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Title: The Open Boat and Other Stories
Author: Stephen Crane
Release Date: April 28, 2014 [eBook #45524]
[Most recently updated: October 17, 2021]
Language: English
Produced by: Dianna Adair, Steven Calwas, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OPEN BOAT AND OTHER STORIES ***
THE OPEN BOAT AND OTHER STORIES
*************************************
New Novels for 1898
_Crown 8vo, price 6s. each_
DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO
By I. ZANGWILL
THE SCOURGE-STICK
By MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED
THE LONDONERS
By ROBERT HICHENS
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
By H. G. WELLS
THE FOURTH NAPOLEON
By CHARLES BENHAM
THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH
By GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
THE MINISTER OF STATE
By J. A. STEUART
CLEO THE MAGNIFICENT
By Z. Z.
THE BROOM OF THE WAR-GOD
By H. N. BRAILSFORD
THE LAKE OF WINE
By BERNARD CAPES
GOD'S FOUNDLING
By A. J. DAWSON
EZEKIEL'S SIN
By J. A. PEARCE
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 Bedford Street, W.C.
*************************************
THE OPEN BOAT AND OTHER STORIES
by
STEPHEN CRANE
Author of "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Little Regiment,"
"The Third Violet," etc.
London
William Heinemann
1898
All rights reserved
To the Memory of
THE LATE WILLIAM HIGGINS
and to
CAPTAIN EDWARD MURPHY
and
STEWARD C. B. MONTGOMERY
Of the sunk Steamer 'Commodore.'
CONTENTS
Part I
Minor Conflicts
Page
The Open Boat 1
A Man and Some Others 41
The Bride comes to Yellow Sky 65
The Wise Men 85
The Five White Mice 107
Flanagan and His Short
Filibustering Adventure 129
Horses 155
Death and the Child 175
Part II
Midnight Sketches
An Experiment in Misery 211
The Men in the Storm 227
The Duel that was not Fought 239
An Ominous Baby 251
A Great Mistake 259
An Eloquence of Grief 265
The Auction 271
The Pace of Youth 279
A Detail 297
Part I
Minor Conflicts
THE OPEN BOAT
A Tale intended to be after the Fact.
Being the Experience of Four Men from
the Sunk Steamer 'Commodore'
I
None of them knew the colour of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and
were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were
of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white,
and all of the men knew the colours of the sea. The horizon narrowed
and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged
with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.
Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here
rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously
abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat
navigation.
The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six
inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were
rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest
dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was
a narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the
broken sea.
The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes
raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the
stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.
The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and
wondered why he was there.
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that
profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least,
to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm
fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a
vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a
day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of
a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump
of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the
waves, went low and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something
strange in his voice. Although steady, it was deep with mourning, and
of a quality beyond oration or tears.
"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.
"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and,
by the same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced
and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she
rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously
high. The manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic
thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems
in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave,
requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully
bumping a crest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long
incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after
successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another
behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do
something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey
one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves
that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in
a dingey. As each slaty wall of water approached, it shut all else from
the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine
that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last
effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of the
waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.
In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes
must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed
from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtlessly have been weirdly
picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they
had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun
swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the
colour of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, streaked with
amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the
breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect
upon the colour of the waves that rolled toward them.
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the
difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The
cook had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito
Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat
and pick us up."
"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.
"The crew," said the cook.
"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I
understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored
for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."
"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.
"No, they don't," said the correspondent.
"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.
"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that
I'm thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a
life-saving station."
"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.
II
As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through
the hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down
again the spray slashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was
a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad
tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid.
It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights
of emerald and white and amber.
"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook. "If not, where
would we be? Wouldn't have a show."
"That's right," said the correspondent.
The busy oiler nodded his assent.
Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humour,
contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think we've got much of a show
now, boys?" said he.
Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and
hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be
childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the
situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On
the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any
open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.
"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "we'll get ashore
all right."
But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler
quoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"
The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."
Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the
sea, near patches of brown sea-weed that rolled over the waves with a
movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in
groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of
the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens
a thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the
men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and
sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at
them, telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to
alight on the top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to
the boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the
air in chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the
captain's head. "Ugly brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as
if you were made with a jack-knife." The cook and the correspondent
swore darkly at the creature. The captain naturally wished to knock
it away with the end of the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it,
because anything resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized
this freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently and
carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the
pursuit the captain breathed easier on account of his hair, and others
breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this time as
being somehow grewsome and ominous.
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. And also they
rowed.
They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the
oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the
oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very
ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining
one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star
of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to
change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand
along the thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the
man in the rowing seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was
all done with the most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each
other, the whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the
captain cried: "Look out now! Steady there!"
The brown mats of sea-weed that appeared from time to time were like
islands, bits of earth. They were travelling, apparently, neither one
way nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed
the men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.
The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on
a great swell, said that he had seen the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet.
Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent was
at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the
lighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were
important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn
his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others,
and when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.
"See it?" said the captain.
"No," said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything."
"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that
direction."
At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and
this time his eyes chanced on a small still thing on the edge of the
swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an
anxious eye to find a lighthouse so tiny.
"Think we'll make it, captain?"
"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else,"
said the captain.
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously
by the crests, made progress that in the absence of sea-weed was not
apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing wallowing,
miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great
spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.
"Bail her, cook," said the captain serenely.
"All right, captain," said the cheerful cook.
III
It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that
was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him.
They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they
were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may
be common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow,
spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command
a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the
dingey. It was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the
common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal
and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat
there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who
had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the
best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it.
"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoat
on the end of an oar and give you two boys a chance to rest." So the
cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the overcoat.
The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig.
Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breaking
into the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success.
Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now
almost assumed colour, and appeared like a little grey shadow on the
sky. The man at the oars could not be prevented from turning his head
rather often to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow.
At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could
see land. Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky,
this land seemed but a long black shadow on the sea. It certainly was
thinner than paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the
cook, who had coasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the
way, I believe they abandoned that life-saving station there about a
year ago."
"Did they?" said the captain.
The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now
obliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued
their old impetuous swooping at the dingey, and the little craft,
no longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or the
correspondent took the oars again.
Shipwrecks are _à propos_ of nothing. If men could only train for them
and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there
would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey none had slept
any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to
embarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the
deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.
For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the
correspondent was fond of rowing at this time. The correspondent
wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could
there be people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an
amusement; it was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental
aberrations could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to
the muscles and a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in
general how the amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced
oiler smiled in full sympathy. Previously to the foundering, by the
way, the oiler had worked double-watch in the engine-room of the ship.
"Take her easy, now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves.
If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll
sure have to swim for it. Take your time."
Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line
of black and a line of white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain
said that he could make out a house on the shore. "That's the house of
refuge, sure," said the cook. "They'll see us before long, and come out
after us."
The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to
make us out now, if he's looking through a glass," said the captain.
"He'll notify the life-saving people."
"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the
wreck," said the oiler, in a low voice. "Else the life-boat would be
out hunting us."
Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came
again. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally,
a new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low
thunder of the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the
lighthouse now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north,
Billie," said he.
"'A little more north,' sir," said the oiler.
Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and
all but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this
expansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of the
men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could
not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be
ashore.
Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat,
and they now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The
correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but
happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight
cigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly
scatheless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and
thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and with
an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at
the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a
drink of water.
IV
"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life
about your house of refuge."
"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"
A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was
of dunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain,
and sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the
beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the
slim lighthouse lifted its little grey length.
Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny they
don't see us," said the men.
The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless,
thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the men
sat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure," said everybody.
It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within
twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact,
and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning
the eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the
dingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.
"Funny they don't see us."
The light-heartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their
sharpened minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of
incompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice. There was the shore
of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it
came no sign.
"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a
try for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us have
strength left to swim after the boat swamps."
And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for
the shore. There was a sudden tightening of muscles. There was some
thinking.
"If we don't all get ashore--" said the captain. "If we don't all get
ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"
They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As
for the reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in
them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be
drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why,
in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to
come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely
to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese
of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do
better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's
fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has
decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save
me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd.... But no, she cannot
mean to drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not
after all this work." Afterward the man might have had an impulse to
shake his fist at the clouds: "Just you drown me, now, and then hear
what I call you!"
The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed
always just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil
of foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the speech of them.
No mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could
ascend these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler
was a wily surfman. "Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live three
minutes more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea
again, captain?"
"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain.
This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady
oarsmanship, turned the boat in the middle of the surf and took her
safely to sea again.
There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed
sea to deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, they
must have seen us from the shore by now."
The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolate
east. A squall, marked by dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like
smoke from a burning building, appeared from the south-east.
"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?"
"Funny they haven't seen us."
"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're
fishin'. Maybe they think we're damned fools."
It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward,
but wind and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea, and
sky formed their mighty angle, there were little dots which seemed to
indicate a city on the shore.
"St. Augustine?"
The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."
And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler
rowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of
more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite
anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the
theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots,
and other comforts.
"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.
"No," said the oiler. "Hang it."
When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the
boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless
of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold
sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His
head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave
crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board
and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It
is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled
comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great
soft mattress.
"Look! There's a man on the shore!"
"Where?"
"There! See 'im? See 'im?"
"Yes, sure! He's walking along."
"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"
"He's waving at us!"
"So he is! By thunder!"
"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out
here for us in half-an-hour."
"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."
The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching
glance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating
stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in
the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The
oarsman did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.
"What's he doing now?"
"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think.... There he goes
again. Towards the house.... Now he's stopped again."
"Is he waving at us?"
"No, not now! he was, though."
"Look! There comes another man!"
"He's running."
"Look at him go, would you."
"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both
waving at us. Look!"
"There comes something up the beach."
"What the devil is that thing?"
"Why, it looks like a boat."
"Why, certainly it's a boat."
"No, it's on wheels."
"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along
shore on a wagon."
"That's the life-boat, sure."
"No, by ----, it's--it's an omnibus."
"I tell you it's a life-boat."
"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big
hotel omnibuses."
"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you
suppose they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going around
collecting the life-crew, hey?"
"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag.
He's standing on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other two
fellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the fellow with the
flag. Maybe he ain't waving it."
"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why certainly, that's his
coat."
"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his
head. But would you look at him swing it."
"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a
winter resort hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boarders
to see us drown."
"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"
"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a
life-saving station up there."
"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah,
there, Willie."
"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you
suppose he means?"
"He don't mean anything. He's just playing."
"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea
and wait, or go north, or go south, or go to hell--there would be some
reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his coat
revolving like a wheel. The ass!"
"There come more people."
"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"
"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."
"That fellow is still waving his coat."
"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It
don't mean anything."
"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be
that there's a life-saving station there somewhere."
"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave."
"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever
since he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men
to bring a boat out? A fishing boat--one of those big yawls--could come
out here all right. Why don't he do something?"
"Oh, it's all right, now."
"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that
they've seen us."
A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on
the sea slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men
began to shiver.
"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood,
"if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here
all night!"
"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've
seen us now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out after
us."
The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this
gloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of
people. The spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made the
voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded.
"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking
him one, just for luck."
"Why? What did he do?"
"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."
In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and
then the oiler rowed. Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically,
turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse had
vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared,
just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed
before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. The
land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder
of the surf.
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am
going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule
the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and
trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was
about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?"
The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged
to speak to the oarsman.
"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"
"'Keep her head up,' sir." The voices were weary and low.
This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and
listlessly in the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable
of noting the tall black waves that swept forward in a most sinister
silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.
The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the
water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke.
"Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"
V
"Pie," said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk
about those things, blast you!"
"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches,
and----"
A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled
finally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south,
changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, a
small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the
furniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.
Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in
the dingey that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed
by thrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed extended
far under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain
forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave
came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chilling
water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and
groan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat
gurgled about them as the craft rocked.
The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he
lost the ability, and then arouse the other from his sea-water couch in
the bottom of the boat.
The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and the
overpowering sleep blinded him. And he rowed yet afterward. Then he
touched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his name. "Will you
spell me for a little while?" he said, meekly.
"Sure, Billie," said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himself
to a sitting position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler,
cuddling down in the sea-water at the cook's side, seemed to go to
sleep instantly.
The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without
snarling. The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boat
headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her, and to
preserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waves
were silent and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almost
upon the boat before the oarsman was aware.
In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure
that the captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be always
awake. "Captain, shall I keep her making for that light north, sir?"
The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points off
the port bow."
The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the
warmth which this clumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed
almost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth invariably chattered wildly
as soon as he ceased his labour, dropped down to sleep.
The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleeping
under-foot. The cook's arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with
their fragmentary clothing and haggard faces, they were the babes of
the sea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood.
Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a
growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the
boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his
life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking
his eyes and shaking with the new cold.
"Oh, I'm awful sorry, Billie," said the correspondent contritely.
"That's all right, old boy," said the oiler, and lay down again and was
asleep.
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent
thought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had
a voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end.
There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming
trail of phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black
waters. It might have been made by a monstrous knife.
Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with the
open mouth and looked at the sea.
Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish
light, and this time it was alongside the boat, and might almost have
been reached with an oar. The correspondent saw an enormous fin speed
like a shadow through the water, hurling the crystalline spray and
leaving the long glowing trail.
