tree, we beheld 
 a creature that was entirely new to us both. It 
 was about twenty inches long including a six- 
 inch tail, and it had the appearance of a gigan- 
 tic armour-plated rat. It came titupping along 
 quite unsuspectingly down an open glade in the
 
 266 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 forest, preoccupied with daily affairs, and with 
 the manner of a man who has just comfortable 
 time to catch a train. He disregarded us alto- 
 gether, for we remained without moving and he 
 passed to windward of us, a compact, competent- 
 looking animal that knew his way about. He 
 was, so we afterwards found out, an armadillo. 
 Monkeys there were in crowds. They came fly- 
 ing through the upper stories of the forest with 
 the rapidity of birds, and when they chose, their 
 progress was incredibly silent, while at other 
 times they came crashing along with shouts and 
 chatteration like a lot of children let out of school. 
 Their agility was startling and miraculous. Their 
 leaps through the air gave the lie direct to the 
 theory of gravity, and defied even Wilfred's vo- 
 cabulary of ejaculation. They would sail through 
 space in a line as direct and accurate as that of an 
 arrow, or they would drop down and down like 
 a stone, and while you watched with growing 
 alarm for the monkey's safety, his line of direc- 
 tion would change in a twinkle, and by means 
 of a dextrous, perfectly calculated clutch at a 
 branch, he would be off again at an acute angle 
 to his former course. And the swaggering ease, 
 born of long practice, which accompanied these 
 evolutions, was comic to see. As Wilfred said: 
 "They done that before." 
 Then there was a tree-climbing porcupine with
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 267 
 
 a long tail, the whole beast being about three 
 and a half feet long. He showed not the least 
 alarm at our appearance, but regarded us with 
 the same frank curiosity with which we regarded 
 him. He actually remained where he was while 
 we diverted our line of progress to avoid him. 
 
 The birds I cannot give in detail, for I am very 
 ignorant of birds and am only sure of the common 
 seagull, the sparrow, and the crow. But there 
 were parrots in a large variety, and especially 
 numerous was one species that made a noise such 
 as a circular saw might make while attacking a 
 grindstone. That bird would have been of use in 
 a ship in thick weather. 
 
 The coati-mondi was also new to us, though of 
 course we knew of his existence. But here I must 
 emphasise the extraordinary difference there is 
 between animals in captivity and the same ani- 
 mals at large living their normal life under what 
 I understand is called the stimulus of danger. The 
 coati-mondi was brown-furred and snug; he lived 
 and had his being in a perfectly fitting motor 
 coat; he was a highly competent animal with an 
 irritable eye. We saw only one, and he was com- 
 ing head foremost down a tree he was trotting 
 with entire comfort perpendicularly downwards 
 and snuffling as though he had a cold in his 
 head. He did not see us, for we remained stand- 
 ing still, and as he happened to pass us on the
 
 268 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 weather side he went by quite close and entirely 
 preoccupied, still snuffling. 
 
 "Useyerpockerankercher!" said Wilfred; and 
 at the sound of the strange human voice the 
 beast jumped a foot in the air, then down again 
 and vanished. 
 
 But the strangest thing we saw was an ant- 
 eater. He looked like a mistake or the product 
 of a dream. He did not carry a brown haystack 
 on his back like the anteaters I have seen in cap- 
 tivity, but was clipped short as though from a 
 recent hair cut. He looked powerful, and in spite 
 of his really impossible, tubular head, he had an 
 affable, really humorous gleam in his artificial 
 sort of eye. He did not look either real or likely, 
 but he was real all right. 
 
 There were also sloths and many small, rat- 
 like creatures which, in violent contrast to the 
 sloths, were always in a hurry. Of course we did 
 not see all these animals at once. We saw them 
 on different occasions, for we set out with the 
 deliberate intention of seeing them, and some- 
 times I am afraid we did not know what man- 
 ner of creatures we were looking at until we 
 returned to the ship and described them to Tim- 
 othy Hanks, who would usually give them a 
 long Latin name. 
 
 But the sight of all sights we saw one day in a 
 narrow glade, and it was a sight that still comes
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 269 
 
 to me in my dreams and wakes me with its horror. 
 It was in a narrow, natural alleyway through 
 the thick undergrowth that fringed the lake, 
 where we were forced to walk one behind the 
 other. Wilfred happened to be leading, and he 
 stopped suddenly and stepped back a foot or two 
 in intense astonishment. We were then getting 
 used to surprises, and at this evidence of shock 
 in one not easily disturbed, I quite instinctively 
 brought my repeating shotgun readily to my 
 shoulder. Gazing over my small companion's 
 head and down the narrow glade, my eyes en- 
 countered a five-foot pile of snake. 
 
 "Oh, my! 'Ow shockin'!" gasped Wilfred; and 
 indeed the sight was shocking. 
 
 On the top of that living pile was the snake's 
 head and therefore almost on a level with ours, 
 and he looked at us with wide, unblinking green 
 eyes, just as though he had been expecting us and 
 was awaiting our arrival. For a moment or so 
 sheer incredulity held us, and then, without a 
 thought to our usual policy of non-interference, 
 and as I happened to have the gun, I stepped in 
 front of Wilfred. My sensations were entirely 
 primitive and unreasoning. The snake, if you 
 come to think of it quite logicaljy, had as much 
 right there as we had, but, by the same token, as 
 he was certain to try and kill us if he could, 
 so had we every right to try and kill him. In
 
 270 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 other words, this was war. The impulse that 
 directed us Wilfred, myself, and that pre- 
 posterous monster of a snake must have gone 
 back a very long way, to the ages when creatures 
 struggled for supremacy. No doubt we were as 
 detestable to the snake as the snake was to us, and 
 in us every fibre of our being rose up in horror at 
 the sight, and the death of either Wilfred, myself, 
 or the snake was a foregone conclusion. The 
 snake was looking me in the eyes, and its terri- 
 ble stare was unswerving and implacable. The 
 markings upon its head suggested an expression 
 of hatred; this was accident, of course, or, at least, 
 perhaps it was; anyway, that expression had no 
 little effect upon both Wilfred and myself. We 
 were both, actually, terrified, nor am I ashamed 
 to confess it, for you must recollect that the 
 girth of this snake at its thickest was as great as 
 the circumference of a strong man's thigh. It 
 formed an immense pile of thick, weighty coils 
 that appeared, at first, to be motionless, while 
 the effect produced was certainly heightened by 
 the deep green gloom of the forest. The terror 
 that undoubtedly attacked us both was in every 
 way precisely that which affects birds and rab- 
 bits when under the influence of snakes of a 
 lesser power; but we had the God-sent reasoning 
 faculty of man to help us, the reasoning power 
 that warned us to combat this terror and
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 271 
 
 which had given us the shotgun in my hand. 
 Therefore I waited, knowing my power to kill. 
 Such a sight one seldom sees, for it is obviously 
 not possible to capture the largest species of boa- 
 constrictor such as this, and I had every intention 
 of taking it all in. As the snake looked at me, its 
 eyes seemed to drive at one with the same em- 
 phasis as a levelled rifle barrel, and with regard 
 to the direction of its gaze I afterwards noted a 
 curious fact. Wilfred maintained that the snake 
 gazed at him unswervingly and not at me. There- 
 fore I am not afraid to say that there must have 
 been some hypnotic influence at work, for the 
 snake could not have looked us both in the eyes 
 at the same time. 
 
