"Very well danced!" said one; but it appears the compliment was not
strong enough for the performers, who (forgetful of the proverb) took up
the tale in person.

"Well," said Johnson. "I mayn't be no sailor, but I can dance!"

And his late partner, with an almost pathetic conviction, added, "My
foot is as light as a feather."

Seeing how the wind set, you may be sure I added a few words of
praise before I carried Johnson alone into the passage: to whom, thus
mollified, I told so much as I judged needful of our situation, and
begged him, if he would not take the job himself, to find me a smart
man.

"Me!" he cried. "I couldn't no more do it than I could try to go to
hell!"

"I thought you were a mate?" said I.

"So I am a mate," giggled Johnson, "and you don't catch me shipping
noways else. But I'll tell you what, I believe I can get you Arty Nares:
you seen Arty; first-rate navigator and a son of a gun for style." And
he proceeded to explain to me that Mr. Nares, who had the promise of
a fine barque in six months, after things had quieted down, was in the
meantime living very private, and would be pleased to have a change of
air.

I called out Pinkerton and told him. "Nares!" he cried, as soon as I
had come to the name. "I would jump at the chance of a man that had had
Nares's trousers on! Why, Loudon, he's the smartest deep-water mate out
of San Francisco, and draws his dividends regular in service and out."
This hearty indorsation clinched the proposal; Johnson agreed to produce
Nares before six the following morning; and Black Tom, being called into
the consultation, promised us four smart hands for the same hour, and
even (what appeared to all of us excessive) promised them sober.

The streets were fully lighted when we left Black Tom's: street after
street sparkling with gas or electricity, line after line of distant
luminaries climbing the steep sides of hills towards the overvaulting
darkness; and on the other hand, where the waters of the bay invisibly
trembled, a hundred riding lanterns marked the position of a hundred
ships. The sea-fog flew high in heaven; and at the level of man's life
and business it was clear and chill. By silent consent, we paid the hack
off, and proceeded arm in arm towards the Poodle Dog for dinner.

At one of the first hoardings, I was aware of a bill-sticker at work: it
was a late hour for this employment, and I checked Pinkerton until the
sheet should be unfolded. This is what I read:--

     TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD.

     OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE

     WRECKED BRIG FLYING SCUD

     APPLYING,

     PERSONALLY OR BY LETTER,

     AT THE OFFICE OF JAMES PINKERTON, MONTANA
     BLOCK,

     BEFORE NOON TO-MORROW, TUESDAY, 12TH,

     WILL RECEIVE

     TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD.

"This is your idea, Pinkerton!" I cried.

"Yes. They've lost no time; I'll say that for them--not like the Fraud,"
said he. "But mind you, Loudon, that's not half of it. The cream of
the idea's here: we know our man's sick; well, a copy of that has been
mailed to every hospital, every doctor, and every drug-store in San
Francisco."

Of course, from the nature of our business, Pinkerton could do a thing
of the kind at a figure extremely reduced; for all that, I was appalled
at the extravagance, and said so.

"What matter a few dollars now?" he replied sadly. "It's in three months
that the pull comes, Loudon."

We walked on again in silence, not without a shiver. Even at the Poodle
Dog, we took our food with small appetite and less speech; and it was
not until he was warmed with a third glass of champagne that Pinkerton
cleared his throat and looked upon me with a deprecating eye.

"Loudon," said he, "there was a subject you didn't wish to be referred
to. I only want to do so indirectly. It wasn't"--he faltered--"it wasn't
because you were dissatisfied with me?" he concluded, with a quaver.

"Pinkerton!" cried I.

"No, no, not a word just now," he hastened to proceed. "Let me speak
first. I appreciate, though I can't imitate, the delicacy of your
nature; and I can well understand you would rather die than speak of it,
and yet might feel disappointed. I did think I could have done better
myself. But when I found how tight money was in this city, and a man
like Douglas B. Longhurst--a forty-niner, the man that stood at bay in a
corn patch for five hours against the San Diablo squatters--weakening on
the operation, I tell you, Loudon, I began to despair; and--I may
have made mistakes, no doubt there are thousands who could have done
better--but I give you a loyal hand on it, I did my best."

"My poor Jim," said I, "as if I ever doubted you! as if I didn't
know you had done wonders! All day I've been admiring your energy and
resource. And as for that affair----"

"No, Loudon, no more, not a word more! I don't want to hear," cried Jim.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't want to tell you," said I; "for
it's a thing I'm ashamed of."

"Ashamed, Loudon? O, don't say that; don't use such an expression even
in jest!" protested Pinkerton.

"Do you never do anything you're ashamed of?" I inquired.

"No," says he, rolling his eyes. "Why? I'm sometimes sorry afterwards,
when it pans out different from what I figured. But I can't see what I
would want to be ashamed for."

I sat a while considering with admiration the simplicity of my friend's
character. Then I sighed. "Do you know, Jim, what I'm sorriest for?"
said I. "At this rate, I can't be best man at your marriage."

"My marriage!" he repeated, echoing the sigh. "No marriage for me now.
I'm going right down to-night to break it to her. I think that's what's
shaken me all day. I feel as if I had had no right (after I was engaged)
to operate so widely."

"Well, you know, Jim, it was my doing, and you must lay the blame on
me," said I.

"Not a cent of it!" he cried. "I was as eager as yourself, only not so
bright at the beginning. No; I've myself to thank for it; but it's a
wrench."