The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face was
hidden, and he seemed to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea.
They certainly were asleep. So, being bereft of sympathy, he leaned a
little way to one side and swore softly into the sea.
But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead or
astern, on one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled the
long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whiroo of the dark
fin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cut
the water like a gigantic and keen projectile.
The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the same
horror that it would if he had been a picnicker. He simply looked at
the sea dully and swore in an undertone.
Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone. He wished
one of his companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it.
But the captain hung motionless over the water-jar, and the oiler and
the cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.
VI
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am
going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule
the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"
During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude
that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him,
despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an
abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard.
The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had
drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still----
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important,
and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of
him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates
deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible
expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the
desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one
knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself."
A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says
to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.
The men in the dingey had not discussed these matters, but each had, no
doubt, reflected upon them in silence and according to his mind. There
was seldom any expression upon their faces save the general one of
complete weariness. Speech was devoted to the business of the boat.
To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the
correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this
verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.
"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand,
And he said: 'I shall never see my own, my native land.'"
In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the
fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had
never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had
informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally
ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it
his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had
it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than the
breaking of a pencil's point.
Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was
no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet,
meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an
actuality--stern, mournful, and fine.
The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his
feet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his
chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came
between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square
forms was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues.
The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower
movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and
perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the
Legion who lay dying in Algiers.
The thing which had followed the boat and waited, had evidently grown
bored at the delay. There was no longer to be heard the slash of the
cut-water, and there was no longer the flame of the long trail. The
light in the north still glimmered, but it was apparently no nearer to
the boat. Sometimes the boom of the surf rang in the correspondent's
ears, and he turned the craft seaward then and rowed harder. Southward,
some one had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It was too low
and too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflection
upon the bluff back of it, and this could be discerned from the boat.
The wind came stronger, and sometimes a wave suddenly raged out like
a mountain-cat, and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a
broken crest.
The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. "Pretty
long night," he observed to the correspondent. He looked at the shore.
"Those life-saving people take their time."
"Did you see that shark playing around?"
"Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right."
"Wish I had known you were awake."
Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat.
"Billie!" There was a slow and gradual disentanglement. "Billie, will
you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
As soon as the correspondent touched the cold comfortable sea-water in
the bottom of the boat, and had huddled close to the cook's life-belt
he was deep in sleep, despite the fact that his teeth played all the
popular airs. This sleep was so good to him that it was but a moment
before he heard a voice call his name in a tone that demonstrated the
last stages of exhaustion. "Will you spell me?"
"Sure, Billie."
The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the
correspondent took his course from the wide-awake captain.
Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and the
captain directed the cook to take one oar at the stern and keep the
boat facing the seas. He was to call out if he should hear the thunder
of the surf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get
respite together. "We'll give those boys a chance to get into shape
again," said the captain. They curled down and, after a few preliminary
chatterings and trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither
knew they had bequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or
perhaps the same shark.
As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the
side and gave them a fresh soaking, but this had no power to break
their repose. The ominous slash of the wind and the water affected them
as it would have affected mummies.
"Boys," said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice,
"she's drifted in pretty close. I guess one of you had better take
her to sea again." The correspondent, aroused, heard the crash of the
toppled crests.
As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whisky-and-water, and this
steadied the chills out of him. "If I ever get ashore and anybody shows
me even a photograph of an oar----"
At last there was a short conversation.
"Billie.... Billie, will you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
VII
When the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and the sky
were each of the grey hue of the dawning. Later, carmine and gold
was painted upon the waters. The morning appeared finally, in its
splendour, with a sky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips
of the waves.
On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tall
white windmill reared above them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appeared
on the beach. The cottages might have formed a deserted village.
The voyagers scanned the shore. A conference was held in the boat.
"Well," said the captain, "if no help is coming we might better try
a run through the surf right away. If we stay out here much longer
we will be too weak to do anything for ourselves at all." The others
silently acquiesced in this reasoning. The boat was headed for the
beach. The correspondent wondered if none ever ascended the tall
wind-tower, and if then they never looked seaward. This tower was a
giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented
in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the
struggles of the individual--nature in the wind, and nature in the
vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor
treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It
is, perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with
the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his
life, and have them taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another
chance. A distinction between right and wrong seems absurdly clear to
him, then, in this new ignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands
that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and
his words, and be better and brighter during an introduction or at a
tea.
"Now, boys," said the captain, "she is going to swamp, sure. All we can
do is to work her in as far as possible, and then when she swamps, pile
out and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now, and don't jump until she
swamps sure."
The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf.
"Captain," he said, "I think I'd better bring her about, and keep her
head-on to the seas and back her in."
"All right, Billie," said the captain. "Back her in." The oiler swung
the boat then and, seated in the stern, the cook and the correspondent
were obliged to look over their shoulders to contemplate the lonely and
indifferent shore.
The monstrous in-shore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were
again enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slanted
beach. "We won't get in very close," said the captain. Each time a man
could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward
the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation
there was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing the others,
knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glances
was shrouded.
As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the
fact. He tried to coerce his mind into thinking of it, but the mind
was dominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles said they
did not care. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it
would be a shame.
There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men
simply looked at the shore. "Now, remember to get well clear of the
boat when you jump," said the captain.
Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash,
and the long white comber came roaring down upon the boat.
"Steady now," said the captain. The men were silent. They turned their
eyes from the shore to the comber and waited. The boat slid up the
incline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and swung down the
long back of the wave. Some water had been shipped and the cook bailed
it out.
But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling boiling flood of white
water caught the boat and whirled it almost perpendicular. Water
swarmed in from all sides. The correspondent had his hands on the
gunwale at this time, and when the water entered at that place he
swiftly withdrew his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.
The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled
deeper into the sea.
"Bail her out, cook! Bail her out," said the captain.
"All right, captain," said the cook.
"Now, boys, the next one will do for us, sure," said the oiler. "Mind
to jump clear of the boat."
The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly
swallowed the dingey, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into
the sea. A piece of life-belt had lain in the bottom of the boat, and
as the correspondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his
left hand.
The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was
colder than he had expected to find it off the coast of Florida. This
appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be noted at
the time. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact
was somehow so mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation
that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was cold.
When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy
water. Afterward he saw his companions in the sea. The oiler was
ahead in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly. Off to the
correspondent's left, the cook's great white and corked back bulged out
of the water, and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good
hand to the keel of the overturned dingey.
There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent
wondered at it amid the confusion of the sea.
It seemed also very attractive, but the correspondent knew that it was
a long journey, and he paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver
lay under him, and sometimes he whirled down the incline of a wave as
if he were on a hand-sled.
But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset
with difficulty. He did not pause swimming to inquire what manner of
current had caught him, but there his progress ceased. The shore was
set before him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it
and understood with his eyes each detail of it.
As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling
to him, "Turn over on your back, cook! Turn over on your back and use
the oar."
"All right, sir." The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an
oar, went ahead as if he were a canoe.
Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with
the captain clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have appeared
like a man raising himself to look over a board fence, if it were
not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent
marvelled that the captain could still hold to it.
They passed on, nearer to shore--the oiler, the cook, the captain--and
following them went the water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas.
The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy--a
current. The shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff,
topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture before
him. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in a
gallery looks at a scene from Brittany or Holland.
He thought: "I am going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be
possible? Can it be possible?" Perhaps an individual must consider his
own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.
But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small deadly current,
for he found suddenly that he could again make progress toward the
shore. Later still, he was aware that the captain, clinging with one
hand to the keel of the dingey, had his face turned away from the shore
and toward him, and was calling his name. "Come to the boat! Come to
the boat!"
In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that
when one gets properly wearied, drowning must really be a comfortable
arrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a large degree
of relief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for
some moments had been horror of the temporary agony. He did not wish to
be hurt.
Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with
most remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically
off him.
"Come to the boat," called the captain.
"All right, captain." As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain
let himself down to bottom and leave the boat. Then the correspondent
performed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large wave caught him
and flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat and
far beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics, and
a true miracle of the sea. An overturned boat in the surf is not a
plaything to a swimming man.
The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but
his condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each
wave knocked him into a heap, and the under-tow pulled at him.
Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing
and running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook,
and then waded towards the captain, but the captain waved him away, and
sent him to the correspondent. He was naked, naked as a tree in winter,
but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a
strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent's
hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulæ, said: "Thanks,
old man." But suddenly the man cried: "What's that?" He pointed a swift
finger. The correspondent said: "Go."
In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched
sand that was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea.
The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he
achieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particular
part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thud
was grateful to him.
It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets,
clothes, and flasks, and women with coffee-pots and all the remedies
sacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to the men from the sea
was warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried
slowly up the beach, and the land's welcome for it could only be the
different and sinister hospitality of the grave.
When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight,
and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on
shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.
A MAN AND SOME OTHERS
I
Dark mesquit spread from horizon to horizon. There was no house or
horseman from which a mind could evolve a city or a crowd. The world
was declared to be a desert and unpeopled. Sometimes, however, on
days when no heat-mist arose, a blue shape, dim, of the substance
of a spectre's veil, appeared in the south-west, and a pondering
sheep-herder might remember that there were mountains.
In the silence of these plains the sudden and childish banging of a
tin pan could have made an iron-nerved man leap into the air. The sky
was ever flawless; the manoeuvring of clouds was an unknown pageant;
but at times a sheep-herder could see, miles away, the long, white
streamers of dust rising from the feet of another's flock, and the
interest became intense.
Bill was arduously cooking his dinner, bending over the fire, and
toiling like a blacksmith. A movement, a flash of strange colour,
perhaps, off in the bushes, caused him suddenly to turn his head.
Presently he arose, and, shading his eyes with his hand, stood
motionless and gazing. He perceived at last a Mexican sheep-herder
winding through the brush toward his camp.
"Hello!" shouted Bill.
The Mexican made no answer, but came steadily forward until he was
within some twenty yards. There he paused, and, folding his arms,
drew himself up in the manner affected by the villain in the play.
His serape muffled the lower part of his face, and his great sombrero
shaded his brow. Being unexpected and also silent, he had something of
the quality of an apparition; moreover, it was clearly his intention to
be mysterious and devilish.
The American's pipe, sticking carelessly in the corner of his mouth,
was twisted until the wrong side was uppermost, and he held his
frying-pan poised in the air. He surveyed with evident surprise this
apparition in the mesquit. "Hello, José!" he said; "what's the matter?"
The Mexican spoke with the solemnity of funeral tollings: "Beel,
you mus' geet off range. We want you geet off range. We no like.
Un'erstan'? We no like."
"What you talking about?" said Bill. "No like what?"
"We no like you here. Un'erstan'? Too mooch. You mus' geet out. We no
like. Un'erstan'?"
"Understand? No; I don't know what the blazes you're gittin' at."
Bill's eyes wavered in bewilderment, and his jaw fell. "I must git out?
I must git off the range? What you givin' us?"
The Mexican unfolded his serape with his small yellow hand. Upon his
face was then to be seen a smile that was gently, almost caressingly
murderous. "Beel," he said, "geet out!"
Bill's arm dropped until the frying-pan was at his knee. Finally he
turned again toward the fire. "Go on, you dog-gone little yaller rat!"
he said over his shoulder. "You fellers can't chase me off this range.
I got as much right here as anybody."
"Beel," answered the other in a vibrant tone, thrusting his head
forward and moving one foot, "you geet out or we keel you."
"Who will?" said Bill.
"I--and the others." The Mexican tapped his breast gracefully.
Bill reflected for a time, and then he said: "You ain't got no manner
of license to warn me off'n this range, and I won't move a rod.
Understand? I've got rights, and I suppose if I don't see 'em through,
no one is likely to give me a good hand and help me lick you fellers,
since I'm the only white man in half a day's ride. Now, look; if you
fellers try to rush this camp, I'm goin' to plug about fifty per cent.
of the gentlemen present, sure. I'm goin' in for trouble, an' I'll
git a lot of you. 'Nuther thing: if I was a fine valuable caballero
like you, I'd stay in the rear till the shootin' was done, because I'm
goin' to make a particular p'int of shootin' you through the chest." He
grinned affably, and made a gesture of dismissal.
As for the Mexican, he waved his hands in a consummate expression
of indifference. "Oh, all right," he said. Then, in a tone of deep
menace and glee, he added: "We will keel you eef you no geet. They have
decide'."
"They have, have they?" said Bill. "Well, you tell them to go to the
devil!"
