ES B.CO LLY OPEN WATER BOOKS BY JAMES B. CONNOLLY PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Open Water. Illustrated . . . net $1.20 The Crested Seas. Illustrated .... $1.50 The Deep Sea's Toll. Illustrated . . $1.50 The Seiners. With frontispiece . . . $1.50 Out of Gloucester. Illustrated . . . $1.50 An Olympic Victor, Illustrated . . . $1.25 Jeb Hutton. The story of a Georgia Boy. Illustrated net $1.20 ° » • • * v • • • » * <« > > > • • • • • • • • • • • V • ••« Oh, papa, — papa — " she was saying, and believe me, I didn't regret that finish OPEN WATER BY JAMES BRENDAN CONNOLLY AUTHOR OF " OUT OF GLOUCESTER," *' THE SEINERS," "THE DEEP sea's TOLL," "THE CRESTED SEAS," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK:::::::::::::::::::::::::i 9 io Copyright, iqio, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published October, ioio CONTENTS PAGE The Emigrants i Tshushima Straits 25 The Consuming Flame .... ... 61 Gree Gree Bush 101 The Venture of the "Flying Hind" . . . 143 The Cruise of the "Bounding Boy" ... 183 The Sea-Faker 213 Heroes 237 The Christmas Handicap .... . . 271 9&55T3 ILLUSTRATIONS "Oh, papa — papa — " she was saying, and, believe me, I didn't regret that finish .... Frontispiece PAGE He thought I meant it for him, and dropped, but 'twas over his head I threw it — at the other lamp 134 I set the Chinamen to work, one gang bailing out — another gang to the pumps 162 I saw Gillis striving like a hero 166 "And wurk fasht, b'y — wurk fasht" 246 They got the pair at last, taking first the little stow- away 260 "Ho, Ho, with nine yards the devil from hell won't get me" 310 I could feel the taunt in that yell, and into my soul it came 320 1 ' ■ • > THE EMIGRANTS The Emigrants TO the waiting people in Poland there came one day the most momentous package of all, that which contained the money for their tickets — this from far-away America, from Henry, good husband to Esther, and more than a son to Esther's mother, even from the day he had asked her for Esther in marriage. Then were there the most formidable details to be attended to; for in the realm of the Czar the matter of emigrating is of great moment. There had to be faced the most terrifying of officials, who asked the most searching questions, and gave over the papers only after the most rigid formali- ties, and also only after payments had been made that seemed like mountains of expense to people who for so long had been dwelling in the valley of poverty. And there was even more than that. When for so many hundreds of years one's ancestors have lived and died in a country — in so many cases for that country — one does not, generally, make ready to leave that country, forever most likely, 3 The Emigrants and for a far-away and unknown land most surely, without noalqiig some little stir, without betraying to the neighbors something of the inward agita- GQiiy-lfiijrdly even, though that country be one long ruled by people of a later creation and cruder civ- ilization, by aliens who for some centuries now had been denying all ancestral rights. But the day of departure came at last, and with the unnecessary household effects disposed of, the little patch of land handed over, the passports ob- tained — all that attended to — and the last-made grave visited once again, Esther and Esther's mother, with the four children, emerged from beneath the shower of tears, kisses, embraces, and blessings, and boarded the rough car on which they were to be jolted to the frontier. The frontier! They were near to it at length, and nearing it were met by uniformed officials of the country they were leaving, who peered into their faces, shouted at them, examined their papers, went away, came back, had another look, another examination, shouted once more, and finally allowed the train to pass beyond the line of pacing soldiers, and thence to the servants of the great steamship companies, more especially the one in green livery with red trimmings, who also shouted at them — everybody seemed to shout at them, but this one could be heard a league — 4 The Emigrants "D'Auswanderer — Auswanderer!" And when he made it clear that they were to rally to him, and they had humbly assembled, turned them over to a little old man, also in uniform, who re- assembled them after his own fashion, and led them like a band of conscripts to the company's lodging-house and there assigned them quarters for the night. The company, the little man made them understand, was now responsible for them — from now until they were aboard the steamer in Hamburg; and though the company would be a kind father to them, it would also see that none strayed beyond the confines of its premises. They were happy then; and Esther's mother, who had not from the first moment of departure ceased to worry for the children, above all for little Michel, now in deep gratitude put them away for the night, the eldest two in one berth, the next with Esther. Michel, the youngest — the baby — she took to herself. Never would she part from little Michel — never — never — and told him so between the lines of the song with which she lulled him to sleep. To the women, when the children were hushed, there came from the next apartment the sound of men's voices. One there was who seemed to have come back from America for a holiday — a young man, by the tone — recounting tales of the won- 5 The Emigrants derful land to which all were bound. Not longer than two days was he in New York when some one said, "Come," and set him to work at two dollars — two dollars — four rubles, a day — yes. In a berth opposite to Esther's mother, a young woman breathed aloud at that. "You heard, old mother ? Four rubles a day. You have no man, but it is fine to think of, is it not?" "Truly," answered Esther's mother, "it will be fine for the young." Esther's mother could then hear old Joseph asking questions. Poor old Joseph! For him there had been no need to come. He had, indeed, saved enough to keep him, with prudence, all his years at home. But he had come, and there was no gainsaying him. To the frontier only — to the control station, no further — he had said to the neighbors, and even to themselves, before taking the train; but to America it was to be, in truth, as he had told them that afternoon in the cars, and told them also how he had sold his little pos- sessions privately, and drawn all his savings, and changed all into large bills which, even at the moment, were in a pouch under his vest. He even showed them where, around his neck, under his long white beard, lay the string of the pouch. They slept well that night. The cooing and gurgling of little Michel awoke Esther's mother, 6 The Emigrants as it had awakened her for many mornings now. What a feeling that — the little fingers creeping up over the face and trying to open one's eyes in the morning! Oh, the little man! she cuddled him and kept him by her until long after Esther had the other children ready — until the com- pany's man came to say that those who cared might cook breakfast in the kitchen below where were samovars and charcoal, and where cold water was to be had of the pump in the yard outside. After that they must be ready to go to the office, there to get tickets, for which one must have the money ready. "Children under four years are free at the steamship from Hamburg to New York, but only those under ten months are free at the railway from here to Hamburg. Be prepared ! " "Oh, my little Michel! We shall have to pay for him on the railway, think you, Esther ? — and he but hardly weaned." "And for Max on the steamer, mother. He is five." "Five — yes — but small for his age. Michel is such a great fellow." Just before Esther's mother in the line was the young woman who had slept in the berth oppo- site Esther's mother during the night. She held a lusty baby boy in her arms. The weight of 7 The Emigrants him was sagging one hip and shoulder down and around, but she would not set him down. To her came the superintendent: a portly, good-looking man in a thin silk coat, fine, frilled linen, loose tie, and the softest of tanned kid slippers, and a clerk at his elbow with pad and pen. "And this one — how old is he ?" The young woman trembled. Esther's mother, next in line, also trembled. "How old, I say— how old ?" "Ten months, Your Excellence." "Ten months ? Ten months ? Set him down." "But he cannot walk yet — he is too young, Your Excellence." "Pish — pish — for a moment, and let us see. There — and he cannot walk, you say ?" "Oh, but so little, Your Excellence." Fat, curly, bow-legged, and black-eyed, the child stamped about the room. " But so little, you say, and only ten months ? So. At ten years he will be a man already. Ten months! and walks like a sailor. Ten months!" "He was born so, Your Excellence — large and strong for his age." "So." The superintendent halted to wipe his perspiring cheeks. "Ah, but it is warm. And this other fat, curly one?" he pinched little Mi- 8 The Emigrants chel's cheek. "What age ? Ten months, also, old mother?" "Ten months, Your Excellence." "And born large and strong also ? And his name — Samson ? No ? Michel, you say ? Oh, Michel! Ach! let them pass. Let them all pass. What can one do with women — such lies! To the doctor now." To the first room in the control station went Esther's party, and these, with many others, pa- tiently awaited examination. Laws! There were laws, it seemed. And had they not left all troublesome laws behind them ? And here, regulations also — such queer things were in the world! which said that they must be examined all, especially as to hair and eyes, before they would be allowed on the railway which was to take them, by and by, to the steamship and so on to the great country beyond the great sea. It was terrifying, this waiting in line; and then, when the doctor said, "Now you — " to have to march up the whole length of the long room and stand before him, with his eyes and mouth that did not smile, and have him look one over so — such a look! and the looking-glass that was strapped to his forehead! It could not be that he knew how he frightened one when he studied one out in that way — so — and shook his hands 9 The Emigrants slowly — so — and then stiff and stern — so! No, surely he could not know. Behind Esther was the old mother, holding little Michel, dancing him up and down, sticking her face into his face, saying boo! and boo! and boo! again, and kissing him every time he crowed aloud. This was her own darling — youngest of all — little Michel. She held him high over her shoulder that he might stroke old Joseph's beard, and old Joseph, sad and patient, for a moment tried to smile. Esther faced the doctor, and, being passed, came back to her place on the long bench. Es- ther's mother should have been next, but she turned to Joseph, and he, obedient as in the days of his youth, stood before the doctor. The doctor took up his paper. "You are alone?" "Yes, Herr Doctor." "No wife, no child behind you ?" "No wife, nor child — nor kin, Herr Doctor." "And in America — no kin ?" "Nobody — in all the world, nobody." " But at your age — why do you go ? You like to travel?" "I ? Not I — old trees, fast roots." " So ? But tell me — it is for myself, not the law, that I ask — why do you go ?" 10 The Emigrants "I go because my friends go. Esther goes — and so the children. The children go, so goes Sarah; and where Sarah goes even there must I "So? And which is Sarah?" "She who is next." "With the child ? H-m— she is old also." "She has been younger, Herr Doctor." "I meant no harm, old man. That you may know her when she is yet older is my wish." "May the Lord spare her, Herr Doctor. And if I may say it — you will see for yourself — the child is her life." "'Tis not hard to see that. But if you will step down now and tell her to come." Sarah approached haltingly. She still carried Michel. "That child — is he not heavy, old mother?" "Oh, no, Herr Doctor— not little Michel!" "But you must set him down now." "And I must, Herr Doctor?" "Only for a little while. That is it. And now the hair." Down tumbled the hair. Old Joseph remem- bered what that hair was once, and, remembering, sighed. "And now for the eyes. The head this way — so." II The Emigrants The faded old eyes were turned toward the light. They looked like eyes that had wept so much they could weep no more. " So — h-m — And now this way. And this way once more. H-m-m — You have seen much trouble, old mother ? " "Trouble ? Every one has trouble." "It is true. And your daughter — she is the only child now ? " "The only child." "There were others ?" "Five are buried, Herr Doctor — five and their father." "Ah! and your daughter's husband, is it not, who sends the money for passage ?" "Henry it is — yes. A fine boy, and who has worked so hard that we might all come to him together." " So." Longer, and yet longer, the doctor looked into the old eyes. Then he asked her further questions. Afterward she could not remember what the questions were — he asked so many — and there was that fearful looking-glass on his head; but she told him of the sickness with her eyes. She had had that sickness with her eyes for a long time now. But it mattered little. She could see to sew in the long nights of winter and to make all the clothes for the babies. And no one had 12 The Emigrants ever before said that her eyes were not as good for that as any other eyes. The very clothes that little Michel then had on — where was he, the little imp? Oh, under the table — such a boy! those clothes were the envy of every mother in the village. And her own eyes had overlooked every stitch, every single stitch. Look, the Herr Doator could see for himself that the work was well done. Not another child in the village had such clothes. Children of the rich there were with clothes that would not show finer stitching. The surgeon, shaking his head, turned to the superintendent. She could not understand what it was they said, the one to the other — they talked in Polish no longer — but there was that in their faces and gestures which troubled her. She put her hand on the surgeon's arm even before he had done speaking to the superintendent, and all in the room trembled for her boldness. Her other hand clasped little Michel's fingers. Then the superintendent, who seemed to talk all languages — and her own language as one born to it — called Esther over and whispered to her. And Esther mournfully told her mother that she would have to wait for a time. "Wait ? And why ?" It was plain she did not understand. "There is not money enough for all, His Excel- *3 The Emigrants lence says. It is full fare for children over four years of age, and half fare for children over ten months. And Max is above four years, and little Michel above ten months — they have de- cided. And if the children are to go, some one must stay behind — is it not so, Your Excellence ? " "It is so, old mother," confirmed the superin- tendent. Esther's mother looked to her little Michel, and from him around the room. Her eyes fastened on the slim young woman with the fat baby in arms, she who had been in the opposite berth the night before, and just ahead of them in line at the office. All had remarked that since leav- ing the office that morning not once had she set her baby down. She feared to have to buy a ticket for him — 'twas not hard to see that. To her Esther's mother rushed. "See, Herr Excel- lence, see you, which is the larger ? Or, the Herr Doctor, who understands such things better, see, which is the older — this one or my little Michel. Set him down — will you not set him down ? Ah, she will not. Look again, Herr Doctor. This one has been passed, has he not?" "It is true," said the superintendent. Then did Esther's mother force the young woman to set the fat baby on the floor. In an instant he was rolling toward the men. H The Emigrants "Ten months, and see him run! Ten months, and free! But not little Michel ?" With her dry eyes she faced the superintendent. "But not little Michel, Heir Doctor?" The surgeon shook his head. The soul was not open to his knife. Then, suddenly, he wondered why he was spending so much time over this case. Again and again had such cases come before him — not exactly alike always, but much alike. How many he had passed by before! But here he was this morning. It could not be merely that it was a fair, warm, summer's morning — hardly that. In his memory were a thousand other fair, warm mornings, with trees nodding outside the door and the blue sky beyond, and a voice as pleading and eyes as sad as these — almost. Whatever it was, this doctor, who examined a thousand immi- grants a month, took a great deal of trouble to make it clear to Esther why it was her mother could not go. "How can I tell her ?" said Esther. "She can- not come, and yet we must go to Henry, who is waiting for us." It was on the superintendent's hint that she told her mother that, though there was not money enough for all at that moment, she need not de- spair; for when they reached America she would have Henry send her ticket-money back. *5 The Emigrants "Oh, my heart!" said Esther's mother, "and I must wait until that money comes again ? You go now with the children, and not I ? And yet it is right — it is right. Henry is impatient, and why not ? The long time he has toiled for the tickets, and now he wishes to see his own. Esther, you are his own — and the children, little Michel and all. But not his wife's old mother? He will await every steamer now — go to the office and ask for Esther and the babies. Ah, ah, it is not right. No, I do not mean that. Esther, when you see him you will tell him, and surely he will man- age to send the money soon. And yet it is so much to save — eighty rubles. One could live a long time at home on so much. But he is good, Henry, and he will not complain, and he shall see how I will make it up in care of the children. You and Henry, Esther, will have need of me. I will be taking care of the little ones when you help him at his work. But little Michel " Old Joseph stepped over. Timidly he plucked the superintendent by the arm. "I have enough — I will pay for Sarah's ticket." The pouch was in his hand, the string from around his neck. "Sh-h — " said the superintendent, and told him how it was. "Oh!" said old Joseph. 16 The Emigrants But Esther's mother had caught sight of old Joseph, and divined what he had said. "Ah, Joseph, you will pay, and I shall not have to wait." And then they had to tell her, or partly tell her — it was the sickness of the eyes. "Even if we allowed you to leave here, old mother, they would send you back from New York. The American surgeons are very strict. ,, It took her some time to understand it. Her courage almost left her, and she had to sit down for a while; but, presently gaining a little strength, she inquired how long it would take the sickness to leave her. If she took good care, stayed in the darkened room, say, by the time Esther and her children arrived in New York and could send a letter back — would she be well then ? Three weeks or more — four weeks it might be — five, pos- sibly. Well, in five weeks — what a long time! but in five weeks would the sickness be cured ? Then it was that they told Esther the whole truth. Her mother's eyes would never be better. And Esther told Joseph, and Joseph led her away, with her fingers still clinging to little Michel's hand, and she still of the opinion that in a few weeks her eyes might be well and she on her way to join the children. After that it was time for bathing. Every one must get under the stream of water and get such *7 The Emigrants a wash as he never got before. They told Esther's mother that she could not go with the others, that she would have to 'give up little Michel because of the sickness of her eyes. In a little while, after they had been through the bath, little Michel would be brought back. She protested at that. "So soon to lose him for long weeks, and now not to see him while he is washed?" So vehement was she that super- intendent and surgeon threw up their hands and allowed her to have her way. So she took little Michel into the women's apartments and gave him so fine a warm bath, with such a plenty of soapsuds, that he crowed like a young rooster. "Such a boy!" said Esther's mother, and held him up, rosy, for all to see, and later, with his glowing face, confronted the superintendent tri- umphant. It was against all the rules that Esther's mother should go in the train for Hamburg. But she hung onto little Michel, to whom she was so soon to say good-by — hung on so tightly that when the train started the superintendent said something to the guard, and handed him a paper; the guard in reply said, "Very good — Berlin"; that and something else, and Esther's mother, happy and smiling, stayed aboard. 