While Jim departed on his dolorous mission, I returned alone to the
office, lit the gas, and sat down to reflect on the events of that
momentous day: on the strange features of the tale that had been so far
unfolded, the disappearances, the terrors, the great sums of money; and
on the dangerous and ungrateful task that awaited me in the immediate
future.

It is difficult, in the retrospect of such affairs, to avoid attributing
to ourselves in the past a measure of the knowledge we possess to-day.
But I may say, and yet be well within the mark, that I was consumed that
night with a fever of suspicion and curiosity; exhausted my fancy in
solutions, which I still dismissed as incommensurable with the facts;
and in the mystery by which I saw myself surrounded, found a precious
stimulus for my courage and a convenient soothing draught for
conscience. Even had all been plain sailing, I do not hint that I should
have drawn back. Smuggling is one of the meanest of crimes, for by that
we rob a whole country pro rata, and are therefore certain to impoverish
the poor: to smuggle opium is an offence particularly dark, since it
stands related not so much to murder, as to massacre. Upon all these
points I was quite clear; my sympathy was all in arms against my
interest; and had not Jim been involved, I could have dwelt almost with
satisfaction on the idea of my failure. But Jim, his whole fortune, and
his marriage, depended upon my success; and I preferred the interests of
my friend before those of all the islanders in the South Seas. This is
a poor, private morality, if you like; but it is mine, and the best I
have; and I am not half so much ashamed of having embarked at all on
this adventure, as I am proud that (while I was in it, and for the
sake of my friend) I was up early and down late, set my own hand to
everything, took dangers as they came, and for once in my life played
the man throughout. At the same time, I could have desired another field
of energy; and I was the more grateful for the redeeming element of
mystery. Without that, though I might have gone ahead and done as well,
it would scarce have been with ardour; and what inspired me that night
with an impatient greed of the sea, the island, and the wreck, was the
hope that I might stumble there upon the answer to a hundred questions,
and learn why Captain Trent fanned his red face in the exchange, and why
Mr. Dickson fled from the telephone in the Mission Street lodging-house.




CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS.


I was unhappy when I closed my eyes; and it was to unhappiness that I
opened them again next morning, to a confused sense of some calamity
still inarticulate, and to the consciousness of jaded limbs and of
a swimming head. I must have lain for some time inert and stupidly
miserable, before I became aware of a reiterated knocking at the
door; with which discovery all my wits flowed back in their accustomed
channels, and I remembered the sale, and the wreck, and Goddedaal, and
Nares, and Johnson, and Black Tom, and the troubles of yesterday,
and the manifold engagements of the day that was to come. The thought
thrilled me like a trumpet in the hour of battle. In a moment, I had
leaped from bed, crossed the office where Pinkerton lay in a deep trance
of sleep on the convertible sofa, and stood in the doorway, in my night
gear, to receive our visitors.

Johnson was first, by way of usher, smiling. From a little behind, with
his Sunday hat tilted forward over his brow, and a cigar glowing between
his lips, Captain Nares acknowledged our previous acquaintance with a
succinct nod. Behind him again, in the top of the stairway, a knot of
sailors, the new crew of the Norah Creina, stood polishing the wall with
back and elbow. These I left without to their reflections. But our two
officers I carried at once into the office, where (taking Jim by the
shoulder) I shook him slowly into consciousness. He sat up, all abroad
for the moment, and stared on the new captain.

"Jim," said I, "this is Captain Nares. Captain, Mr. Pinkerton."

Nares repeated his curt nod, still without speech; and I thought he held
us both under a watchful scrutiny.

"O!" says Jim, "this is Captain Nares, is it? Good morning, Captain
Nares. Happy to have the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir. I know you
well by reputation."

Perhaps, under the circumstances of the moment, this was scarce a
welcome speech. At least, Nares received it with a grunt.

"Well, Captain," Jim continued, "you know about the size of the
business? You're to take the Nora Creina to Midway Island, break up
a wreck, call at Honolulu, and back to this port? I suppose that's
understood?"

"Well," returned Nares, with the same unamiable reserve, "for a reason,
which I guess you know, the cruise may suit me; but there's a point or
two to settle. We shall have to talk, Mr. Pinkerton. But whether I go or
not, somebody will; there's no sense in losing time; and you might give
Mr. Johnson a note, let him take the hands right down, and set to to
overhaul the rigging. The beasts look sober," he added, with an air of
great disgust, "and need putting to work to keep them so."

This being agreed upon, Nares watched his subordinate depart and drew a
visible breath.

"And now we're alone and can talk," said he. "What's this thing about?
It's been advertised like Barnum's museum; that poster of yours has
set the Front talking; that's an objection in itself, for I'm laying a
little dark just now; and anyway, before I take the ship, I require to
know what I'm going after."

Thereupon Pinkerton gave him the whole tale, beginning with a
businesslike precision, and working himself up, as he went on, to the
boiling-point of narrative enthusiasm. Nares sat and smoked, hat
still on head, and acknowledged each fresh feature of the story with a
frowning nod. But his pale blue eyes betrayed him, and lighted visibly.

"Now you see for yourself," Pinkerton concluded: "there's every last
chance that Trent has skipped to Honolulu, and it won't take much of
that fifty thousand dollars to charter a smart schooner down to Midway.
Here's where I want a man!" cried Jim, with contagious energy. "That
wreck's mine; I've paid for it, money down; and if it's got to be fought
for, I want to see it fought for lively. If you're not back in ninety
days, I tell you plainly, I'll make one of the biggest busts ever seen
upon this coast; it's life or death for Mr. Dodd and me. As like as not,
it'll come to grapples on the island; and when I heard your name last
night--and a blame' sight more this morning when I saw the eye you've
got in your head--I said, 'Nares is good enough for me!'"