 The light, as I have said, was bad, so I ap- 
 proached a step or two entirely enthralled with 
 the almost overpowering repulsiveness of so ter- 
 rible a reptile, and the eyes of the snake never 
 seemed to leave mine. The scales of the skin 
 were dappled, and though I had at first thought 
 them motionless, I discovered, with a sudden 
 shock, that the snake was slowly unentangling 
 itself with a smooth, gliding motion that was 
 common to all its dreadful length. I lost no 
 further time and raised the gun afresh, and at a 
 comparatively short range, I aimed at the full 
 centre of that wicked face and pulled the trigger. 
 
 The result was nothing short of terrific, and we
 
 272 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 turned and ran some little distance, then halted 
 and turned about, battling with a panic that was 
 hard to resist. Again I took aim while that vast 
 reptile thrashed the forest in its death agony 
 with the power of a ship's propeller. Up the 
 tunnel-like glade was that incredibly violent, 
 twisting mass, tangling and straightening and 
 tangling again in supreme, blind ferocity. In the 
 midst of its horrible convulsions, which must have 
 been only muscular activity and not the energy 
 of life, it straightened with the quickness of a 
 whiplash and came, with great rapidity, down 
 the glade toward us. I gave it another shot into 
 the pulped mass that was once its shocking head. 
 
 The snake's body stopped at the impact and 
 contracted like a depressed spring, then, as 
 startlingly as a released spring, it shot forward 
 again and lay twisting slightly as dead snakes 
 will. 
 
 "It takes a fair deal to shake me," said Wilfred, 
 wiping the sweat off his forehead with his hand, 
 "but I'll admit I'm shook this time! Sech 
 things as that 'ere serpint did n't ought to be, no, 
 they did n't! It makes a man indignant!" 
 
 We waited a long time; then we measured the 
 snake and it was twenty-four feet seven inches in 
 length without its head and maybe a foot of its 
 neck, or whatever that part is called that con- 
 nects the head with the rest of it. Though larger
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 273 
 
 snakes have been killed in the Amazon, I do not 
 wish to see them. Anyway, though neither Wil- 
 fred nor myself is a timid man, we discontinued, 
 for a time, our forest wanderings. 
 
 "Ship's good enough for me," remarked Wil- 
 fred. "I'll stay aboard an' paint the galley; it 
 needs it." 
 
 Meanwhile, trading operations continued 
 briskly. The gold came from stream beds several 
 days' travel to the west, and owing to the difficul- 
 ties that the forest presented to a white man, and 
 to the cheapness of the gold, we made no attempt 
 to gather it ourselves, and were, not unnaturally, 
 content to continue our system of barter. The 
 Indians remained quite content with affairs and 
 trooped off after more gold with energy and some 
 amusement. WTiy we should want this more or 
 less useless stuff they did not bother to find out, 
 and their attitude was not unlike what the atti- 
 tude of any American community would be did 
 there arrive some extraordinary strangers willing 
 to barter objects of practically priceless worth 
 for some cheap and more or less easily come-by 
 mineral deposit. Therefore I doubt if any ship's 
 company, since the days of the infamous Sir 
 Henry Morgan, ever earned such money as we 
 did, for every man was to draw his share of the 
 total according to his service rendered. And 
 then, quite suddenly, the trading stopped.
 
 274 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 I do not think that the gold supply had given 
 out, but that the Indians had as many axes, 
 knives, and so on as they wished. The Indians 
 with whom we had been trading were only one 
 tribe in a race, and having acquired as much 
 property as they could carry about, they now 
 wished to kill the trade in order that none of their 
 friends or enemies should benefit as they had 
 done by our unexpected arrival. This may have 
 been childish pride, but I fancy, myself, that it 
 was high strategy and statecraft. In vain did 
 the captain argue and in vain did he tempt, 
 the Indians only shook their heads politely and 
 remained immoveable. Moreover, with equal 
 politeness, they now desired our departure; the 
 incident, in the words of the British Parliament, 
 was now closed. It was tantalising, or rather 
 would have been tantalising, had the ship not 
 been netting an average of ten thousand dollars 
 a day for some time; and recollecting the story 
 about the dog with a bone, Captain Hawks ac- 
 cepted the inevitable, for the Blowgun Indians 
 were, without possibility of doubt, masters of the 
 situation such was the power of curare. 
 
 So we organised a grand entertainment to 
 round off our stay in that unforgettable country, 
 an entertainment in which the Indians took part. 
 It was quite a social evening, with free food, 
 music, and fireworks. These last were some
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 275 
 
 signal rockets and flares which we let off in 
 honour of the occasion. After the Indians had 
 sung and danced, or rather droned and hopped, 
 an expert with the accordion from the forecastle 
 rendered some ancient sea ditties, the crew roar- 
 ing the chorus in right good style. Captain 
 Hawks distributed a large number of presents* 
 and the Indians presented us with four canoes 
 and a quantity of curios; Captain Esterkay per- 
 formed some conjuring tricks, to the intense 
 amusement of the Indians and forecastle alike; 
 Wilfred prepared a vast quantity of food, which 
 our Indian guests ate till they could eat no 
 more; Twocents challenged any Indian to a 
 contest of acrobatics and beat them all to a 
 standstill, which is saying a good deal; and I was 
 persuaded into singing that most exquisite of all 
 sea songs, "Tom Bowling," to the ill-concealed 
 dismay and embarrassment of the assembled com- 
 pany. We had the ship gay with lights, and the 
 scene was curious and interesting, for we were 
 crowded and swarming with naked savages who 
 were obviously of a fighting breed. Yet the best of 
 humour prevailed, and we were all genuinely sorry 
 to say good-bye. The colonel was, I know, for 
 the Indians had done more than trade with him. 
 They had saved his life and had refrained from 
 eating him, and what more could any man wish ! 
 When they finally departed and were embarked
 
 276 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 in their canoes, they surrounded the ship just out 
 of range of the lights and all together they sang 
 some Indian chant. The effect was splendid in its 
 dramatic quality, and after a moment of awed 
 silence we cheered those Indians three times over 
 at the top pitch of our lungs. 
 
 Next day there was not so much as the shadow 
 of an Indian to be seen in the neighbourhood. 
 
 There now lay before us the difficult journey 
 down to Para. From where we then were to 
 Manaos was practically enemy's country, through 
 which there was but one road, which we must 
 take, and along which the Rio Maranon Com- 
 pany was bound to be waiting for us. They could 
 wait, too, indefinitely, while time was everything 
 to us. It was a difficult situation, and I fancy 
 even Captain Hawks was perplexed with the 
 future. As for our crew, they openly prayed that 
 a downright struggle would come, and in this 
 they were not disappointed. 
 
 According to the colonel, there was another 
 entrance to the lake which would serve us better 
 than the narrow river we had ascended, and 
 though the current of this second waterway was 
 very swift there was greater width and depth. 
 So early next day, Captain Hawks, Captain 
 Esterkay, the colonel, and two men went off in 
 the launch to explore. They expected to be away 
 all day, and meanwhile the command of the ship
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 277 
 
 fell to me, and I was busy over the details of our 
 departure. I sent Timothy Hanks off to get in a 
 large supply of fresh meat, and with the assist- 
 ance of 'Arry Ketchold I overhauled the ship. 
 That day was full of detail both for Mr. Mc- 
 Lushley and myself, and the time passed quickly 
 enough. Evening came and darkness, but no 
 sign of the explorers in the launch. Their non- 
 appearance, however, did not disturb me, for I 
 knew the great uncertainty that must always 
 accompany travel in an unexplored country. 
 The evening passed, the night advanced, mid- 
 night came and went. We mounted a bright 
 spherical light upon the foremast to guide the 
 wanderers, who did not show up. It was not 
 until daylight next day that I grew uneasy, and 
 my uneasiness turned to alarm when noon ar- 
 rived without the return of the captain and his 
 party. Then, as commander of the ship, I called 
 an informal council of war consisting of Timothy 
 Hanks and Mr. McLushley. 
 