18 The Emigrants Everybody in the car felt sorry for Esther's mother, and smiled at her and the baby when they saw that she had had her way. All that night and all next morning they were confined to the rickety car, on the side of which, in large black letters, were the words, RUSSISCHE AUSWANDERER At times, along the way, there were stations where, the guard's vigilance relaxing, they might have had time to run out and procure needful things; but if their own guard were careless, not so the others, and they were soon rushed back. Everybody seemed to think that whoever else were accorded privileges, these lowly strangers at least should be given no liberty. The young fellow, Moishe, he who had been to America before, explained how it was. "Some years ago some people — not our people, but others of Russia — carried the cholera into Hamburg and so on to America; and since then none are allowed to leave the cars until we are in Hamburg, and there we leave them only for the Auswanderer- hallen, and there it is lock and key also, until we shall be on the steamer. I know, for it was so when I went before also, although, upon my word, it seems harder now. Next time, should I come back again, I will return third class — no less." *9 The Emigrants At Bromberg, which is well on toward Berlin, a boy having grapes for sale halted under the window of the car. "Ah!" sighed Esther, "if the babies had but a handful!" Old Joseph, hearing, leaned out, motioned for the full of his hat, and handed down a ruble. The boy shook his head. "He will have none of your Russian money," said Moishe. "He wants German money. I re- member that it was so before." "But I have no German money," said poor Joseph, and was drawing in his head disconsolate when they were perceived by a young fellow whom they had themselves already noticed as one who seemed to have no other business than to walk the platform and observe the people about him. He was neither German nor Russian, they saw at once. To him, when he came over, Moishe handed Joseph's ruble and spoke some words in the strange tongue with which he used to converse with the superintendent at the control station when he wished to show that he had been to America. The young stranger nodded, and for Joseph's ruble handed back German money. "Two marks and fifteen pfennigs" — they knew that much of German money; and then, stopping the fruit boy, he purchased the platter of grapes and handed it up to Esther's mother. Further, he ran off and came back with a precious orange for each 20 The Emigrants of the children. Little Michel's hand was not large enough to hold his. "There," said Moishe proudly, "that is the American kind. Money, they have it like dirt to spend — these rich Ameri- cans. You will find them everywhere." "Not many of them come to Poland," said old Joseph; "or, if so, I never saw them in our vil- lage." Esther's mother fed the orange to little Michel. Between mouthfuls she hugged him tight, and in his ear whispered: "Ah, my little Michel, some day — who can say — you will also be rich, with money to spend like that; and with the money there will also be horses and carriages and grand houses and servants. And maybe I shall live to see it, and if so it may be that I shall be allowed there — in the grand house — in a little back room up under the roof with nobody to see me, but from where I can look and see all, knitting your socks for the bad weather and putting the letters on the fine linen you will have then. Is it not so, my little Michel?" and little Michel held his mouth up for more orange. Not long after that it came to an end — at Ber- lin, where the train made a long halt. Esther's mother had almost forgotten that she was not to go, and was beginning to believe that she would yet be allowed to stay. But here was a new guard, 21 The Emigrants one with less kindness than the other. He pulled out a paper and came through the car, calling loudly her name. "Sarah — I cannot read it — but Sarah Some- thing, an old woman." She had no cause to an- swer — the pitiful look that came to her worn old face would have made her known out of a multi- tude. She pleaded with this one, even as she had with the doctor and superintendent, and up to the last moment hoped she might win him over. But this was one who dared not or could not go beyond orders — out of the car he lifted her as the train moved, out and onto the platform. And after her came old Joseph. He had stopped not for bundles or boxes, but jumped off like a youth of twenty. "You must tell her all," called Esther after him. "I will tell her." It was a most unheard-of thing, this leaving the car by one against whom no objection was made; and the astounded guard, with no prece- dent to help him out, was at a loss what to do. He gesticulated in bewilderment, but the train moved out. Esther's mother did not see Joseph. She had eyes only for little Michel, with his arms reach- ing out of the window toward her, out over his 22 The Emigrants mother's shoulder, as though for something he missed. Long after the train was out of sight she stood there, despairing. Only when fatigue compelled her did she move to a bench, and then only to cast her weary body down and hold a tight hand to her aching eyes and head. Joseph, saying noth- ing, sat on another bench. By and by the train that was to take her back to Russia came, and, arising, she saw him sitting there. "You, Joseph? And why? Why, O Joseph, did you turn back, too ?" "Why ? Why ? As if you did not know. You in Poland and I stay in America ? I am old, Sarah." "And I am old, too, Joseph — so old, and never knew till now." It was in the control station on the frontier that she was told the worst. It had to be told her. She had to be made to understand why it was that she was not to be allowed to stay there until the ticket should come from America — if all the tickets in the world were to come, still she could not go. It was old Joseph who told her. "So," she said, "so. Oh, you were a good boy. And Max, Jacob, Joseph — good children, all. And Esther, my daughter, you were good, 23 The Emigrants too — Esther, yes. But Michel, O my heart! Oh, my little Michel " Then it was the tears came. "That is better," said the surgeon. "But she will need care, old man, when she is back in Po- land again — for all her days, it may be." "She shall have care," said Joseph, "and for all her days, if need be." Between the control station and their old home in Poland she spoke only once. Without lifting her head she reached out her hand. "Joseph?" "I am here." "When the letters come from America it may be that my eyes — you heard what the doctor said ? — my eyes — and in the letters may be things that are not for others to see — But I do not mind you, Joseph — and also there will be such things as little Michel will write when he grows up — you know, Joseph ? " "I know, Sarah." "And so I may need eyes, Joseph. It is hard to say only that, to be only a burden to thee at the last, but I may need eyes, Joseph." "Thou shalt have eyes, Sarah." 24 TSHUSHIMA STRAITS Tshushima Straits IT was the Russian battle-fleet steaming north- erly toward the Sea of Japan. Twenty ships were in column and ten miles an hour the speed. From the quarter-deck of the Kremlin the Ameri- can could hear the crew of the big turret at drill. By the clanking echo of the tumbling tray he could guess their speed. He shook his head to himself. "No doubt you're brave and all that, but you could stand an awful lot of practice." By and by, the loading tray no longer sound- ing, the form of a sailor emerged from the turret hatch. A moment, as if to get his bearings, another as if to take in the scene, and then in two nervous bounds he made the deck. The American knew him for his man, but he finished his cigarette before stepping over to the other's side. "Is not this Stephan Demetri Har- lov so called, turret captain ?" "So called," the other replied in English, "so called?" And then in French, "You speak a strange tongue, m'sieur." 27 Tshushima Straits "Etranger? Eh bien, have it so," the Ameri- can retorted in French. "You do not recall me ?" " Oh, yes, you are the American quartermaster we shipped at Hong-Kong." "I am also an American naval officer on a leave of absence. My name is Mannix. I am that same young Mannix, the Annapolis cadet, who spent most of his furloughs in coming to see Her Grace's sister — before she became Her Grace, that was. Does M'sieur Harlov recollect ?" The Russian paused before answering, and then he spoke in English. "I recollect — very well. Ensign Mannix now, is it not? But you have changed." "Naturally, of course — in seven years." "And how is the pretty little Madeleine ?" "Quite well, thanks." "Not Mrs. Mannix yet?" "Not yet. And perhaps never. But she is concerned, and I am concerned, and her sister is concerned in what I have to say to you — if Ste- phan Demetri Harlov, enlisted man in His Im- perial Majesty's navy, has a short half-hour to spare ? " "Some matters, Mr. Mannix — is it not best to let some matters rest ? " "Not this matter, Your Grace. To-morrow you fight, and to-morrow, possibly " 28 Tshushima Straits "—I die?" "Exactly." "And why not you die also ?" "Exactly." "And if I die and you die, how can it matter then?" "It will not matter to us. But Her Grace " "Meaning?" There was a note of mockery in the Russian's voice. "Meaning" — there was a note of stubbornness in the American's — "meaning Her Grace, Miss Madeleine's sister — my sister-in-law, possibly, if I return from my mission." "Ah-h, a mission?" "Exactly — a mission." It was a night of drizzle with recurring fog, and they had been peering into each other's faces while talking. Now the Russian looked suddenly away. "What a scene for a drama!" he ex- claimed. "See that taffrail plunging. The drip- ping deck beneath us — gleaming distantly. And outboard " — he swept his arm in half a circle — "profoundly dark, except where on the swirl of the tidal waters the sweeping search-lights play." The Russian pointed to where astern was a towing spar on which three search-lights were concentrated; and listening and looking, Mannix began to appreciate the sensitive side of this man 29 Tshushima Straits who could see, weigh, believe, and judge in an instant. "They make one think of mad porcu- pines charging like that, do they not?" And again the fog enveloping and the safety signal whistles sounding, "We make so much noise and display so many lights! But it will not come to-night. No, not to-night. For what fleet could preserve an effective battle-formation in this sea and tide and gloom ? They would be shelling each other before they were done. And to-mo- row — to-morrow!" he laid a hand on the Ameri- can's arm; "for to get through the straits without meeting Togo's fleet, we cannot expect that — nor wish it. No, no. And" — this under his breath almost — "there can be but one outcome. But let us go inside," and Mannix followed him to the turret, where the other switched on an electric light. A short, hardy, immensely powerful-looking sailor leaped to his feet and stood to attention. "S-st!" hissed Harlov; but not until he had seen the American did the sailor relax. "And now?" queried the Russian. "And now," began Mannix, and in the most rapid and concise language of which he was master made it clear how it was that his companion had come to misunderstand. In this cause Mannix could be eloquent. The Russian was quick to 30 Tshushima Straits see. His cynicism began to leave him. Man- nix did not have to half explain things. "Yes, yes, go on. Yes, yes," the Russian kept repeat- ing. "But it is almost incredible, nevertheless — a plot from the most dramatic stage almost. A man that I know as a friend — it is almost incon- ceivable." "Yet it is true. I was with him when he died — in his own cabin. He sent for me. Dying, he wished to make amends. For years his wild passion had goaded him to the most ingenious schemes to win — pardon, but it is so — the love of Her Grace. He considered the battle half won when you doubted. But he did not know this American girl — a thousand like him could not have stirred her. Only he had to arrive at death's door to learn that. But once convinced, he went just as far the other way to make amends. It was his own idea, the death-bed confession which I drew up and he signed." "What!" "Yes, and before witnesses." Two bells struck. Mannix stood up. "I must go, for at nine o'clock I was to report to my di- vision officer. But here is the confession. Read it. And if you say, I will see you in the morning — if all goes well." "Yes, yes, in the morning. Adieu." 3 1 Tshushima Straits The division officer was detained, and so Man- nix was told to wait in the passageway for him. From where he stood he could look into the ward- room. Several officers were lounging there. One was ordering wine for himself and another, in- structing the boy carefully as to the rare vin- tage. "A pretty duty," he observed to his com- panion, "an economic principle. If we do not drink it to-night, it will probably rest on the bottom of the sea to-morrow. And a pity that." At this point an officer, a lieutenant, entered the ward-room. "You seem pleased at the pros- pect," he said reprovingly to the wine-drinker, laying a bundle on the table. "No, no, no." The other smiled and raised a deprecating hand. "Not pleased, but the thought of the excitement, it does relieve the strain. But what have you there, Nicolas Osin ?" " It is a suit of clothes, and I am looking for a cord to tie them up." "Clothes! Have you not your underclothes, and will they not be enough to swim in when the time comes ? " "No, no, a suit of clothes to dress properly — afterward. I shall stow these somewhere on the gun-deck, and afterward " "And how if there is no afterward ? How if one of your guns blows up and you with it ?" 32 Tshushima Straits "Ah-h," and Nicolas Osin shrugged his shoul- ders. "Then I shall will them to you." Two or three laughed, and one by the pianola, who had stopped his playing to catch the retort, set the machine in motion again. It was a Ger- man pianola, and Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" that he was rolling out. Three others were gathered at a table on the starboard side, while a fourth was playing soli- taire under the centre cluster of incandescent lights. The officer with the bundle, by a gesture, indicated the solitaire player. "Look at him now!" The solitaire player looked up. "Oh, well, it is you, Nicolas Osin, Vice-Admiral Misanthrope, cheer up." And fixing his eyes on the bundle of clothing, "You are wise, too, Nicolas Osin. To- morrow morning, when I go off watch, I will envelop myself in the newest of underclothing, even to new socks, all of silk. The doctor says that if one is dressed in clean underclothing the danger of blood-poisoning from a wound is much lessened. I should not like to die that way — by blood-poisoning." "Doctors," said the officer at the pianola, "doctors give useful advice — sometimes." "As to that," began the solitaire player, "I could tell you — " But did not, for just then one 33 Tshushima Straits of the three officers of the starboard side began to unroll a plan of something. "Ho there!" The solitaire player scooped his cards into one pile. "What have you there, Alexai Fatischeff? Plans of battle evolutions, devolutions, revolutions ? " " It is a plan of my estate." "What a lucky man — to have an estate!" "I shall be luckier if—" He did not finish. "We shall all be lucky, my friend, if by this time to-morrow night " "You croaking frog you, shut up!" came from the two companions of Alexai Fatischeff. " Shut up and go to bed!" An officer in dripping oil-clothes entered the room. A half-dozen questions assailed him at once. "Still (oggy — yes. And choppy — a little. And the search-lights still playing ? Yes. Only for the towing spars we should have run into each other a dozen times to-night. And the enemy ? No telling, but our wireless operator has been picking up wireless messages regularly." "Then to-morrow?" "It looks like it," and he passed on. Mannix's division officer came along then. "Ah-h," he spied Mannix, gave him some rapid instructions in the event of a battle on the mor- row, and then dismissed him. 34 Tshushima Straits Mannix's way out led past the quarters of the senior officers. Here some doors were opened, some closed; but there was a light shining out from all. And such occupants as he could see seemed very much occupied, either writing or overhauling the contents of their desks. On the room door of one of these, that of Lieutenant Pushkin, who had charge of the after-turret, Man- nix knocked. Pushkin knew of Mannix's mission. Following the invitation to enter, Mannix looked in. Pushkin was at his desk. He was writing furiously and did not look up. "I came to wish you good luck in case there should not be too much time to-morrow," said Mannix. "Thank you. It is good of you. And to you, also, good luck." He regarded Mannix kindly. "And is it all right with Stephan Demetri ?" "I think it will be. On the eve of a battle a man is more likely to forget his little ego. Only now I am worrying for him in the battle. But you are writing home ? " "Yes," and Pushkin smiled absently. "To my wife. And my little girl — fourteen years. A hard world, and so a little word to her and advice how to bring her up — in case, in case — you know." "Of course. Good-night." "Good-night." 35 Tshushima Straits II Next morning Mannix, walking the superstruc- ture, heard a gentle, "My friend, I thank you." It was the sailor, Stephan Demetri, saluting him. "You have done me and mine a great service, and at great peril to yourself. Yes, great risk; for somewhere in that haze ahead of us an enemy, a brave, fanatically brave enemy is waiting. And has been waiting — for months, and not grown weary in the waiting. So it may be I shall not get another chance to speak with you. I have done my wife a great wrong. And I ask, should I die and you live, that you will tell her so." "But you are not going to die. You will live to tell her yourself." "No, no. I know our captain. And all ships which do not strike their colors will be sunk. We are not properly prepared for battle. But those of us who are to die will not regret it, if only our example shall not be lost." "You must live. There is the little fellow also." "Yes, yes, but all things must give way now to — " he pointed to the flag at the peak. "And now it is eight bells — battle stations in our turret. Adieu." He gripped ManmYs hand, saluted 36 Tshushima Straits profoundly, and hurried down to the quarter- deck. All the morning a haze hung over the sea. The wireless operator was still picking up cipher mes- sages which, his judgment told him, could only come from ships not many miles away. The haze and these undecipherable messages bred a feeling of uneasiness. At noon Mannix was called to the bridge and given the wheel; and no more than had hold of it than there emerged from out of the haze a long, fast-moving steamer. All the signal men in the fleet jumped to their long glasses, but while they were yet trying to distinguish her colors she dis- appeared. She could not have been more than four thousand yards away, and Mannix specu- lated on what would have happened to her if his own China squadron were involved. A challenge it would have been, and at once an explanation, or a seven-inch shell would then and there have ended her cruising days. The haze thinned, with Mannix still at the wheel of the Kremlin, when they came into view. Up to the northward they were, and for them clearly no surprise. Almost before they were seen from the Kremlin s bridge they were swung into column, and headed westerly across the Russian course. 37 Tshushima Straits The Russian flag-ship signalled a change of course. Ere yet he had done putting his wheel over, Mannix saw the enemy were changing to meet it, and having greater speed were more prompt in execution. Months on the way had the Russian fleet been; with grass growing on their bottoms and machinery not in the best of condition, they were out-manoeuvred from the first. From his station on the open bridge of the Kremlin, Mannix had a good view of everything ahead. He thrilled as he read the signal that broke the battle flags out. And out they floated. Men's nerves strained to snapping at the sight. They cheered with something of hysteria. The enemy followed: The sunburst of Japan, but nothing cheerful to that sun. A shell came wide of the Russian battle-ship's bows. Another — still wide. The careless sight- ing shots of a confident foe they seemed. Another and another — nearer. The next struck close to the Kremlin s bow, throwing high a column of water which drenched some sailors on the fore- castle of the flag-ship. They ducked and ran back laughing. The shell continued on, ricochetting, on to the next in line without exploding. Another came skipping by. A sailor threw a piece of coal after it. All who witnessed this laughed, and the 38 Tshushima Straits laughter relieved the tension. Everybody on the bridge had a word or two to say then. "I see nothing wonderful in their shooting/' said one. "Ho, ho, they boasted it would be like breaking pipes in a shooting-gallery. " Mannix recognized in him the officer of the pianola. He turned on Mannix. "They are reported to have some American gunners aboard some of their ships. What of that, you American i" He said it half in malice, half in fun. "There was no American behind that, be sure of that, sir. Our apprentice boys straight from the training-ships could do better than that." The Russian ships were painted black, the Japanese gray, a war gray. Everything gray — hulls, stacks, stays, tops, masts, bridges — every- thing. And those gray silhouettes were in one long single column, steaming, perhaps, fifteen knots; and with the turmoil of their wakes and the white masses at every bow, they gave one some- thing to think about. Even in a peaceful evolu- tion, a silent column of war-ships sliding rapidly past without fuss or noise — the rapid sliding of a score of great, grim, gray ships across the gray seascape, it is wonderfully impressive. Even in times of peace it is so, but now it was war! the destiny of two nations, perhaps of two great races, depending on the outcome. 