"I guess," observed Nares, studying the ash of his cigar, "the sooner I
get that schooner outside the Farallones, the better you'll be pleased."

"You're the man I dreamed of!" cried Jim, bouncing on the bed. "There's
not five per cent of fraud in all your carcase."

"Just hold on," said Nares. "There's another point. I heard some talk
about a supercargo."

"That's Mr. Dodd, here, my partner," said Jim.

"I don't see it," returned the captain drily. "One captain's enough for
any ship that ever I was aboard."

"Now don't you start disappointing me," said Pinkerton; "for you're
talking without thought. I'm not going to give you the run of the books
of this firm, am I? I guess not. Well, this is not only a cruise; it's a
business operation; and that's in the hands of my partner. You sail that
ship, you see to breaking up that wreck and keeping the men upon the
jump, and you'll find your hands about full. Only, no mistake about one
thing: it has to be done to Mr. Dodd's satisfaction; for it's Mr. Dodd
that's paying."

"I'm accustomed to give satisfaction," said Mr. Nares, with a dark
flush.

"And so you will here!" cried Pinkerton. "I understand you. You're
prickly to handle, but you're straight all through."

"The position's got to be understood, though," returned Nares, perhaps
a trifle mollified. "My position, I mean. I'm not going to ship
sailing-master; it's enough out of my way already, to set a foot on this
mosquito schooner."

"Well, I'll tell you," retorted Jim, with an indescribable twinkle: "you
just meet me on the ballast, and we'll make it a barquentine."

Nares laughed a little; tactless Pinkerton had once more gained a
victory in tact. "Then there's another point," resumed the captain,
tacitly relinquishing the last. "How about the owners?"

"O, you leave that to me; I'm one of Longhurst's crowd, you know," said
Jim, with sudden bristling vanity. "Any man that's good enough for me,
is good enough for them."

"Who are they?" asked Nares.

"M'Intyre and Spittal," said Jim.

"O, well, give me a card of yours," said the captain: "you needn't
bother to write; I keep M'Intyre and Spittal in my vest-pocket."

Boast for boast; it was always thus with Nares and Pinkerton--the two
vainest men of my acquaintance. And having thus reinstated himself in
his own opinion, the captain rose, and, with a couple of his stiff nods,
departed.

"Jim," I cried, as the door closed behind him, "I don't like that man."

"You've just got to, Loudon," returned Jim. "He's a typical American
seaman--brave as a lion, full of resource, and stands high with his
owners. He's a man with a record."

"For brutality at sea," said I.

"Say what you like," exclaimed Pinkerton, "it was a good hour we got him
in: I'd trust Mamie's life to him to-morrow."

"Well, and talking of Mamie?" says I.

Jim paused with his trousers half on. "She's the gallantest little soul
God ever made!" he cried. "Loudon, I'd meant to knock you up last night,
and I hope you won't take it unfriendly that I didn't. I went in and
looked at you asleep; and I saw you were all broken up, and let you be.
The news would keep, anyway; and even you, Loudon, couldn't feel it the
same way as I did."

"What news?" I asked.

"It's this way," says Jim. "I told her how we stood, and that I backed
down from marrying. 'Are you tired of me?' says she: God bless her!
Well, I explained the whole thing over again, the chance of smash, your
absence unavoidable, the point I made of having you for the best man,
and that. 'If you're not tired of me, I think I see one way to manage,'
says she. 'Let's get married to-morrow, and Mr. Loudon can be best man
before he goes to sea.' That's how she said it, crisp and bright, like
one of Dickens's characters. It was no good for me to talk about the
smash. 'You'll want me all the more,' she said. Loudon, I only pray I
can make it up to her; I prayed for it last night beside your bed, while
you lay sleeping--for you, and Mamie and myself; and--I don't know if
you quite believe in prayer, I'm a bit Ingersollian myself--but a kind
of sweetness came over me, and I couldn't help but think it was an
answer. Never was a man so lucky! You and me and Mamie; it's a triple
cord, Loudon. If either of you were to die! And she likes you so much,
and thinks you so accomplished and distingue-looking, and was just as
set as I was to have you for best man. 'Mr. Loudon,' she calls you;
seems to me so friendly! And she sat up till three in the morning fixing
up a costume for the marriage; it did me good to see her, Loudon, and to
see that needle going, going, and to say 'All this hurry, Jim, is just
to marry you!' I couldn't believe it; it was so like some blame' fairy
story. To think of those old tin-type times about turned my head; I was
so unrefined then, and so illiterate, and so lonesome; and here I am in
clover, and I'm blamed if I can see what I've done to deserve it."

So he poured forth with innocent volubility the fulness of his heart;
and I, from these irregular communications, must pick out, here a little
and there a little, the particulars of his new plan. They were to be
married, sure enough, that day; the wedding breakfast was to be at
Frank's; the evening to be passed in a visit of God-speed aboard the
Norah Creina; and then we were to part, Jim and I, he to his married
life, I on my sea-enterprise. If ever I cherished an ill-feeling
for Miss Mamie, I forgave her now; so brave and kind, so pretty and
venturesome, was her decision. The weather frowned overhead with a
leaden sky, and San Francisco had never (in all my experience) looked so
bleak and gaunt, and shoddy, and crazy, like a city prematurely old; but
through all my wanderings and errands to and fro, by the dock side or in
the jostling street, among rude sounds and ugly sights, there ran in my
mind, like a tiny strain of music, the thought of my friend's happiness.