II
Bill had been a mine-owner in Wyoming, a great man, an aristocrat,
one who possessed unlimited credit in the saloons down the gulch. He
had the social weight that could interrupt a lynching or advise a bad
man of the particular merits of a remote geographical point. However,
the fates exploded the toy balloon with which they had amused Bill,
and on the evening of the same day he was a professional gambler with
ill-fortune dealing him unspeakable irritation in the shape of three
big cards whenever another fellow stood pat. It is well here to inform
the world that Bill considered his calamities of life all dwarfs in
comparison with the excitement of one particular evening, when three
kings came to him with criminal regularity against a man who always
filled a straight. Later he became a cow-boy, more weirdly abandoned
than if he had never been an aristocrat. By this time all that remained
of his former splendour was his pride, or his vanity, which was one
thing which need not have remained. He killed the foreman of the ranch
over an inconsequent matter as to which of them was a liar, and the
midnight train carried him eastward. He became a brakeman on the Union
Pacific, and really gained high honours in the hobo war that for many
years has devastated the beautiful railroads of our country. A creature
of ill-fortune himself, he practised all the ordinary cruelties upon
these other creatures of ill-fortune. He was of so fierce a mien that
tramps usually surrendered at once whatever coin or tobacco they had
in their possession; and if afterward he kicked them from the train,
it was only because this was a recognized treachery of the war upon
the hoboes. In a famous battle fought in Nebraska in 1879, he would
have achieved a lasting distinction if it had not been for a deserter
from the United States army. He was at the head of a heroic and
sweeping charge, which really broke the power of the hoboes in that
country for three months; he had already worsted four tramps with
his own coupling-stick, when a stone thrown by the ex-third baseman
of F Troop's nine laid him flat on the prairie, and later enforced
a stay in the hospital in Omaha. After his recovery he engaged with
other railroads, and shuffled cars in countless yards. An order to
strike came upon him in Michigan, and afterward the vengeance of the
railroad pursued him until he assumed a name. This mask is like the
darkness in which the burglar chooses to move. It destroys many of the
healthy fears. It is a small thing, but it eats that which we call our
conscience. The conductor of No. 419 stood in the caboose within two
feet of Bill's nose, and called him a liar. Bill requested him to use
a milder term. He had not bored the foreman of Tin Can Ranch with any
such request, but had killed him with expedition. The conductor seemed
to insist, and so Bill let the matter drop.
He became the bouncer of a saloon on the Bowery in New York. Here most
of his fights were as successful as had been his brushes with the
hoboes in the West. He gained the complete admiration of the four clean
bar-tenders who stood behind the great and glittering bar. He was an
honoured man. He nearly killed Bad Hennessy, who, as a matter of fact,
had more reputation than ability, and his fame moved up the Bowery and
down the Bowery.
But let a man adopt fighting as his business, and the thought grows
constantly within him that it is his business to fight. These phrases
became mixed in Bill's mind precisely as they are here mixed; and let
a man get this idea in his mind, and defeat begins to move toward him
over the unknown ways of circumstances. One summer night three sailors
from the U.S.S. _Seattle_ sat in the saloon drinking and attending to
other people's affairs in an amiable fashion. Bill was a proud man
since he had thrashed so many citizens, and it suddenly occurred to him
that the loud talk of the sailors was very offensive. So he swaggered
upon their attention, and warned them that the saloon was the flowery
abode of peace and gentle silence. They glanced at him in surprise, and
without a moment's pause consigned him to a worse place than any stoker
of them knew. Whereupon he flung one of them through the side door
before the others could prevent it. On the sidewalk there was a short
struggle, with many hoarse epithets in the air, and then Bill slid
into the saloon again. A frown of false rage was upon his brow, and
he strutted like a savage king. He took a long yellow night-stick from
behind the lunch-counter, and started importantly toward the main doors
to see that the incensed seamen did not again enter.
The ways of sailormen are without speech, and, together in the street,
the three sailors exchanged no word, but they moved at once. Landsmen
would have required two years of discussion to gain such unanimity. In
silence, and immediately, they seized a long piece of scantling that
lay handily. With one forward to guide the battering-ram, and with two
behind him to furnish the power, they made a beautiful curve, and came
down like the Assyrians on the front door of that saloon.
Mystic and still mystic are the laws of fate. Bill, with his kingly
frown and his long night-stick, appeared at precisely that moment
in the doorway. He stood like a statue of victory; his pride was at
its zenith; and in the same second this atrocious piece of scantling
punched him in the bulwarks of his stomach, and he vanished like a
mist. Opinions differed as to where the end of the scantling landed
him, but it was ultimately clear that it landed him in south-western
Texas, where he became a sheep-herder.
The sailors charged three times upon the plate-glass front of the
saloon, and when they had finished, it looked as if it had been the
victim of a rural fire company's success in saving it from the flames.
As the proprietor of the place surveyed the ruins, he remarked that
Bill was a very zealous guardian of property. As the ambulance surgeon
surveyed Bill, he remarked that the wound was really an excavation.
III
As his Mexican friend tripped blithely away, Bill turned with a
thoughtful face to his frying-pan and his fire. After dinner he drew
his revolver from its scarred old holster, and examined every part of
it. It was the revolver that had dealt death to the foreman, and it
had also been in free fights in which it had dealt death to several or
none. Bill loved it because its allegiance was more than that of man,
horse, or dog. It questioned neither social nor moral position; it
obeyed alike the saint and the assassin. It was the claw of the eagle,
the tooth of the lion, the poison of the snake; and when he swept
it from its holster, this minion smote where he listed, even to the
battering of a far penny. Wherefore it was his dearest possession, and
was not to be exchanged in south-western Texas for a handful of rubies,
nor even the shame and homage of the conductor of No. 419.
During the afternoon he moved through his monotony of work and leisure
with the same air of deep meditation. The smoke of his supper-time fire
was curling across the shadowy sea of mesquit when the instinct of the
plainsman warned him that the stillness, the desolation, was again
invaded. He saw a motionless horseman in black outline against the
pallid sky. The silhouette displayed serape and sombrero, and even the
Mexican spurs as large as pies. When this black figure began to move
toward the camp, Bill's hand dropped to his revolver.
The horseman approached until Bill was enabled to see pronounced
American features, and a skin too red to grow on a Mexican face. Bill
released his grip on his revolver.
"Hello!" called the horseman.
"Hello!" answered Bill.
The horseman cantered forward. "Good evening," he said, as he again
drew rein.
"Good evenin'," answered Bill, without committing himself by too much
courtesy.
For a moment the two men scanned each other in a way that is not
ill-mannered on the plains, where one is in danger of meeting
horse-thieves or tourists.
Bill saw a type which did not belong in the mesquit. The young fellow
had invested in some Mexican trappings of an expensive kind. Bill's
eyes searched the outfit for some sign of craft, but there was none.
Even with his local regalia, it was clear that the young man was of a
far, black Northern city. He had discarded the enormous stirrups of
his Mexican saddle; he used the small English stirrup, and his feet
were thrust forward until the steel tightly gripped his ankles. As
Bill's eyes travelled over the stranger, they lighted suddenly upon the
stirrups and the thrust feet, and immediately he smiled in a friendly
way. No dark purpose could dwell in the innocent heart of a man who
rode thus on the plains.
As for the stranger, he saw a tattered individual with a tangle of hair
and beard, and with a complexion turned brick-colour from the sun and
whisky. He saw a pair of eyes that at first looked at him as the wolf
looks at the wolf, and then became childlike, almost timid, in their
glance. Here was evidently a man who had often stormed the iron walls
of the city of success, and who now sometimes valued himself as the
rabbit values his prowess.
The stranger smiled genially, and sprang from his horse. "Well, sir, I
suppose you will let me camp here with you to-night?"
"Eh?" said Bill.
"I suppose you will let me camp here with you to-night?"
Bill for a time seemed too astonished for words. "Well,"--he answered,
scowling in inhospitable annoyance--"well, I don't believe this here is
a good place to camp to-night, mister."
The stranger turned quickly from his saddle-girth.
"What?" he said in surprise. "You don't want me here? You don't want me
to camp here?"
Bill's feet scuffled awkwardly, and he looked steadily at a cactus
plant. "Well, you see, mister," he said, "I'd like your company well
enough, but--you see, some of these here greasers are goin' to chase
me off the range to-night; and while I might like a man's company all
right, I couldn't let him in for no such game when he ain't got nothin'
to do with the trouble."
"Going to chase you off the range?" cried the stranger.
"Well, they said they were goin' to do it," said Bill.
"And--great heavens! will they kill you, do you think?"
"Don't know. Can't tell till afterwards. You see, they take some feller
that's alone like me, and then they rush his camp when he ain't quite
ready for 'em, and ginerally plug 'im with a sawed-off shot-gun load
before he has a chance to git at 'em. They lay around and wait for
their chance, and it comes soon enough. Of course a feller alone like
me has got to let up watching some time. Maybe they ketch 'im asleep.
Maybe the feller gits tired waiting, and goes out in broad day, and
kills two or three just to make the whole crowd pile on him and settle
the thing. I heard of a case like that once. It's awful hard on a man's
mind--to git a gang after him."
"And so they're going to rush your camp to-night?" cried the stranger.
"How do you know? Who told you?"
"Feller come and told me."
"And what are you going to do? Fight?"
"Don't see nothin' else to do," answered Bill gloomily, still staring
at the cactus plant.
There was a silence. Finally the stranger burst out in an amazed cry.
"Well, I never heard of such a thing in my life! How many of them are
there?"
"Eight," answered Bill. "And now look-a-here; you ain't got no manner
of business foolin' around here just now, and you might better lope
off before dark. I don't ask no help in this here row. I know your
happening along here just now don't give me no call on you, and you
better hit the trail."
"Well, why in the name of wonder don't you go get the sheriff?" cried
the stranger.
"Oh, h----!" said Bill.
IV
Long, smoldering clouds spread in the western sky, and to the east
silver mists lay on the purple gloom of the wilderness.
Finally, when the great moon climbed the heavens and cast its ghastly
radiance upon the bushes, it made a new and more brilliant crimson of
the campfire, where the flames capered merrily through its mesquit
branches, filling the silence with the fire chorus, an ancient melody
which surely bears a message of the inconsequence of individual
tragedy--a message that is in the boom of the sea, the sliver of the
wind through the grass-blades, the silken clash of hemlock boughs.
No figures moved in the rosy space of the camp, and the search of the
moonbeams failed to disclose a living thing in the bushes. There was no
owl-faced clock to chant the weariness of the long silence that brooded
upon the plain.
The dew gave the darkness under the mesquit a velvet quality that
made air seem nearer to water, and no eye could have seen through it
the black things that moved like monster lizards toward the camp. The
branches, the leaves, that are fain to cry out when death approaches in
the wilds, were frustrated by these uncanny bodies gliding with the
finesse of the escaping serpent. They crept forward to the last point
where assuredly no frantic attempt of the fire could discover them, and
there they paused to locate the prey. A romance relates the tale of the
black cell hidden deep in the earth, where, upon entering, one sees
only the little eyes of snakes fixing him in menaces. If a man could
have approached a certain spot in the bushes, he would not have found
it romantically necessary to have his hair rise. There would have been
a sufficient expression of horror in the feeling of the death-hand at
the nape of his neck and in his rubber knee-joints.
Two of these bodies finally moved toward each other until for each
there grew out of the darkness a face placidly smiling with tender
dreams of assassination. "The fool is asleep by the fire, God be
praised!" The lips of the other widened in a grin of affectionate
appreciation of the fool and his plight. There was some signaling in
the gloom, and then began a series of subtle rustlings, interjected
often with pauses, during which no sound arose but the sound of faint
breathing.
A bush stood like a rock in the stream of firelight, sending its long
shadow backward. With painful caution the little company travelled
along this shadow, and finally arrived at the rear of the bush. Through
its branches they surveyed for a moment of comfortable satisfaction a
form in a grey blanket extended on the ground near the fire. The smile
of joyful anticipation fled quickly, to give place to a quiet air of
business. Two men lifted shot-guns with much of the barrels gone, and
sighting these weapons through the branches, pulled trigger together.
The noise of the explosions roared over the lonely mesquit as if these
guns wished to inform the entire world; and as the grey smoke fled,
the dodging company back of the bush saw the blanketed form twitching;
whereupon they burst out in chorus in a laugh, and arose as merry as a
lot of banqueters. They gleefully gestured congratulations, and strode
bravely into the light of the fire.
Then suddenly a new laugh rang from some unknown spot in the darkness.
It was a fearsome laugh of ridicule, hatred, ferocity. It might have
been demoniac. It smote them motionless in their gleeful prowl, as the
stern voice from the sky smites the legendary malefactor. They might
have been a weird group in wax, the light of the dying fire on their
yellow faces, and shining athwart their eyes turned toward the darkness
whence might come the unknown and the terrible.
The thing in the grey blanket no longer twitched; but if the knives in
their hands had been thrust toward it, each knife was now drawn back,
and its owner's elbow was thrown upward, as if he expected death from
the clouds.
This laugh had so chained their reason that for a moment they had no
wit to flee. They were prisoners to their terror. Then suddenly the
belated decision arrived, and with bubbling cries they turned to run;
but at that instant there was a long flash of red in the darkness, and
with the report one of the men shouted a bitter shout, spun once, and
tumbled headlong. The thick bushes failed to impede the route of the
others.
The silence returned to the wilderness. The tired flames faintly
illumined the blanketed thing and the flung corpse of the marauder, and
sang the fire chorus, the ancient melody which bears the message of the
inconsequence of human tragedy.
V
"Now you are worse off than ever," said the young man, dry-voiced and
awed.
"No, I ain't," said Bill rebelliously. "I'm one ahead."
After reflection, the stranger remarked, "Well, there's seven more."
They were cautiously and slowly approaching the camp. The sun was
flaring its first warming rays over the grey wilderness. Upreared
twigs, prominent branches, shone with golden light, while the shadows
under the mesquit were heavily blue.
Suddenly the stranger uttered a frightened cry. He had arrived at a
point whence he had, through openings in the thicket, a clear view of a
dead face.