39 Tshushima Straits What officers were on the bridge were viewing matters most calmly; but down in his heart Mannix, though he would not have uttered the thought to these Russians nor listened if another said as much to him, down in his heart the feel- ing would not be dislodged — before even the first shell burst that day these gray ships looked the masters. And making up his mind to that, Mannix breathed a prayer for Madeleine whom, he made up his mind then, he was never to see again. After four hours at the wheel, and perhaps five minutes after those first fighting shots, Mannix was relieved, but with instructions to be within call. He descended to the chart bridge, one deck below, and there waited. Now the Russians were capped. Every Japa- nese ship lay ready, with a whole broadside to the head of the Russian column. And at once the Japanese opened up. Every ship in that long, gray line opened up on the first four ships of the Russian line. Only those first four ships were within range of the Japanese. Mannix' s ship was in that first four. It was a rain of metal. All about the sea was white-capped with the rico- chetting shells. Had but one-quarter of them come aboard, the Russian leaders would all have been sunk in that first twenty minutes. But in 40 Tshushima Straits that short time enough shells came aboard — with- out leaving the chart bridge Mannix could see that — enough to make a mess of steel partitions, enough to make splinters of most of the wood- work (which should long ago have been removed, but wasn't), enough to dismount several guns, to bowl over several gun crews. Mannix would have liked to run about the ship to observe better how the men were behaving, but he did not dare to get too far away in case they should need him at the wheel. But even from where he was he caught characteristic touches of the fighting Slav. Almost beneath him he saw a gunner stop, squint out of a gun-port to see what was doing, suck in his cheeks, say most thoughtfully, "Well, well, but this cannot last long — they will soon have no shells left at this rate, and then what will they do?" But mostly the men said nothing, except to utter soft remarks to themselves. The work of the guns, of lifting the wounded out of the way, of making repairs, absorbed them. They looked neither one way nor the other, saw litde except the shell which they had to hoist into the breech, or the breech-block which they had to crank home, or the enemy's ships through the long- sighting telescope. There were men who paused helplessly in the very height of all this, probably 4* Tshushima Straits peasants who at the last moment had been driven aboard. Some of these had never seen a ship of the kind until that day when they had come over the gangplank at Libau. One of these looked up and, seeing the eyes of Mannix fixed kindly on him — a gun was disabled and the crew were trying to make the necessary repairs — he paused to say, "If yon was a horse, or a cow, or a sheep now, I could show you how to doctor him." An officer called down to Mannix and sent him off with a message to the chief of the powder divi- sion. From that Mannix guessed that the internal communications had been shot away, and also that many of the messenger boys had been killed off. Down between decks he met with a few skulkers in the passageways, waiting, no doubt, for the battle to end. Some ugly stories had been set afloat before the fight, and, no doubt of it, there were many mutineers in that crew. Man- nix found his powder-division officer. He was the same who had been playing solitaire in the ward-room the night before. When Mannix came upon him he was calmly shooting down one of these mutineers in an ammunition passageway. The man did not even cry out as he crumpled up, and the others there hardly looked at him. They had not time, and besides, as one observed, he deserved it. 42 Tshushima Straits On his way back Mannix saw that it was going hard with his ship. The gunners, they meant well, but they did not know how. It was true that most of the Jap shells went wide too, but they were pumping them out so fast that if but one in ten found a mark it was enough. Man- nix saw that one shell was jammed in a port on the gun-deck and two plates were torn away from her forward; above the water-line, it was true, and no great danger from that yet because of the smoothness of the sea, but if the ship should list toward that side! There were holes in smoke- stacks — several; but as yet only one showed signs of toppling over. Mannix caught a flying rumor of a hole below her water-line aft, and also of an explosion in the after-turret magazine. This was the Duke's turret. He wanted to rush aft to find out more about it, but felt he might be needed on the bridge. And he was. The helmsman had just been killed. His blood was yet on the spokes, making them difficult to grasp. Mannix was busy for a few minutes rubbing first one hand and then the other against his blouse, to clear them of the blood. The enemy, having successfully completed their first manoeuvre, were now about to attempt a loop about the entire Russian fleet. They went 43 Tshushima Straits about it in a superbly insolent manner, as if what the Russians did could not matter. Mannix said to himself, "God! there's a fleet I know of that you couldn't try that on and get away with it!" Possibly he said it aloud, or showed by his expression what he was thinking of, for an officer, the pianola-player, turned and smiled on him. The next instant the entire port side of the bridge caved in. Also the steering-gear was parted. "You are out of a job," said the pia- nola-player. An instant later he was struck with a shell. "And I also!" he added, and lay still. Mannix looked and saw that the stan- chions supporting the bridge had been shot away on one side. Shells were whistling through all the free space on the bridge. "Some qualified gun-pointer has got the range of this place," thought Mannix, and was about to find a new post when he felt a dull blow in the side. It was not painful, and he could not understand why he went down. He was puzzling that out when he was almost overcome by a feeling of nausea. It was difficult for him to keep from vomiting. And the funny thing was that he had had nothing to eat since breakfast. He may have lost conscious- ness, or he may have merely lost track of time, but certainly the next notice he took was of him- self being on the forward end of the forecastle 44 Tshushima Straits head and looking up at the bridge-works, which had collapsed and were burning. "Queer that," thought Mannix, and, though he did not know why he did it, climbed up on the forward turret where was a man on his knees. He was gazing down into the turret, that officer. Mannix knelt beside him. "What do you think?" he said to Mannix, and pointed inside. Mannix looked. Every man there was dead. It must have been instant incineration with all of them. Bodies there that if a hand were but laid upon them would have crumbled like the dust they were. Charred to ashes these, but with the outlines of the forms perfectly preserved. Mannix took another look. On the casemate, not a mark; of the guns, no displacement. This was the only man of all that turret crew who had been left alive. He had been sent off with a mes- sage, and had only got his head into the under- hatch on his return when the shell struck. He seemed hard of hearing and very much aston- ished. "Why, I felt nothing, Your Excellency, absolutely nothing. But it was terribly — O ter- ribly hot!" he added. "And what shall I do now, I wonder?" He repeated that last, "What shall I do?" several times. Mannix suddenly found himself wondering why it was he felt no horror. But so it was. He was 45 Tshushima Straits like a man on the side-lines watching some game, but much less wrought up than if it were the — the annual game between the army and the navy say. Thinking to get word of the Duke, Mannix went aft. Treading his way through the debris of the gun-deck, he saw that half the port battery had been put out of commission. "And the fight not yet half over," he thought. Blood was not yet everywhere, but there was already more than was pleasant to see or smell. Wounded men were being taken below to the hospital; but there were too many for the hospital corps, and so here and there were groups attending to themselves. Ban- daging each other they were mostly. They were rather serious, but not too much so. That it was a great battle they were engaged in seemed not to have any intellectual interest for them. They were wounded, that was all. Some were gone beyond hope and knew it. "Ah-h, if I had but a samovar now, I would make me a fine last cup of tea," said one in a wistful voice. Mannix saw another with his back to a bulkhead, his legs stretched out before him, rolling a cigarette. Having only one arm left, he was having diffi- culty. He hailed Mannix, otherwise Mannix would never have known; for, bareheaded, black- ened, stripped to his undershirt, there was no mark or rank to distinguish him from any enlisted 4 6 Tshushima Straits man. Mannix turned back at the call, and saw that it was the officer who had been tying up his clothes the evening before, he who had been called Nicolas Osin. "I shall not need them after all. If you want them — we know of you — they are there," and he nodded his head toward a wooden chest which, in some way, had escaped demolition. " But you are far from being dead," exclaimed Mannix. "One arm, what is that?" "One arm?" Nicolas Osin smiled, almost proudly. "One arm, indeed. If you should turn me over now, you would see a hole as big as your whole head, so they tell me. A piece of shell, yes, and a marvel it did not come clear through. Most surprising, yes, how those shells act." He puffed at his cigarette. "And Sergei Herzar, he is gone, yes. Ps-s-t!" — he made an upward movement of his arm — "like that. And not so much as a button for a souvenir. Only this morning at breakfast he was speaking to me of a letter to his wife, and was much worried that she might not get it. There was a little estrangement before he left home, and he was asking forgiveness now, and now she will never know; for the mail-box, of course, will sink with us. Oh, she will be sunk, there is no doubt of it. Our captain is one who will never strike his colors." 47 Tshushima Straits "The captain is dead," said Mannix. "So? Too bad. But no matter, the Krem- lins colors they will not be struck. But go on about your business. Suffer? Oh, no, no! But I am going, of course. Adieu." Mannix rushed on to Pushkin's room, which was on the deck below. In a hundred ways the ship was now showing that she was hard hit. She would not much longer remain afloat, and Man- nix wished to save a few little things which Push- kin had allowed him to stow away in his desk; that is, if he saved himself. He could hardly get through the ward-room, it was so cluttered with wreckage. Two holes gaped in the star- board side. Not one thing had been left whole. The keys of the German pianola were scattered all over the deck. The place was full of smoke, gas, vapor; a vapor that made it difficult and dangerous to take in even the quickest breath. Mannix rushed through to his room, snatched Madeleine's packet of letters from a drawer, belted on a revolver he saw hanging up, and came away. The after-ladder to the quarter-deck had be- come impassable. He had to go clear amidships to find a ladder to the deck. There was a man at the foot of the ladder. He was coughing weakly. Mannix stopped to ask him his trouble. 4 8 Tshushima Straits "No, I am all right now, but down there" — he pointed below — "are many, many suffocated, the entire powder division — the gas from their accursed shells. ,, Mannix reached the quarter-deck. There they were still fighting the after-turret, irregularly, as if not many of the crew were left. Mannix dropped into the turret. The Duke was there, leaning against the casemate, wounded. Mannix asked after Pushkin. The Duke pointed to a body. "Dead?" asked Mannix. The Duke nodded. They had not enough men to work the guns. One gun lacked both a trainer and a pointer. Mannix stepped up to the gun-pointer's telescope. He had had no serious intention of doing this, but now he could not help it. He turned to the Duke. "With your permission ?" he said. "Help yourself," said the Duke pleasantly. Mannix almost shouted with exultation as he fired. No strange work was this for him. On his own gun-ship he had been a turret officer. That first shot went to the mark. And the next. And then he heard from behind. "She's going now, surely. It is the boilers — they have blown up!" "Leave — at once — everybody!" commanded the Duke. There was still a shell in the chamber of Man- 49 Tshushima Straits nix's gun. "We may as well fire this one," sug- gested Mannix. "By all means," replied the Duke. Mannix, after looking back to make sure the breech-block was closed, pointed and fired. He saw a great commotion when it landed. "A bull's-eye !" cried the one man who had stayed behind to see the effect. That man also stooped to raise the Duke in his arms. Only Mannix, the Duke, and this man were left in the turret. The Duke was helpless. It was his legs, both legs. "Ivan, get out — quick!" commanded the Duke. "Yes, Your Grace, but with you," said Ivan. "Come," urged Mannix, "she is sinking, and you must try to help yourself." "No, no. I will go down with her. I should not want to live after she is gone. But you must go. You are the kind that women love. You will win Madeleine, have no fear." "But your wife?" "What of her?" "You believe in her ?" "Ah-h, but what does she think of me ?" Mannix looked at Ivan, who saluted and lifted the Duke through the under-hatch and onto the quarter-deck. The ship was now to the gun-deck and lurching. The quarter-deck would soon 50 Tshushima Straits be under. Mannix wondered what he could get that would float a man's body. Over by the ward-room hatch he spied a table, or what was left of it unburned, floating up from beneath. He was not sure that he could pull it through to the deck, but he tried. A half-burned leg broke off, then another, and then, Ivan rushing over and taking hold, it came through. There was also another table, with some parts of the German pianola and the wreck of a chair. Mannix and Ivan lashed the two table-tops together with strips of the table-cloth. They had now only to let them slide down from the steeply inclined deck to the ship's side. They lifted the Duke, who was but half conscious, and laid him across the table-top. It held him up without trouble. Mannix took hold of the chair for him- self, but seeing a sailor looking at it wistfully, he asked, "Can you swim ?" "No, Your Excellency." "Then take it." "Thanks to Your Excellency," and plunged into the sea with it. "But you, Ivan," asked Mannix, "can you swim ?" Swim ? I ? If I was rated by my swimming and not by my brains, I, Your Excellency, would be flying an admiral's stars." 5i Tshushima Straits "Shove off, then!" ordered Mannix. They were barely clear of the ship when she started her death-rolling. She was a monstrous sight in that final roll, with one bilge keel and a propeller up-pointing and the smoke pointing from her. And the flames flashing through the smoke. A great volume of steam up-rushed as the burning hull went under. Mannix looked about. Only the Duke, Ivan, himself, and that other sailor to whom he had given the chair seemed to have come safe away from the Kremlin. Ill Mannix now felt the sting of a wound in his right side and another in the left thigh. It seemed to come to him dimly that he had felt these before, ages before. No doubt it hap- pened at about the time the bridge was demol- ished. Only for the salt-water, which made his wounds smart, probably he would not have no- ticed them now. It was painful for him to work his arms and legs, but yet he must if he was to get anywhere with the Russian who, lying helpless and heedless across the table, seemed not to care whether he lived or died. "But I care!" thought Mannix. "No reason in the world why I should die too. Sorry though I am for Russia, still she 52 Tshushima Straits is not my country, and I have something else to hope for." With the palm of one hand resting on the edge of the table, Mannix found he could easily keep afloat, and by kicking out with his sound leg he saw that he could steer the little raft toward sev- eral straying ship's boats. Just before the action began some of the ships had cast away their boats, and now there was a string of half a dozen — gigs, whale-boats, sailing cutters — drifting about to windward and not too far away. The haze had gone entirely now and the sun shone clear; a low sun, for it was getting late in the afternoon. Mannix seized a chance to count the fleet. One other was gone besides the Krem- lin, and two others looked as if they had not long to remain afloat. Hopelessly shot through these two were, and through the holes near the water- line the sea was pushing. Scorched and blistered they were, with here and there the steel plates melted into horrible-looking bunches. All this, with huge clouds of smoke and darting tongues of flame, made terrible sights of them. As Mannix looked he saw a Russian destroyer range alongside the flag-ship. He guessed they were taking off the body of the Admiral, the limp body was handled with such extreme care. There was no sea on, but the long, oily roll broke against 53 Tshushima Straits the body of the big battle-ship and, resurging, lifted the little destroyer, now high up, and again let her sag away down. She looked, that once imposing battle-ship, like an old tramp steamer that had been lying for years on some beach till somebody happened to remember that she would make a good target for the fleet at target practice, and so they had taken her out and shot her up. Mannix marvelled that she was still afloat. At this point the Duke cried out. Mannix turned his head. The Russian was struggling to lift himself to his elbow to see the flag-ship more clearly. "A pity — a brave man, our Admiral," he said after a moment of observation, and then Mannix thought he heard him sob. Mannix could count dozens of small pieces of wreckage. These, being on a level with his eyes, loomed up like little hills on a level plain. Float- ing in the water, clinging precariously as they were to these bits of wreckage, were a few sur- viving sailors of the fleet. As they labored and struggled to get on, a destroyer of the enemy came tearing by. Her swash washed several of them into the sea. Most of the destroyer's crew seemed to be on deck, on their faces triumphant smiles. One called out and, leaning over the life- line, laughed and pointed, then threw what looked like a piece of exploded shell at one of these 54 Tshushima Straits swimming sailors. It did not strike the swimmer, who, looking over his shoulder and seeing whence it came, hurriedly submerged himself. Evidently they wanted to have a little fun with him, for they ran close to him, as if trying to see how close they could come without actually running over him. Mannix happened to remember then: Why, this was the Duke's man, Ivan. His revolver lay on the table beside the Duke. He took it up, think- ing to shoot one of them, but the destroyer was steaming perhaps twenty-five knots an hour, and in the middle of the swirl under her quarter as she turned was the Russian sailor. Mannix thought he was gone, but he was a tough one, and when the destroyer a,nd her grinning crew had passed on he bobbed up. "Was it not true, what I told Your Excellency, that I could swim well ? " he said smilingly, as he came up hand over hand. They reached one of the drifting boats. Ivan lifted in his master, and then helped Mannix, after which there came a dull explosion. "A torpedo," said the sailor sententiously. "Look, Your Excellency — the Bovodino." Mannix saw it, and the sight made him think of a death-stricken whale. Heavily, slowly, from one side to the other, the great war-ship rolled. And then, solemnly, completely over and forever from sight. 55 Tshushima Straits Mannix heard the sound of a screw behind him. It was the Japanese destroyer again. A voice hailed, but he made no answer. She drew up and stopped her engines not fifty feet away. An officer was sitting on a camp-chair on the side nearest to them. One elbow rested on the top life-line, and in the hand of that arm, between two fingers, he held a cigar. His other elbow rested on his knee, and that hand supported his chin. The very way he held the cigar and stared, it was unbearably insolent. Not a word did he say, just stared at the shipwrecked group. Mannix thought he smiled. " Beast !" said the Duke, and, raising himself on this thwart, returned with an even more insolent expression his enemy's stare. The two remained staring across so, each with all the insolence and contempt he could master. Sud- denly the Jap called out something — short, sharp, and in Russian. Mannix could not get what it was. "Oh!" cried the sailor. "Oh, to Your Grace!" and sank back. The Jap slowly placed his cigar between his lips and puffed, blew the smoke toward them, and smiled. Mannix could just see that smile in the gloom. "Pardon," said the Duke, and, taking Mannix's revolver, fired. The Jap made as if to stand up, and did half stand up for an instant. Then his body took a 56 Tshushima Straits forward lurch, sagged the life-line half to the deck, and pitched forward and overboard. With the splash of the body the sailor seized the Duke and dropped overboard. "Come, Your Excellency," he whispered to Mannix, and made for an over- turned boat which Mannix had not before no- ticed. The next in line it was, with a plank torn out near the keel. Mannix followed the sailor and helped him with the Duke. "I can use my arms but not my legs," whispered the Duke. "Now, Your Excellency," called out the sailor, and Mannix, sinking beneath the water, followed the sailor beneath the gunnel of the overturned boat. Between the surface of the water and the bot- tom of the overturned boat was room and air for twenty men to bob around and breathe in. They had only to hang onto a thwart to keep them- selves afloat. The boat which they had just left prevented them from seeing what was doing aboard the destroyer; but now an explosion almost made their upturned boat jump clear of the water. Mannix looked through the hole near the keel. The destroyer's people were shooting at the boat they had just left. Another shell and there was nothing left of it. Another shell, possibly to make sure, and then the destroyer steamed back and forth, as if looking to see if any had survived. 57 Tshushima Straits They watched her steam off in the last of the daylight, to make sure she had gone. That was just after sunset in the twilight, the sun going down in a burning glow that night. "We cannot stay here," said Mannix. "No, Your Excellency. In two minutes I shall be back," and the sailor disappeared. Soon he was alongside again with a free boat. Between them, Mannix and the sailor, they tore a few more planks from the bottom of the capsized boat, and lifted the Duke through. It was hard work, and when it was done all three again lay flat on their backs and studied the stars. It was the sailor who moved first. Without being ordered, he stepped and stayed the mast, shipped the rudder, and hoisted the two sails. "A useful chap, this sailor," commented Man- nix. "Who is he?" "He is from my estate. For hundreds of years his ancestors were the serfs of my ances- tors, but to-day the serf is a better man than his master." "Better than either of us," added Mannix. "And now we should get away. It might not be well for us to be found here in the morning — by our friends from that destroyer, for instance." "Tell Ivan what you wish. He is of iron and can go* without sleep for a week." • 58 Tshushima Straits Mannix gave the sailor the tiller, pointed to a star in the south, and the cutter began to slip through the darkness. And such a darkness! The fires from the burning Russian battle-ships only accented it. For hours the Russian sat on a thwart and looked out on the dark sea without a word. At last he turned to Mannix. "The black night of Russia. But not our fault. Nor the navy's fault. No, no. Officers and men, we know how to fight. But when we have in power bureaucrats, politi- cians, who love their country only for what they can squeeze from that country, what is to be ex- pected ? Such as he " — pointing to Ivan at the tiller — "you see how he fights when he is loyal. And when he is not loyal, who is to blame ?" He turned away, and Mannix fancied he was crying to himself. "Shall we go home, Your Grace?" Mannix asked at last. "Ah-h!" he sighed, "it is too much to hope for." They sailed on, and all went well with them thereafter. 