For that was indeed a day of many and incongruous occupations. Breakfast
was scarce swallowed before Jim must run to the City Hall and Frank's
about the cares of marriage, and I hurry to John Smith's upon the
account of stores, and thence, on a visit of certification, to the
Norah Creina. Methought she looked smaller than ever, sundry great
ships overspiring her from close without. She was already a nightmare of
disorder; and the wharf alongside was piled with a world of casks, and
cases, and tins, and tools, and coils of rope, and miniature barrels of
giant powder, such as it seemed no human ingenuity could stuff on board
of her. Johnson was in the waist, in a red shirt and dungaree trousers,
his eye kindled with activity. With him I exchanged a word or two;
thence stepped aft along the narrow alleyway between the house and the
rail, and down the companion to the main cabin, where the captain sat
with the commissioner at wine.

I gazed with disaffection at the little box which for many a day I was
to call home. On the starboard was a stateroom for the captain; on the
port, a pair of frowsy berths, one over the other, and abutting astern
upon the side of an unsavoury cupboard. The walls were yellow and damp,
the floor black and greasy; there was a prodigious litter of straw, old
newspapers, and broken packing-cases; and by way of ornament, only
a glass-rack, a thermometer presented "with compliments" of some
advertising whiskey-dealer, and a swinging lamp. It was hard to foresee
that, before a week was up, I should regard that cabin as cheerful,
lightsome, airy, and even spacious.

I was presented to the commissioner, and to a young friend of his whom
he had brought with him for the purpose (apparently) of smoking cigars;
and after we had pledged one another in a glass of California port, a
trifle sweet and sticky for a morning beverage, the functionary spread
his papers on the table, and the hands were summoned. Down they trooped,
accordingly, into the cabin; and stood eyeing the ceiling or the floor,
the picture of sheepish embarrassment, and with a common air of wanting
to expectorate and not quite daring. In admirable contrast, stood
the Chinese cook, easy, dignified, set apart by spotless raiment, the
hidalgo of the seas.

I daresay you never had occasion to assist at the farce which followed.
Our shipping laws in the United States (thanks to the inimitable Dana)
are conceived in a spirit of paternal stringency, and proceed throughout
on the hypothesis that poor Jack is an imbecile, and the other parties
to the contract, rogues and ruffians. A long and wordy paper of
precautions, a fo'c's'le bill of rights, must be read separately to each
man. I had now the benefit of hearing it five times in brisk succession;
and you would suppose I was acquainted with its contents. But the
commissioner (worthy man) spends his days in doing little else; and when
we bear in mind the parallel case of the irreverent curate, we need not
be surprised that he took the passage tempo prestissimo, in one roulade
of gabble--that I, with the trained attention of an educated man,
could gather but a fraction of its import--and the sailors nothing.
No profanity in giving orders, no sheath-knives, Midway Island and any
other port the master may direct, not to exceed six calendar months,
and to this port to be paid off: so it seemed to run, with surprising
verbiage; so ended. And with the end, the commissioner, in each case,
fetched a deep breath, resumed his natural voice, and proceeded to
business. "Now, my man," he would say, "you ship A. B. at so many
dollars, American gold coin. Sign your name here, if you have one, and
can write." Whereupon, and the name (with infinite hard breathing) being
signed, the commissioner would proceed to fill in the man's appearance,
height, etc., on the official form. In this task of literary portraiture
he seemed to rely wholly upon temperament; for I could not perceive him
to cast one glance on any of his models. He was assisted, however, by a
running commentary from the captain: "Hair blue and eyes red, nose
five foot seven, and stature broken"--jests as old, presumably, as the
American marine; and, like the similar pleasantries of the billiard
board, perennially relished. The highest note of humour was reached in
the case of the Chinese cook, who was shipped under the name of "One
Lung," to the sound of his own protests and the self-approving chuckles
of the functionary.

"Now, captain," said the latter, when the men were gone, and he had
bundled up his papers, "the law requires you to carry a slop-chest and a
chest of medicines."

"I guess I know that," said Nares.

"I guess you do," returned the commissioner, and helped himself to port.

But when he was gone, I appealed to Nares on the same subject, for I was
well aware we carried none of these provisions.

"Well," drawled Nares, "there's sixty pounds of niggerhead on the quay,
isn't there? and twenty pounds of salts; and I never travel without some
painkiller in my gripsack."

As a matter of fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual sailor's
provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion,
he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and
flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from
Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides,
some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over
which Nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. "Seems to smell like
diarrhoea stuff," he would remark. "I wish't I knew, and I would
try it." But the slop-chest was indeed represented by the plugs of
niggerhead, and nothing else. Thus paternal laws are made, thus they
are evaded; and the schooner put to sea, like plenty of her neighbours,
liable to a fine of six hundred dollars.