 "I think," said I, "that it may be assumed 
 that something has happened to the captain and 
 his party. Since the colonel is one of that party, 
 a man with wide experience of these parts, it may 
 be also assumed that what has happened to them 
 is no mere accident of travel. Therefore, the 
 conclusion I have come to is that they have 
 fallen up against some Rio Maranon force which
 
 278 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 has taken them prisoner. If, then, the Rio 
 Maranon has got them, we must get them out." 
 
 "We must," agreed Mr. McLushley, "but we 
 must proceed wi' due caution. The saircum- 
 stances are unusual, the deeficulties are prrodee- 
 gious, and the consequences of a mistake are 
 awfu'!" And the Scotchman sat back with the 
 satisfied expression of one who has made an able 
 statement of complicated affairs. 
 
 "I am thinkin'," he continued in the same 
 deliberate manner, "that our friends are in a 
 poseetion that can only be tairmed extraordi- 
 nair' prrecarious ! " and he lit his black pipe and 
 smoked luxuriously. "I'm also thinkin' that 
 these Rio Maranon people will find their preeson- 
 airs most awkward cattle to handle!" and he 
 chuckled with enjoyment. "Captain Matthew 
 Hawks a preesonair! Eh! I'm no' envying his 
 jailer!" 
 
 After some further discussion we decided that 
 I should leave Timothy Hanks in command of the 
 ship with an unofficial advisory partner in the 
 veteran McLushley, a state of affairs only possi- 
 ble in such a community as ours, and that I, 
 accompanied by Wilfred and two men, should go 
 in search of Captain Hawks and his party ; and in 
 order that we should be able to move easily, that 
 we should take one of the Indian canoes that had 
 been presented to us.
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 279 
 
 The crew, when they heard of my intended 
 departure, volunteered in a body at my request 
 for two. But the matter was settled finally by 
 the fact that two men, Spillings and Peabody by 
 name, had learned to handle canoes during a 
 temporary residence in the Canadian Northwest. 
 Spillings and Peabody were Americans of more 
 than ordinary effectiveness and were afraid of 
 nothing on .earth except the captain. They dis- 
 closed the possession each of a very modern re- 
 volver and plenty of ammunition, which items 
 the laws of the ship strictly forbade them. So, 
 when we eventually started off; what with these 
 two delicate specimens and Wilfred (who feared 
 no one on earth, not even Captain Hawks), and 
 myself, we formed, I think, a small but efficient 
 force. The crew gazed enviously down upon us, 
 and Timothy Hanks and Mr. McLushley waved 
 us upon our way. 
 
 I had a very good idea of the position of the 
 channel which the captain had gone off to explore, 
 and so directed a course diagonally across the 
 lake, and as the afternoon was well upon its way 
 and the sun already making westing, we paddled 
 hard, no easy labour in such a climate. I had 
 disposed my crew with an eye to their characters, 
 putting Wilfred in the bow, Peabody next him, 
 and Spillings next Peabody, while I occupied the 
 position in command in the stern.
 
 280 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 By the time that night descended in earnest 
 the prospect of learning anything definite seemed 
 small, but we kept along, knowing that what we 
 were about was the only thing to do. Impercepti- 
 bly, and without conscious effort on our part, the 
 canoe increased its speed. This continued for a 
 time before we realised that we must be in the 
 grip of some current. We had, by then, crossed 
 the narrow portion of the lake and were skirting 
 the shore, and it is necessary for me to emphasise 
 the fact that we were all of us sailors, and not 
 used to the navigation of rivers. Thus, in our 
 ignorance, we continued, satisfied with the help 
 that this mysterious current was affording. The 
 still evening lay heavy and dripping with hot 
 moisture in the twilight world, and grey masses 
 of malarial mists began to rise from the water. 
 Along the shore of the lake the tall trees stood 
 motionless, while the size of the gigantic tree- 
 ferns and the great twisted lianas and the tall 
 bunches of spear grass impressed us all with a 
 sense of our loneliness. Quite suddenly, the now 
 dimly seen forest parted and the canoe, turning 
 sharply, aimed for this opening with a quick 
 sweeping access of speed, and a Babel of startled 
 exclamations broke from us as we endeavoured, 
 too late, to gain control of our craft. 
 
 ' 'Ere! Full astern!" gasped Wilfred, as we 
 raked the water with our paddles in desperation
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 281 
 
 and without effect, for the canoe slid onwards 
 amazingly, and like a train entering a tunnel, 
 shot into this natural, sluice-like canal! 
 
 Half a moment of frantic work showed us con- 
 vincing proof of our helplessness, and after a 
 short panic of energy we resigned ourselves to 
 keeping the canoe in midstream. The water 
 round us had an unruffled glass-like surface as it 
 sucked downwards, and as the minutes passed 
 it dawned upon us and our ignorance that we 
 must be approaching a really tight fix. But 
 I am afraid that such is the innate boyishness 
 of sailors that we all thoroughly enjoyed the 
 experience. 
 
 "People pay money fer this!" piped Wilfred 
 in the bow, "at 'ome, in Hearl's Court! The 
 Water Chute costs yer a tanner a time, and 'ere 
 we are 'avin' all fer nothink ! " 
 
 The time went by and still brought no change. 
 Occasionally we passed through rough patches of 
 water, but we always managed to keep our canoe 
 in line with the current that continued to carry 
 us onward at the rate of a motor boat. I do not 
 now know how far we travelled, but I am certain 
 that we went a long way, quite fifteen miles, 
 before there came any change to alarm us. And 
 then the water grew rougher, was heaped about 
 in a nasty way, and roared unpleasantly in our 
 ears. Still, as there was nothing to do but keep
 
 282 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 on, on we went, with Wilfred giving high whoops 
 of glee in the bow. And then, as suddenly as 
 we had entered these rapids, we as suddenly left 
 them, and shot like an arrow over more tranquil 
 waters, and came, finally, to rest in a wide river 
 that was black and almost motionless in the 
 night. We should, I think, have then realised 
 that we had accidentally escaped drowning by a 
 fortunate chance, had not there appeared before 
 us a sight that swept all thoughts of the rapids 
 from our minds. 
 
 Brilliant with many lights, a wide-beamed 
 river boat lay apparently at anchor. 
 
 The sight was a tonic to our rather stretched 
 nerves. Wilfred was for immediately boarding 
 the steamer without preliminary investigation, 
 and as both Peabody and Spillings heartily 
 agreed, they fell to paddling briskly. 
 
 "Stop the ship," said I to Spillings, who was 
 immediately in front of me, "or I'll lay your 
 head open with this paddle." 
 
 So Spillings ceased work abruptly and im- 
 pressed the necessity of doing the same upon 
 Peabody, who, in turn, handed it on to Wil- 
 fred. 
 
 "You 'it me ag'in, Peabody," cried Wilfred, 
 "an' s' 'elp me I'll beat the face orf yer the 
 moment we git on dry mud!" 
 