"Gosh!" said Bill, who at the next instant had seen the thing; "I
thought at first it was that there José. That would have been queer,
after what I told 'im yesterday."
They continued their way, the stranger wincing in his walk, and Bill
exhibiting considerable curiosity.
The yellow beams of the new sun were touching the grim hues of the
dead Mexican's face, and creating there an inhuman effect, which made
his countenance more like a mask of dulled brass. One hand, grown
curiously thinner, had been flung out regardlessly to a cactus bush.
Bill walked forward and stood looking respectfully at the body. "I know
that feller; his name is Miguel. He----"
The stranger's nerves might have been in that condition when there
is no backbone to the body, only a long groove. "Good heavens!" he
exclaimed, much agitated; "don't speak that way!"
"What way?" said Bill. "I only said his name was Miguel."
After a pause the stranger said:
"Oh, I know; but----" He waved his hand. "Lower your voice, or
something. I don't know. This part of the business rattles me, don't
you see?"
"Oh, all right," replied Bill, bowing to the other's mysterious
mood. But in a moment he burst out violently and loud in the most
extraordinary profanity, the oaths winging from him as the sparks go
from the funnel.
He had been examining the contents of the bundled grey blanket, and
he had brought forth, among other things, his frying-pan. It was now
only a rim with a handle; the Mexican volley had centered upon it. A
Mexican shot-gun of the abbreviated description is ordinarily loaded
with flat-irons, stove-lids, lead pipe, old horseshoes, sections of
chain, window weights, railroad sleepers and spikes, dumb-bells, and
any other junk which may be at hand. When one of these loads encounters
a man vitally, it is likely to make an impression upon him, and a
cooking-utensil may be supposed to subside before such an assault of
curiosities.
Bill held high his desecrated frying-pan, turning it this way and that
way. He swore until he happened to note the absence of the stranger. A
moment later he saw him leading his horse from the bushes. In silence
and sullenly the young man went about saddling the animal. Bill said,
"Well, goin' to pull out?"
The stranger's hands fumbled uncertainly at the throat-latch. Once
he exclaimed irritably, blaming the buckle for the trembling of his
fingers. Once he turned to look at the dead face with the light of the
morning sun upon it. At last he cried, "Oh, I know the whole thing was
all square enough--couldn't be squarer--but--somehow or other, that
man there takes the heart out of me." He turned his troubled face for
another look. "He seems to be all the time calling me a--he makes me
feel like a murderer."
"But," said Bill, puzzling, "you didn't shoot him, mister; I shot him."
"I know; but I feel that way, somehow. I can't get rid of it."
Bill considered for a time; then he said diffidently, "Mister, you're a
eddycated man, ain't you?"
"What?"
"You're what they call a--a eddycated man, ain't you?"
The young man, perplexed, evidently had a question upon his lips, when
there was a roar of guns, bright flashes, and in the air such hooting
and whistling as would come from a swift flock of steam-boilers. The
stranger's horse gave a mighty, convulsive spring, snorting wildly in
its sudden anguish, fell upon its knees, scrambled afoot again, and was
away in the uncanny death run known to men who have seen the finish of
brave horses.
"This comes from discussin' things," cried Bill angrily.
He had thrown himself flat on the ground facing the thicket whence had
come the firing. He could see the smoke winding over the bush-tops.
He lifted his revolver, and the weapon came slowly up from the ground
and poised like the glittering crest of a snake. Somewhere on his face
there was a kind of smile, cynical, wicked, deadly, of a ferocity which
at the same time had brought a deep flush to his face, and had caused
two upright lines to glow in his eyes.
"Hello, José!" he called, amiable for satire's sake. "Got your old
blunderbusses loaded up again yet?"
The stillness had returned to the plain. The sun's brilliant rays swept
over the sea of mesquit, painting the far mists of the west with faint
rosy light, and high in the air some great bird fled toward the south.
"You come out here," called Bill, again addressing the landscape, "and
I'll give you some shootin' lessons. That ain't the way to shoot."
Receiving no reply, he began to invent epithets and yell them at
the thicket. He was something of a master of insult, and, moreover,
he dived into his memory to bring forth imprecations tarnished with
age, unused since fluent Bowery days. The occupation amused him, and
sometimes he laughed so that it was uncomfortable for his chest to be
against the ground.
Finally the stranger, prostrate near him, said wearily, "Oh, they've
gone."
"Don't you believe it," replied Bill, sobering swiftly. "They're there
yet--every man of 'em."
"How do you know?"
"Because I do. They won't shake us so soon. Don't put your head up, or
they'll get you, sure."
Bill's eyes, meanwhile, had not wavered from their scrutiny of the
thicket in front. "They're there all right; don't you forget it. Now
you listen." So he called out: "José! Ojo, José! Speak up, _hombre_! I
want have talk. Speak up, you yaller cuss, you!"
Whereupon a mocking voice from off in the bushes said, "Señor?"
"There," said Bill to his ally; "didn't I tell you? The whole batch."
Again he lifted his voice. "José--look--ain't you gittin' kinder tired?
You better go home, you fellers, and git some rest."
The answer was a sudden furious chatter of Spanish, eloquent with
hatred, calling down upon Bill all the calamities which life holds. It
was as if some one had suddenly enraged a cageful of wild cats. The
spirits of all the revenges which they had imagined were loosened at
this time, and filled the air.
"They're in a holler," said Bill, chuckling, "or there'd be shootin'."
Presently he began to grow angry. His hidden enemies called him nine
kinds of coward, a man who could fight only in the dark, a baby who
would run from the shadows of such noble Mexican gentlemen, a dog that
sneaked. They described the affair of the previous night, and informed
him of the base advantage he had taken of their friend. In fact,
they in all sincerity endowed him with every quality which he no less
earnestly believed them to possess. One could have seen the phrases
bite him as he lay there on the ground fingering his revolver.
VI
It is sometimes taught that men do the furious and desperate thing from
an emotion that is as even and placid as the thoughts of a village
clergyman on Sunday afternoon. Usually, however, it is to be believed
that a panther is at the time born in the heart, and that the subject
does not resemble a man picking mulberries.
"B' G----!" said Bill, speaking as from a throat filled with dust,
"I'll go after 'em in a minute."
"Don't you budge an inch!" cried the stranger, sternly. "Don't you
budge!"
"Well," said Bill, glaring at the bushes--"well--"
"Put your head down!" suddenly screamed the stranger, in white alarm.
As the guns roared, Bill uttered a loud grunt, and for a moment leaned
panting on his elbow, while his arm shook like a twig. Then he upreared
like a great and bloody spirit of vengeance, his face lighted with the
blaze of his last passion. The Mexicans came swiftly and in silence.
The lightning action of the next few moments was of the fabric of
dreams to the stranger. The muscular struggle may not be real to the
drowning man. His mind may be fixed on the far, straight shadows back
of the stars, and the terror of them. And so the fight, and his part in
it, had to the stranger only the quality of a picture half drawn. The
rush of feet, the spatter of shots, the cries, the swollen faces seen
like masks on the smoke, resembled a happening of the night.
And yet afterward certain lines, forms, lived out so strongly from the
incoherence that they were always in his memory.
He killed a man, and the thought went swiftly by him, like the feather
on the gale, that it was easy to kill a man.
Moreover, he suddenly felt for Bill, this grimy sheep-herder, some deep
form of idolatry. Bill was dying, and the dignity of last defeat, the
superiority of him who stands in his grave, was in the pose of the lost
sheep-herder.
* * * * *
The stranger sat on the ground idly mopping the sweat and powder-stain
from his brow. He wore the gentle idiot smile of an aged beggar as he
watched three Mexicans limping and staggering in the distance. He noted
at this time that one who still possessed a serape had from it none
of the grandeur of the cloaked Spaniard, but that against the sky the
silhouette resembled a cornucopia of childhood's Christmas.
They turned to look at him, and he lifted his weary arm to menace them
with his revolver. They stood for a moment banded together, and hooted
curses at him.
Finally he arose, and, walking some paces, stooped to loosen Bill's
grey hands from a throat. Swaying as if slightly drunk, he stood
looking down into the still face.
Struck suddenly with a thought, he went about with dulled eyes on the
ground, until he plucked his gaudy blanket from where it lay dirty from
trampling feet. He dusted it carefully, and then returned and laid it
over Bill's form. There he again stood motionless, his mouth just agape
and the same stupid glance in his eyes, when all at once he made a
gesture of fright and looked wildly about him.
He had almost reached the thicket when he stopped, smitten with alarm.
A body contorted, with one arm stiff in the air, lay in his path.
Slowly and warily he moved around it, and in a moment the bushes,
nodding and whispering, their leaf-faces turned toward the scene
behind him, swung and swung again into stillness and the peace of the
wilderness.
THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY
I
The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion
that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the plains
of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of green grass, dull-hued
spaces of mesquit and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of
light and tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over
the horizon, a precipice.
A newly-married pair had boarded this train at San Antonio. The man's
face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun, and a direct
result of his new black clothes was that his brick-coloured hands were
constantly performing in a most conscious fashion. From time to time
he looked down respectfully at his attire. He sat with a hand on each
knee, like a man waiting in a barber's shop. The glances he devoted to
other passengers were furtive and shy.
The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress
of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there,
and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted her head
to regard her puff-sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They
embarrassed her. It was quite apparent that she had cooked, and that
she expected to cook, dutifully. The blushes caused by the careless
scrutiny of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange
to see upon this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in
placid, almost emotionless lines.
They were evidently very happy. "Ever been in a parlour-car before?" he
asked, smiling with delight.
"No," she answered; "I never was. It's fine, ain't it?"
"Great. And then, after a while, we'll go forward to the diner, and get
a big lay-out. Finest meal in the world. Charge, a dollar."
"Oh, do they?" cried the bride. "Charge a dollar? Why, that's too
much--for us--ain't it, Jack?"
"Not this trip, anyhow," he answered bravely. "We're going to go the
whole thing."
Later, he explained to her about the train. "You see, it's a thousand
miles from one end of Texas to the other, and this train runs right
across it, and never stops but four times."
He had the pride of an owner. He pointed out to her the dazzling
fittings of the coach, and, in truth, her eyes opened wider as she
contemplated the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver,
and glass, the wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface
of a pool of oil. At one end a bronze figure sturdily held a support
for a separated chamber, and at convenient places on the ceiling were
frescoes in olive and silver.
To the minds of the pair, their surroundings reflected the glory of
their marriage that morning in San Antonio. This was the environment
of their new estate, and the man's face, in particular, beamed with
an elation that made him appear ridiculous to the negro porter. This
individual at times surveyed them from afar with an amused and superior
grin. On other occasions he bullied them with skill in ways that did
not make it exactly plain to them that they were being bullied. He
subtly used all the manners of the most unconquerable kind of snobbery.
He oppressed them, but of this oppression they had small knowledge, and
they speedily forgot that unfrequently a number of travellers covered
them with stares of derisive enjoyment. Historically there was supposed
to be something infinitely humorous in their situation.
"We are due in Yellow Sky at 3.42," he said, looking tenderly into her
eyes.
"Oh, are we?" she said, as if she had not been aware of it.
To evince surprise at her husband's statement was part of her wifely
amiability. She took from a pocket a little silver watch, and as she
held it before her, and stared at it with a frown of attention, the new
husband's face shone.
"I bought it in San Anton' from a friend of mine," he told her
gleefully.
"It's seventeen minutes past twelve," she said, looking up at him with
a kind of shy and clumsy coquetry.
A passenger, noting this play, grew excessively sardonic, and winked at
himself in one of the numerous mirrors.
At last they went to the dining-car. Two rows of negro waiters in
dazzling white suits surveyed their entrance with the interest, and
also the equanimity, of men who had been forewarned. The pair fell to
the lot of a waiter who happened to feel pleasure in steering them
through their meal. He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly pilot,
his countenance radiant with benevolence. The patronage entwined with
the ordinary deference was not palpable to them. And yet as they
returned to their coach they showed in their faces a sense of escape.
To the left, miles down a long purple slope, was a little ribbon of
mist, where moved the keening Rio Grande. The train was approaching it
at an angle, and the apex was Yellow Sky. Presently it was apparent
that as the distance from Yellow Sky grew shorter, the husband became
commensurately restless. His brick-red hands were more insistent in
their prominence. Occasionally he was even rather absent-minded and far
away when the bride leaned forward and addressed him.
As a matter of truth, Jack Potter was beginning to find the shadow of a
deed weigh upon him like a leaden slab. He, the town-marshal of Yellow
Sky, a man known, liked, and feared in his corner, a prominent person,
had gone to San Antonio to meet a girl he believed he loved, and there,
after the usual prayers, had actually induced her to marry him without
consulting Yellow Sky for any part of the transaction. He was now
bringing his bride before an innocent and unsuspecting community.
Of course, people in Yellow Sky married as it pleased them in
accordance with a general custom, but such was Potter's thought of his
duty to his friends, or of their idea of his duty, or of an unspoken
form which does not control men in these matters, that he felt he was
heinous. He had committed an extraordinary crime. Face to face with
this girl in San Antonio, and spurred by his sharp impulse, he had gone
headlong over all the social hedges. At San Antonio he was like a man
hidden in the dark. A knife to sever any friendly duty, any form, was
easy to his hand in that remote city. But the hour of Yellow Sky, the
hour of daylight, was approaching.