This characteristic scene, which has delayed me overlong, was but a
moment in that day of exercise and agitation. To fit out a schooner for
sea, and improvise a marriage between dawn and dusk, involves heroic
effort. All day Jim and I ran, and tramped, and laughed, and came near
crying, and fell in sudden anxious consultations, and were sped (with
a prepared sarcasm on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and made
dashes to the schooner and John Smith's, and at every second corner
were reminded (by our own huge posters) of our desperate estate. Between
whiles, I had found the time to hover at some half-a-dozen jewellers'
windows; and my present, thus intemperately chosen, was graciously
accepted. I believe, indeed, that was the last (though not the least) of
my concerns, before the old minister, shabby and benign, was routed from
his house and led to the office like a performing poodle; and there, in
the growing dusk, under the cold glitter of Thirteen Star, two hundred
strong, and beside the garish glories of the agricultural engine, Mamie
and Jim were made one. The scene was incongruous, but the business
pretty, whimsical, and affecting: the typewriters with such kindly faces
and fine posies, Mamie so demure, and Jim--how shall I describe that
poor, transfigured Jim? He began by taking the minister aside to the far
end of the office. I knew not what he said, but I have reason to believe
he was protesting his unfitness; for he wept as he said it: and the old
minister, himself genuinely moved, was heard to console and encourage
him, and at one time to use this expression: "I assure you, Mr.
Pinkerton, there are not many who can say so much"--from which I
gathered that my friend had tempered his self-accusations with at least
one legitimate boast. From this ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me;
and though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of my name and
one fierce handgrip, communicated some of his own emotion, like a charge
of electricity, to his best man. We stood up to the ceremony at last,
in a general and kindly discomposure. Jim was all abroad; and the divine
himself betrayed his sympathy in voice and demeanour, and concluded with
a fatherly allocution, in which he congratulated Mamie (calling her "my
dear") upon the fortune of an excellent husband, and protested he had
rarely married a more interesting couple. At this stage, like a glory
descending, there was handed in, ex machina, the card of Douglas B.
Longhurst, with congratulations and four dozen Perrier-Jouet. A bottle
was opened; and the minister pledged the bride, and the bridesmaids
simpered and tasted, and I made a speech with airy bacchanalianism,
glass in hand. But poor Jim must leave the wine untasted. "Don't touch
it," I had found the opportunity to whisper; "in your state it will make
you as drunk as a fiddler." And Jim had wrung my hand with a "God bless
you, Loudon!--saved me again!"

Hard following upon this, the supper passed off at Frank's with somewhat
tremulous gaiety. And thence, with one half of the Perrier-Jouet--I
would accept no more--we voyaged in a hack to the Norah Creina.

"What a dear little ship!" cried Mamie, as our miniature craft was
pointed out to her. And then, on second thought, she turned to the best
man. "And how brave you must be, Mr. Dodd," she cried, "to go in that
tiny thing so far upon the ocean!" And I perceived I had risen in the
lady's estimation.

The dear little ship presented a horrid picture of confusion, and its
occupants of weariness and ill-humour. From the cabin the cook was
storing tins into the lazarette, and the four hands, sweaty and sullen,
were passing them from one to another from the waist. Johnson was three
parts asleep over the table; and in his bunk, in his own cabin, the
captain sourly chewed and puffed at a cigar.

"See here," he said, rising; "you'll be sorry you came. We can't stop
work if we're to get away to-morrow. A ship getting ready for sea is no
place for people, anyway. You'll only interrupt my men."

I was on the point of answering something tart; but Jim, who was
acquainted with the breed, as he was with most things that had a bearing
on affairs, made haste to pour in oil.

"Captain," he said, "I know we're a nuisance here, and that you've had
a rough time. But all we want is that you should drink one glass of wine
with us, Perrier-Jouet, from Longhurst, on the occasion of my marriage,
and Loudon's--Mr. Dodd's--departure."

"Well, it's your lookout," said Nares. "I don't mind half an hour.
Spell, O!" he added to the men; "go and kick your heels for half an
hour, and then you can turn to again a trifle livelier. Johnson, see if
you can't wipe off a chair for the lady."

His tone was no more gracious than his language; but when Mamie had
turned upon him the soft fire of her eyes, and informed him that he was
the first sea-captain she had ever met, "except captains of steamers,
of course"--she so qualified the statement--and had expressed a lively
sense of his courage, and perhaps implied (for I suppose the arts of
ladies are the same as those of men) a modest consciousness of his good
looks, our bear began insensibly to soften; and it was already part
as an apology, though still with unaffected heat of temper, that he
volunteered some sketch of his annoyances.

"A pretty mess we've had!" said he. "Half the stores were wrong; I'll
wring John Smith's neck for him some of these days. Then two newspaper
beasts came down, and tried to raise copy out of me, till I threatened
them with the first thing handy; and then some kind of missionary bug,
wanting to work his passage to Raiatea or somewhere. I told him I would
take him off the wharf with the butt end of my boot, and he went away
cursing. This vessel's been depreciated by the look of him."

While the captain spoke, with his strange, humorous, arrogant
abruptness, I observed Jim to be sizing him up, like a thing at once
quaint and familiar, and with a scrutiny that was both curious and
knowing.

"One word, dear boy," he said, turning suddenly to me. And when he had
drawn me on deck, "That man," says he, "will carry sail till your hair
grows white; but never you let on, never breathe a word. I know his
line: he'll die before he'll take advice; and if you get his back up,
he'll run you right under. I don't often jam in my advice, Loudon; and
when I do, it means I'm thoroughly posted."