 "Quit making that row!" I ordered; and for a
 
 THE WATER GREW ROUGRKB
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 283 
 
 moment or so I thought out a plan of action. 
 Then I spoke. 
 
 "I am in command of this," said I, by way of 
 reminder, for I knew the kind of men I was deal- 
 ing with, "and what I say goes. We will drift 
 down and have as close a look as we can, and 
 then we may draw off again. But we may board 
 her, but no man moves without orders from me, 
 and my orders will be whispered. No man must 
 make a sound, and I will do the paddling, so ship 
 your oars." 
 
 There is no craft that can be so silently ma- 
 noeuvred as a canoe, and like a feather upon the 
 surface of that slow-moving water we approached 
 that garishly lit river steamer. At the time I 
 wondered why she was at anchor, but I did not 
 realise then how far we had come owing to the 
 rapids, which had been in the nature of a short 
 cut. In other words, as all distances in that 
 country are measured in miles of navigable 
 river, the steamer was some forty miles from the 
 lake. She was of the ordinary Rio Maranon 
 pattern, a light-draught, two-decked affair, with 
 deck cabins and with clear spaces fore and aft for 
 slinging hammocks. The bright light cast from 
 many oil lamps made a close examination of her 
 easy enough from the surrounding darkness, and 
 like a shadow we drifted down, my paddle alone 
 directing our course. Through an open doorway
 
 284 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 we beheld the inevitable card-players. I do not 
 think I ever saw a Rio Maranon river boat in 
 which there was not a group of these futile wast- 
 ers of time and money. There was also the usual 
 crowd in the bows and stern dozing and smoking, 
 with another lot of card-players bursting into 
 occasional shouts as their fool game proceeded. 
 All the cabin doors were open on the lower deck, 
 and so, with but one exception, were they upon 
 the upper. And beside that one closed door there 
 lounged a man with a gun. As though my eyes 
 could see through wood I was satisfied that 
 behind that closed door were Captain Hawks 
 and his companions. Then with a few silent 
 strokes of the paddle I brought the canoe round 
 the river boat, and there, sure enough, was our 
 motor launch moored alongside. I backed away 
 some little distance until we could whisper in 
 safety. 
 
 "Did you mark that closed door with the 
 sentry?" I whispered. "Well, the Old Man and 
 the rest are behind it. We are going to get 'em 
 out"; and in the darkness my accustomed eyes 
 could see a happy grin upon the faces of my 
 companions. They looked like men who had just 
 found a ten-dollar piece. "We are going along- 
 side," I continued; "we shall go quickly and 
 quietly. We will go alongside just below where 
 that sentry stands at the closed door. I will
 
 CAPTAIN HAWKS DISAPPEARS 285 
 
 climb aboard first, Spillings will follow, then 
 Peabody, then Wilfred, and not all together or 
 this pesky canoe '11 turn over. Wilfred will be the 
 last man out, and he will not leave the ship until 
 Peabody is clear." 
 
 "Can't I come out along o' you an* 'ave a go 
 at the bloke with the gun?" breathed Wilfred 
 with some irritation. 
 
 "No, you can't," said I, with emphasis. 
 "There's a stiff proposition before us, and it's 
 got to be handled properly see?" 
 
 We should not be long climbing aboard, but 
 all the same, the moment of waiting for the last 
 man would be hard to bear and would demand 
 character as well as courage. 
 
 "Never mind this canoe," I continued, "let her 
 go adrift. When I get aboard I shall up-end that 
 sentry and maybe his gun '11 go off; that'll wake 
 every one. So never mind where the bullet goes, 
 but jump. If the bullet don't come my way, I '11 
 put the sentry out of action, and then I shall make 
 a break for the card-players there on the upper 
 deck a little farther along. Wilfred will come 
 with me. Meanwhile, Spillings and Peabody will 
 kick that door down, and the quicker they do it 
 the better. The men on the forward main-deck 
 we can't attend to for the moment, but they 
 won't know how big a party we are, and I don't 
 anticipate much trouble from them once their
 
 286 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 officers are bottled. Understand your orders? 
 Very well, then. Come on!" 
 
 We may not have been experts in the naviga- 
 tion and the handling of canoes, but we came 
 alongside that river steamer all right.
 
 CHAPTER XIH 
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 
 
 I GRIPPED the low rail of the lower deck and 
 swung onto it, and reaching up I caught the up- 
 per deck and repeated the process. No one was 
 expecting us, and no one had happened to see 
 us come swiftly alongside. As I came up over the 
 rail of the upper deck the sentry was in the midst 
 of a yawn, and for a second that yawn was frozen 
 to his face. The unfortunate man was rolling a 
 cigarette, his rifle, with the butt to the deck, was 
 leaning in the crook of his elbow. He was a good 
 man that, and I felt sorry, in a way, to hurt him, 
 but there was nothing else to be done. As time, at 
 such moments, is measured in quarter-seconds, it 
 was not physically possible to get his rule up and 
 in action before I grabbed him, and he knew it, 
 so he turned his yawn into a most powerful yell. 
 But the yell, though powerful, did not last. I got 
 him by the ankles and up-ended him precisely 
 with what you might call some swiftness, his 
 head striking the deck where before his feet had 
 been resting. Quick as I may have been, I hardly 
 finished with the sentry before I noted, out of the 
 corner of my eye, Spillings and Peabody going
 
 288 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 through the closed door. They did not kick it, 
 they ran through it, as was manifested after- 
 wards by the condition of their heads, and they 
 had hard heads too. So by the tune that I was 
 running forward, Wilfred had gained my side 
 with his gun in his hand. We raced each other 
 and arrived at the open door of the cabin, wherein 
 sat the men at cards, with a considerable bump, 
 and Wilfred happening to be an inch or so in 
 front, and being very light while I am heavy, 
 and as our impact together in the doorway was 
 considerable, the little cook went flying. The 
 card-players had heard the sentry's shout of 
 warning and our approaching steps and had 
 risen to their feet; Wilfred, unable to stop him- 
 self from collision in the doorway with myself, 
 arrived in their very midst with an ear-cracking 
 whoop! Over went the card -table, the cards, the 
 drinks, and the money, and catching one man 
 round the neck the little Englishman and he went 
 down together with a crack. But while this hap- 
 pened I shouted, "Hands up!" in a loud voice 
 with purposeful emphasis for effect. Their hands 
 went up, and meanwhile Wilfred bobbed to his 
 feet again, for he hardly seemed to touch the 
 ground. Our arrival, especially Wilfred's, must 
 have been a shock; and then I discovered Eich- 
 holz to be among them. Strange, indeed, are 
 the things we sometimes do without thought,
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 289 
 
 for I nodded to Eichholz, and Eichholz nodded 
 back ! 
 
 All this happened, of course, in ten ticks of a 
 watch, and then there burst forth a wild uproar 
 from all over the ship, punctuated by some 
 crackle of firearms and the mingled yells of 
 Spillings and Peabody, who sounded as though 
 they had gone mad. What precisely happened 
 to those two gallant toughs I do not know, but 
 the effect was as if they were having the time of 
 their lives. Though the paid forces of the Rio 
 Maranon Company were not human lambs, 
 Spillings and Peabody, now gone thoroughly 
 berserk, produced no little panic, and so far my 
 plans had matured perfectly. While the four men 
 in the cabin still stood with their hands aloft, I 
 was joined by Captain Hawks, who, to my relief, 
 now instantly took over entire command of the 
 situation. 
 