59 THE CONSUMING FLAME The Consuming Flame THERE was a boarding-house in San Fran- cisco — the roof could be seen from the tops of a ship in the stream, and frequented mostly by ship captains it was; a great place, with Mrs. Mangan always there to put the good heart into everybody. A fine old lady, Mrs. Mangan, and the prettiest girl, they say, when she married Mangan. A notably quiet man, Mangan, except for the twice a year or so when he exploded in the grand spree which kept his vessel in port for an extra week or two. But he was lost at sea, leaving a son, Bat, who grew up into one of the dare-devil skippers of the West coast. Not a port from Magellan to Behring Sea that didn't have a story of Bat. A wild one, but great-hearted too, who made and spent a half-dozen fortunes in his time, and came home one day with a beautiful Chilian wife — not so very long this before he was lost. A foolish thing, but he said he was going to make a port that night. Gale or no gale, he would — he'd come to moorings; and so he did — and took all hands with him. 63 The Consuming Flame He left a little baby girl, which old Mrs. Man- gan took care of, for the Chilian wife did not live long after Bat was lost; and Chiquita, her father's baby name clinging, grew up, and was so pretty growing up that the boarders went daft about her, and spoilt her, naturally, as such men will. Great men of their kind, who gave — and took — easily. Jack Gateley came to know her while she was still little, because the house they lived in was owned by his father. Later, after the death of Jack's father, who drank himself straight into the grave when Jack's mother died, old Mrs. Mangan used to call him in to give him cookies; and, of course, any boy would like to be asked in there to see the big ship captains, and hear them tell of the strange places they had been to. And the talk of these wide-sailing ship-masters got into Jack's blood so that he enlisted in the Navy to see the world, and when he came back from his first apprentice cruise the beauty of Chick Mangan burst on him like a night shell on the target range. A flame of color and warmth it was; and not to Jack alone. On the street hardly a man passed — and women, too — but turned to look again. Per- haps the women, too, were not unaware of him. It used to make Jack quiver just to sit near her; and when she kissed him, that trembled 6 4 The Consuming Flame even at the thought of it, and of her own accord — the two alone in her grandmother's parlor the day he was to sail again — it was like a torch to his soul. And straight from that to the China station he went and put in three years there, regularly get- ting letters from her; scrawly letters, and neither could she spell the commonest words; but more to make his heart jump in a dozen lines than in all the books of poetry the ship's library held. And he used to write her long letters, too; and not a thing he saw in the East but he would wonder what she would think or say of it; not a thing he bought but he wondered would she like it; and for weeks before he got his discharge he thought of but little else but how she would look and act — would she kiss him again ? — and he was all of a-tremble coming up the street from the dock, and arriving at the door of the old boarding- house he was gasping like a man who had just run a long race. "She's upstairs somewhere," said Grannie Man- gan, when she had done crying over Jack, and he went up to find her. He could hear her little church organ, imag- ined her as knowing that his ship was in and wait- ing for him in the same old parlor alone, and so he did not knock. But she was not alone, did not 65 The Consuming Flame hear the door turn. It was a steamer captain with her, Prady, who was said to make much more out of smuggling silks, opium, Chinamen, one thing and another, many times what his cap- tain's pay amounted to. Prady, sidewise to the doors, was bending over her. She stopped play- ing. "Chick," murmured Prady, and kissed her — and she let him. The note in Prady's voice made Jack's heart grip small within him, and he backed out and drew the door to, but now not without being heard. Prady's challenging voice called out, "Who's there?" and Jack, having it in his mind to beat up Prady, re-entered; but, seeing her, he forgot. "Jack — Jack — oh, Jackie, but the man you've grown to be!" "Yes, and the woman you've grown to be!" She misunderstood, and such a smile that, had it lasted, Jack could not have held out; but, greet- ing his eyes fairly, she could not fail to understand. Such bewilderment, such shame to her. "Oh, Jackie!" "'Oh, Jackie!'" he mimicked her cruelly. "And so you've struck your colors, Chick — my colors, too. And your letters — were they noth- ing but to blind me ? How long has it been go- ing on ?" She shrank away from him. 66 The Consuming Flame It had all happened so quickly. She stood up when she heard the door close behind him. "Oh, Jackie, Jackie! But I wasn't bad! no, not bad, Jackie — don't think that!" but he was gone, run- ning up the street. Whatever Prady may have thought and done before, he thought and did the right thing now. "Look here, Chick, I see where that lad didn't get things right. What'll I do ? Say it — any- thing to make it right. Anything, I say — and that means anything, not barrin' death." "Oh, go away — go away." II That night Jack Gateley got drunk for the first time in his life, and everybody knew it next day. Chick sent for Prady and he went out to find Jack, and, locating him, came back to Chick. "Go back there," ordered Chick. "I'll follow you." Prady went in and pleaded with him, as well as he could with so many within hearing. But no use: the lad was just the age. All the stories that ever he heard from fo'c's'le rovers were sound- ing in his ears, and their one moral borne out. Women! women! huh! He himself had not pa- trolled the far ports without knowing something 6 7 The Consuming Flame of that. And from such surprising quarters! And not alone from those who had the name of it. What he did not appreciate was that swinging down the street in power and straightness and beauty, with his head and face and bearing, he was a figure to focus wandering eyes. But it did come at times from such surprising quarters! What might have happened to him could surely have happened to others, as others had said, and not alone from those who had the name of it. If the flooding tide of idealism had hitherto borne him in high, clean waters, so now its ebbing had left him on murky, wreck-marked shores. And Prady was the last man to influence him now. Prady! He recollected now that on his way up from the dock the day before he had met an old chum who had said, "Know this Captain Prady ? Well, he calls around there pretty often, he does." No more than that, but enough now, remembering what he had seen and what he had had in mind. Since that day before he had been wondering what weakness possessed him not to beat this man up. So now he flouted Prady, and Prady, not overtrained to deference, had to talk back to some extent. Enough. Hardly time for Prady to guard, after the word passed, before Gateley was on him. A powerful man, Prady, and wily as a serpent, but this boy could have 68 The Consuming Flame battled toe to toe with the great John L. himself and made him break ground that night. He smothered Prady, hit him so fast and often that before the other well knew he was fighting at all he was beaten. From the corner Jack dragged him across the room, hove him through the swing- ing doors and out into the street. Prady, who came then as near to achieving heroism as a man in his position might, picked himself up, and, bleeding and dishevelled, car- ried the word to the waiting Chick. "And you wouldn't expect me to hang around after that, would you, Chick ?" She, who had caught intermittent glimpses of it through the window, was thinking more of Jack than of Prady. What a man he had grown to be! "No, Captain," she said, "I'll wait my- self now. Good-night." And she waited. Lurking like an outcast in the shadows, with patrolling policemen and the passing throng viewing her shrinking figure spec- ulatively, she waited. She meant to speak to him. She would speak, and his companions, whatever sort of men they might be, could think what they pleased. And he came out at last and she stepped forth — but she did not speak. No man, but a woman! Poor Chick shrank back, but not before the woman had seen her — and laughed at 6 9 The Consuming Flame her. 'Twas plain enough, a discarded acquaint- ance of her handsome sailor's. And not so bad- looking, and a figure! She laughed again, and this time Jack took notice. He saw a woman's figure shrink into the doorway, knew not what kind she was, only that here was another woman jeering at her. He stopped. "Here," he said, and from a thick roll gave her a large bill. "Good- night." The girl eyed him and eyed the roll. He was good to look at, and he surely carried a lot of money with him. "W-why — what's the matter ?" "Nothing. Don't feel bad now — you're all right — but good-night." Chick from her doorway saw the parting; and even better than he himself, or the girl, under- stood what it meant; and the tears came to her eyes, and she not one who cried easily. She saw him then continue his way, entering a street that led toward her home. In wild hope she followed, only to see him stop before the door of what had been once his home, but long sold to Charlie Wing. She knew of this Charlie Wing, as who had not ? And suspected more than she knew. Seldom did she go out but Charlie Wing passed her before she reached home again. She could not say why, but she had a dread of Charlie Wing. With the door of Wing's place closed behind Jack Gateley, 70 The Consuming Flame Chick ran around to her own grandmother's, which was on the opposite side of the same block, and there was Captain Lappen. As wild a fellow, Dan Lappen, as ever beat through the Golden Gate; whose one hope for years had been, but almost given up now, to marry Chick Mangan. In his mind — part idealist and part plain pirate — ran a vague notion of some day doing a deed that would bring her to her knees in admiration of him. It was Lappen who once stood on the steps of her grandmother's boarding-house after a success- ful cruise, with a bundle of new five-dollar bills in the open palm of his hand, and blew them off, one by one, and "Lord in heaven! see 'em sail," kept saying while the wind was floating them down the street. Foolish ? Maybe; but it was Chick Mangan looking at him from behind the curtains, only fourteen years old this time, but tall, rounded, overpowering in her beauty even then, and think- ing him a wonder for it. Lappen wouldn't have mourned a million five-dollar bills that day, for after it he performed the most thrilling deed of all his life — a kiss stolen from Chick, a memory cherished in secret. The witchery of the girl had never left this free- booter of the sea. "Some day you'll be marryin', 71 The Consuming Flame I s'pose, Chick?" he said to her now after some desultory conversation, as he had a hundred times before in just that tone, and she answered in the same old words, "Surely, some day," only now without the smile or the blush. "And what kind of a man i" "Oh-h — " Poor Chick was worn out, unpre- pared for catechising. "Oh-h — a man with lots of money, I suppose." She had never said that before, and Lappen leaped up. "Then I'll make the money: "Oh-ho, we'll sail in the morn For the Golden Horn — Oh, the treasure pirates' bay — And we'll strike 'em aboard And we'll crimp their hoard And sink 'em where they lay." He danced a few steps in time to show how merry he felt. "Oh, those were the days, Chick!" and a wistfulness almost tremulous in his voice. Chick laughed; and it pleased him to make her laugh. "I'll sail in the mornin', to make a fortune for Chick Mangan." Chick, staring ab- sently at him, thought of something. All the men in the world had become fit for but one purpose. "You can do better than to make money, Cap- tain — to please me ?" 72 The Consuming Flame "Name it, Chick." "You know Jack Gateley?" "Jack Gateley's boy, that died — that used to sit around here by the hour and never a word but listenin' to what everybody was savin' — that little fellow?" "Yes, but a big fellow now. And you know Charlie Wing's?" Lappen knew Charlie Wing's, where the silk store was on the lower floor and the upper floors given over to gambling. And he knew Charlie Wing. Quite a man in his way, this Wing, who made a lot of money and spent all he made; said to be one-quarter Chinese, but liking not to be re- minded of it. No cringing Chinese laundryman type, but of fine large presence and large ways; a splendid dresser, perhaps too splendid a dresser — his finger-rings alone must have stood him tens of thousands. But Chick was speaking. "I want you to get him out of there. You knew his father, his mother — and the great kind they were — he's the last of his people. A pity if he went wrong. Get hold of him, Captain. For God's sake, Captain, get him away — away from doing wrong till he comes to himself." So Lappen, docile as Prady was, went and found him. Even while Lappen stood by, Jack lost a year's rent of his father's houses, and Lap- 73 The Consuming Flame pen, standing by, also saw Charlie Wing offer Jack his whole pile back. The young fellow's eyes narrowed. "Why ?" "I knew your father," said Charlie. "A good many people knew my father. Some he'd better not known. That money ? Not much; but I'll take a cigar," and did, from off the side- board, and lit up and went on, "because I feel I'm entitled to it, like any other customer," and snapped the burnt match across the room, and Lappen noticed that it went where he had aimed it — plumb centre into the silver-mounted cuspidor. "No use temptin' that lad with promises o' money-making " thought Lappen. "His kind, it's excitement they want — to forget things," and wooed him instead with hints of desperate advent- ure, and won him in the end. And at dawn they sailed out through the Golden Gate, with never a notion of when they were coming back. Across the Pacific, the length and the breadth of the sealing country, from the Japan coast clear on around, they cruised. They raided rookeries and they raided the wide sea. Wherever were any seals, season or no season, law or no law, they hunted them. They were not alone at it, for Japs and Russians and a few from British Columbia were there; but it was taking big chances, for all four nations— Japan, Russia, Eng- 74 The Consuming Flame land, and their own country — had war-ships there to see that the rookeries were protected and the pelagic laws observed. And the two men grew to know each other, and Lappen to like the other rarely, as Chick Mangan well knew he would. And Lappen, who meant originally to make use of Jack to further his own interest with Chick Mangan, gave over the notion. Talking with the young fellow, pumping his very soul as they walked the deck on quiet evenings, the lad revealed himself, and Lappen came to have a higher notion of many things. He had broken his promise to keep the boy from wrong; but he would bring him home and give her the money he had gathered so that she could hold her head up — no pauper — if ever she married this lad. Lord, what was money to him ? And hadn't he sailed, as a boy, with great Bat Mangan, her father, who'd 've given him his shirt? Perhaps she would refuse to take it, but at least she would stand off and say, "Well, Dan Lappen, you're sure something of a man!" and maybe kiss him on her wedding day. And this cruise over, he would never again run against the law — never. The Hattie Rymish was chased a dozen times, and forced to lay in hiding after each chase till it was safe to try again. Lappen had, during this time, converted a good many seal-skins into gold 75 The Consuming Flame — English, American, and Russian gold pieces. "In case anything happens to me, I want you to bring that money home to Chick," he would say to Jack. Even should he get caught or killed he made Jack promise he would tell her what chances he took to get it. "She'll like that," he said. "A good pile there now," he said one day, "but it will be twice that before the year's out." And so it would have, long before that year was out, if he had not grown over-bold. It was off Sagha- lien Island and a Jap cruiser; not three months before this an American gun-boat had killed half a dozen Japs for just what they had done a dozen times. Their chance now was to run in and tuck behind the rocks somewhere. Twenty miles or so ahead of them was a goodly place. A boat was lowered over the side and the men told to row ashore — no more than a quarter of a mile. By and by the vessel would drop back and pick them up. Lappen and Jack, by staying aboard, hoped to save the vessel; and they did get her almost into the cove, with everything ready for getting away quickly, but the cruiser had her long-reaching rifles and, while yet four thousand yards away, she opened up on the schooner; and it is a pretty big shell, a three-inch, to be tearing up the water 7 6 The Consuming Flame alongside a little wooden hull. The Hattie wasn't too easy to hit, they having put her end-to, mak- ing a narrow enough target of her; but in time something was bound to come aboard; and one shell did, taking the main-mast ten feet above the deck and scattering pine splinters everywhere, big flying billets that came nigh to killing them both. Close enough that, and Jack made ready the boat to row ashore while Lappen ran below to get his bags of gold. "Oh, we shot away her mizzen and we shot away her fore, And 'Quarter! quarter!* cried they, as o'er the rail we bore. But the quarter that we gave them was the bottom of the sea, A-sailin' down the coast of the High Sag-a-lee," carolled Lappen. "And God! but when I get that back to 'Frisco, there'll be money enough for her — and a story to tell her!" And so it would have, but that he had to pry open his state-room door, which was swollen, and was still tugging at the door when a shell came through the stern, straight on through the cabin, through the after bulkhead, and exploded somewhere in the main-hold. There was no need to tug at the door then; it flew open and with it almost half the vessel's side. The water rushed 77 The Consuming Flame into her so fast that in no time Lappen was stand- ing to his knees. But the closet door within the state-room still stuck. "Come on," yelled Jack from deck; "never mind the money!" "No, no!" cried Lappen; "it's for Chick!" and Jack heard the smash of his boot driving through the splintering wood. Jack was holding the bow of the boat to the vessel's side, all ready for a quick leap. "Hurry, hurry — for God's sake, hurry!" he cried. "Coming!" Lappen called out, and then it was that a shell caught her below the water-line and lifted her — her whole after-end. For perhaps a second Jack saw him. He must have got to the top of the cabin-ladder; in one last great effort he must have hoisted the two bags of gold high over his head, for they showed clear of the water, the hands and two wrists under them — no more than that — and down again in the last rush of the smothered vessel. Jack jumped into the boat and drove her aft. He did not have to go clear astern, but rowed her straight over what was left of the quarter-rail, even then well under water. He looked down. He could see nothing; but thinking that Lappen might be tangled in the main-sheet, he dove. The water was mussed up and still he could see nothing; but standing on her settling deck and 78 The Consuming Flame feeling something under one foot, he stooped. It was one of the bags of gold. He kicked it away. He felt around further till, his ear-drums and eyeballs ready to pop, he let himself shoot to the top of the water. He waited a while for breath, and then dove again, but could find nothing, and came up. Now he climbed into the boat; and as he sat there, he thought what a pity it all was. The trusting primitive man, with just the little touch of guile, the dare-devil adventurer, the incorrigible law-breaker, but always the fine seaman — above all, the good shipmate with whom he had come to feel akin. "Blast you! blast you, Chick Mangan!" he suddenly exploded, and then, the shells breaking all around, rowed ashore. Ill There was varied experience — the Russo- Japanese war for one kind — and four years had gone when Jack Gateley, the adventurer, returned to San Francisco. He looked up old Mrs. Mangan first of all, and found her, as usual, in the kitchen downstairs. Crooning to herself she was: 79 The Consuming Flame "The cold north wind was on the Bay — O, the Bay, the green-white Bay! And o'er the waters and far away His tall ship did sail that day. O, the green-white stormy Bayl When my lad's ship did sail away — Over the waters and far away — O, the day, the day, the day!" " Grannie !" "Oo-ra-lay!" exclaimed the old lady, and cried over him. And Jack almost cried too. "And the Roosians — or the Japaneses — which was it? — didn't shoot you, Jackie? No? Well, they tried hard enough, I'll be bound. How many lost on that ship you were on?" "Nine hundred, Grannie." "And how many of you saved ?" "Three." "Three? Glory be to ye three! But oh, the poor men, the poor men ! But that's war, and we must take it like everything else, no doubt, we being what we are. But you're lookin' older, Jackie." "I feel older — a lot older, Grannie. But" — he had to pull himself to speak of it — "what's this about that man Greig used to come around here?" "Why, he's dead, boy." "I know, but what about him ?" 80 The Consuming Flame "He saw Chick one day, him drivin' by behind a pair of those fast horses he owned so many of, and hunted the city high and low till he got some- body to make them acquainted. A fine, free- spending, handsome man, and lively — but ter- rible jealous, if anybody so much as looked at Chick. He wanted to marry Chick, and I don't know did she promise or not. I know she'd done most anything to get away, poor dear. 'Twas after you were reported lost with Lappen and the vessel in Asia, or wherever it was. She used to get so terribly tired, the poor child, of everything. And then came a sealer in to say that Lappen was lost but not you, and the pair of us, Chick and myself, talked so much about you that I believe the man got jealous. Anyway, the next thing I knew he used to be coming around here to see Chick and she wouldn't see him. There was something more than I knew in it. He said to me, 'Grannie, Chick's all right, but too straight- speaking for her own good — people don't under- stand her. I know I don't, and I've come to forty years of age.' He offered to leave her all his money if she'd marry him when he lay dying — his heart was weak — just take his name. But she wouldn't. So he left it to her anyway, and it's lyin' in the bank yet — she never touchin' one cent of it. Oh-h" — the old lady pushed her arms in a help- 81 The Consuming Flame less gesture from her. "The poor girl's crazed, worn to the thickness of a straw. Wanted to die, she said once. 'What trouble's come into your life,' I said, 'that you want to die — you poor girl that's never known husband or child?' 