He knew full well that his marriage was an important thing to his
town. It could only be exceeded by the burning of the new hotel. His
friends would not forgive him. Frequently he had reflected upon the
advisability of telling them by telegraph, but a new cowardice had been
upon him. He feared to do it. And now the train was hurrying him toward
a scene of amazement, glee, reproach. He glanced out of the window at
the line of haze swinging slowly in toward the train.
Yellow Sky had a kind of brass band which played painfully to the
delight of the populace. He laughed without heart as he thought of it.
If the citizens could dream of his prospective arrival with his bride,
they would parade the band at the station, and escort them, amid
cheers and laughing congratulations, to his adobe home.
He resolved that he would use all the devices of speed and plainscraft
in making the journey from the station to his house. Once within that
safe citadel, he could issue some sort of a vocal bulletin, and then
not go among the citizens until they had time to wear off a little of
their enthusiasm.
The bride looked anxiously at him. "What's worrying you, Jack?"
He laughed again. "I'm not worrying, girl. I'm only thinking of Yellow
Sky."
She flushed in comprehension.
A sense of mutual guilt invaded their minds, and developed a finer
tenderness. They looked at each other with eyes softly aglow. But
Potter often laughed the same nervous laugh. The flush upon the bride's
face seemed quite permanent.
The traitor to the feelings of Yellow Sky narrowly watched the speeding
landscape.
"We're nearly there," he said.
Presently the porter came and announced the proximity of Potter's home.
He held a brush in his hand, and, with all his airy superiority gone,
he brushed Potter's new clothes, as the latter slowly turned this way
and that way. Potter fumbled out a coin, and gave it to the porter as
he had seen others do. It was a heavy and muscle-bound business, as
that of a man shoeing his first horse.
The porter took their bag, and, as the train began to slow, they moved
forward to the hooded platform of the car. Presently the two engines
and their long string of coaches rushed into the station of Yellow Sky.
"They have to take water here," said Potter, from a constricted throat,
and in mournful cadence as one announcing death. Before the train
stopped his eye had swept the length of the platform, and he was glad
and astonished to see there was no one upon it but the station-agent,
who, with a slightly hurried and anxious air, was walking toward the
water-tanks. When the train had halted, the porter alighted first and
placed in position a little temporary step.
"Come on, girl," said Potter, hoarsely.
As he helped her down, they each laughed on a false note. He took the
bag from the negro, and bade his wife cling to his arm. As they slunk
rapidly away, his hang-dog glance perceived that they were unloading
the two trunks, and also that the station-agent, far ahead, near the
baggage-car, had turned, and was running toward him, making gestures.
He laughed, and groaned as he laughed, when he noted the first effect
of his marital bliss upon Yellow Sky. He gripped his wife's arm firmly
to his side, and they fled. Behind them the porter stood chuckling
fatuously.
II
The California Express on the Southron Railway was due at Yellow Sky
in twenty-one minutes. There were six men at the bar of the Weary
Gentleman saloon. One was a drummer, who talked a great deal and
rapidly; three were Texans, who did not care to talk at that time;
and two were Mexican sheep-herders, who did not talk as a general
practice in the Weary Gentleman saloon. The bar-keeper's dog lay on the
board-walk that crossed in front of the door. His head was on his paws,
and he glanced drowsily here and there with the constant vigilance of
a dog that is kicked on occasion. Across the sandy street were some
vivid green grass plots, so wonderful in appearance amid the sands that
burned near them in a blazing sun, that they caused a doubt in the
mind. They exactly resembled the grass-mats used to represent lawns on
the stage. At the cooler end of the railway-station a man without a
coat sat in a tilted chair and smoked his pipe. The fresh-cut bank of
the Rio Grande circled near the town, and there could be seen beyond it
a great plum-coloured plain of mesquit.
Save for the busy drummer and his companions in the saloon, Yellow Sky
was dozing. The new-comer leaned gracefully upon the bar, and recited
many tales with the confidence of a bard who has come upon a new field.
"And at the moment that the old man fell down-stairs, with the bureau
in his arms, the old woman was coming up with two scuttles of coal,
and, of course----"
The drummer's tale was interrupted by a young man who suddenly appeared
in the open door. He cried--
"Scratchy Wilson's drunk, and has turned loose with both hands."
The two Mexicans at once set down their glasses, and faded out of the
rear entrance of the saloon.
The drummer, innocent and jocular, answered--
"All right, old man. S'pose he has. Come and have a drink, anyhow."
But the information had made such an obvious cleft in every skull in
the room, that the drummer was obliged to see its importance. All had
become instantly morose.
"Say," said he, mystified, "what is this?"
His three companions made the introductory gesture of eloquent speech,
but the young man at the door forestalled them.
"It means, my friend," he answered, as he came into the saloon, "that
for the next two hours this town won't be a health resort."
The bar-keeper went to the door, and locked and barred it. Reaching
out of the window, he pulled in heavy wooden shutters and barred them.
Immediately a solemn, chapel-like gloom was upon the place. The drummer
was looking from one to another.
"But say," he cried, "what is this, anyhow? You don't mean there is
going to be a gun-fight?"
"Don't know whether there'll be a fight or not," answered one man
grimly. "But there'll be some shootin'--some good shootin'."
The young man who had warned them waved his hand. "Oh, there'll be a
fight, fast enough, if any one wants it. Anybody can get a fight out
there in the street. There's a fight just waiting."
The drummer seemed to be swayed between the interest of a foreigner,
and a perception of personal danger.
"What did you say his name was?" he asked.
"Scratchy Wilson," they answered in chorus.
"And will he kill anybody? What are you going to do? Does this happen
often? Does he rampage round like this once a week or so? Can he break
in that door?"
"No, he can't break down that door," replied the bar-keeper. "He's
tried it three times. But when he comes you'd better lay down on the
floor, stranger. He's dead sure to shoot at it, and a bullet may come
through."
Thereafter the drummer kept a strict eye on the door. The time had not
yet been called for him to hug the floor, but as a minor precaution he
sidled near to the wall.
"Will he kill anybody?" he said again.
The men laughed low and scornfully at the question.
"He's out to shoot, and he's out for trouble. Don't see any good in
experimentin' with him."
"But what do you do in a case like this? What do you do?"
A man responded--"Why, he and Jack Potter----"
But, in chorus, the other men interrupted--"Jack Potter's in San
Anton'."
"Well, who is he? What's he got to do with it?"
"Oh, he's the town-marshal. He goes out and fights Scratchy when he
gets on one of these tears."
"Whow!" said the drummer, mopping his brow. "Nice job he's got."
The voices had toned away to mere whisperings. The drummer wished to
ask further questions, which were born of an increasing anxiety and
bewilderment, but when he attempted them, the men merely looked at him
in irritation, and motioned him to remain silent. A tense waiting hush
was upon them. In the deep shadows of the room their eyes shone as
they listened for sounds from the street. One man made three gestures
at the bar-keeper, and the latter, moving like a ghost, handed him a
glass and a bottle. The man poured a full glass of whisky, and set down
the bottle noiselessly. He gulped the whisky in a swallow, and turned
again toward the door in immovable silence. The drummer saw that the
bar-keeper, without a sound, had taken a Winchester from beneath the
bar. Later, he saw this individual beckoning to him, so he tip-toed
across the room.
"You better come with me back of the bar."
"No, thanks," said the drummer, perspiring. "I'd rather be where I can
make a break for the back-door."
Whereupon the man of bottles made a kindly but peremptory gesture.
The drummer obeyed it, and finding himself seated on a box, with his
head below the level of the bar, balm was laid upon his soul at sight
of various zinc and copper fittings that bore a resemblance to plate
armour. The bar-keeper took a seat comfortably upon an adjacent box.
"You see," he whispered, "this here Scratchy Wilson is a wonder with a
gun--a perfect wonder--and when he goes on the war-trail, we hunt our
holes--naturally. He's about the last one of the old gang that used
to hang out along the river here. He's a terror when he's drunk. When
he's sober he's all right--kind of simple--wouldn't hurt a fly--nicest
fellow in town. But when he's drunk--whoo!"
There were periods of stillness.
"I wish Jack Potter was back from San Anton'," said the bar-keeper. "He
shot Wilson up once--in the leg--and he would sail in and pull out the
kinks in this thing."
Presently they heard from a distance the sound of a shot, followed
by three wild yells. It instantly removed a bond from the men in the
darkened saloon. There was a shuffling of feet. They looked at each
other.
"Here he comes," they said.
III
A man in a maroon-coloured flannel shirt, which had been purchased for
purposes of decoration, and made, principally, by some Jewish women
on the east side of New York, rounded a corner and walked into the
middle of the main street of Yellow Sky. In either hand the man held
a long, heavy blue-black revolver. Often he yelled, and these cries
rang through a semblance of a deserted village, shrilly flying over
the roofs in a volume that seemed to have no relation to the ordinary
vocal strength of a man. It was as if the surrounding stillness formed
the arch of a tomb over him. These cries of ferocious challenge rang
against walls of silence. And his boots had red tops with gilded
imprints, of the kind beloved in winter by little sledging boys on the
hillsides of New England.
The man's face flamed in a rage begot of whisky. His eyes, rolling and
yet keen for ambush, hunted the still door-ways and windows. He walked
with the creeping movement of the midnight cat. As it occurred to him,
he roared menacing information. The long revolvers in his hands were
as easy as straws; they were moved with an electric swiftness. The
little fingers of each hand played sometimes in a musician's way. Plain
from the low collar of the shirt, the cords of his neck straightened
and sank as passion moved him. The only sounds were his terrible
invitations. The calm adobes preserved their demeanour at the passing
of this small thing in the middle of the street.
There was no offer of fight--no offer of fight. The man called to the
sky. There were no attractions. He bellowed and fumed and swayed his
revolver here and everywhere.
The dog of the bar-keeper of the Weary Gentleman saloon had not
appreciated the advance of events. He yet lay dozing in front of his
master's door. At sight of the dog, the man paused and raised his
revolver humorously. At sight of the man, the dog sprang up and walked
diagonally away, with a sullen head and growling. The man yelled,
and the dog broke into a gallop. As it was about to enter an alley,
there was a loud noise, a whistling, and something spat the ground
directly before it. The dog screamed, and, wheeling in terror, galloped
headlong in a new direction. Again there was a noise, a whistling, and
sand was kicked viciously before it. Fear-stricken, the dog turned and
flurried like an animal in a pen. The man stood laughing, his weapons
at his hips.
Ultimately the man was attracted by the closed door of the Weary
Gentleman saloon. He went to it, and, hammering with a revolver,
demanded drink.
The door remaining imperturbable, he picked a bit of paper from the
walk, and nailed it to the framework with a knife. He then turned his
back contemptuously upon this popular resort, and, walking to the
opposite side of the street and spinning there on his heel quickly and
lithely, fired at the bit of paper. He missed it by a half-inch. He
swore at himself, and went away. Later, he comfortably fusilladed the
windows of his most intimate friend. The man was playing with this
town. It was a toy for him.
But still there was no offer of fight. The name of Jack Potter, his
ancient antagonist, entered his mind, and he concluded that it would be
a glad thing if he should go to Potter's house, and, by bombardment,
induce him to come out and fight. He moved in the direction of his
desire, chanting Apache scalp music.
When he arrived at it, Potter's house presented the same still, calm
front as had the other adobes. Taking up a strategic position, the
man howled a challenge. But this house regarded him as might a great
stone god. It gave no sign. After a decent wait, the man howled further
challenges, mingling with them wonderful epithets.
Presently there came the spectacle of a man churning himself into
deepest rage over the immobility of a house. He fumed at it as the
winter wind attacks a prairie cabin in the north. To the distance there
should have gone the sound of a tumult like the fighting of two hundred
Mexicans. As necessity bade him, he paused for breath or to reload his
revolvers.
IV
Potter and his bride walked sheepishly and with speed. Sometimes they
laughed together shamefacedly and low.
"Next corner, dear," he said finally.
They put forth the efforts of a pair walking bowed against a strong
wind. Potter was about to raise a finger to point the first appearance
of the new home, when, as they circled the corner, they came face to
face with a man in a maroon-coloured shirt, who was feverishly pushing
cartridges into a large revolver. Upon the instant the man dropped this
revolver to the ground, and, like lightning, whipped another from its
holster. The second weapon was aimed at the bridegroom's chest.
There was a silence. Potter's mouth seemed to be merely a grave for his
tongue. He exhibited an instinct to at once loosen his arm from the
woman's grip, and he dropped the bag to the sand. As for the bride, her
face had gone as yellow as old cloth. She was a slave to hideous rites,
gazing at the apparitional snake.
The two men faced each other at a distance of three paces. He of the
revolver smiled with a new and quiet ferocity. "Tried to sneak up on
me!" he said. "Tried to sneak up on me!" His eyes grew more baleful. As
Potter made a slight movement, the man thrust his revolver venomously
forward. "No; don't you do it, Jack Potter. Don't you move a finger
towards a gun just yet. Don't you move an eyelash. The time has come
for me to settle with you, and I'm going to do it my own way, and loaf
along with no interferin'. So if you don't want a gun bent on you, just
mind what I tell you."
Potter looked at his enemy. "I ain't got a gun on me, Scratchy," he
said. "Honest, I ain't." He was stiffening and steadying, but yet
somewhere at the back of his mind a vision of the Pullman floated--the
sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the
wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of
oil--all the glory of their marriage, the environment of the new estate.