The little party in the cabin, so disastrously begun, finished, under
the mellowing influence of wine and woman, in excellent feeling and
with some hilarity. Mamie, in a plush Gainsborough hat and a gown of
wine-coloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her rude surroundings
and companions. The dusky litter of the cabin set off her radiant
trimness: tarry Johnson was a foil to her fair beauty; she glowed in
that poor place, fair as a star; until even I, who was not usually of
her admirers, caught a spark of admiration; and even the captain, who
was in no courtly humour, proposed that the scene should be commemorated
by my pencil. It was the last act of the evening. Hurriedly as I went
about my task, the half-hour had lengthened out to more than three
before it was completed: Mamie in full value, the rest of the party
figuring in outline only, and the artist himself introduced in a back
view, which was pronounced a likeness. But it was to Mamie that I
devoted the best of my attention; and it was with her I made my chief
success.

"O!" she cried, "am I really like that? No wonder Jim ..." She paused.
"Why it's just as lovely as he's good!" she cried: an epigram which was
appreciated, and repeated as we made our salutations, and called out
after the retreating couple as they passed away under the lamplight on
the wharf.

Thus it was that our farewells were smuggled through under an ambuscade
of laughter, and the parting over ere I knew it was begun. The figures
vanished, the steps died away along the silent city front; on board, the
men had returned to their labours, the captain to his solitary cigar;
and after that long and complex day of business and emotion, I was at
last alone and free. It was, perhaps, chiefly fatigue that made my heart
so heavy. I leaned at least upon the house, and stared at the foggy
heaven, or over the rail at the wavering reflection of the lamps, like a
man that was quite done with hope and would have welcomed the asylum of
the grave. And all at once, as I thus stood, the City of Pekin flashed
into my mind, racing her thirteen knots for Honolulu, with the hated
Trent--perhaps with the mysterious Goddedaal--on board; and with the
thought, the blood leaped and careered through all my body. It seemed no
chase at all; it seemed we had no chance, as we lay there bound to iron
pillars, and fooling away the precious moments over tins of beans. "Let
them get there first!" I thought. "Let them! We can't be long behind."
And from that moment, I date myself a man of a rounded experience:
nothing had lacked but this, that I should entertain and welcome the
grim thought of bloodshed.

It was long before the toil remitted in the cabin, and it was worth
my while to get to bed; long after that, before sleep favoured me;
and scarce a moment later (or so it seemed) when I was recalled to
consciousness by bawling men and the jar of straining hawsers.

The schooner was cast off before I got on deck. In the misty obscurity
of the first dawn, I saw the tug heading us with glowing fires and
blowing smoke, and heard her beat the roughened waters of the bay.
Beside us, on her flock of hills, the lighted city towered up and
stood swollen in the raw fog. It was strange to see her burn on thus
wastefully, with half-quenched luminaries, when the dawn was already
grown strong enough to show me, and to suffer me to recognise, a
solitary figure standing by the piles.

Or was it really the eye, and not rather the heart, that identified that
shadow in the dusk, among the shoreside lamps? I know not. It was Jim,
at least; Jim, come for a last look; and we had but time to wave a
valedictory gesture and exchange a wordless cry. This was our second
parting, and our capacities were now reversed. It was mine to play the
Argonaut, to speed affairs, to plan and to accomplish--if need were, at
the price of life; it was his to sit at home, to study the calendar, and
to wait. I knew besides another thing that gave me joy. I knew that my
friend had succeeded in my education; that the romance of business,
if our fantastic purchase merited the name, had at last stirred my
dilletante nature; and, as we swept under cloudy Tamalpais and through
the roaring narrows of the bay, the Yankee blood sang in my veins with
suspense and exultation.

Outside the heads, as if to meet my desire, we found it blowing fresh
from the northeast. No time had been lost. The sun was not yet up before
the tug cast off the hawser, gave us a salute of three whistles, and
turned homeward toward the coast, which now began to gleam along its
margin with the earliest rays of day. There was no other ship in view
when the Norah Creina, lying over under all plain sail, began her long
and lonely voyage to the wreck.




CHAPTER XII. THE "NORAH CREINA."


I love to recall the glad monotony of a Pacific voyage, when the trades
are not stinted, and the ship, day after day, goes free. The mountain
scenery of trade-wind clouds, watched (and in my case painted) under
every vicissitude of light--blotting stars, withering in the moon's
glory, barring the scarlet eve, lying across the dawn collapsed into the
unfeatured morning bank, or at noon raising their snowy summits between
the blue roof of heaven and the blue floor of sea; the small, busy,
and deliberate world of the schooner, with its unfamiliar scenes, the
spearing of dolphin from the bowsprit end, the holy war on sharks,
the cook making bread on the main hatch; reefing down before a violent
squall, with the men hanging out on the foot-ropes; the squall itself,
the catch at the heart, the opened sluices of the sky; and the relief,
the renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again,
and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea. I love to
recall, and would that I could reproduce that life, the unforgettable,
the unrememberable. The memory, which shows so wise a backwardness
in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended
pleasures; and a long-continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its
mass) our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of our life's map
there lies a roseate, undecipherable haze, and that is all.

Of one thing, if I am at all to trust my own annals, I was delightedly
conscious. Day after day, in the sun-gilded cabin, the whiskey-dealer's
thermometer stood at 84. Day after day, the air had the same
indescribable liveliness and sweetness, soft and nimble, and cool as
the cheek of health. Day after day the sun flamed; night after night the
moon beaconed, or the stars paraded their lustrous regiment. I was aware
of a spiritual change, or, perhaps, rather a molecular reconstitution.
My bones were sweeter to me. I had come home to my own climate, and
looked back with pity on those damp and wintry zones, miscalled the
temperate.