'Maybe that's it,' she says." Jack thrummed the table. "And who's this other man, Grannie, they say she's engaged to?" "I don't know is she. Macron, a fine sort of man, a club man like. There used to be lots of talk about him in the papers." "Why, he's most old enough to be her father, Grannie." "True, boy. But who knows, perhaps bein' older, as Greig said, he understands her — which every one don't, maybe." Jack meditated on Macron, a man of wealth and family, whose adventures in other days used to set the country gossiping. A wonderful man in his way, but "We" — Mrs. Mangan was running on — "we didn't hear till a week ago about your bein' saved from that terrible battle." "Wasn't it in the papers ?" '"Twas in first — two years ago — that you were lost, and your picture. Chick was glad, and Macron too." 82 The Consuming Flame "Macron?" exclaimed Jack. And abruptly, "Anybody upstairs, Grannie ?" "There is — Captain Prady. And go up, Jackie, like a good boy, and say a civil word to him. If you and him had some fallin' out, don't lay that agin him now, the poor man. He's that forlorn about Chick. What's there in the girl, anyway ? Sure she's no prettier than was her mother." "Or her grandmother — from what they say," Jack smiled. "Oh-h — no deluderin', though I was no fright in my day. But that poor man, Prady, that gave up his steamer for a shore berth " "And why?" "Why? It's not me can say, but he's hauntin' this old place since as far back as they say you and Lappen was lost. The poor man! go up and say a civil word to him, Jackie-boy." So Jack went upstairs and said, "How are you ?" to Prady, whereat the older man's face lit up immeasurably. They chatted of one thing and another; of everything but Chick. Suddenly, unaccountably to Jack, Prady's eyes glowed. "I knew she'd be here, but I s'pose she's heard." "Heard what?" Prady only gazed incredulously at Jack, who presently heard the door open and close, and then 83 The Consuming Flame her step below stairs with Grannie. Then, by and by, her step ascending the stairs. She came in and shook hands with Prady. Jack, who was in the far corner, had also risen to greet her; but, seeming not to see him, she had taken a position by the window which looked out onto the garden of Jack's old home. Jack saw how slender she was now; the old blazing color, too, had faded to ivory. Without warning she turned on him. "Tell me about Lappen." Jack told her briefly, laying stress only on Lap- pen's speech of her and his ending. "A brave man — and died on your account, I think." "On my account, Jack?" "On your account, yes." "On my account," she repeated; then most irrelevantly, to Jack's way of thinking, "Why did he risk bringing you to disgrace, then ?" "Me into disgrace? Me? Was I of a child's age, or what ? He loved you, dared for you, died for you, and you say that! God, but you've grown to be a terrible woman, Chick!" "Perhaps so," she said slowly. And again, "Perhaps so," even more slowly. And then, sighing, "Well-11 — I don't imagine that all of us understand ourselves," and, sitting at the little organ, strayed from one piece to another. Jack 8 + The Consuming Flame came out of a reverie to find he was listening to the Lamentations. Jeremiah, viewing the ruins of Jerusalem, surely voiced a great sorrow; and the mediaeval old monk who later set the prophet's lamentation to music, he, too, must have known what sorrow was. Jack, sitting there, home after his years of peril and breathing it in, felt that it was much easier to die than to keep on living. If ever he went to battle again he hoped the ship's band would play what she was playing now. But no, no band could play it properly — it would need to be a church organ. She ceased playing. A moment of silence and, sofdy, "Dan Lappen — off Saghalien — I hope he's resting well — and will forgive," and looking more directly at Jack, "You look more like the old Jackie now. But not so awfully sad, Jack. Come here — see." She was looking out onto the neglected garden. "Do you remember the little girl, Jackie, who used to look across from her window mornings to you in your window, you a curly-haired boy in your night-gown, leaning out to point out to the Chinese servant what flowers to cut for your mommer's breakfast-table — do you ?" There was a speaking beauty in her eyes, and Jack's heart was thumping terribly. He dared 85 The Consuming Flame not speak, but only for Prady being there he would have gathered her to him. Pledged or no to Macron or any other man, it would not have mattered. "And now it's a gambling house." Abruptly an exclamation, almost like a cry wrung out of her, and she was off. The door closed below. Prady stepped into the other, the front room. He returned soon. "She's gone — around the corner to Charlie Wing's — to the silk store. But there's a ladies' game there — such ladies!" He stepped over and looked gloomily out of the rear window. "That Charlie Wing, for all his polish and easy ways," he went on, "he's a desperate man. He is not used to having anybody cross him." "No ? But what's he got to do with her ?" Prady showed that he heard, but no answer came from him. Thirsting to hear of her smallest do- ings, Jack forced another question: "Does she go there often ? " "Twice before — this week. A silk store — but she never brings home any silk. You know," he went on hastily, "she may not be playing there, though if she did could you blame her? That Macron, I s'pose he bores her most to death — everything bores her these days, she that used to 86 The Consuming Flame get so much fun out of the littlest thing." He looked up at the ceiling as if bored to death him- self, and then all at once exploded with: "A won- der you wouldn't tell her to cut it out!" "Me?" Jack wondered what had come over the man. "Me?" "Yes, you." And after a while: "This Charlie Wing shot two men in Lima once — used to run a place in the Chinese quarter there. 'Twas me smuggled him aboard my steamer and brought him here — paid me five thousand dollars for it." He paused. "I wish now I hadn't. But I think Til take a walk down the street. So long." Out in the hall he stopped to look into the case where so many of Chick's old presents were hung up, those given her by the ship captains in the old days: shells, beads, bows and arrows, knives, guns, and so on — a regular little museum. Jack could hear the glass doors sliding, but paid no attention to that. Soon the street door closed behind him. Jack stepped over to the rear window and looked out on that back area, and for no other reason than that she had been doing so a while ago. There was the yard to Charlie Wing's place. It had once been a fine garden, and a grand old mansion too, his father's, and he had lived there for a long time. — had been born there. A thousand times he had played in that very garden, and so had she; 87 The Consuming Flame and then he got to brooding over it, and over her life, and over what Prady had said of this Charlie Wing. In the middle of his thoughts it came to him in a flash. He had not believed that he could ever again feel toward her as in the old days, but that afternoon her personality had taken hold of him again; and now he grew cold to think of her being in Charlie Wing's place. In older days he would have acted on the impulse, but of late he had got into the way of thinking things out. So he was brooding over it all — Charlie Wing, Prady, Greig, Macron — wherein did it concern him ? The report of a pistol-shot brought him jumping out of it. A dull sound it was, but he knew it for a big-bored revolver shot. He picked out an open window, a lace curtain across it. It must have come from there. No longer puzzling reflection, but down the backstairs in two strides — across Grannie's backyard in three more. The door to Charlie Wing's he found bolted on the inside, but the wall was easily scaled. He had not forgotten the lay-out of his own old home — straight up the backstairs he rushed and straight for that back- room — he knew that room, too, of the open win- dow. Another shot, and almost at the same instant the door swung open before him. It was Charlie 88 The Consuming Flame Wing backing out. The revolver was still in his hand. Jack looked beyond Charlie and there he saw Chick, her head resting on a table as if she were weary — frightened he would say, if it were any other girl. On the floor was Prady, his legs stretched out before him and his back resting against the wall. Blood was on his white shirt front and a knife in his hand. Like coming death he looked. Charlie said something in Chinese and turned. A quick man, but not quite quick enough. Jack caught his lifted wrist, and the bullet went on by him — somewhere. He wrenched the wrist — he could feel the bones crack- ing under his grip and see Wing grow clear white with the agony. Before the weapon had hit the floor he had him by the throat, but Wing did not die by his hand. Over Wing's shoulder he saw Chick lift her head and he saw that she knew him. And he had no more time for Wing. He heaved him off and back on the floor he fell to Prady, who Jack had thought was all gone, but who now reached over and drove his knife deep into Wing's neck. The knife Jack knew for one from Chick's case, one of those ivory-handled knives from the East that Prady himself had brought home to her years before. And Jack had seen the mata- dors in Lima kill their bulls with just that same stroke — behind the shoulders and down through 8 9 The Consuming Flame the heart. And so, no doubt, had Prady; and pos- sibly, also, had Charlie Wing. He took her up. Once she would have been quite a weight; but not now — the consuming fire had worn her. He could feel her lips to his ear. "Oh-h — but I'm so glad it's you that came to take me away." Turning to the door, he said to Prady: "If anybody comes, let it be Charlie and you and me alone." "All right," agreed Prady — "just you and me and Charlie. Didn't I tell you he was bad ? He said something to Chick — I couldn't get the words, but Chick slapped his face. I heard the slap, and her voice like she was ready to cry; but not for fear, not Chick. 'Why, you yellow beast!' she said. 'Do you think because — ' and then I, lis- tening at the curtain, jumped in. But he had the gun all the time, he was that crazy about her — you didn't know that; I did — for years. He didn't give me a chance — seemed like he thought I was her man. If that wasn't a joke!" Prady laughed terribly. " I struck at him, but he was too quick — too quick. ... So it '11 be as you say, Gateley, no word of her . . . and I'll lie like a Chinaman — just me — and — and him — and he's gone — and I'm go-ing. . . ." 90 The Consuming Flame IV Jack carried her out through the old garden and into the boarding-house, meeting nobody on the way, to the same old sofa in the same old parlor. She was looking up at him as he laid her down. "I'm glad it's you, Jackie-dear," she said, and reached, weakly enough, for his hand. "I hurried back here to-day just hoping to catch you — I heard you were home again. I told Macron. He knows all about you and me, Jackie. Before ever I knew him long I told him. You said something about showing my colors once, Jackie, and I told him early. See here, dear." She had been shot through the right breast, and the blood from the wound was spreading over her waist — a navy-blue serge, the color he liked so. Her throat seemed to be swelling and he opened her collar. No baby's throat was whiter or smoother. She put her hand to her waist and he unfastened it. She took his other hand while he was doing that and pressed it to her breast, then led it to a cord which, when he drew it out, he saw had fastened to it a medal. "See — your colors, Jackie." His own medal of honor it was. He had won it while an apprentice boy and had given it to her on his return home. He thought 9« The Consuming Flame she had long ago lost it or thrown it away, or at least, in her heedless way, had given it to somebody. "Macron never minded, Jack. That is half why I liked him, I think. No, Macron never minded. But Greig! I used to wear it inside; but this day I had it outside — under my coat — and he saw it. He guessed what it was and asked me, and I said yes. 'Then take it off and leave it off/ he said to me. ' I'll not take it off or leave it off,' I said. 'Take it off,' he said, 'or I'll go — and for good/ And I said 'Go!'" She looked at him then, a little proudly and yet timidly, as if he might not like her speaking of it. "He came back, but I never could like him again. Did I do right, Jackie ?" The humility of her left him in speechless shame. He could have died at that moment, merely to reassure her. "And there's a key — here." Jack drew it out. "Ask Grannie and she'll show you the box — it's got everything you ever sent me, every letter, every ebony elephant, every ivory pagoda, every souve- nir spoon — every little thing and everything I ever saw in the papers about you — nothing else but you in it. And nobody's ever seen the inside of it but myself. There you'll find the letters — wrote but never sent — I want you to read them now. Read them . . . and you'll know I did 92 The Consuming Flame love you, dear." She choked a little then, and he bent over to raise her up. "Sweetheart," she whispered — "nearer." To the impelling love and the beauty in her eyes he bent . . . still lower . . . and they kissed . . . " It's the truest kiss I ever gave, Jackie. If it's a sin, then God help me!" Out of her weakness she rested a while, looking at him — saying no word but looking. ... "I never meant harm to nobody, Jackie — to nobody — never, never! All I ever did I just couldn't help. Before I knew it was wrong, those captains used to pick me up and kiss me — and say things to me — like Prady. Poor Prady! I could burn for it now, but you must not think me better than I was — and I did. But I wasn't a bad girl — no more than that. I couldn't seem to help that, and surely they who used to know my father could mean no harm to me. But never after that day . . . that terrible day you left me. I never felt the same after that day. When you left me that day the blood left my heart. I used to cry the long nights through. And I hated the name of who- ever might try to lead you astray. You won- dered about Lappen — him, too, he promised me different." She remained quiet for some little time. Her strength had been going from her. Jack feared 93 The Consuming Flame she would speak no more, but she looked up to say, "And even to-day, Jackie, I got to thinking of when I was a little girl and you still a little boy, and I asked Charlie Wing to let me go to that room. It was upstairs in the gambling part, I know. But I went. And I raised the window to look out into the garden as you used to, but I saw you standing at the window there, and I drew back so you would not see me, and just then Charlie Wing came in and I drew farther back into the room so he wouldn't look out and see you. Something told me he did not like you. And there we were alone — and he misunderstood. Maybe I shouldn't have blamed him, for what could he guess of the heart of a girl, how after all the years the memory of even the little things will still cling. Maybe, too, good women don't go to the gambling part. And when he shot I didn't mind it much, only till you came in. * He'll blame me again,' I thought; but when you looked at me as you did I could have died with joy. I wasn't afraid for you. I knew you would crush him if you wanted to. Remember the night you fought Prady ? Every blow you struck that night I struck with you, and every blow he struck you, struck me. Poor Prady! Well, God forgive me if I'm to blame. . . . Sometimes I think my mother died too soon. . . . 94 The Consuming Flame "And about Grannie, sweetheart. Be good to her, won't you ? I know you will; but be double good to her for me. Oh, the nights she's laid awake while I cried myself to sleep, and she not knowing why. Be good to Grannie. ..." The blood was coming in little bubbles from her lips. Jack, wiping them away, tried not to let her know it. But she knew. "I think I ought to pray a little, Jackie, don't you ? Won't you pray with me — and for me, sweetheart ? — and for Captain Prady — and Captain Lappen — they were both brave men, weren't they, dear ?" So she began and he repeated: "Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. . . . And now — yes, and for Charlie Wing too, for how could he guess ? . . . Wait, wait, sweetheart — the baby prayer too. Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weep- ing in this valley of tears. Turn then, Most Gra- cious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile . . . What's next, dear ? Yes — oh yes . . . That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ . . . pray for us sinners now — and — yes, now and at the hour of — of our death-t-th — What comes after death, Jackie?" "Amen, sweetheart." 95 The Consuming Flame "... Ah-h, yes, A-men" — her fingers closing tightly over his. "Ah-h — ah-h" — the least little bit of a sigh. . . . He buried his medal of honor with her. . . . He thought she would like it so. . . . The great battle fleet was about to sail from Hampton Roads. And Gateley came down to enlist. One thing sure, truth or no in the flying rumors — feast, fight, or frolic, whichever it would prove, here plainly was one of those who "hoped for the best." Nothing happened to the fleet, but one day came target practice. Headed for the battle range was Gateley's ship with her men to battle stations. Down the line she was steaming, fourteen knots her speed, with all her port broadside and turret guns booming. At their stations, stripped to their racing jerseys, eyes glowing, chests heaving, lips curving, but nerves under control, were the turret crew. So would they strip and look in battle, and no more eager to win in real battle than now. Round about were bags of powder piled up. Hardly prudent? No; but prudent people never make or save nations. The God of War there was 9 6 The Consuming Flame the turret captain, Gateley — wide-shouldered, lean- waisted as a race-horse — astraddle of the entering hatch. Through his tight-fitting jersey his torso swelled; and his big arms, too, were bulging with restrained power. Two miles she had gone, and nine thousand yards away a badly shot up target fluttered in the warm sea-air. Slugging down the battle line came the great ship again. It looked like a new world's record. From aloft they could see far out another solid rectangle of painted canvas being cut to flying ribbons. The time was almost up, the light of anticipation gleaming in their eyes — particularly the twelve-inch records would be badly broken. Boom, flame, and smoke it was along the whole ship's side, when pfF! almost an explosion it was, and flame and smoke not reck- oned with from beneath the after-turret entering hatch. How that bag of powder was tossed out without an explosion nobody knew or could explain. The rules forbade speech till time was up, and another shot remained to be fired. And that was fired. "Something burning in the right hoist," said somebody then, and the turret captain dropped, almost threw himself, down through the four decks of the other ammunition hoist to the hand- ling-room. 97 The Consuming Flame Above him in one hoist the flames were roaring. Sparks of burning cloth began to fall on the steel deck of the handling-room, and there were bags of powder not yet stowed. "Don't touch that — nor don't wait for that — close your magazine doors!" he called, and they saw him jump for the sizzling little spark as they pulled-to the maga- zine doors, themselves inside. Almost with the cushioned shock of the closing doors came the flash and a great pf-f-fF! — he had all but tossed the eighty-pound charge into the passageway when it had gone off. Two men came running in just in time to see him standing there with his arms crossed before his face. They saw him, too, smooth his eyelids with the tips of his fingers. "It must be terrible to be blind," he said. His jersey was burnt off his body. The miracle of his escape overcame them. "You still alive, Gate?" "I guess so." "It's sure your lucky day." "Right again, son — my lucky day," and went up on deck. The surgeon wished to have him brought below to the hospital, but Gateley begged off*. "If you don't mind, sir, I'll stay up here," he said. So they allowed him to stay on deck, where he walked the quarter, from his turret to the ship's side, with never a word to anybody and 9 8 The Consuming Flame nobody a word to him. Shipmates came up to him, with a mind to say something; but, meeting him face to face, they turned away without saying it. And so he walked the deck — one hour, two hours, three hours, all that afternoon — turning sometimes to look out over the sea, at the sky, across to the other ships of the fleet; but no sign of what might be going on within, only when he would lift his head to gulp down the cool air. This ter- rible self-repression was too much for some of his shipmates — they went away to cry. But never a sign of weakness in him till suddenly he turned and looked up to the flag. "Good-by, old ship — good ship, too." His voice was low. "Good-by, old Navy. I only wish 'twas on the real battle line," and saluted then the flag. Turning, he found a ring of his shipmates enclosing him. "Good-by, fellows," and — this in a voice low but clear as the ship's own bell — "Coming!" he called out, and fell full- length backward on the deck. The surgeon knelt above his body. "Though hardly any need," he observed. "He was fated from the first. He inhaled the flame, and it burnt him out inside." 