"You know I fight when it comes to fighting, Scratchy Wilson, but I
ain't got a gun on me. You'll have to do all the shootin' yourself."
His enemy's face went livid. He stepped forward, and lashed his weapon
to and fro before Potter's chest.
"Don't you tell me you ain't got no gun on you, you whelp. Don't tell
me no lie like that. There ain't a man in Texas ever seen you without
no gun. Don't take me for no kid."
His eyes blazed with light and his throat worked like a pump.
"I ain't takin' you for no kid," answered Potter. His heels had not
moved an inch backward. "I'm takin' you for a ---- fool. I tell you I
ain't got a gun, and I ain't. If you're goin' to shoot me up, you'd
better begin now. You'll never get a chance like this again."
So much enforced reasoning had told on Wilson's rage. He was calmer.
"If you ain't got a gun, why ain't you got a gun?" he sneered. "Been to
Sunday school?"
"I ain't got a gun because I've just come from San Anton' with my wife.
I'm married," said Potter. "And if I'd thought there was going to be
any galoots like you prowling around when I brought my wife home, I'd
had a gun, and don't you forget it."
"Married!" said Scratchy, not at all comprehending.
"Yes, married! I'm married," said Potter, distinctly.
"Married!" said Scratchy; seeming for the first time he saw the
drooping drowning woman at the other man's side. "No!" he said. He
was like a creature allowed a glimpse of another world. He moved a
pace backward, and his arm with the revolver dropped to his side. "Is
this--is this the lady?" he asked.
"Yes, this is the lady," answered Potter.
There was another period of silence.
"Well," said Wilson at last, slowly, "I s'pose it's all off now?"
"It's all off if you say so, Scratchy. You know I didn't make the
trouble."
Potter lifted his valise.
"Well, I 'low it's off, Jack," said Wilson. He was looking at the
ground. "Married!" He was not a student of chivalry; it was merely that
in the presence of this foreign condition he was a simple child of the
earlier plains. He picked up his starboard revolver, and placing both
weapons in their holsters, he went away. His feet made funnel-shaped
tracks in the heavy sand.
THE WISE MEN
They were youths of subtle mind. They were very wicked according to
report, and yet they managed to have it reflect great credit upon them.
They often had the well-informed and the great talkers of the American
colony engaged in reciting their misdeeds, and facts relating to their
sins were usually told with a flourish of awe and fine admiration.
One was from San Francisco and one was from New York, but they
resembled each other in appearance. This is an idiosyncrasy of
geography.
They were never apart in the City of Mexico, at any rate, excepting
perhaps when one had retired to his hotel for a respite, and then the
other was usually camped down at the office sending up servants with
clamorous messages. "Oh, get up and come on down."
They were two lads--they were called the kids--and far from their
mothers. Occasionally some wise man pitied them, but he usually was
alone in his wisdom. The other folk frankly were transfixed at the
splendour of the audacity and endurance of these kids.
"When do those boys ever sleep?" murmured a man as he viewed them
entering a café about eight o'clock one morning. Their smooth infantile
faces looked bright and fresh enough, at any rate. "Jim told me he saw
them still at it about 4.30 this morning."
"Sleep!" ejaculated a companion in a glowing voice. "They never sleep!
They go to bed once in every two weeks." His boast of it seemed almost
a personal pride.
"They'll end with a crash, though, if they keep it up at this pace,"
said a gloomy voice from behind a newspaper.
The Café Colorado has a front of white and gold, in which is set
larger plate-glass windows than are commonly to be found in Mexico.
Two little wings of willow flip-flapping incessantly serve as doors.
Under them small stray dogs go furtively into the café, and are shied
into the street again by the waiters. On the side-walk there is always
a decorative effect of loungers, ranging from the newly-arrived and
superior tourist to the old veteran of the silver mines bronzed by
violent suns. They contemplate with various shades of interest the show
of the street--the red, purple, dusty white, glaring forth against the
walls in the furious sunshine.
One afternoon the kids strolled into the Café Colorado. A half-dozen
of the men who sat smoking and reading with a sort of Parisian effect
at the little tables which lined two sides of the room, looked up and
bowed smiling, and although this coming of the kids was anything but an
unusual event, at least a dozen men wheeled in their chairs to stare
after them. Three waiters polished tables, and moved chairs noisily,
and appeared to be eager. Distinctly these kids were of importance.
Behind the distant bar, the tall form of old Pop himself awaited them
smiling with broad geniality. "Well, my boys, how are you?" he cried in
a voice of profound solicitude. He allowed five or six of his customers
to languish in the care of Mexican bartenders, while he himself gave
his eloquent attention to the kids, lending all the dignity of a great
event to their arrival. "How are the boys to-day, eh?"
"You're a smooth old guy," said one, eying him. "Are you giving us this
welcome so we won't notice it when you push your worst whisky at us?"
Pop turned in appeal from one kid to the other kid. "There, now, hear
that, will you?" He assumed an oratorical pose. "Why, my boys, you
always get the best that this house has got."
"Yes, we do!" The kids laughed. "Well, bring it out, anyhow, and if
it's the same you sold us last night, we'll grab your cash register and
run."
Pop whirled a bottle along the bar and then gazed at it with a rapt
expression. "Fine as silk," he murmured. "Now just taste that, and if
it isn't the best whisky you ever put in your face, why I'm a liar,
that's all."
The kids surveyed him with scorn, and poured their allowances. Then
they stood for a time insulting Pop about his whisky. "Usually it
tastes exactly like new parlour furniture," said the San Francisco
kid. "Well, here goes, and you want to look out for your cash
register."
"Your health, gentlemen," said Pop with a grand air, and as he wiped
his bristling grey moustaches he wagged his head with reference to the
cash register question. "I could catch you before you got very far."
"Why, are you a runner?" said one derisively.
"You just bank on me, my boy," said Pop, with deep emphasis. "I'm a
flier."
The kids sat down their glasses suddenly and looked at him. "You must
be," they said. Pop was tall and graceful and magnificent in manner,
but he did not display those qualities of form which mean speed in the
animal. His hair was grey; his face was round and fat from much living.
The buttons of his glittering white waistcoat formed a fine curve, so
that if the concave surface of a piece of barrel-hoop had been laid
against Pop it would have touched every button. "You must be," observed
the kids again.
"Well, you can laugh all you like, but--no jolly now, boys, I tell you
I'm a winner. Why, I bet you I can skin anything in this town on a
square go. When I kept my place in Eagle Pass there wasn't anybody who
could touch me. One of these sure things came down from San Anton'. Oh,
he was a runner he was. One of these people with wings. Well, I skinned
'im. What? Certainly I did. Never touched me."
The kids had been regarding him in grave silence, but at this moment
they grinned, and said quite in chorus, "Oh, you old liar!"
Pop's voice took on a whining tone of earnestness. "Boys, I'm telling
it to you straight. I'm a flier."
One of the kids had had a dreamy cloud in his eye and he cried out
suddenly--"Say, what a joke to play this on Freddie."
The other jumped ecstatically. "Oh, wouldn't it though. Say he wouldn't
do a thing but howl! He'd go crazy."
They looked at Pop as if they longed to be certain that he was, after
all, a runner. "Now, Pop, on the level," said one of them wistfully,
"can you run?"
"Boys," swore Pop, "I'm a peach! On the dead level, I'm a peach."
"By golly, I believe the old Indian can run," said one to the other, as
if they were alone in confidence.
"That's what I can," cried Pop.
The kids said--"Well, so long, old man." They went to a table and sat
down. They ordered a salad. They were always ordering salads. This was
because one kid had a wild passion for salads, and the other didn't
care. So at any hour of the day they might be seen ordering a salad.
When this one came they went into a sort of executive session. It was
a very long consultation. Men noted it. Occasionally the kids laughed
in supreme enjoyment of something unknown. The low rumble of wheels
came from the street. Often could be heard the parrot-like cries of
distant vendors. The sunlight streamed through the green curtains, and
made little amber-coloured flitterings on the marble floor. High up
among the severe decorations of the ceiling--reminiscent of the days
when the great building was a palace--a small white butterfly was
wending through the cool air spaces. The long billiard hall led back
to a vague gloom. The balls were always clicking, and one could see
countless crooked elbows. Beggars slunk through the wicker doors, and
were ejected by the nearest waiter. At last the kids called Pop to them.
"Sit down, Pop. Have a drink." They scanned him carefully. "Say now,
Pop, on your solemn oath, can you run?"
"Boys," said Pop piously, and raising his hand, "I can run like a
rabbit."
"On your oath?"
"On my oath."
"Can you beat Freddie?"
Pop appeared to look at the matter from all sides. "Well, boys,
I'll tell you. No man is ever cock-sure of anything in this world,
and I don't want to say that I can best any man, but I've seen
Freddie run, and I'm ready to swear I can beat him. In a hundred
yards I'd just about skin 'im neat--you understand, just about neat.
Freddie is a good average runner, but I--you understand--I'm just--a
little--bit--better." The kids had been listening with the utmost
attention. Pop spoke the latter part slowly and meanfully. They thought
he intended them to see his great confidence.
One said--"Pop, if you throw us in this thing, we'll come here and
drink for two weeks without paying. We'll back you and work a josh on
Freddie! But O!--if you throw us!"
To this menace Pop cried--"Boys, I'll make the run of my life! On my
oath!"
The salad having vanished, the kids arose. "All right, now," they
warned him. "If you play us for duffers, we'll get square. Don't you
forget it."
"Boys, I'll give you a race for your money. Book on that. I may
lose--understand, I may lose--no man can help meeting a better man. But
I think I can skin him, and I'll give you a run for your money, you
bet."
"All right, then. But, look here," they told him, "you keep your face
closed. Nobody gets in on this but us. Understand?"
"Not a soul," Pop declared. They left him, gesturing a last warning
from the wicker doors.
In the street they saw Benson, his cane gripped in the middle,
strolling through the white-clothed jabbering natives on the shady
side. They semaphored to him eagerly. He came across cautiously, like a
man who ventures into dangerous company.
"We're going to get up a race. Pop and Fred. Pop swears he can skin
'im. This is a tip. Keep it dark. Say, won't Freddie be hot?"
Benson looked as if he had been compelled to endure these exhibitions
of insanity for a century. "Oh, you fellows are off. Pop can't beat
Freddie. He's an old bat. Why, it's impossible. Pop can't beat Freddie."
"Can't he? Want to bet he can't?" said the kids. "There now, let's
see--you're talking so large."
"Well, you----"
"Oh, bet. Bet or else close your trap. That's the way."
"How do you know you can pull off the race? Seen Freddie?"
"No, but----"
"Well, see him then. Can't bet with no race arranged. I'll bet with you
all right--all right. I'll give you fellows a tip though--you're a pair
of asses. Pop can't run any faster than a brick school-house."
The kids scowled at him and defiantly said--"Can't he?" They left him
and went to the Casa Verde. Freddie, beautiful in his white jacket, was
holding one of his innumerable conversations across the bar. He smiled
when he saw them. "Where you boys been?" he demanded, in a paternal
tone. Almost all the proprietors of American cafés in the city used to
adopt a paternal tone when they spoke to the kids.
"Oh, been 'round,'" they replied.
"Have a drink?" said the proprietor of the Casa Verde, forgetting his
other social obligations. During the course of this ceremony one of the
kids remarked--
"Freddie, Pop says he can beat you running."
"Does he?" observed Freddie without excitement. He was used to various
snares of the kids.
"That's what. He says he can leave you at the wire and not see you
again."
"Well, he lies," replied Freddie placidly.
"And I'll bet you a bottle of wine that he can do it, too."
"Rats!" said Freddie.
"Oh, that's all right," pursued a kid. "You can throw bluffs all you
like, but he can lose you in a hundred yards' dash, you bet."
Freddie drank his whisky, and then settled his elbows on the bar.
"Say, now, what do you boys keep coming in here with some pipe-story
all the time for? You can't josh me. Do you think you can scare me
about Pop? Why, I know I can beat him. He can't run with me. Certainly
not. Why, you fellows are just jollying me."
"Are we though!" said the kids. "You daren't bet the bottle of wine."
"Oh, of course I can bet you a bottle of wine," said Freddie
disdainfully. "Nobody cares about a bottle of wine, but----"
"Well, make it five then," advised one of the kids.
Freddie hunched his shoulders. "Why, certainly I will. Make it ten if
you like, but----"
"We do," they said.
"Ten, is it? All right; that goes." A look of weariness came over
Freddie's face. "But you boys are foolish. I tell you Pop is an old
man. How can you expect him to run? Of course, I'm no great runner, but
then I'm young and healthy and--and a pretty smooth runner too. Pop is
old and fat, and then he doesn't do a thing but tank all day. It's a
cinch."
The kids looked at him and laughed rapturously. They waved their
fingers at him. "Ah, there!" they cried. They meant that they had made
a victim of him.
But Freddie continued to expostulate. "I tell you he couldn't win--an
old man like him. You're crazy. Of course, I know you don't care about
ten bottles of wine, but, then--to make such bets as that. You're
twisted."
"Are we, though?" cried the kids in mockery. They had precipitated
Freddie into a long and thoughtful treatise on every possible chance
of the thing as he saw it. They disputed with him from time to time,
and jeered at him. He laboured on through his argument. Their childish
faces were bright with glee.