"Two years of this, and comfortable quarters to live in, kind of shake
the grit out of a man," the captain remarked; "can't make out to be
happy anywhere else. A townie of mine was lost down this way, in a
coalship that took fire at sea. He struck the beach somewhere in the
Navigators; and he wrote to me that when he left the place, it would be
feet first. He's well off, too, and his father owns some coasting
craft Down East; but Billy prefers the beach, and hot rolls off the
bread-fruit trees."

A voice told me I was on the same track as Billy. But when was this? Our
outward track in the Norah Creina lay well to the northward; and perhaps
it is but the impression of a few pet days which I have unconsciously
spread longer, or perhaps the feeling grew upon me later, in the run to
Honolulu. One thing I am sure: it was before I had ever seen an island
worthy of the name that I must date my loyalty to the South Seas. The
blank sea itself grew desirable under such skies; and wherever the
trade-wind blows, I know no better country than a schooner's deck.

But for the tugging anxiety as to the journey's end, the journey itself
must thus have counted for the best of holidays. My physical well-being
was over-proof; effects of sea and sky kept me for ever busy with my
pencil; and I had no lack of intellectual exercise of a different order
in the study of my inconsistent friend, the captain. I call him friend,
here on the threshold; but that is to look well ahead. At first, I
was too much horrified by what I considered his barbarities, too much
puzzled by his shifting humours, and too frequently annoyed by his small
vanities, to regard him otherwise than as the cross of my existence. It
was only by degrees, in his rare hours of pleasantness, when he forgot
(and made me forget) the weaknesses to which he was so prone, that he
won me to a kind of unconsenting fondness. Lastly, the faults were
all embraced in a more generous view: I saw them in their place, like
discords in a musical progression; and accepted them and found them
picturesque, as we accept and admire, in the habitable face of nature,
the smoky head of the volcano or the pernicious thicket of the swamp.

He was come of good people Down East, and had the beginnings of a
thorough education. His temper had been ungovernable from the first; and
it is likely the defect was inherited, and the blame of the rupture
not entirely his. He ran away at least to sea; suffered horrible
maltreatment, which seemed to have rather hardened than enlightened him;
ran away again to shore in a South American port; proved his capacity
and made money, although still a child; fell among thieves and was
robbed; worked back a passage to the States, and knocked one morning
at the door of an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. The
introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing.
The sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in
tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the
spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy for the old lady," Nares said,
"even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her
thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as I was going by; I
always thought she was a kind of pleasant old girl. Well, when she came
to the door that morning, I told her so, and that I was stone-broke; and
she took me right in, and fetched out the pie." She clothed him, taught
him, and had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed him to her
hearth on his return from every cruise, and when she died bequeathed him
her possessions. "She was a good old girl," he would say. "I tell you,
Mr. Dodd, it was a queer thing to see me and the old lady talking a
pasear in the garden, and the old man scowling at us over the pickets.
She lived right next door to the old man, and I guess that's just what
took me there. I wanted him to know that I was badly beat, you see, and
would rather go to the devil than to him. What made the dig harder, he
had quarrelled with the old lady about me and the orchard: I guess that
made him rage. Yes, I was a beast when I was young. But I was always
pretty good to the old lady." Since then he had prospered, not
uneventfully, in his profession; the old lady's money had fallen in
during the voyage of the Gleaner, and he was now, as soon as the smoke
of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was
about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head
of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow;
clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on
that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner;
when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the
greatest brute upon the seas.

His usage of the men, his hazing, his bullying, his perpetual
fault-finding for no cause, his perpetual and brutal sarcasm, might have
raised a mutiny in a slave galley. Suppose the steersman's eye to have
wandered: "You ----, ----, little, mutton-faced Dutchman," Nares would
bawl; "you want a booting to keep you on your course! I know a little
city-front slush when I see one. Just you glue your eye to that compass,
or I'll show you round the vessel at the butt-end of my boot." Or
suppose a hand to linger aft, whither he had perhaps been summoned not
a minute before. "Mr. Daniells, will you oblige me by stepping clear
of that main-sheet?" the captain might begin, with truculent courtesy.
"Thank you. And perhaps you'll be so kind as to tell me what the hell
you're doing on my quarter-deck? I want no dirt of your sort here. Is
there nothing for you to do? Where's the mate? Don't you set ME to find
work for you, or I'll find you some that will keep you on your back a
fortnight." Such allocutions, conceived with a perfect knowledge of his
audience, so that every insult carried home, were delivered with a mien
so menacing, and an eye so fiercely cruel, that his unhappy subordinates
shrank and quailed. Too often violence followed; too often I have heard
and seen and boiled at the cowardly aggression; and the victim, his
hands bound by law, has risen again from deck and crawled forward
stupefied--I know not what passion of revenge in his wronged heart.

It seems strange I should have grown to like this tyrant. It may even
seem strange that I should have stood by and suffered his excesses to
proceed. But I was not quite such a chicken as to interfere in public;
for I would rather have a man or two mishandled than one half of
us butchered in a mutiny and the rest suffer on the gallows. And in
private, I was unceasing in my protests.

"Captain," I once said to him, appealing to his patriotism, which was
of a hardy quality, "this is no way to treat American seamen. You don't
call it American to treat men like dogs?"