 With prompt alacrity and while confusion 
 reigned, Captain Hawks went amid those card- 
 players and disarmed them all but Eichholz, 
 whom he told to drop his hands. In this manner 
 he acquired three revolvers which he handed to 
 Captain Esterkay and the colonel, who arrived a 
 moment after. The two men who had been cap- 
 tured with them had joined forces with Spillings 
 and Peabody and had armed themselves with 
 anything that came handy. And there now came
 
 290 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 a surprise for Wilfred and myself, to say nothing 
 of those interrupted gamesters. 
 
 "Eichholz," cried the captain, "take charge of 
 these men"; and Eichholz nodded, producing at 
 the same time a revolver of which he had not 
 been relieved like his companions. These last 
 stared with blank dismay and growing rage, yet 
 they obeyed his gesture to line up by the after 
 bulkhead. 
 
 "Wilfred," continued the captain hurriedly, 
 "stay here with Eichholz and help him to keep 
 these men covered"; and Wilfred, with a gasp of 
 astonishment, obeyed. 
 
 " Grummet and Esterkay, aft with you. Don't 
 shoot unless you have to. Calvin and myself will 
 go forward. We must clear this ship." 
 
 But this was easier said than done, and not by 
 reason of the resistance raised by the Rio Mara- 
 non forces, but by our own four men who were in 
 no mind to give up their savage fun. Had the 
 Rio Maranon men had time to collect their forces, 
 they would, most probably, have wiped our four 
 men out. But panic was in charge, and they ran 
 and scattered wildly before the ferocity of Pea- 
 body, Spillings, and their companions. There- 
 fore it was first necessary to quell our own men 
 into some semblance of obedience, and to my 
 shouted orders they paid no heed. So I caught 
 Spillings, who happened to be nearest, and seeing
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 291 
 
 red, he promptly turned his attention to my- 
 self, and absurd as it may seem, away we went, 
 ding-dong-dell, amid a host of our enemies! 
 There was no gentle hitting here; we hit for a 
 knock-out, and for a moment or so Spillings gave 
 me plenty to do. But I have not been a mate for 
 ten years and a second mate for longer still with- 
 out practice in the rough-and-tumble order of 
 combat. A left-handed swing sent Spillings out; 
 and only then, when I had time and attention 
 to note it, did I hear the tumultuous sounds of 
 retreat. 
 
 The suddenness of the attack had more than 
 a little to do with our victory, and with those in 
 command captured and prevented from exerting 
 their moral influence, and with the four men 
 running berserk in their midst, the crew of the 
 river boat turned in retreat and escaped any way 
 they could, some actually diving into the alli- 
 gator-infested waters of the river. The whole 
 incident I do not think can have lasted more than 
 five minutes, and what was equally astonishing 
 was that so far as I know no one was killed. 
 Minor injuries, of course, were sustained on both 
 sides. The sentry I had up-ended, and who, in 
 consequence, had not been able to retreat with 
 his companions, we put with nis card-playing 
 superiors in charge of Wilfred and Eichholz. 
 Spillings and Peabody, and the other two men,
 
 292 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 were considerably knocked about; Wilfred had 
 somehow acquired a tremendous black eye; 
 while I discovered that I had a violently bleeding 
 nose, though where or how I got it I do not know 
 unless it was a present from Spillings. Captain 
 Hawks had apparently suffered in some previous 
 scrap, and Captain Esterkay had a torn mouth, 
 so altogether we looked rather a hard crowd. 
 
 But we lost no time in nursing our hurts. The 
 four men were sent down to stoke up the wood- 
 burning furnace, while the colonel, who could 
 do most things more or less, took charge of the 
 engines. Eichholz, whose desertion from the 
 ranks of the enemy was still a mystery to me, 
 took charge of the prisoners in the cabin. 
 Captain Esterkay took charge of the forward 
 deck, with Wilfred to help him in slipping the 
 cable when the colonel announced sufficient 
 steam to move. Captain Hawks took charge in 
 what did service for a pilot house, while I, with 
 a rifle, stood ready in the darkness to answer 
 promptly any rule fire from the bank. But the 
 men had gone without their weapons, and in 
 total darkness we started up-stream. 
 
 "Seems to me," said the captain, a little while 
 later, "we are not doing so badly. First it was a 
 dog, then an Indian, then an alligator, and now 
 a shallow-draught steamboat. But I've lost the 
 launch, they took it with 'em when they left us
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 293 
 
 in a hurry. And I'm obliged to you, Grummet; 
 I was expecting you." And the captain placed a 
 cigar with some care between his bruised lips. 
 
 I told him of our descent of the rapids. 
 
 "Say, Grummet," he remarked when I had 
 finished, "I guess it's only safe at sea!" 
 
 "I guess it is, sir," I agreed. 
 
 "And then you chanced across this river boat 
 and just came aboard? " he asked with a grin. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Ah, just so." 
 
 It seemed that there were three outlets from 
 the lake: the one we had ascended upon arrival, 
 the rapids we had descended in the canoe, and 
 the channel which the captain had gone off to 
 chart. It was after the launch had descended 
 this third channel that the captain and his com- 
 panions had come slap into the arms of the river 
 boat, and having been taken by surprise, and 
 after an exchange of a few shots, he had capit- 
 ulated to the inevitable, and they had been im- 
 prisoned in the deck cabin. And while they were 
 thus temporarily beaten, Eichholz had come to 
 see them, which was the first intimation the 
 captain had that he was aboard the river steamer. 
 
 The moon had risen over the trees upon the 
 port hand and afforded just enough light for 
 Captain Hawks to keep his newly acquired 
 vessel in midstream. But our draught was so
 
 294 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 slight that we could take chances, for it was our 
 purpose to return to the lake and to the Martin 
 Connor as soon as possible. For there was an 
 uneasy feeling in our hearts, since it had become 
 obvious that the Rio Maranon Company had 
 come so far afield as to penetrate to the very 
 borders of the Blowgun Indians' country. 
 
 "Go and take a look round the ship and 
 report," said the captain. 
 
 I found Cert'nly Wilfred in the wooden shanty 
 that did duty as galley. He had gravitated there 
 as a musician drifts to a piano, and he was busy 
 with a dish of some sort for all hands. He was 
 hilariously cheerful and bustling with a bandage 
 over one eye and with his shirt ripped down the 
 back. A chewed cigarette stub stuck to his lower 
 lip and wagged about while he sang : 
 
 " It 's a long way to Tipperary, 
 It 's a long way to go. . . ." 
 
 Colonel Calvin was seated watching the en- 
 gines, while Spillings and company were taking 
 turns at stoking. 
 
 "Feel all right?" I asked Spillings; "I had to 
 hit you pretty hard." 
 
 : * Yes, sir, feel all right, thank you, sir," grinned 
 Spillings, gazing at me through one eye; "'fraid 
 I did n't hear you speak at first, sir." 
 
 "You didn't, Spillings, but you were a bit
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 295 
 
 excited. You fight well, but you neglect your 
 head, which I admit is hard as hard as any I 
 ever hit. You gave me a real live moment or two, 
 and I have some eight-ounce gloves in the ship; 
 we must have a go." 
 
 "Thank you, sir; I'd like nothing better." 
 
 "No ill feelin' is there, Spillings?" I asked. 
 
 "Great snakes! No, sir!" 
 
 So we shook hands. 
 
 I found Captain Esterkay sympathetically 
 arranging a cold compress on the head of the 
 sentry I had up-ended. I gave the latter a cigar 
 which he instantly lighted, so I fancy he was not 
 badly hurt. 
 