99 GREE GREE BUSH Gree Gree Bush OUEER how a man knocking around the world gets here a hint, there a hint, of a thing that has been puzzling him for years, and at last, all of a sudden usually, finds he has all the missing threads straight and untangled in his palm. I have in mind the case of Bowles. Bowles wasn't his right name at all, but we'll call him that, for it was under that name he enlisted in the navy, where they still speak of him as the "Gree Gree Man." But that enlistment occurred later. Bowles came of a family up our way that, well, the newspaper men — I had a brother a newspaper man — used often to sit down and wonder if the Bowleses really did believe themselves so much better than ordinary people, or were they just try- ing to fool themselves, too. There is probably not much going on in a city that a dozen good police reporters don't pretty near get to the bottom of — if they're really interested. Bowles's people were great hypocrites and Bowles, being brought up to believe that he was better stuff than other fellows, naturally broke when the strain came. 103 Gree Gree Bush Before he was out of college he had done a dozen things that another boy would have been put away for. But one day he just had to jump out, and in a hurry; and cut off from leaving the city by train or steamer, he sailed on a bark that was bound for the West Coast of Africa, on one of a line of old hookers that used to sail more or less regularly for the West Coast, going out with a small holdful — rum, striped calico, brass wire, and so on, missionaries sometimes — and coming back with a big holdful of ivory, palm-oil, pepper, and things like that. A nice, quiet business that used to pay about a thousand per cent one time. Perhaps it does yet. And it was a great relief to all the Bowleses when young Bowles got away without getting caught, and they didn't care how long he stayed away. What I am about to say now of Bowles's doings on the West Coast is the summing up of what I learned at different times from a dozen people — a couple of ship captains, a bosun's mate in the navy, a dozen sailormen, stokers, and so on, who happened to be on the West Coast when Bowles was there. Out there Bowles fell in with old Chief Thomson, who used to run things pretty much to suit himself over a country larger than many a European nation controlled. Thomson was a name the white traders gave 104 Gree Gree Bush him. It may have been that Bowles — though Kipp was the name he took out there — possibly Bowles, coming of a hard-fibred trading ancestry, showed the old fellow a few new commercial tricks. He must have been of some material use, for old chief was too shrewd and Bowles too cold-blooded for anybody to suspect it was a matter of sentiment. So fat and wide that he had to swing his legs side- ways like a duck when he walked — that was old chief but respected by all the white people, even though he was as complete an old villain as ever lived in some ways, for he had force, and he was a man who meant well by his own people; that is, after he'd had his fill of eating, drinking, and gen- eral pleasuring. Old chief was at the head of half a dozen secret societies — at least half a dozen. Africa is rotten with secret societies, worse than any white country. Among white peoples, of course, those who want political office or a good grocery trade — that kind are the great "joiners"; but down there it was the ceremonies that attracted them as much as anything. In places there they still practise some of the things they used to do ages ago. It is hard to make people believe this, al- though in our own country the negroes still prac- tise voodooism, and in Jamaica and Hayti they still practise Obeaism. One society, however, 105 Gree Gree Bush old Chief Thomson made little secret of — Africa for the Africans was what it meant. And by an African he meant a black, and by a black, anybody with one drop of black blood. "One drop of negro blood always a negro," he used to say, or as near to it as he could in English. "The white people made that law — let it stand." There are plenty like Thomson who want their people to rule everybody in Africa — blacks, whites, and yellows. Why not, he used to say, when Japan was planning to do the same thing in Asia, and the whites had been doing it in Europe and America. Old Chief Thomson carried his hope of this last society so far that he had had his eldest son educated in England, so that he might be better fitted to carry on the great work for the race. There was a sort of branch of the society that old chief would not talk so freely about; but the scheme, so 'twas said', was to take boys and girls, especially girls, when they were young, and train them, so that by and by they would be able to train the coming race, to lead them to better things. The girls brought up like that used to be hid in the jungle, where if any man was found, he was put to death. Of this society old chief was believed to be Zoah, which meant Grand Knight, Grand Master, Exalted Ruler, Great Mogul, what- 106 Gree Gree Bush ever anybody wants to call it, and clear on up to the 133d degree. Of course, though talky negroes sometimes gave out hints, all this was mostly guesswork with the whites. There never was one who really knew anything about them — unless it was this same Bowles. And that was one thing they all had against Bowles — he was making up with the blacks against his own; and later, when he got tangled up and they got after him, in the Berg mystery, it was as much because of his being on the side of the natives as for the belief that he had a hand in Berg's death. This Berg was a steamer captain running up and down the West Coast, an Ameri- can, a fine sort according to the rating of his kind, and he had married, many years before this, a girl who, it was whispered, had negro blood in her. Traders' lies! However, this day he went up the river to meet old chief, taking his daughter with him. The mother being dead, she lived on the steamer with her father. Captain Berg intended only to run up to the lagoon and back; but he was a great gambler and he wound up by joining in a little game with Bowles and young Chief Thomson, who was now back from England. The game stretched out, ran into the evening — how late no real matter, though Captain Berg left at nine 107 Gree Gree Bush o'clock, according to young Chief Thomson and Bowles. Next morning, Captain Berg's body was found by his crew floating in the lagoon. It was known he could not swim, and as Thomson and Bowles said he had been drinking during the game, it was not hard to believe that he had fallen into the lagoon while looking for his landing. But his daughter ? She had gone with her father, Bowles and young chief said, and of course she must have drowned with him. Well, they waited for her body to come up. But it didn't come, whereupon people began to talk. They could not reach young chief, old chief had too much power for that, but Bowles had to get out. Old chief and young chief together could not save him. If he had not gone, some of Captain Berg's crew — he had two or three desperate ones among them — would surely have killed him. So he hur- ried away, this time to Manila, where he enlisted in the navy. And here is what I started to say in the begin- ning: it is odd how we get onto a man's trail and lose it, then pick it up again, and at last see him run down. Our ship was lying into Rio Janeiro. The bosun was overseeing the unshipping of the ship's wash line. His great friend, Mr. Glavin, and myself were watching him. Quite a man, too, the bosun. Only the day before a big coal-passer 108 Gree Gree Bush had suddenly given a wild yell and leaped over the side. The bosun, without yelling, had gone over after him. It was a fine thing really, but not as the bosun explained it. "The ridiculousest thing you ever saw," says he. "The big brute, he weighed one hundred and ninety and I don't s'pose I weigh over one hundred and twenty-five, and he couldn't swim, and tried to throw his arms around my neck. And instead gave me a black eye — look," and the bosun showed the eye. "But I give him a knee in his stomach under water, and a wallop in the nose out o' water, and when he let go, another wallop in the jaw. 'You big loafer,' I says, 'what you tryin' to do, hah — drown me ?' Then I towed him to the gangway." Here the bosun paused and reflected: "I ain't got the tonnage, though, to be pulling these big cart-horses out o' the water regularly. The next one '11 be liable to drown if he waits for me. Now if 'twas Glavin" — he pointed a finger to the chief machinist, who was leaning over the rail and gazing abstractedly toward the city — "if it was Glavin now, he'd 've just gone on treadin' water and tossed him onto the armor-belt shelf all in one motion" — which was the most exaggerated praise, of course, but going to show that physically, at least, Glavin rated high in that ship. 109 Gree Gree Bush As I took to sizing up Glavin, a young appren- tice lad approached him. The boy said something in a low tone. Glavin regarded him in mingled grief and surprise. "And only yesterday afternoon the master-at-arms tells me he saw you shooting crap atop of one of the cold boilers," he said. "That's why, sir," said the lad. "They cleaned me out." "Now look here," said Glavin, and gave him a fine dressing down, after which he handed a five- dollar bill to the boy. The bosun roared aloud. "Some easy — you! On the level, Glavin, did ever you refuse a man a dollar in your life ? " "Yes, I did — once," answered Glavin. Only that then, but later he told the whole story. And here it is as he told it, the story of the Gree Gree Man. I I was a chief water-tender at this time on one of the heavy-armored cruisers of the Asiatic squad- ron, and there was an ordinary seaman who was also a great tailor, and being willing to work early and late, he used to make, oh, maybe, two hundred dollars a month over and above his pay. And being the best-hearted fellow in the world, he gen- erally gave it away again. Didn't matter who no Gree Gree Bush it was that asked Tailor Haley for money; he got it, if Haley had it. And, of course, Haley never saved a cent in spite of all he used to make. Well, we were laying into Nagasaki one day when Haley broke his liberty and came aboard good and drunk. It happened to be right after some American bluejackets had taken charge of a souvenir store where they'd been paying seven- teen prices for things and then not getting the real article, though not for anything like that did our fellows begin the trouble. It was that some of them 'd made the Chinese cruise before and so happened to know the money there, and when this yellow chap tried to short-change them it was like sounding general quarters. There must have been, oh, a dozen or fifteen shop people went out of commission before our people sounded off that day. Well, our ship's party was known to 've been around about there at the time, and the Japan- ese merchant who'd lost some money and come aboard, he picked out Tailor Haley as the man that started the trouble in his place, and a Japanese policeman backed him up. How did he know ? Why, by Tailor's hat- band, he said. He couldn't read a word of our print, mind you, nor could the policeman; but they both could read the name on the hat band. Well, all right. in Gree Gree Bush Now Tailor knew, as we found out later, that it was a chief petty officer who'd come so near to putting this particular merchant out of commis- sion, and Tailor knew, too, that that same chief water-tender was drunk when he did it, so drunk that he didn't remember about it when he came to. Somebody had to go to the brig for it, and Tailor, with never a word, went; that is, no word except to say, to whiten a little the black mark against the service, "I was too drunk at the time to know what I was doing." As to the money part, everybody who knew Tailor laughed at that the same as Tailor did. "Lord," says Tailor, "you can put me down for most anything foolish, but when it comes to stealin!" However, after a summary court-martial, he was dishonorably discharged, but the stealing charge not proved. The officers, knowing Tailor, wouldn't stand for that. Now, I knew that Tailor didn't do it. How ? Well, Tailor and myself were great chums, and the afternoon this thing happened we were in a tea-house with the Geisha girls dancing and we sitting cross-legged on the mats, drinking tea while we watched 'em. Now, casting back to make out why Tailor stood for what he did, I remembered — and there were but few men for'ard who didn't remember — 112 Gree Gree Bush that day before we left San Francisco and the two sisters of this chief water-tender who came aboard to bid him good-by. And this chief water-tender, in spite of what had happened to Tailor, was a good fellow. And if he hadn't been we'd have overlooked it for the sake of his sisters; there was nothing promenading the quarter, let alone the for'ard deck, to be rated with them that day. They certainly made prizes of the whole chief water-tender mess. They had everything going to do it — looks and figure and the quick wit, and the heart that's more than all. And so maybe you'll understand — Tailor worshipping on the edge of the crowd and that chief water-tender, the brother of these girls, hoping to go up for his war- rant before long. Do you see what it meant to the chief water-tender and the kind of chap Tailor was — in his fourth enlistment and still an ordinary seaman. To Tailor the navy was only another place to pass the time in, while to this chief water- tender, brother of those girls, it meant his whole life. Well, Tailor was dishonorably discharged, and there he was broke and blue, and ten thousand miles from home. So I beat the decks with a paper, one mess after the other, and they gave like sailors and bluejackets: chief petty officers five dollars, first-class men four dollars, second- ly Gree Gree Bush class three, and so on down to the young appren- tice boys, who gave a dollar each; and many would have given more, a month's pay some of them, if they'd been allowed. Everybody gave but one fellow — well, I won't disgrace any branch of the service by saying what division he was in; but this fellow — Bowles, as you can guess — instead of money gives me a lecture. Said Tailor shouldn't get anything from anybody. Deserved no pity — ought to have saved for a rainy day. "The sun don't shine every day," I remember him saying. "A shipmate of yours as well as everybody else's here, and a good shipmate, and now he's down and out — what d'y' say?" I says, to give him one last chance. But nothing came of my pleading, and I said, "Well, 'the best thing I'll wish for you is that you'll never have to ask me for a dollar." Well, after Tailor was put ashore, three or four of us, friends of Tailor's, made up our minds that the first chance Bowles would give us we'd throw him. We'd already come to believe that 'twas him looted the Jap's cash-box, and not in drink when he did it, either. No, he wasn't that kind, nor was he the kind would do things out of sheer devilment because he couldn't hold himself in. So we rigged up a game one day to make the master-at-arms open up his diddy-box, and, sure II 4 Gree Gree Bush enough, there was more gold than ever he drew from the paymaster. Well, that was no proof, one gold piece being pretty much like another; but only one thing did all of us here believe. And to think of him putting the Jap merchant and the policeman up to saying 'twas Tailor did that jobl There was so much feeling against Bowles that all hands took to watching him night and day. Never mind at what. There are some things not pleasant to talk about — and at last he was put on the beach. We all thought we'd seen the last of him then. But one day on our way home, in Callao a year or so later, we had a big international race — Eng- lish, French, German, Italian, a dozen crews — I was stroke of our ship's crew. A good hard race, and forty thousand dollars comin' to us when we crossed the line. And all I could raise I bet on that race, and when I went ashore it was with twelve hundred dollars in my clothes. Of course it wouldn't do to take that bundle of money back to the States, so I was setting out to burn it, with a couple of good lads in my own division to help hold a match to it now and then. And walking up from the jetty, that stone jetty with the big clock on the sort of a light-house, who should we meet but Bowles. There was every mark that he had gone to pieces. I saw him, "5 Gree Gree Bush but didn't let on to know him. But he signalled and I stopped. Maybe he thought I'd speak first, but I didn't. I only looked him over. Did you ever do that to a man down and out ? He must be a bad one to do that to, mustn't he ? Well, this was a bad one — I haven't hinted at the half about him. And his eyes were a hunted dog's eyes, his lips like a child's that expects to be struck down. "Glavin" — he starts. "You mean Mr. Glavin, don't you?" I says. "It was plain Glavin once," he says, "or may- be you've got your warrant by this ? " On my word, I didn't think he had so much spunk in him. "No," I says, "I haven't got my warrant, and it's still plain Glavin — to shipmates and friends." He eyes me cornerwise. "Mr. Glavin, you haven't the price of a meal, have you ?" "I have," I says, "of a meal or a drink, and a good many of them!" He looked at me again as if he thought I'd speak first, but I didn't, and the shame of it never stopped him. "Well, let me have it, will you ?" "Will I ?" I says, and I looked him over again. But he did have the mean eyes! And he had the body that couldn't possibly hold the heart or soul of any kind of a man. How a recruiting officer ever passed him, I don't know. 116 Gree Gree Bush "Will I?" I says, and I pulled out my roll with it. It made a bundle as big as my forearm, nothing short of a ten or twenty, except a few five and ten dollar gold pieces in my other pocket for change. "Do you remember Tailor Haley?" I goes on. He didn't say anything. "Well," I says, "before I give you a nickel you'll starve to- day, if it lays with me, for what you did to Tailor Haley." He backs away from me, thought I was going to hit him, maybe; but I'd no more strike him than I would a leper with a broken back. "But Fll tell you what I will do," I goes on. "Fll go back aboard the ship and I'll tell them the whole story, and after that, Fll pass around a paper for you." And I did, after I'd told the story to the new men who didn't know it. And I beat the decks, above and below, missing not a man, even going down into the bunkers below, and I came back, and not a cent had I. But as I was going over the side a machinist, third-class, hails me and says, "Hold up, Glavin. Him and me, we used to be in the same mess, and I remember now he passed me the butter once — here's a quarter to get the poor devil a meal." And another says, "Well, I never before refused a man money and I'd hate to have it on my ticket that I ever did refuse a "7 Gree Gree Bush man money. So here's a dime to get the hag's son a drink." Over the side I went with the thirty-five cents and took it ashore, and giving it to him I says, "Here's what seven hundred men of your old ship have subscribed — thirty-five cents. It 'd been a thousand dollars if you'd done right. And that's for Tailor Haley," I goes on. "And if you meet anybody poorer than yourself before you strike a cantina or wherever it is you're going, I know you'll divide with him, you being that charitable kind." He'd turned away by then and was all but crying — in pity for himself, I s'pose. " Remember your own favorite warning," I says. "'The sun don't shine every day ?'" God forgive me, but the sun that day in Callao was like a glory in the sky! II Well, I was home from the East on my fur- lough when I got word from Mr. Wilson saying that he was to be executive on one of the fast scout-ships and she was started for the West Coast, and would I go with him. A fine officer, Mr. Wilson — one of the best. After a man's been in a big cruiser and a battle-ship, a scout-ship don't look so great, but because of Mr. Wilson I shipped 118 Gree Gree Bush in her. Good officers mean more, after all, than big tonnage. So we ran over, putting into a little place — I never knew the native name for it, but a little place on a point making out from a black river. And there was a little light-house on black and white painted stilts and a lot of black sludge around it. Before we went ashore, Mr. Wilson called me to his room. "Glavin," he says, "I may need you on this thing we got to look into. There was an Ameri- can ship-captain, Berg, and his daughter. He was drowned — or murdered — here, nearly two years now. The daughter was supposed to be drowned, too, but the relatives have heard rumors and they think she may be alive. They have an idea that one of these secret societies may 've got her. Now when we go ashore, you leave me and cruise for yourself till I'm ready to return to the ship. I can get all the official information I want, but the natives '11 never talk to an officer, you know. Off by yourself you may be able to learn something." Mr. Wilson took the steam-launch and half a dozen of us of the crew ashore with him. But the man he wanted to find was at a settlement — inland — fifteen or twenty miles — so we steamed up this black river, dark even at noon-time with the trees hanging away over, and soft, squishy banks. 119 Gree Gree Bush On the way up, Mr. Wilson spoke of a Mr. Thomson he had to meet, and I was wondering could he be old Chief Thomson, the same, they said, that Bowles *d been mixed up with. I asked Mr. Wilson, but he said it couldn't be, as old Thomson was dead near a year. From the river we steamed into a lagoon, and there Mr. Wilson met his Mr. Thomson, who was as black as one of the black gang's black bags aboard ship, though dressed like a white English swell — a long coat, top hat, and patent-leather shoes, and a cane, which he never forgot to swing. A big fellow when you got close to him, and could Ve been a Congo chief straight out of the jungle, by his features, only he talked good English, with a topside accent. Mr. Wilson went off with Thomson to a sort of office building. There was a lot of other niggers standing round, some of them not wearing much clothes, and while Mr. Wilson was gone off with Thomson, some of our crowd got to talking with them as well as we could — two or three of them knew some English. But we didn't get on very fast, and took to stroll- ing round to see what the place looked like, how the people lived, and so on. And bearing in mind to learn a little something more, I got away from the village, nobody noticing me particularly, or so I thought, till I drifted up a narrow path that 120 Gree Gree Bush soon led into the dark forest. After a time I saw flying from a pole alongside the path a white cloth with a queer black design on it. A circle it was, outside of a man's hand holding what looked like a war club. Then a nigger came running after me and made a sign that I mustn't go that way. "Leopard — lion — hippo — me no 'fraid," I said, but he moved his hands faster than ever. "No, no lion — girls — womans — Gree Gree Bush!" he said. And I said, "Ho-ho!" and waved him away again. "A fine time of day," I thought, "when I've got to run away from a lot of women. Some chief's harem," I thought, a little pleased at the notion of strange sights, and pushed on. The nigger gave a sorrowful cry and ran back. I followed the path till I came to a stockade, maybe ten feet high, made of thick trunks of what must 've been palm-trees. The spaces in between were plastered with mud or clay, and the sides being so smooth I had some trouble in climbing up. There were three buildings, long and low — bungalows they would call them in the East — and so much better built and so different from any of the other buildings I'd seen since I landed, most others being only one-story things of mud and leaves, that I knew right away that they must be for some unusual purpose. And while I 121 Gree Gree Bush was puzzling over just what they might be, I heard women's voices from inside repeating some- thing, like as if it might be a prayer, after some leader. And then came singing, and then like somebody preaching or reciting, and then they all came filing out from the building farthest away from where I was. It was coming on late in the afternoon, and behind me was a lot of trees. All around, in fact, except at the one opening where the path was, the trees were solid; which was why they proba- bly didn't see me, though I wasn't trying to hide myself. Not at first, I wasn't. I couldn't see any reason that it mattered at first, though soon, recollecting the nigger back on the path, I began to feel that this wasn't meant for me or any white man, or for any man to see. They wore only long white robes with a red sash around their waists, and they were all bare- footed and bare-armed and all black or brown — except one, who looked to be a white girl. She was in the last row as they came up four by four, and I kept my eyes on her. I was hoping she'd look up. And she did. Just before she filed in the door of the building near my end she looked up, and her eyes — they doubled her love- liness! I don't know what made me — I never 'd been given to speaking to strange women — "Look 122 Gree Gree Bush for me to-night," I called out, and whistled like a whippoorwill and slid down from the wall. "Ah-h — to-night!" said a voice from behind me. I turned. There was a white man with a revolver aimed at me. "Well, what do you want?" I said. It was almost dusk, mind. He jumped back, with a queer noise in his throat, which made me take a sharper look. "What!" It was — but I could hardly believe it — Bowles! I jumps for him. He runs, but in four leaps I had him, and throwing my weight onto his back and slamming him to the ground, I took the re- volver from him and turned his face up to what light was left. Sure enough it was the face I'd last seen that day on the dock in Callao. I stuck the revolver in my jacket-pocket, stood up, and said, "Look here — you know how I love you, don't you ?" He didn't say anything to that. "Well, look here," I said again, and gripped him by the throat. "Now tell me what I want to know." I eased up on his throat. "Who are these women — these girls?" "They're sacred. It's death if you're caught looking in on them — death even to be here. Only the Zoah and the council can visit here, and then they must all go together at some appointed time." 123 Gree Gree Bush "Then what are you doing here ?" He didn't answer. "And who's the Zoah?" "Mr. Thomson." "Mr. Thomson? The big fellow in the swell clothes ? And he sent you after me ?" "Yes, when Daiko came back to tell him you were headed up this path." "And what if I stay around here to-night — somebody '11 kill me, huh ? And that some- body '11 be Mr. Thomson, huh — or somebody he'll appoint?" He didn't answer. Perhaps he couldn't, for I had him gurgling under my fingers most of the time. "And I suppose you'll go back to the vil- lage if I let you?" I goes on. "And you're one of them now ? And you got an establishment of your own by this time ?" He didn't say anything. I couldn't see his face very well — it was dark by then; but I felt I had it right. It was easy enough to imagine him, the kind he was, to settle down among them, with three or four oily, black, fat wives hanging around him. "And look here!" I gave his throat a fresh squeeze, till he must've thought I really intended to choke him to death. "Who's that girl?" "What girl ?'