In the midst of it Wilburson entered. Wilburson worked; not too much,
though. He had hold of the Mexican end of a great importing house of
New York, and as he was a junior partner, he worked. But not too much,
though. "What's the howl?" he said.
The kids giggled. "We've got Freddie rattled."
"Why," said Freddie, turning to him, "these two Indians are trying to
tell me that Pop can beat me running."
"Like the devil," said Wilburson, incredulously.
"Well, can't he?" demanded a kid.
"Why, certainly not," said Wilburson, dismissing every possibility of
it with a gesture. "That old bat? Certainly not. I'll bet fifty dollars
that Freddie----"
"Take you," said a kid.
"What?" said Wilburson, "that Freddie won't beat Pop?"
The kid that had spoken now nodded his head.
"That Freddie won't beat Pop?" repeated Wilburson.
"Yes. It's a go?"
"Why, certainly," retorted Wilburson. "Fifty? All right."
"Bet you five bottles on the side," ventured the other kid.
"Why, certainly," exploded Wilburson wrathfully. "You fellows must
take me for something easy. I'll take all those kinds of bets I can
get. Cer--tain--ly."
They settled the details. The course was to be paced off on the asphalt
of one of the adjacent side-streets, and then, at about eleven o'clock
in the evening, the match would be run. Usually in Mexico the streets
of a city grow lonely and dark but a little after nine o'clock. There
are occasional lurking figures, perhaps, but no crowds, lights and
noise. The course would doubtless be undisturbed. As for the policeman
in the vicinity, they--well, they were conditionally amiable.
The kids went to see Pop; they told him of the arrangement, and then in
deep tones they said, "Oh, Pop, if you throw us!"
Pop appeared to be a trifle shaken by the weight of responsibility
thrust upon him, but he spoke out bravely. "Boys, I'll pinch that race.
Now you watch me. I'll pinch it."
The kids went then on some business of their own, for they were not
seen again till evening. When they returned to the neighbourhood of
the Café Colorado the usual stream of carriages was whirling along the
calle. The wheels hummed on the asphalt, and the coachmen towered in
their great sombreros. On the sidewalk a gazing crowd sauntered, the
better class self-satisfied and proud, in their Derby hats and cut-away
coats, the lower classes muffling their dark faces in their blankets,
slipping along in leather sandals. An electric light sputtered and
fumed over the throng. The afternoon shower had left the pave wet and
glittering. The air was still laden with the odour of rain on flowers,
grass, leaves.
In the Café Colorado a cosmopolitan crowd ate, drank, played billiards,
gossiped, or read in the glaring yellow light. When the kids entered a
large circle of men that had been gesticulating near the bar greeted
them with a roar.
"Here they are now!"
"Oh, you pair of peaches!"
"Say, got any more money to bet with?" Colonel Hammigan, grinning,
pushed his way to them. "Say, boys, we'll all have a drink on you now
because you won't have any money after eleven o'clock. You'll be going
down the back stairs in your stocking feet."
Although the kids remained unnaturally serene and quiet, argument in
the Café Colorado became tumultuous. Here and there a man who did not
intend to bet ventured meekly that perchance Pop might win, and the
others swarmed upon him in a whirlwind of angry denial and ridicule.
Pop, enthroned behind the bar, looked over at this storm with a shadow
of anxiety upon his face. This widespread flouting affected him, but
the kids looked blissfully satisfied with the tumult they had stirred.
Blanco, honest man, ever worrying for his friends, came to them. "Say,
you fellows, you aren't betting too much? This thing looks kind of
shaky, don't it?"
The faces of the kids grew sober, and after consideration one
said--"No, I guess we've got a good thing, Blanco. Pop is going to
surprise them, I think."
"Well, don't----"
"All right, old boy. We'll watch out."
From time to time the kids had much business with certain orange, red,
blue, purple, and green bills. They were making little memoranda on the
back of visiting cards. Pop watched them closely, the shadow still upon
his face. Once he called to them, and when they came he leaned over the
bar and said intensely--"Say, boys, remember, now--I might lose this
race. Nobody can ever say for sure, and if I do, why----"
"Oh, that's all right, Pop," said the kids, reassuringly. "Don't mind
it. Do your derndest, and let it go at that."
When they had left him, however, they went to a corner to consult.
"Say, this is getting interesting. Are you in deep?" asked one
anxiously of his friend.
"Yes, pretty deep," said the other stolidly. "Are you?"
"Deep as the devil," replied the other in the same tone.
They looked at each other stonily and went back to the crowd. Benson
had just entered the café. He approached them with a gloating smile of
victory. "Well, where's all that money you were going to bet?"
"Right here," said the kids, thrusting into their waistcoat pockets.
At eleven o'clock a curious thing was learned. When Pop and Freddie,
the kids and all, came to the little side street, it was thick with
people. It seemed that the news of this race had spread like the wind
among the Americans, and they had come to witness the event. In the
darkness the crowd moved, mumbling in argument.
The principals--the kids and those with them--surveyed this scene with
some dismay. "Say--here's a go." Even then a policeman might be seen
approaching, the light from his little lantern flickering on his white
cap, gloves, brass buttons, and on the butt of the old-fashioned Colt's
revolver which hung at his belt. He addressed Freddie in swift Mexican.
Freddie listened, nodding from time to time. Finally Freddie turned to
the others to translate. "He says he'll get into trouble if he allows
this race when all this crowd is here."
There was a murmur of discontent. The policeman looked at them with an
expression of anxiety on his broad, brown face.
"Oh, come on. We'll go hold it on some other fellow's beat," said one
of the kids. The group moved slowly away debating. Suddenly the other
kid cried, "I know! The Paseo!"
"By jiminy," said Freddie, "just the thing. We'll get a cab and go out
to the Paseo. S-s-h! Keep it quiet; we don't want all this mob."
Later they tumbled into a cab--Pop, Freddie, the kids, old Colonel
Hammigan and Benson. They whispered to the men who had wagered, "The
Paseo." The cab whirled away up the black street. There were occasional
grunts and groans, cries of "Oh, get off me feet," and of "Quit! you're
killing me." Six people do not have fun in one cab. The principals
spoke to each other with the respect and friendliness which comes to
good men at such times. Once a kid put his head out of the window and
looked backward. He pulled it in again and cried, "Great Scott! Look at
that, would you!"
The others struggled to do as they were bid, and afterwards shouted,
"Holy smoke! Well, I'll be blowed! Thunder and turf!"
Galloping after them came innumerable cabs, their lights twinkling,
streaming in a great procession through the night.
"The street is full of them," ejaculated the old colonel.
The Paseo de la Reforma is the famous drive of the city of Mexico,
leading to the Castle of Chapultepec, which last ought to be well known
in the United States.
It is a fine broad avenue of macadam with a much greater quality of
dignity than anything of the kind we possess in our own land. It seems
of the old world, where to the beauty of the thing itself is added the
solemnity of tradition and history, the knowledge that feet in buskins
trod the same stones, that cavalcades of steel thundered there before
the coming of carriages.
When the Americans tumbled out of their cabs the giant bronzes of Aztec
and Spaniard loomed dimly above them like towers. The four roads of
poplar trees rustled weirdly off there in the darkness. Pop took out
his watch and struck a match. "Well, hurry up this thing. It's almost
midnight."
The other cabs came swarming, the drivers lashing their horses, for
these Americans, who did all manner of strange things, nevertheless
always paid well for it. There was a mighty hubbub then in the
darkness. Five or six men began to pace the distance and quarrel.
Others knotted their handkerchiefs together to make a tape. Men were
swearing over bets, fussing and fuming about the odds. Benson came to
the kids swaggering. "You're a pair of asses." The cabs waited in a
solid block down the avenue. Above the crowd the tall statues hid their
visages in the night.
At last a voice floated through the darkness. "Are you ready there?"
Everybody yelled excitedly. The men at the tape pulled it out straight.
"Hold it higher, Jim, you fool," and silence fell then upon the throng.
Men bended down trying to pierce the deep gloom with their eyes. From
out at the starting point came muffled voices. The crowd swayed and
jostled.
The racers did not come. The crowd began to fret, its nerves burning.
"Oh, hurry up," shrilled some one.
The voice called again--"Ready there?" Everybody replied--"Yes, all
ready. Hurry up!"
There was a more muffled discussion at the starting point. In the crowd
a man began to make a proposition. "I'll bet twenty--" but the crowd
interrupted with a howl. "Here they come!" The thickly-packed body of
men swung as if the ground had moved. The men at the tape shouldered
madly at their fellows, bawling, "Keep back! Keep back!"
From the distance came the noise of feet pattering furiously. Vague
forms flashed into view for an instant. A hoarse roar broke from the
crowd. Men bended and swayed and fought. The kids back near the tape
exchanged another stolid look. A white form shone forth. It grew like a
spectre. Always could be heard the wild patter. A scream broke from the
crowd. "By Gawd, it's Pop! Pop! Pop's ahead!"
The old man spun towards the tape like a madman, his chin thrown back,
his grey hair flying. His legs moved like oiled machinery. And as he
shot forward a howl as from forty cages of wild animals went toward the
imperturbable chieftains in bronze. The crowd flung themselves forward.
"Oh, you old Indian! You savage! Did anybody ever see such running?"
"Ain't he a peach! Well!"
"Where's the kids? H-e-y, kids!"
"Look at him, would you? Did you ever think?" These cries flew in the
air blended in a vast shout of astonishment and laughter.
For an instant the whole tragedy was in view. Freddie, desperate, his
teeth shining, his face contorted, whirling along in deadly effort,
was twenty feet behind the tall form of old Pop, who, dressed only
in his--only in his underclothes--gained with each stride. One grand
insane moment, and then Pop had hurled himself against the tape--victor!
Freddie, fallen into the arms of some men, struggled with his breath,
and at last managed to stammer--
"Say, can't--can't--that old--old--man run!"
Pop, puffing and heaving, could only gasp--"Where's my shoes? Who's got
my shoes?"
Later Freddie scrambled panting through the crowd, and held out his
hand. "Good man, Pop!" And then he looked up and down the tall, stout
form. "Hell! who would think you could run like that?"
The kids were surrounded by a crowd, laughing tempestuously.
"How did you know he could run?"
"Why didn't you give me a line on him?"
"Say--great snakes!--you fellows had a nerve to bet on Pop."
"Why, I was cock-sure he couldn't win."
"Oh, you fellows must have seen him run before."
"Who would ever think it?"
Benson came by, filling the midnight air with curses. They turned to
jibe him.
"What's the matter, Benson?"
"Somebody pinched my handkerchief. I tied it up in that string. Damn
it."
The kids laughed blithely. "Why, hello! Benson," they said.
There was a great rush for cabs. Shouting, laughing, wondering, the
crowd hustled into their conveyances, and the drivers flogged their
horses toward the city again.
"Won't Freddie be crazy! Say, he'll be guyed about this for years."
"But who would ever think that old tank could run so?"
One cab had to wait while Pop and Freddie resumed various parts of
their clothing.
As they drove home, Freddie said--"Well, Pop, you beat me."
Pop said--"That's all right, old man."
The kids, grinning, said--"How much did you lose, Benson?"
Benson said defiantly--"Oh, not so much. How much did you win?"
"Oh, not so much."
Old Colonel Hammigan, squeezed down in a corner, had apparently been
reviewing the event in his mind, for he suddenly remarked, "Well, I'm
damned!"
They were late in reaching the Café Colorado, but when they did, the
bottles were on the bar as thick as pickets on a fence.
THE FIVE WHITE MICE
Freddie was mixing a cock-tail. His hand with the long spoon was
whirling swiftly, and the ice in the glass hummed and rattled like a
cheap watch. Over by the window, a gambler, a millionaire, a railway
conductor, and the agent of a vast American syndicate were playing
seven-up. Freddie surveyed them with the ironical glance of a man who
is mixing a cock-tail.
From time to time a swarthy Mexican waiter came with his tray from the
rooms at the rear, and called his orders across the bar. The sounds
of the indolent stir of the city, awakening from its siesta, floated
over the screens which barred the sun and the inquisitive eye. From
the far-away kitchen could be heard the roar of the old French _chef_,
driving, herding, and abusing his Mexican helpers.
A string of men came suddenly in from the street. They stormed up to
the bar. There were impatient shouts. "Come now, Freddie, don't stand
there like a portrait of yourself. Wiggle!" Drinks of many kinds and
colours, amber, green, mahogany, strong and mild, began to swarm
upon the bar with all the attendants of lemon, sugar, mint and ice.
Freddie, with Mexican support, worked like a sailor in the provision
of them, sometimes talking with that scorn for drink and admiration for
those who drink which is the attribute of a good bar-keeper.
At last a man was afflicted with a stroke of dice-shaking. A herculean
discussion was waging, and he was deeply engaged in it, but at the
same time he lazily flirted the dice. Occasionally he made great
combinations. "Look at that, would you?" he cried proudly. The others
paid little heed. Then violently the craving took them. It went along
the line like an epidemic, and involved them all. In a moment they had
arranged a carnival of dice-shaking with money penalties and liquid
prizes. They clamorously made it a point of honour with Freddie that
he should play and take his chance of sometimes providing this large
group with free refreshment. With bended heads like football players,
they surged over the tinkling dice, jostling, cheering, and bitterly
arguing. One of the quiet company playing seven-up at the corner table
said profanely that the row reminded him of a bowling contest at a
picnic.