"Americans?" he said grimly. "Do you call these Dutchmen and
Scattermouches [1] Americans? I've been fourteen years to sea, all but
one trip under American colours, and I've never laid eye on an American
foremast hand. There used to be such things in the old days, when
thirty-five dollars were the wages out of Boston; and then you could see
ships handled and run the way they want to be. But that's all past and
gone; and nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a
belaying-pin. You don't know; you haven't a guess. How would you like to
go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with all your
duty to do and every one's life depending on you, and expect to get
a knife ripped into you as you come out of your stateroom, or be
sand-bagged as you pass the boat, or get tripped into the hold, if the
hatches are off in fine weather? That kind of shakes the starch out of
the brotherly love and New Jerusalem business. You go through the mill,
and you'll have a bigger grudge against every old shellback that dirties
his plate in the three oceans, than the Bank of California could settle
up. No; it has an ugly look to it, but the only way to run a ship is to
make yourself a terror."

[1] In sea-lingo (Pacific) DUTCHMAN includes all Teutons and folk from
the basin of the Baltic; SCATTERMOUCH, all Latins and Levantines.

"Come, Captain," said I, "there are degrees in everything. You know
American ships have a bad name; you know perfectly well if it wasn't for
the high wage and the good food, there's not a man would ship in one if
he could help; and even as it is, some prefer a British ship, beastly
food and all."

"O, the lime-juicers?" said he. "There's plenty booting in lime-juicers,
I guess; though I don't deny but what some of them are soft." And with
that he smiled like a man recalling something. "Look here, that brings
a yarn in my head," he resumed; "and for the sake of the joke, I'll give
myself away. It was in 1874, I shipped mate in the British ship Maria,
from 'Frisco for Melbourne. She was the queerest craft in some ways that
ever I was aboard of. The food was a caution; there was nothing fit
to put your lips to--but the lime-juice, which was from the end bin no
doubt: it used to make me sick to see the men's dinners, and sorry to
see my own. The old man was good enough, I guess; Green was his name;
a mild, fatherly old galoot. But the hands were the lowest gang I ever
handled; and whenever I tried to knock a little spirit into them, the
old man took their part! It was Gilbert and Sullivan on the high seas;
but you bet I wouldn't let any man dictate to me. 'You give me your
orders, Captain Green,' I said, 'and you'll find I'll carry them out;
that's all you've got to say. You'll find I do my duty,' I said; 'how
I do it is my lookout; and there's no man born that's going to give
me lessons.' Well, there was plenty dirt on board that Maria first and
last. Of course, the old man put my back up, and, of course, he put up
the crew's; and I had to regular fight my way through every watch. The
men got to hate me, so's I would hear them grit their teeth when I came
up. At last, one day, I saw a big hulking beast of a Dutchman booting
the ship's boy. I made one shoot of it off the house and laid that
Dutchman out. Up he came, and I laid him out again. 'Now,' I said, 'if
there's a kick left in you, just mention it, and I'll stamp your ribs
in like a packing-case.' He thought better of it, and never let on;
lay there as mild as a deacon at a funeral; and they took him below to
reflect on his native Dutchland. One night we got caught in rather a
dirty thing about 25 south. I guess we were all asleep; for the first
thing I knew there was the fore-royal gone. I ran forward, bawling blue
hell; and just as I came by the foremast, something struck me right
through the forearm and stuck there. I put my other hand up, and by
George! it was the grain; the beasts had speared me like a porpoise.
'Cap'n!' I cried.--'What's wrong?' says he.--'They've grained me,' says
I.--'Grained you?' says he. 'Well, I've been looking for that.'----'And
by God,' I cried, 'I want to have some of these beasts murdered for
it!'--'Now, Mr. Nares,' says he, 'you better go below. If I had been one
of the men, you'd have got more than this. And I want no more of your
language on deck. You've cost me my fore-royal already,' says he; 'and
if you carry on, you'll have the three sticks out of her.' That was old
man Green's idea of supporting officers. But you wait a bit; the cream's
coming. We made Melbourne right enough, and the old man said: 'Mr.
Nares, you and me don't draw together. You're a first-rate seaman, no
mistake of that; but you're the most disagreeable man I ever sailed
with; and your language and your conduct to the crew I cannot stomach.
I guess we'll separate.' I didn't care about the berth, you may be sure;
but I felt kind of mean; and if he made one kind of stink, I thought
I could make another. So I said I would go ashore and see how things
stood; went, found I was all right, and came aboard again on the top
rail.--'Are you getting your traps together, Mr. Nares?' says the old
man.--'No,' says I, 'I don't know as we'll separate much before 'Frisco;
at least,' I said, 'it's a point for your consideration. I'm very
willing to say good-by to the Maria, but I don't know whether you'll
care to start me out with three months' wages.' He got his money-box
right away. 'My son,' says he, 'I think it cheap at the money.' He had
me there."


It was a singular tale for a man to tell of himself; above all, in the
midst of our discussion; but it was quite in character for Nares. I
never made a good hit in our disputes, I never justly resented any act
or speech of his, but what I found it long after carefully posted in his
day-book and reckoned (here was the man's oddity) to my credit. It was
the same with his father, whom he had hated; he would give a sketch of
the old fellow, frank and credible, and yet so honestly touched that
it was charming. I have never met a man so strangely constituted: to
possess a reason of the most equal justice, to have his nerves at the
same time quivering with petty spite, and to act upon the nerves and not
the reason.