! 124 Gree Gree Bush "You know what girl. Tell me right or" — I think I'd have choked him where he stood if he hadn't answered. At last I got it out of him. She was Captain Berg's daughter. She had been kidnapped. I was going to let him go, when I had an in- spiration. "This Zoah, this Thomson — he wants to get hold of this girl, don't he ? " He admitted it. It was against all the laws of the bush society, but Thomson was planning to get her, nevertheless. He was even planning to kidnap her from this place — a sacrilegious thing. After this I let go his throat. "You go back," I said, "and say nothing of me. If they ask you, say you couldn't find me, and they will think that I got lost in the jungle. A few more lies oughtn't to worry your conscience — and you'll be safe. If you hint of me — feel that?" — I gripped his throat again — "I'll kill you before the ship leaves port. Get that? You do, eh? Well, then, get out!" He backed away for half-a-dozen steps, then he hurried off in the darkness. I climbed up on the stockade and for perhaps an hour I lay there, not moving or speaking. There were lights in the middle bungalow. After a time I whistled sofdy, three times together, the whippoorwill's call. I didn't know if there were any whippoorwills in that country, but I felt that 125 Gree Gree Bush she would recognize it when she heard. No an- swer, and I whistled again and again, softly. I was still whistling — I had heard nothing — when a voice below me said, "Sh-h " I could hardly make her out, even in her white robe, it was so dark. I made ready to drop down to her. "No, no, no! You must not. They would kill you. But if you can come back — you are sailor and American, yes ? My father was sailor and American, also." She spoke good English, but slowly, as though out of practice at it. "I have been praying, prayers of my dead mother, for some great, strong, white man to come and take me." I almost leaped down — I don't know now why I didn't. "Til get you out of here. I'll come back with a ship's company and we won't rest till " "No, no, no! that would not do. You must come only yourself — secretly — at night. I will show you the way." I got no further. A series of calls rang out from inside. "I must go back. It is for prayers before bed. If I am not there, I shall be missed. But after — I shall come back. Wait for me, but oh, take care!" As she fled away I did the foolish thing. Believ- ing that if any others of the women there did hear 126 Gree Gree Bush me they would not understand, I called aloud, "I'll be waiting — don't fail!" and repeated the whippoorwill's call, and with that dropped off outside the wall. "Waiting!" I fondly fancied her echoing it. But no voice of hers was that. A laugh followed it, and shuffling feet, and the stirring of under- brush, and heavy breathing. "Who's there?" I called out — the foolishness of it; but I, aflame with the things I had in mind, felt strong enough to lick a whole tribe of black men. I had my back to the stockade. "Who's there ! " I called again. No answer — only the feeling that they were closing in on me. Bowles's revolver hung heavy in my inside pocket, and I drew it out, took a step forward — another, maybe another, and then it came. No terrible pain, but a dull blow, and then something like a great weight coming down upon me. I swayed, sagged slowly down, but came up. Again the dull blow and the weight, and "What a pity! what a pity!" I said to my- self. And that's all I remember of that. 127 Gree Gree Bush III Next thing I remember I was lying in some kind of a low shack with a dim light in one cor- ner and a negro fanning himself in another, and two negroes armed, each with a big, knobby war club and a heavy revolver — and no old-fashioned make, but as modern as any officer's service weapon — a queer combination, I thought, when I did think. I wasn't thinking too much. My head wasn't aching so terribly, though it did ache, but my mind wasn't clear and I was hungry. I lay there, stupid enough, I guess, and it seemed to me that it was a dream and not real, when I heard a great beating of tomtoms. Before I could think of them at all the sound of them was ring- ing through me. Perhaps 'twas their noise woke me up. It came from somewhere outside, and, more than any thought of clubs and revolvers or sudden attack, it put dread into my soul. Slow, regular at first, but getting faster and faster, and that yah-yah, yah-yah, yah-yah which no white people can ever get, not till I found my heart beating to that note of it did I begin to feel the least worry. A white man came in. It was Bowles, I saw — after a while. Then I closed my eyes again. He 128 Gree Gree Bush bent over me and put his eyes close to mine — I could feel him. He went out then, but soon re- turned with the nigger Daiko, who fed me a bowl of rice and a cup of some kind of kola-nut prepara- tion. Bowles watched me. "That's right, Daiko," he said, "feed him well. He must be brought to the sacrifice in his full strength. Soon now. Everything, the Zoah says, must be over by sun- rise." I never let on I heard that, because I too well knew he meant it for me, not for the negro. I needed that food, for I must 've lost quite a little blood. But with that food inside of me I felt better, a lot better. The tomtoms stopped, and then another nigger came in and said something to Daiko, and he motioned to me as if to say that if I had done eating we would go. They led me then, with torch-bearers ahead and behind me, by way of a jungle path, oh, perhaps a quarter-mile to a build- ing that was maybe sixty by forty, with an earth floor, high studded enough for two stories, and the whole side wall solid all the way up except for half a dozen slits up under the roof as if for ventilation. I'd been in half darkness so long that the place seemed bright to me, though it couldn't have been too bright, for there were only two lamps in the place, one at each end — big-bowled, old- 129 Gree Gree Bush fashioned, kerosene bracket lamps, like what they used in stables at home. They had reflectors behind the light and were set, oh, nine or ten feet above the floor. The place was rigged up like a lodge-room of most any secret society in our country except that there was only one platform and pedestal, at the farther end from where they stood me. Thomson stood there. All around, the others stood along the two long sides of the room, close together. I didn't count them, but there must have been seventy or eighty of them. And they were all dressed alike, naked except for a loin cloth and some kind of wild animal's skin half covering them, beautiful lion and leopard skins — some one, some the other. Their bodies mostly were oily in the light. Every one carried a war club, one end resting on the ground, and a big re- volver, like the two who'd been guarding back in the shack, and I couldn't help wondering why they carried the clubs when they could get such good, up-to-date weapons. But perhaps that was a regulation of the secret society, by way of re- minding them, the same as the tomtoms were. They kept me standing there with nothing said or done for maybe ten minutes. Not one of them looked away from me, but I paid no atten- tion to them. It was Thomson I was measuring Gree Gree Bush up. And measured by inches, he was a proper man. I couldn't help thinking what a grand heavy-weight ring fighter he'd have made, and wishing I could have a try at him before they sewed me up, tied the weight, and slid me over the side. Bowles and Daiko had been sent out and now they came back, the door being unbolted for them after a queer knock three times given, and now they let in Captain Berg's daughter. She was dressed in white as when I had seen her, and plainly the dread of something terrible was in her eyes, but no trembling or drawing back. They placed her face to me, and then Bowles and Daiko were told to leave. Bowles, first turning to Thom- son as if claiming some privilege, stepped close to me, then slapped and then spat in my face three times. "That's for Tailor Haley," he said, "and that's for the day you ran me off the ship, and that's for that day in Callao. And the sun may be shin- ing every day, but you'll never see it again." If I'd only one arm, or just part of one arm free, he'd have got his big discharge then and there. But I only said, "You're a brave man — you always were." When the two were gone, Thomson came down from his platform and placed a long, heavy knife in *3* Gree Gree Bush her hand. For a long time she did not look up at me. When she did it was to say, "Do you un- derstand ?" I shook my head. "You are to die. If I kill you I save my life. If I don't, then I die and you are put to torture." "Why not?" I said to her. "I've got to go, anyway, and why not by you, and you save your own life ? " "No, no!" she whispered and shook her head. " Do you not see I am not of them ? If I kill you, do you not see how they will regard us ? You and I — we are of one blood. And there is," she was speaking in a low voice, "a way of escape from the torture." Her lips only framed the last three words, so that nobody else there could possibly know what she said. Her eyes sought mine, then she directed them to the knife in her hand. " Save me from him," her lips said, though no sound came from them. It took me a second or two to get her mean- ing. We looked at each other. " From him ! " she repeated with her lips, turning her eyes without moving her head, and I knew she meant Thom- son, who was standing rigid beside the pedestal. On his kinky head fell the light of the big lamp behind him. From behind me the light of the other lamp shone on her. 132 Gree Gree Bush I looked from her to Thomson and tried to guess what he was thinking of. I looked around at his councillors. To Thomson I looked again, and he smiled like a devil from hell; and yet there was anxiety in his eyes, too, while she stood there as if hesitating. "You must decide — and quickly," came Thom- son's voice suddenly, sharply. I think he meant by speaking in just that instant, in just that tone, to settle what he thought were her doubts. With one last appeal in her eyes, she raised the knife and bent toward me as if to bury it into my breast. I raised my bound hands high as if to let her strike beneath them to my heart. Even as I did it, I could feel the thrill run around the room and above all the cry of pleasure from Thomson. "Now you must" she said, and she had to reach up to make the stroke. One quick stroke and the bonds were cut and my hands free. "And here!" I said, and she slashed my ankle bonds — the whole thing in two seconds. With the knife in my hands I looked at Thomson and laughed. "Here," I said, and stepped toward her as if to strike; but what I intended was to pick her up and dash for the door. Thomson called out and started forward. As he came, he swung his great war club and hurled *33 Gree Gree Bush it. I dodged, and as it struck the wall just behind me, I saw my chance. I picked it up, leaped into the air and smashed the lamp above me, then turned toward Thomson. He thought I meant it for him, and dropped on the floor, but it was over his head I threw it — at the other lamp. And crash! From light to dark was quick as that. I swooped for her in the dark, took her in my left arm. "Now," I said, "here's where we'll have company going!" and leaped for the door. One man I felt in my way, and I drove the knife deep into him somewhere. Another, and him I knifed, too. I felt for the door — unbarred it. All was yelling and calling by now, but I knew it would take them a few seconds to guess what I had in mind. But the door would not open for me — it was barred on the outside, too. "Stay here!" I whispered to her, and minding the two negroes just behind that I'd knifed, I reached back and drew them close, felt for their skin coverings, pulled them off and threw them over her. "Lay there till it's over," I said, and also pulled the two bodies — I made sure they were dead by a few more jabs — and curled them around in front and about her. At the same time I took the revolvers from their belts. They had no extra cartridges in the belts — none of 'em I remembered then had — only what they carried in the revolvers. 134 He thought I meant it for him, and dropped, but 'twas over his head I threw it — at the other lamp Gree Gree Bush They were calling to each other now as if to get together, and somebody said something — Thomson's voice I thought — and I saw a little light, as if somebody had just struck a match. The light flared up. I aimed at the light before it could get blazing. A yell came, and at that I began shooting right and left. Whatever hap- pened was the worse for them. There were sev- enty or eighty of them and only one of me. In no time all hands were shooting, while I lay on the ground next the bodies guarding the girl and let them shoot. Feeling another body fall near me, I reached over, and to make no mistake I drove my big knife into him — and drew him alongside. I reached around till I found the club of the last dead man and waited till the shooting was over which was soon enough. I piled this new body on top of the other two guarding her. "You'll be safe now," I said. "Stay here, you, too," she whispered. "I won't go far," I said. "I won't have to," I added to myself, and stood up. There were groans and calls, cries of terror and pain, all over the place. And I almost laughed when I started out to think that no matter who I drove my knife into, it was an enemy. Every time one of them struck out, seventy or eighty in the beginning to my one, it was one of themselves that was struck. 135 Gree Gree Bush All I had to do was not to let anybody grab me and hold me long enough to discover who I was. And I waded in. And that big knife, fifteen inches long, double-edged and heavy — without half trying I could have reached the heart of a bullock with it. Every stroke wasn't a sure dead man, but pretty near it. Never a one I struck that didn't go down — if not dead, well on the way to it. And some of them yelled, and before I'd knifed half a dozen fresh ones, they were in a new panic, and I could hear all hands at it again, strik- ing out with their war clubs. Then was my dan- ger — that one of them would accidentally hit me. So I took to the club business, too, but using two clubs, taking my second from the hands of the last man I'd knifed. With my left-hand club I felt for them, with my right-hand one I cracked their skulls. When I thought there was any dan- ger to either side — I could tell by their terrible breathing — I'd drop low to make sure, and then let them have it. It was like cracking nuts with a hammer — as easy as that when you gauged the distance right. They couldn't tell me from one of themselves. Maybe five or six did feel my shirt instead of the smooth, oily bodies of themselves, but by then it was always too late. When I felt a man give that most astonished grunt at close quarters, I took no chances but 136 Gree Gree Bush whipped out my knife and stabbed quick and hard. Three or four times I went down under somebody or other, but always then I reached up and slit a throat or a belly before a yell could come. That knife! A finger's weight on it and it cut through 'em like soft butter. One time they quit yelling — Thomson's voice, I think, ordering; but I wasn't even sure of that, so crazy was I getting with all voices beginning to sound a good deal alike to me. I was beginning not to care where I fetched up — I only wanted to be swinging at them. But this time I stopped a second to listen. The voice must have been telling them how foolish they were to be killing each other. They stopped and I could hear them crowding together into the middle of the place. I guessed there were half of 'em left yet, and that wouldn't do; so I dove in among 'em and started swinging, and no mortal man, white, or yellow, or black could have stood there and been hammered and cracked by an invisible hand — like black Death itself — in that black place, and not struck back. That's where I had 'em. And I went among 'em with new speed. Only when I felt the club touch would I stop, and only then for a part of a second to make sure, and then it was lean forward and duck low and let him have it. Not many I «J7 Gree Gree Bush missed, and when I didn't miss they went down — and mosdy for the count. Of course, I got caught a few times. With bunches of 'em clinched in that dark I couldn't always dodge 'em. But when that happened and I went down under 'em, I used the knife back and up, and heaved 'em off me in a hurry. 'Twas like heaving the line off you in foot-ball, and I was a husky lad in those days. Of course I got cut and bruised, and what with the bruises and loss of blood I started with, I began to feel weak. It had been a hot night outside. It was hotter than a fire-room in there. I could almost bite the air in chunks, what with the heat and the sweating and the blood and the hot breathing. Just the work of swinging a big war club the way I did for the Lord knows how long — fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe — that with the excitement was enough to keep a man up. "A little more," I remember I kept saying to myself, "and it ought to be over." They rolled slippery around my feet. I fell half a dozen times quick, there were so many of 'em on the floor, and I was getting unsteady. At the last of it I let myself down on the floor and crawled among 'em. And 'twasn't till I felt there were no more of 'em left in the open that I began to wonder had I missed any in the corners. 138 Gree Gree Bush My mind wasn't overclear at the beginning of it and surely not too clear toward the end. I think now that I was by this time half crazy. I felt and pounded in the corners, but no live one there. And then I stumbled onto the platform for the first time. There was one there. At first I thought he was dead like the others, but he moved under me. "Ah, but you're a cute one!" I said. I knew him. And what d' y' think I did ? Dropped knife and club and went at him. Half crazy? Sure I was. "I got you, Thom- son," I says, and he said something, I don't re- member to this day what it was. And do you know how I fixed him ? Squeezed his big neck between my fingers. And I never let go till he fell from me, weakening — broke his neck, I guess, but I don't know. And don't care. I brushed him from me tired-like, to find myself breathing like a man just come through a quarter-mile run. And tired ? Oh, terribly tired ! And so I guessed I'd call it off, and went over by the door and reached my hand out for the girl. "Are you there?" I asked. "Oh, to think that you're alive!" and she reached out her hand for mine. "Is it all over? And what you must have gone through ! Oh, the blood — you're bleeding — everywhere! Oh, if the morning were only here so I could be of use to you ! " 139 Gree Gree Bush "It will soon be here," I said, and sure enough, by and by the rays of light came through the slits up near the roof. Then voices outside and a step at the door and the signal knock — three times repeated. I answered by the same knock I had heard them giving earlier in the night. The bar outside was let down, the door turned, and in they came. It was Bowles and the nigger Daiko. I'd drawn the girl to myself to one side of the door, and when they came in they did not see us. It was so dark inside, too, and sunrise outside. They blinked their eyes and looked and looked, for maybe half a minute, like people who thought they were dreaming. Daiko even rubbed his eyes as if to wake himself up. Then he turned and saw me, and seeing me he gave a shriek, fell on the floor face down, and lay there. Bowles stood stiff, so stiff that I went up to him and took his loaded revolver from him. "Come, I said, "show me the way back to the lagoon." I turned to the girl. "Mr. Wilson will be waiting — no fear — with the launch and take us away." I left Daiko where he was. I had no heart to hurt him. I had killed enough. Bowles walked ahead. I gave the revolver to the girl, while I carried a war club. "If anything happens to me, 140 Gree Gree Bush if anybody jumps out of the bushes on the way," I said, "you will have the revolver to defend yourself." When we reached the lagoon the ship's launch was still waiting on the opposite bank. One of our fellows was standing by her — on watch, no doubt, for me. "Miss Berg," I said, "all's well at last." "How are we to get across?" I asked Bowles, and he pointed to a dugout half hidden in the bushes. I made him push it through the black sludge to the water's edge. "And now if you will get in," I said to her. She reached one hand to me to be helped in. The hand with the revol- ver was lowered to her side, the side away from me. My mistake — to forget Bowles even for a second. A cry from her and something like a dog's bark from Bowles, a report, and across the boat she fell. I leaped across her and the boat and whipped the club across his wrist, maybe broke it — I don't know — and as he dropped the revolver into the soft mud I grabbed him and held him there, kicking and struggling while I bent over her. "Are you hurt, dear?" I asked. Never an answer, and I called to her again. "Stand up, you!" I said to Bowles, and took him and set him on his feet. And he stood there 141 Gree Gree Bush — as well as he could. And I brought the war club down — as if I was driving a stake. He went a foot deep into the mud. And his head was spread out like a red cauliflower. 