 In the cabin I found a sterner mood. Eich- 
 holz, well knowing with whom he had to deal 
 (and who should have known better than he?), 
 was seated at the table with a revolver in his 
 hand. Seated in a row before him were his three 
 erstwhile companions looking as black as a 
 thundercloud. 
 
 "All right?" I asked him. 
 
 "Quite, thank you," he answered without 
 withdrawing his eyes from the three men. This 
 vigilance struck me as being a little excessive, and 
 perhaps I felt a little sorry f or those three men. 
 They were beaten and captured, and among de- 
 cent men the prisoner of war is treated more as 
 a guest than a captive.
 
 296 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 "Won't these gentlemen give their parole?" 
 I asked Eichholz. 
 
 "Parole! " exclaimed Eichholz in quiet wonder. 
 Then he shook his head with the same sad, gen- 
 tle superiority of manner I had found in him 
 from the first. "You don't know what you are 
 talking about. You are not in the United States 
 or Europe." 
 
 "Still," I objected, "what can they do?" 
 
 "They would give their lives to kill me, Mr. 
 Mate," was Eichholz's reply, delivered in his 
 lifeless, level voice. 
 
 " Oh ! " said I, and grinned at him with compre- 
 hension. 
 
 Eichholz was, as the saying is, getting a little of 
 his own back, and who knows how long a bill he 
 had against the Rio Maranon and all its officials? 
 It was an odd scene. Eichholz, a most remark- 
 able man, seated at the table in an easy, lounging 
 attitude with a large revolver cocked ready, and 
 those three men facing him across the cabin, 
 seated in chairs like three bad boys kept in after 
 school. They twiddled their thumbs in irritation, 
 or thrust their hands into their pockets and 
 scowled, or tilted their chairs back and showed 
 their teeth, while Eichholz talked to them in the 
 dog-Spanish of Amazonia. I do not know what 
 he said, but I expect it was powerful! And he 
 seemed to have a lot to say.
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 297 
 
 I returned to Captain Hawks and reported all 
 well; then I described to him the scene in the 
 cabin, and he grinned. 
 
 "Eichholz's is a strange case," said he. "The 
 older I grow the more difficult I find it to judge 
 people adversely. Until you know a man's tem- 
 perament, surrounding influences, and national 
 weaknesses judgment is impossible. Take Eich- 
 holz. When we were prisoners in that cabin, 
 Esterkay and Calvin feeling pretty gloomy, the 
 door was opened and Eichholz came in. I did not 
 know he was aboard until that moment, and when 
 I saw him I was more than a little inclined to eat 
 him. He began by saying that he was going to 
 speak quickly in case the sentry outside knew a 
 word or two of English, which was n't likely. At 
 that I knew that we were going to get out of the 
 mess somehow, for here was obviously a traitor 
 in the camp of the enemy. It was, I don't mind 
 telling you, Grummet, something of a relief, for 
 in spite of my own private determination that 
 this would not be my finish, I could not help see- 
 ing that we were in pretty good shape for our 
 funerals. When innocent Americans can be shot 
 dead without fuss a few hundred miles from 
 American territory in Mexico, they can be shot 
 dead without fuss 'way at the back of goodness 
 knows where in Amazonia. I mean to say a 
 word or two concerning our Consular Service,
 
 298 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 when I get home. Why, an Englishman, no 
 matter where he is, if he gets into a fix, will 
 generally find a British Consul round the corner 
 with a battleship up his sleeve ready to help him 
 out. No; the British know how to look after 
 themselves and that's a fact; I guess they have 
 made themselves so unpleasant that they have 
 learned how; and the sooner we get a big navy 
 and start making ourselves unpleasant when we 
 have to, why, the better it will be for us. But I 
 know what the folk at home will say in answer 
 to that. They'll say that the United States is 
 big enough and don't require any more territory, 
 and therefore does not require a navy. I guess 
 we 'd better get a navy a real navy that you 
 can use in argument or we won't keep what 
 we've got more than a few generations, for the 
 world 's getting smaller and smaller, and Europe 
 ain't half as dead as some politicians, who had 
 never seen a street-car till they landed in Wash- 
 ington, like to make out." 
 
 The captain chewed on his cigar a moment 
 and grunted some words beneath his breath. 
 
 "You may have been astonished to find Eich- 
 holz our friend, but you were no more astonished 
 than I was at what he had to say. He came 
 plump out with it too. He gave me a shorthand 
 account of his life in this country, and though I 
 can't repeat what he said, because it is private,
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 299 
 
 I can tell you that it shocked me, and I'm no 
 young ladies' seminary ! All that we have heard 
 about this rubber business is true, but we have n't 
 heard half. He said that his work was horrible, 
 beyond endurance; that he was just crazy to get 
 out of the country. He 's been dead crazy to get 
 out of this country for two years, Grummet. 
 Their method is to get a man of ability, like 
 Eichholz (he was a doctor in Hamburg with a 
 good practice, but who got into trouble and was 
 done for), offer him a good salary, and ship him 
 up here. Then they have him. To hold him 
 doubly sure he is persuaded by loneliness, by 
 fever, by the despair at the wreck of his life, to 
 come into line with their methods. Then if he 
 tries to get away, they fall on him and tell him 
 they will hang him for the atrocities they have 
 forced him to commit to get rubber. The result 
 is that he's all in pieces." 
 
 I nodded, while a casual remark of Wilfred's 
 that, "This 'ere Earoles seems to find 'is-self 
 'orrible to contemplate," struck me as being 
 singularly apt. 
 
 " So Eichholz came *o me, a prisoner, and asked 
 me to get him out of the country ! The apparent 
 foolishness of the request showed me that he was 
 in earnest. He asked me if I would give him a 
 passage in the Martin Connor if he helped us out 
 of the fix we were then in. You can guess my
 
 300 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 answer! Some particular jackasses would think, 
 I know, that the desire to escape was my only 
 motive, but it was n't Grummet. I wanted to 
 get out of the fix, of course, and I was n't half- 
 dead either. The future looked black, but I have 
 seen it look blacker, and I have seen the future 
 change remarkably when you kick and keep 
 right on kicking. No, I was more pleased than I 
 can describe to think that I could help that man; 
 for when all is said and done it is about all there is 
 to the business of life, to help when you can and 
 help in the right way. And there is plenty of 
 help for the young and promising, and for the 
 old and past praying for, all fixed up pretty in 
 institutions and printed books, with slathers of 
 money from the State and the charitable though 
 lazy-minded. Here was a man with a past as 
 black as your hat that he had fallen and been 
 forced into. Of course you can say that you, or 
 I, or, say, Wilfred, would n't have been forced. 
 Quite so, I agree; but because one man can swim 
 a swollen river, it's no argument that another 
 can. No, I sort of got it into my fool head that 
 there was more than just a commercial chance 
 that had brought me to this country in a full- 
 powered steamer! I was absolutely sure, then, 
 that we should get out of that fix, but just how 
 we were going to do so I did not know. Nor had 
 Eichholz any very definite plan to offer, and as it
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 301 
 
 might look suspicious if he stayed too long with 
 us, he went away and promised to return later. 
 Of course, I knew that you would make a pretty 
 good try to help us, but we might have been de- 
 layed anyway, so that you would not be likely 
 to start out and look for us until we were more 
 than halfway back to Maloca. And this blame 
 hooker pulled up with engine trouble and we 
 anchored where you found us while they tinkered 
 her up. By the time they had finished, it was 
 night and apparently they decided to wait for 
 daylight before continuing. Then I heard that 
 sentry let off a yell, and the thud of his head 
 hitting the deck sounded familiar. "That's 
 Grummet arriving," I thought, and next moment 
 Spillings and Peabody came through the door. 
 Oh, I guess it was all intended, like most things, 
 only it was left to us to make either a good job or 
 a bad one according to how much there is in us ! " 
 When, after ascending what we had come to 
 call the Western Passage, we hove in sight of 
 the Martin Connor in the early hours of the fol- 
 lowing day, our appearance an obvious Rio 
 Maranon river boat caused some excitement. 
 As we approached I saw Timothy Hanks and 
 Mr. McLushley with glasses to their eyes. Then 
 suddenly, Timothy, that most undemonstrative 
 young man, lifted his hat and yelled. We re- 
 plied by prolonged blasts upon our whistle. As
 
 302 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 we came wallowing alongside the crew shouted 
 hilariously, and when you come to think of it 
 our return was rather triumphant. Even Mr. 
 McLushley grinned almost amiably at us and 
 exchanged a short nod with the captain. 
 
 "Ye'r back, I see, Captain Matthew Hawks," 
 said he. 
 
 "I am, Mr. McLushley," answered the cap- 
 tain, "and I traded the launch for this river 
 boat." 
 
 "Oh, ah! Just a wee trip for your health, was 
 it, combining pleasure wi' business, maybe?" 
 
 " Just that, and a little exercise." 
 
 "Oh, ah! I note that ye seem to have run into 
 something wi' ye'r face, Captain Hawks." 
 
 "Yes. I think I remember brushing against 
 something." And the two men laughed quietly, 
 while their eyes shone as they looked at each 
 other, and in them was the light of affection that 
 mocks the spoken word. 
 
 "There'll be some sick men doon the river?" 
 
 " Sick at heart. I have four prisoners with me." 
 
 "Eh! Let me have 'em in the stoke-hold to 
 shovel coal it 's a grra-and occupation in this 
 climate." 
 
 "No, I guess they have had enough." 
 
 "Na. Nathin"s enough for yon." 
 
 Captain Hawks smiled. "The Scotch," said 
 he, "are a great race, but they are not forgiving."
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 303 
 
 We brought our prisoners aboard, and the 
 captain talked to them and explained that we 
 should drop them in one of the ship's boats as 
 we passed Maloca if they would behave them- 
 selves meanwhile. If they gave this undertaking 
 they might have free run of the ship and every 
 consideration as passengers. With this they nat- 
 urally agreed. We then took the river boat a 
 little way off and anchored her with an insulting 
 letter to the Rio Maranon Rubber Company 
 tacked up in her pilot house, and there, for all I 
 know, she remains to this day. 
 
 There is, in the voyage of a ship, a dramatic 
 quality not often equalled in other commercial 
 ventures. When the Martin Connor hove up her 
 hook and started homeward there was not a man 
 aboard her that did not feel, in varying degrees 
 according to his powers of perception, this 
 dramatic quality of which I speak. There was 
 no chanty to be raised as an outlet for emo- 
 tions, the very modern and efficient steam cap- 
 stan did its work, and once more the ship began 
 to vibrate to the pulse of the smooth-running 
 engines. 
 
 We negotiated the Western Passage in a man- 
 ner startling to the oldest sailor aboard, for 
 the swift-running stream became almost rapids 
 in places owing to the corkscrew current, and to
 
 304 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 shoot rapids in an ocean-going ship is a matter to 
 lift one's hair from its roots. 
 
 The Rio Maranon Company was ready for 
 us, first, at Maioca, where the crew of the river 
 boat had long since arrived. The captain had 
 arranged to pass Maioca at daybreak, intending 
 to rush the situation. But there must have been 
 some one on the lookout for us, while the moment 
 or two taken in dropping our prisoners in a boat 
 (we left them the boat) gave time for every one 
 in Maioca to come forth with rifles, and we fled 
 past in a rain of bullets that rang and clattered 
 about the iron ship while we crouched in shelter. 
 Captain Hawks, from inside the iron charthouse, 
 blew blasts upon the whistle in answer, and 
 Wilfred, at great risk to himself, crawled across 
 the deck and, opening one of the swing-scuppers 
 an inch or two, replied with very accurate rifle 
 fire, for I was watching with the glasses through 
 another scupper in the stern. In little over four 
 minutes we were gone by, but it was a fine, 
 lively moment or two. 
 
 At nights, when we anchored, we patrolled the 
 river round the ship with a boat and returned to 
 sea conditions, standing watches throughout the 
 twenty-four hours. At this work we had one or 
 two alarms, but the intruders always turned out 
 to be river Indians desirous of selling fish ! And 
 as the days and nights passed in vigilant un-
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 305 
 
 eventfulness a spirit of unrest crept through the 
 ship. Was n't the mighty Rio Maranon Com- 
 pany going to put up some kind of fight at all? 
 As for the captain and myself, this calm was very 
 grateful. To be quite truthful, we wanted to get 
 out of that country, and if there was no fight- 
 ing the sooner should we escape. However, this 
 apparent inaction on the part of the enemy was 
 suspicious and we never relaxed one moment of 
 watchfulness. The days and nights followed, and 
 once in the main Amazon stream we were often 
 able to steam at full speed through most of the 
 night or as long as the moon lasted. 
 
 "I don't understand it!" said the captain, 
 puzzled and uneasy; "there must be something 
 coming, but I wish I knew what it was!" 
 
 As for the crew they were openly contemptu- 
 ous and disappointed, while Wilfred would spit 
 eloquently whenever he happened to mention the 
 name of the Rio Maranon Rubber Company, and 
 it would be hard to be ruder than that. 
 
 But the days went on and the nights went on, 
 and in this anticlimax we all, I think, in our dif- 
 ferent ways, suffered various forms of "nerves"; 
 for to be momentarily expecting an attack that 
 does not come is one of the most difficult trials 
 to bear. With the river current to help us our 
 mileage per twenty-four hours down-stream was 
 a very different matter from our distances run
 
 306 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 while steaming up. We passed Manaos before 
 Manaos had time to grasp the fact, and no hint 
 was made of stopping us. And then, one day, 
 we passed a Liverpool steamer inward-bound. 
 We regarded her with hungry intensity, for, to 
 us, after what we had been through, her efficient 
 and seagoing appearance was strangely affecting. 
 She blew us a salute upon her whistle, and her 
 Old Man upon his bridge exchanged a wave with 
 Captain Hawks. Oh, it was fine to see white men 
 again, and to come in touch with the sane, clean, 
 organised world once more! That Liverpool 
 steamer, with her white awnings and paintwork 
 and her shining brass, was a sample of all we had 
 left and all we were returning to. It was like 
 meeting a decent individual in a dangerous city 
 slum! Then the forest resumed its preponder- 
 ance in the landscape and we continued on and 
 on, awaiting, ready, some obscure attack that 
 never came. 
 
 It is difficult for me to describe how sick we had 
 all become of that evil country, of the colour and 
 smell of the water, of the unending wall of trees, 
 of the ever-present dripping heat, of the wholly 
 damnable insects. But the thought of home, 
 of the healthy, wind-swept open sea kept our 
 spirits up. I now do not wonder at men becoming 
 worse than savages after years in such a place. 
 