142 THE VENTURE OF THE "FLYING HIND" The Venture of the "Flying Hind" 1WAS walking up Atlantic Avenue, in Boston, one day, thinking that perhaps I'd had enough of fishing for a while and wondering what Td do next, when* along came Glaves, and he slaps his thigh, and says: "Alec Corning — just the man. What d' y' say, Alec, to a little cruise down Newfoundland way?" Now Glaves wasn't the man to go hunting you up out of pure love, and so I waited for more. Besides, when he said Newfoundland, I guessed what was at bottom. For that very morning I'd learned, too, that Annie Mann had gone back to visit her people; but Glaves, being what he was, I said nothing of that. "There's a man named Cruse," goes on Glaves, "and he wants somebody that knows the New- foundland coast; and he'll pay you well. What d' y' say ? Maybe a bit of excitement for you be- fore you see Boston again. And" — he added it almost without thinking — "Pinlock left for there a couple of days ago." H5 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " That word of Pinlock settled it. Whatever the business it didn't matter now. Glaves could easily be a better man, but Pinlock! They did not make them any meaner than Pinlock. "Where will I find Cruse ?" I asks. So he brought me to Cruse, in the back room of a shipping office on Commercial Street, who sizes me up. "Well," he says, "you look like the man I want. And I hear there's not a harbor between Hatteras and the Straits of Belle Isle you can't take a vessel in of out of, fair or foul, night or day. What d' y' say, Mister Corning, to a yachting trip to Newfoundland ?" "Maybe," I says. "Though I don't know as I'd call it yachting." "Well," he says, "if a man isn't yachting, what would bring him there ? " "Well," I says, "it's a good place, Newfound- land, for a fisherman to get baiting." "All right," he says, "let's call it a fishing trip. But will you come ? Glaves is all right in his way, but he needs somebody to stiffen him up like." And so we left on the Flying Hind, a fishing vessel Cruse had got at a bargain that spring. I knew the Hind well — a fast craft, but weak built from her launching day, and six years of driving to market hadn't made her any stronger. Her 146 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " frames sagged like the ribs of an old umbrella, and her spars buckled like a cabman's whip when we slapped the canvas to her in a breeze. But no matter — she could sail, and with Glaves for master and me one of the crew, we swung her off to the eastward. The others of the crew were scrubs picked up along the water front, except an old dory-mate of mine, a young fellow named Gillis, careless as a drifting derelict in his ways, but game to his very shoestrings. Him I took to make sure there was one man would be standing by if anything happened. We put into St. Pierre on our way, in the Mique- lon Islands off the Newfoundland coast, to wait for news and take a few cases of brandy for emer- gencies. From there we laid into a little place, Lowcliff, to the eastward of St. Johns, where Annie Mann's people lived, and where was Pin- lock's vessel, the Polaris, before us. Glaves couldn't wait till we were fair to anchor before he was on his way ashore to see Annie Mann. And Pinlock to the house before him. We put in a week at this place, lying around daytimes and going to dances evenings, and I wondering when we would get down to business; but not worrying overmuch, for I was seeing An- nie Mann every day. And neither did Gillis care. "Fine, buxom girls here in Lowcliff," Gillis used 147 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " to say, and he'd dance all night with a younger sister of Annie's if she would but let him. Till one afternoon Cruse came hurrying aboard. "The steamer from England's into St. Johns. Stand ready to put out any minute now." Next day a little packet dropped anchor near us, and that night we took four doryloads of Chinamen from her, forty in all, and the Polaris took three doryloads more. And we crowded 'em into the hold and battened the hatches on 'em. With the last Chinaman came Cruse. "Get out in a hurry now," says he. It was a bit sudden, and I was glad enough to hear Glaves say: "Just another day here, just one." "What for?" asks Cruse. " Just one, just to-morrow, and to make sure I'll be back let Alec come along with me." So we went ashore in the morning, up to Annie's father's house. She came to the door herself, and she was good to see — all smiles and curves and rosiness. "Will you wait?" asks Glaves. "I've a mes- sage for Annie." Which didn't suit me quite, but I waited. After a while Annie herself called me inside. She and Glaves were standing together in the entry. "Is it true the Hind is going to sea to-night, Alec?" she asks. 148 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " "So the owner says." "And where bound ?" "He didn't say — if indeed he's sure where. But somewhere between Eastport and Norfolk I' guess 'twill have to be." She looked at me. "Is it smuggling out of St. Pierre?" I had to laugh — at the thought of the China- men being mistaken for any St. Pierre packages. But before I could answer there came from the steps outside the scraping of a man's boots and a knock at the door. The three of us stepped into the front room, and Glaves was trembling. "Say you'll marry me, Annie," he says, "and we'll go off on the Hind together." Annie's younger sister that Gillis was so sweet on came into the room then. "It's Captain Pin- lock wants to see you, Annie." "Tell him," says Annie, "he can't see me." That was a pleasant message to both Glaves and me. We heard the voice of Pinlock swearing at the door. "Tell her for me," he says, "that she'll be sorry for this, and Corning too, and whoever else is in there with them," and some more that was less polite. More than the surprise was the thrill I felt at hearing my name coupled with Annie's. I had no notion that anybody but Glaves was thought to 149 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " have a chance with Annie Mann. I was dumb, but Glaves was for jumping out the door. Com- ing to myself, I grabbed him. "A lovely bride- groom you'll look," I said, "with maybe your eyes blackened and your nose flattened." That by way of an excuse, for I doubted he was as good as Pinlock; also I did not want to see any brawling in front of Annie's door. So I went out the back door and overtook Pinlock on the dock, and I said a word or two and he said a word or two, and it being about that size of a place where there's no police to bother we had a great chance to try tacks. Being as we were, of the one tonnage, with pretty much the same length and beam, as you might say, and the spars and quarters to carry sail, it ought to have been an even thing. But he couldn't maneuver — a bit slow to answer his helm, and maybe, too, I could bore into the wind closer than he could. Anyway, when for the last time he'd hauled his wind and his colors with it, I left him, he hailing the Polaris and I going back to the house. I hadn't been gone more than fifteen minutes altogether and Glaves was still talking. "Marry me, Annie, and I'll take you off on the Hind to-night," I heard through the door. Annie heard my steps. "What happened ?" she said. 150 The Venture of the "Flying Hind" "Nothing much," says I. "But I think he'll be putting out on the Polaris soon, and if there's going to be any wedding somebody '11 have to hurry." "What makes you say that?" she asked. "There's going to be no wedding here. But to- night I'm leaving St. Johns on my father's vessel for Boston." "And I will see you there, Annie?" says Glaves. "Why, of course, and you too, Alec — that is, if you want to." She smiled at Glaves, but not at me, and I made up my mind I wouldn't call in a hurry. II It was nine that night when we broke out our anchor. We should have gone early that day, the same as Pinlock, but Glaves had to go moon- ing around Lowcliff after Annie 'd gone off, hav- ing a drink here and a drink there. While we were waiting for him I, being handy with the brush, painted a new name under the vessel's stern, the Zulieka. I hauled a canvas over me while I was doing it — told the crew I was decorating things. For I'd begun to foresee the need of a change of name, and Zulieka was the most unlikely one I could think of. I had read it in a story somewhere. The Venture of the " Flying Hind " While Glaves lay drunk in his bunk I took the vessel out of Lowcliff Harbor. It was a pitch- black night, and only by the noise of a steamer's screw did we know that something was coming in. She bore no lights and passed us in a hurry. We had no lights up either. "What's that?" asked Cruse. "What could it be," I says, "coming from St. Johns way at ten o'clock at night, with her lights shrouded and at full speed?" Only then did Cruse suspect it was the govern- ment cutter. "Pinlock's doing?" he asked. I said yes, and was sorry I had not beat him up so that he would 've been thinking of going to a hospital 'stead of to sea that day. I forgot to say that we wouldn't have left the harbor that night only that I was afraid of this very thing, the cut- ter. Cruse had wanted to wait till morning, it looked so bad. 'Twas a gale of wind and getting worse, and the Flying Hind — the Zulieka now — a weak-built vessel, as I said, with her deck crawl- ing under your feet. It was a hard beat out, but at last I shot her between the two lights of the narrow harbor entrance. We made a wild night of it before morning. And three wilder days followed, so that we guessed there was some damage done along the coast that blow; and during it all, fearing stray cutters, I 152 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " kept her well offshore. On the fourth day I swung her back toward the course of traffic, look- ing for a chance to run over Georges Shoals and so on to Narragansett Bay and Providence, which was one place Cruse had in mind to land his pas- sengers. From Providence it would be an easy matter to get the Chinamen to Boston by train. But that afternoon Gillis, on watch, made out a sail. We were pretty wary of everything; but I soon saw we hadn't any need to fear this, which was a wreck with only one mast left standing. Glaves and Cruse were not over eager to stand down to her — Glaves especially. Whatever would the Hind do with more passengers ? he asked, and what talk would they have after they got ashore ? We'd all be ruined. Besides, somebody else would surely come along and pick them up, and so on; to which I answered that it wasn't yet on record where a fisherman passed by a wrecked vessel without trying to take her people off, and so now I was going to stand down to the vessel. Drawing nearer, we could see she had been a small two-masted schooner, pretty well water- logged now, a coaster by the look of her. While yet a mile away I could name her; but Glaves, though he'd seen her a score of times, and his eyes were as good as mine, had yet no suspicion, 153 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " and so could not understand why I was so eager as we drew nearer to get alongside her. "She may be sinking under their feet," I says, and I was scared; but he had no suspicion till we were so close he could read her name. It was Annie's father's vessel, and with him on the quarter Annie herself, wrapped in her father's great-coat and a sou'wester till she looked like any other of the crew at a distance. It was Glaves who bustled around and gave the orders then; but Gillis and me who manned the dory, and it was me who grasped her hand and first looked into her eyes again. "M-m — but I'm glad to see you again," she breathed, and that was enough; though later 'twas Glaves and Cruse who got all the thanks of her father, and right enough too, Cruse being the owner and Glaves hailing for the master of the Hind. There was something of a sea and lifting fog that afternoon. Between the shifts of vapor we could see a steamer's smoke at times, but were not sure; and even if it was a steamer, I would not rush Annie into a dory till the sea moderated. It was one thing to put yourself or a fisherman like Gillis in a dory, but another to risk a woman's life in one. Not for two hours did I think it safe to take them off. And then it was in two dory- loads — Annie and her father the last to leave her. 154 The Venture of the "Flying Hind" But between these two doryloads the steamer came down on us. She knew us without even trying to see the name, which I'd kept covered by a piece of canvas hung carelessly over her stern. She bore up and hailed — told us to stay where we were till morning, when she would take us in tow, or maybe send a boat aboard if it was moderate enough. And to prevent us from slipping away during the night we were to come to anchor and take in our topsails and keep our riding-light burning over our tafFrail and another to our foremast-head; and to be careful to keep them burning bright, for if one of them disap- peared for even a second they would take it as a sig- nal of our attempt to escape and fire on us at once. So there we lay, every one downcast and wait- ing for the morning, and it was me who caught it while Annie and her father were forward eating supper for lingering so long on the wreck of the coaster. I let them talk for a while, and then, looking at Glaves particularly, I said: "If I had to do it all over I'd do just the same, stay just as long on her, and so would you all — or be no men," and went on deck, where I watched the lights of the cutter, which was steaming back and forth like a patrol in the night. And watching her and thinking of what was next day before us gave me an idea, and I went into the hold, helped 155 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " myself to two of the lanterns which were used to light up the Chinamen's quarters, and took them into the cabin, where now was Annie and her father, sitting on the lockers, she with her head on his shoulder, asleep. "There's been more or less complaining of what's gone and past and what '11 happen to us in the morning. Now it rests with ourselves whether we'll be here in the morning," I said, in a low voice so as not to waken Annie. They couldn't see what I'd be at. Said Glaves: "What! you'd have the cutter lire at us and a woman aboard?" so loud that if Annie wasn't deep asleep she'd heard him, or so I was jealous enough to think. "Oh, belay that!" says I, and held up the two lanterns and lit them, and cov- ered them each then with black oil-jackets. "Now," I said, "have a man stand by our light aloft and another by the lantern astern, while I'll row to the wreck and make these two lanterns fast on her, one to her stern and one to her mast- head, same as aboard here, but covered with these jackets till the time comes. And you watch the cutter's lights, and when the Hind's in line with the cutter and the coaster, then do you aboard here smash both lanterns at the same time, and I'll be on watch on the wreck and snap these oil-skins off the lanterns there, so the cutter won't i 5 6 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " know but what they're the same all the time. And then we'll slip away nice and cozy." Gillis wanted to come with me to the wreck, but I said no, and Glaves also said no. Said he'd need a good man like Gillis aboard the Hind to tend the light aloft. So I left the Hind alone in the dory and boarded the wreck, which lay then with her rails awash, as I could feel in climbing aboard. I mounted the shaky fore-rigging and tied the lantern to her masthead, making fast a length of halyard to the oil-skin cover and sliding down then to the deck, where I hung the other covered lantern over her stern. With the end of a line in each hand then I waited. A long wait it seemed, for the water on her deck aft was then to the top of my boots, and she settling lower with every roll. The dory I had hauled up under her stern, ready to hand if she did go down, and by the feel of her I knew that she would go before a great while. Slowly the cutter's lights swung across the stars. My, but she came slow! But soon they would be in range. And now the stern light was in range — and now, Whsh-h-t! out went the Hind's lights. I whipped the oil-jackets away from my two lights. Below, aloft, they flashed brightly together, and into the dory I leaped and pulled madly for the Hind. In the blackness, *57 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " of course, I couldn't see her, but I knew where she had been. Besides, the cutter's gliding lights were like a range to go by. I rowed hard, but before I got to her I could hear her chain slipping. That meant I was not far from her. Then a voice, the voice of Annie : "You are sure Alec is aboard?" And Glaves's answer: "Sure of it — one of the men just told me he came in over the bow." "So soon?" she exclaimed. I guessed something then and drove the dory harder. I heard the jibing of muffled booms and knew she was coming around. She could not yet be under full way, but she was coming fast enough to make me hesitate. However, it was my only chance, and I laid the dory directly in what proved to be her course. Down came the lifted forefoot of her on the little dory. Down, down, I was borne under water; but I had a grip on her bobstay, and when she lifted I felt for the stops hanging from her bowsprit, and got them and hauled myself up. With every leap now she was increas- ing her speed, and by the time I was over her knight-heads, safe in her bow, she was sifting like a snake through the water. I stayed' up in the bow to get my breath, and as I waited I saw the mast-head light on the coaster begin to swing from side to side. While she was i 5 8 The Venture of the "Flying Hind' 7 yet swinging the taffrail light went out of sight — p'ff, like that. Came a hail over the water then, even as the lantern aloft began to swing yet more widely. Another hail and almost immediately a flash of flame as long as our foreboom. Almost with the report the mast-head light dipped with a rush into the sea. Another moment and a broad- side lit up the blackness. The roar of it came down the wind like thunder. Crawling up, I almost stumbled over two figures in the waist. "But is he aboard ?" said the voice of one — Cruse. "Isn't he?" asked the other — Glaves. " Don't you know ? — he's hardly had time," said Cruse. "No, he isn't, then," answered Glaves. "He can lay around and the cutter '11 get him in the morning." " But suppose the cutter doesn't lay around — or suppose it breezes up to-night?" "Then to hell with him — we can't be laying around here till we're caught." I heard Annie's voice then, and crept farther aft and stood by the house, not ten feet from her and her father. "My poor vessel," said Captain Mann. "Yes, but your insurance is safe," answered Glaves. He had moved aft, too. 159 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " "It's more than insurance — fifteen good years I put in on her," said the old man. "And named for Annie's mother that's dead." Just then Gillis came from somewhere forward. I could tell his step before he spoke. "You told me, Captain Glaves, that Alec was aboard and below; but I don't find him." " What! " Annie's voice and the tone of it made my heart beat. "He's in the cabin," answered Glaves. "Oh-h — " said Annie. And after a pause: " But why isn't he up to see this ? I'll call him," and went below. Glaves followed. Gillis jumped down after Glaves. I leaned over the house and looked down the cabin steps. "And you said his dory was towing alongside, but it's not — nor on deck. There's but one dory on deck. Where is he ?" Gillis stepped into the cabin light. "Alec Corning and me were dory- mates too long — look here, Glaves!" What Gillis would have done I don't know — I dropped below and laid a hand on his arm, but looking at Annie at the time, and she looking at me. The fright left her face, and to see that made me so glad that I couldn't be mad even with Glaves. "Maybe I'd better look to the vessel's course," I said after a little while. "Come, Archie, come on deck." 1 60 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " III I gave her all the sail we had, and all that night kept her going. By daylight we were many miles from where we'd left the cutter. But even so I drove her. It was a gale of wind and a milk- white sea, but still I drove her, and kept driving her till it got so bad below that the Chinamen came running on deck like rats. You could tell how much water was in her hold by measuring how high up their trousers, or whatever it is they wear for trousers, were wet. To their knees some of them. And still I drove her, being in that mood, and I think I'd have driven her to some port or other in that breeze only she carried away her main-mast head. It was a gale of wind and a milk-white sea, as I said, and something had to go. I had to take the main-sail off her then, and maybe with a young woman that two of us wanted for a wife aboard, she had sail enough without the main-sail in that breeze. And so long as we were stopping to put things to rights, I set the Chinamen to work, one gang with draw-buckets bailing out the hold and another gang to the pumps. One of them, who could speak a few words of English, just as much as said that it was pretty hard to have to pay two hundred and eighty 161 The Venture of the " Flying Hind " dollars a head and work your passage too. I thought so too, but told him that if he didn't keep on bailing it soon wouldn't matter how much he'd paid for his passage. I didn't need to say any more. The English-talking one passed the word, and they all grabbed buckets and pump-brakes again. It was gales, fog, and stiff winds for another two days, and we wondering where the Polaris and the cutter were all this time, when out of the fresh-coming easterly a sail came tearing. And soon we knew her for Pinlock's vessel, and behind her, just showing over the horizon, was the smoke of a steamer. It was plain it was a chase, which would make the steamer a government vessel. That meant it was no place for us, and so again I put the main-sail to the Hind and let her go straight before it. The course of the Polaris when she first raised would 've carried her two or three miles to the east'ard of us; but now she swung off and came straight for us, so that by the time we had sail on the Hind the Polaris was perhaps a mile ahead and going at a great clip to the west'ard. 'Twas plenty wind, so much wind that I doubted our twisted mast-head could stand the strain of the main-sail; but it was not a case for doubting — I had to make sure. I knew that so long as noth- ing parted we could outsail the Polaris. And 162 d