 Every ounce of which the ship was capable was
 
 A RAID BY NIGHT 307 
 
 pressed out of her by Mr. McLushley without 
 an undue consumption of coal. Even his iron 
 and leather constitution had not improved and 
 though he said nothing in particular he was as 
 anxious to leave those forests and rotting jungles 
 and fevers as any of us. 
 
 We were now, practically speaking, out of the 
 Rio Maranon Company's country, though we 
 kept a bright lookout for trouble. But no fur- 
 ther trouble awaited us, which worried us not 
 a little, until we arrived at Para, where surprises 
 came thick and fast. 
 
 To begin with, we found that Mr. Alonzo 
 Makepeace Massingbird had been a naturalised 
 citizen of the United States; and the interna- 
 tional difficulties concerning his death fell from 
 the problem beneath the capable hands of the 
 American Consul at Para. He had everything in 
 readiness for us, with legal assistance; and after 
 a sweating, steaming morning and afternoon the 
 incident was closed with a reprimand and a din- 
 ner. But that was not the only surprise. 
 
 The Rio Maranon Rubber Company had gone 
 into liquidation! 
 
 This was due to a sudden depression following 
 upon an inflated boom in rubber, the organised 
 competition offered by the Malay States and 
 Ceylon, the manipulation of rubber markets by 
 a European ring, the impossibly high freights
 
 308 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 i 
 
 demanded both upon the upper river and for 
 oversea transport, the excessively high cost of 
 living and therefore of production in the upper 
 Amazon country, and last, but not least, to the 
 general shocking mismanagement and devilish 
 habits of the Rio Maranon rubber collectors. 
 
 At the news of the practical death of the Rio 
 Maranon Company, a most extraordinary change 
 came over the face of Eichholz ! He altered, liter- 
 ally, in a moment. His tragic mask fell from him; 
 it was almost uncanny and profoundly moving. 
 With his freedom there had come another man, 
 and since the Rio Maranon was now non-existent, 
 so far as its power to injure him was concerned, 
 he bade us good-bye at Para, intending to wait 
 a little and grow more used to a less extra-tropi- 
 cal climate before leaving that part of South 
 America altogether. So he passed out of our 
 lives, a strange, interesting, and attractive man, 
 horribly punished for his sins, yet picking up his 
 life and continuing with fortitude and fine spirit.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 TWO AND THREE QUARTERS MILLIONS IN GOLD 
 
 IT was early upon a fine, merrily tempestuous 
 morning, with a strong breeze blowing steady 
 and warm, that the vast muddy prospect of the 
 estuary gave place to the clean blue ocean before 
 the bows of the Martin Connor. Across the great 
 arch of the sky were hurrying clusters of bril- 
 liant clouds, and the fresh salt wind rippled the 
 tightly stretched awnings. An hilarious spirit 
 prevailed, and when, at first imperceptibly, the 
 ship began to lift to the great Atlantic seas after 
 being so long in the stagnant stillness of the 
 Amazon, there was a cheer in every heart aboard 
 her. The ship herself seemed to catch the mood, 
 and she rolled and pitched like a living thing set 
 free, and oh, the pleasure of those swinging decks 
 to feel the ship once more a ship at sea, with 
 the strong salt air humming in the scanty wire 
 rigging ! And the cleansing purity of the sea and 
 the lofty, wind-borne flights of spray seemed to 
 wash us, as though with antiseptics, of all the 
 horrors, the fevers, and the wickedness of that 
 great and sinister river. 
 
 Only two members of the ship's company were 
 unhappy at the movement. They were Mary-
 
 310 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 jane, the Indian, and Percy, Wilfred's alligator. 
 Maryjane had been deeply offended at the 
 suggestion that we should leave him at Para 
 where the American Consul had promised to 
 find him a job. So there was nothing else to do 
 but take him with us, though after a few hours 
 in the open Atlantic Maryjane would have will- 
 ingly been back in his native swamps. However, 
 seasickness did him no harm, and he is now, 
 I understand, following the useful and placid 
 occupation of ship-keeper in Galveston. Percy, 
 the alligator, was somewhat discommoded with 
 the salt water. But his cage on the after main- 
 deck was as dry as anywhere, and we built around 
 him a shelter of blankets and canvas. He is now, 
 and doubtless always will be, a possession of the 
 city of New York, where he occupies the distinc- 
 tive position of being the largest alligator in cap- 
 tivity. He is, by the by, a crocodile and not an 
 alligator, though just in what the difference con- 
 sists I do not know, though I expect Timothy 
 Hanks knows and understands! 
 
 Stadger, dumbfounded at the moving decks 
 and the occasional swilling of the seas through 
 the clanging scuppers, barked himself into semi- 
 hysteria with sharp staccato barks that went 
 through your head like a knife, until Wilfred, 
 exasperated, fell to hammering his hard muscu- 
 lar body with his fists.
 
 MILLIONS IN GOLD 311 
 
 On the voyage home Timothy Hanks com- 
 pleted a work he had been engaged upon which 
 he entitled "Notes upon the River Amazon," a 
 compilation of facts and figures as unenlightened 
 and as correct as an invoice; the publication of 
 which, in a scientific journal, brought him fame 
 in a quiet way. 
 
 Captain Hawks, from the latest figures obtain- 
 able in Para, computed that we had over two 
 and three quarters millions of dollars' worth of 
 gold on board at a conservative estimate. 
 
 "Not bad, for a single cruise, Grummet," said 
 he with a grin. 
 
 "No, sir, not bad." 
 
 We were in the charthouse, the doors hooked 
 back to the clean sea wind. Captain Alexander 
 Ester kay, feeling cold, filled one end of the settee; 
 Colonel Ezra Calvin, long, loose-jointed, and 
 angular, sat in the other, two very typical speci- 
 mens of North and South. Twocents, in obedi- 
 ence to a call, arrived with a muffler and a great- 
 coat from Captain Esterkay's cabin. The boy's 
 appearance was greatly changed from the day he 
 had given chase to the captain's hat upon the 
 wharf at Galveston. He was not much fatter, it 
 is true, for he was of a slim habit of body. The 
 change was in his expression and in his bearing. 
 A boy still, but a boy for whom the world had its 
 place, and for whom the world held a future. His
 
 312 THE MARTIN CONNOR 
 
 reclamation was complete. There was nothing of 
 the street-bred urchin left; he was a responsible, 
 reputable member of society. Captain Esterkay 
 gave him two years at a technical college, then 
 back he went to sea, and he is now, so I have just 
 heard, third mate in a good line of fruit steamers 
 running between Cuba and New York. Some day 
 he will doubtless have his own command. 
 
 "Two an' three quarter million!" repeated 
 Captain Esterkay in a mild surprise; "say, 
 Matthew, that's all all right, is n't it?" 
 
 "It is, Alexander, for all of us," replied the 
 captain, putting away his papers in the chart- 
 house desk. 
 
 I stepped out onto the bridge-deck into the 
 warm wind and sunshine. The horizon was 
 complete, a sharply defined ring enclosing the 
 bright, foam-patched, flashing sea. 'Arry Ketch- 
 old, ponderous and slow, moved about amid the 
 watch that was busily painting. Mr. Andrew 
 Kinnaird McLushley sat in an oil-stained deck- 
 chair with spectacles on his nose, deep in the 
 poetry of Mrs. Hemans. 
 
 As I climbed the ladder to the bridge the happy 
 chant of the engines came up through the sky- 
 lights, and to their rhythmical measure Cert'nly 
 Wilfred in the galley raised his voice in song. 
 
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