After the regular shower, many carriages rolled over the smooth calle,
and sent a musical thunder through the Casa Verde. The shop-windows
became aglow with light, and the walks were crowded with youths, callow
and ogling, dressed vainly according to superstitious fashions. The
policemen had muffled themselves in their gnome-like cloaks, and placed
their lanterns as obstacles for the carriages in the middle of the
street. The city of Mexico gave forth the deep organ-mellow tones of
its evening resurrection.
But still the group at the bar of the Casa Verde were shaking dice.
They had passed beyond shaking for drinks for the crowd, for Mexican
dollars, for dinners, for the wine at dinner. They had even gone to
the trouble of separating the cigars and cigarettes from the dinner's
bill, and causing a distinct man to be responsible for them. Finally
they were aghast. Nothing remained in sight of their minds which
even remotely suggested further gambling. There was a pause for deep
consideration.
"Well----"
"Well----"
A man called out in the exuberance of creation. "I know! Let's shake
for a box to-night at the circus! A box at the circus!" The group was
profoundly edified. "That's it! That's it! Come on now! Box at the
circus!" A dominating voice cried--"Three dashes--high man out!" An
American, tall, and with a face of copper red from the rays that flash
among the Sierra Madres and burn on the cactus deserts, took the little
leathern cup and spun the dice out upon the polished wood. A fascinated
assemblage hung upon the bar-rail. Three kings turned their pink faces
upward. The tall man flourished the cup, burlesquing, and flung the
two other dice. From them he ultimately extracted one more pink king.
"There," he said. "Now, let's see! Four kings!" He began to swagger in
a sort of provisional way.
The next man took the cup, and blew softly in the top of it. Poising
it in his hand, he then surveyed the company with a stony eye and
paused. They knew perfectly well that he was applying the magic of
deliberation and ostentatious indifference, but they could not wait in
tranquillity during the performance of all these rites. They began to
call out impatiently. "Come now--hurry up." At last the man, with a
gesture that was singularly impressive, threw the dice. The others set
up a howl of joy. "Not a pair!" There was another solemn pause. The men
moved restlessly. "Come, now, go ahead!" In the end, the man, induced
and abused, achieved something that was nothing in the presence of four
kings. The tall man climbed on the foot-rail and leaned hazardously
forward. "Four kings! My four kings are good to go out," he bellowed
into the middle of the mob, and although in a moment he did pass into
the radiant region of exemption, he continued to bawl advice and scorn.
The mirrors and oiled woods of the Casa Verde were now dancing with
blue flashes from a great buzzing electric lamp. A host of quiet
members of the Anglo-Saxon colony had come in for their pre-dinner
cock-tails. An amiable person was exhibiting to some tourists this
popular American saloon. It was a very sober and respectable time of
day. Freddie reproved courageously the dice-shaking brawlers, and, in
return, he received the choicest advice in a tumult of seven combined
vocabularies. He laughed; he had been compelled to retire from the
game, but he was keeping an interested, if furtive, eye upon it.
Down at the end of the line there was a youth at whom everybody railed
for his flaming ill-luck. At each disaster, Freddie swore from behind
the bar in a sort of affectionate contempt. "Why, this kid has had no
luck for two days. Did you ever see such throwin'?"
The contest narrowed eventually to the New York kid and an individual
who swung about placidly on legs that moved in nefarious circles. He
had a grin that resembled a bit of carving. He was obliged to lean
down and blink rapidly to ascertain the facts of his venture, but fate
presented him with five queens. His smile did not change, but he puffed
gently like a man who has been running.
The others, having emerged unscathed from this part of the conflict,
waxed hilarious with the kid. They smote him on either shoulders.
"We've got you stuck for it, kid! You can't beat that game! Five
queens!"
Up to this time the kid had displayed only the temper of the gambler,
but the cheerful hoots of the players, supplemented now by a ring of
guying non-combatants, caused him to feel profoundly that it would be
fine to beat the five queens. He addressed a gambler's slogan to the
interior of the cup.
"Oh, five white mice of chance,
Shirts of wool and corduroy pants,
Gold and wine, women and sin,
All for you if you let me come in--
Into the house of chance."
Flashing the dice sardonically out upon the bar, he displayed three
aces. From two dice in the next throw he achieved one more ace. For
his last throw, he rattled the single dice for a long time. He already
had four aces; if he accomplished another one, the five queens were
vanquished and the box at the circus came from the drunken man's
pocket. All the kid's movements were slow and elaborate. For the last
throw he planted the cup bottom-down on the bar with the one dice
hidden under it. Then he turned and faced the crowd with the air of a
conjuror or a cheat.
"Oh, maybe it's an ace," he said in boastful calm. "Maybe it's an ace."
Instantly he was presiding over a little drama in which every man was
absorbed. The kid leaned with his back against the bar-rail and with
his elbows upon it.
"Maybe it's an ace," he repeated.
A jeering voice in the background said--"Yes, maybe it is, kid!"
The kid's eyes searched for a moment among the men. "I'll bet fifty
dollars it is an ace," he said.
Another voice asked--"American money?"
"Yes," answered the kid.
"Oh!" There was a genial laugh at this discomfiture. However, no one
came forward at the kid's challenge, and presently he turned to the
cup. "Now, I'll show you." With the manner of a mayor unveiling a
statue, he lifted the cup. There was revealed naught but a ten-spot. In
the roar which arose could be heard each man ridiculing the cowardice
of his neighbour, and above all the din rang the voice of Freddie
be-rating every one. "Why, there isn't one liver to every five men in
the outfit. That was the greatest cold bluff I ever saw worked. He
wouldn't know how to cheat with dice if he wanted to. Don't know the
first thing about it. I could hardly keep from laughin' when I seen
him drillin' you around. Why, I tell you, I had that fifty dollars
right in my pocket if I wanted to be a chump. You're an easy lot----"
Nevertheless the group who had won in the theatre-box game did not
relinquish their triumph. They burst like a storm about the head of
the kid, swinging at him with their fists. "'Five white mice'!" they
quoted, choking. "'Five white mice'!"
"Oh, they are not so bad," said the kid.
Afterward it often occurred that a man would jeer a finger at the kid
and derisively say--"'Five white mice.'"
On the route from the dinner to the circus, others of the party often
asked the kid if he had really intended to make his appeal to mice.
They suggested other animals--rabbits, dogs, hedgehogs, snakes,
opossums. To this banter the kid replied with a serious expression
of his belief in the fidelity and wisdom of the five white mice. He
presented a most eloquent case, decorated with fine language and
insults, in which he proved that if one was going to believe in
anything at all, one might as well choose the five white mice. His
companions, however, at once and unanimously pointed out to him that
his recent exploit did not place him in the light of a convincing
advocate.
The kid discerned two figures in the street. They were making imperious
signs at him. He waited for them to approach, for he recognized one as
the other kid--the Frisco kid: there were two kids. With the Frisco kid
was Benson. They arrived almost breathless. "Where you been?" cried
the Frisco kid. It was an arrangement that upon a meeting the one that
could first ask this question was entitled to use a tone of limitless
injury. "What you been doing? Where you going? Come on with us. Benson
and I have got a little scheme."
The New York kid pulled his arm from the grapple of the other. "I
can't. I've got to take these sutlers to the circus. They stuck me for
it shaking dice at Freddie's. I can't, I tell you."
The two did not at first attend to his remarks. "Come on! We've got a
little scheme."
"I can't. They stuck me. I've got to take'm to the circus."
At this time it did not suit the men with the scheme to recognize these
objections as important. "Oh, take'm some other time. Well, can't you
take'm some other time? Let 'em go. Damn the circus. Get cold feet.
What did you get stuck for? Get cold feet."
But despite their fighting, the New York kid broke away from them. "I
can't, I tell you. They stuck me." As he left them, they yelled with
rage. "Well, meet us, now, do you hear? In the Casa Verde as soon as
the circus quits! Hear?" They threw maledictions after him.
In the city of Mexico, a man goes to the circus without descending in
any way to infant amusements, because the Circo Teatro Orrin is one
of the best in the world, and too easily surpasses anything of the
kind in the United States, where it is merely a matter of a number of
rings, if possible, and a great professional agreement to lie to the
public. Moreover, the American clown, who in the Mexican arena prances
and gabbles, is the clown to whom writers refer as the delight of their
childhood, and lament that he is dead. At this circus the kid was not
debased by the sight of mournful prisoner elephants and caged animals
forlorn and sickly. He sat in his box until late, and laughed and swore
when past laughing at the comic foolish-wise clown.
When he returned to the Casa Verde there was no display of the Frisco
kid and Benson. Freddie was leaning on the bar listening to four men
terribly discuss a question that was not plain. There was a card-game
in the corner, of course. Sounds of revelry pealed from the rear rooms.
When the kid asked Freddie if he had seen his friend and Benson,
Freddie looked bored. "Oh, yes, they were in here just a minute ago,
but I don't know where they went. They've got their skates on. Where've
they been? Came in here rolling across the floor like two little gilt
gods. They wobbled around for a time, and then Frisco wanted me to send
six bottles of wine around to Benson's rooms, but I didn't have anybody
to send this time of night, and so they got mad and went out. Where did
they get their loads?"
In the first deep gloom of the street the kid paused a moment debating.
But presently he heard quavering voices. "Oh, kid! kid! Com'ere!"
Peering, he recognized two vague figures against the opposite wall. He
crossed the street, and they said--"Hello-kid."
"Say, where did you get it?" he demanded sternly. "You Indians better
go home. What did you want to get scragged for?" His face was luminous
with virtue.
As they swung to and fro, they made angry denials. "We ain' load'! We
ain' load'. Big chump. Comonangetadrink."
The sober youth turned then to his friend. "Hadn't you better go home,
kid? Come on, it's late. You'd better break away."
The Frisco kid wagged his head decisively. "Got take Benson home first.
He'll be wallowing around in a minute. Don't mind me. I'm all right."
"Cerly, he's all right," said Benson, arousing from deep thought. "He's
all right. But better take'm home, though. That's ri--right. He's
load'. But he's all right. No need go home any more'n you. But better
take'm home. He's load'." He looked at his companion with compassion.
"Kid, you're load'."
The sober kid spoke abruptly to his friend from San Francisco. "Kid,
pull yourself together, now. Don't fool. We've got to brace this ass of
a Benson all the way home. Get hold of his other arm."
The Frisco kid immediately obeyed his comrade without a word or a
glower. He seized Benson and came to attention like a soldier. Later,
indeed, he meekly ventured--"Can't we take cab?" But when the New York
kid snapped out that there were no convenient cabs he subsided to an
impassive silence. He seemed to be reflecting upon his state, without
astonishment, dismay, or any particular emotion. He submitted himself
woodenly to the direction of his friend.
Benson had protested when they had grasped his arms. "Washa doing?"
he said in a new and guttural voice. "Washa doing? I ain' load'.
Comonangetadrink. I----"
"Oh, come along, you idiot," said the New York kid. The Frisco kid
merely presented the mien of a stoic to the appeal of Benson, and
in silence dragged away at one of his arms. Benson's feet came from
that particular spot on the pavement with the reluctance of roots and
also with the ultimate suddenness of roots. The three of them lurched
out into the street in the abandon of tumbling chimneys. Benson was
meanwhile noisily challenging the others to produce any reasons for his
being taken home. His toes clashed into the kerb when they reached the
other side of the calle, and for a moment the kids hauled him along
with the points of his shoes scraping musically on the pavement. He
balked formidably as they were about to pass the Casa Verde. "No! No!
Leshavanothdrink! Anothdrink! Onemore!"
But the Frisco kid obeyed the voice of his partner in a manner that was
blind but absolute, and they scummed Benson on past the door. Locked
together the three swung into a dark street. The sober kid's flank was
continually careering ahead of the other wing. He harshly admonished
the Frisco child, and the latter promptly improved in the same manner
of unthinking complete obedience. Benson began to recite the tale of a
love affair, a tale that didn't even have a middle. Occasionally the
New York kid swore. They toppled on their way like three comedians
playing at it on the stage.
At midnight a little Mexican street burrowing among the walls of the
city is as dark as a whale's throat at deep sea. Upon this occasion
heavy clouds hung over the capital and the sky was a pall. The
projecting balconies could make no shadows.
"Shay," said Benson, breaking away from his escort suddenly, "what
want gome for? I ain't load'. You got reg'lar spool-fact'ry in your
head--you N' York kid there. Thish oth' kid, he's mos' proper shober,
mos' proper shober. He's drunk, but--but he's shober."
"Ah, shup up, Benson," said the New York kid. "Come along now. We can't
stay here all night." Benson refused to be corralled, but spread his
legs and twirled like a dervish, meanwhile under the evident impression
that he was conducting himself most handsomely. It was not long before
he gained the opinion that he was laughing at the others. "Eight purple
dogsh--dogs! Eight purple dogs. Thas what kid'll see in the morn'. Look
ou' for 'em. They--"
As Benson, describing the canine phenomena, swung wildly across the
sidewalk, it chanced that three other pedestrians were passing in
shadowy rank. Benson's shoulder jostled one of them.
A Mexican wheeled upon the instant. His hand flashed to his hip. There
was a moment of silence, during which Benson's voice was not heard
raised in apology. Then an indescribable comment, one burning word,
came from between the Mexican's teeth.
Benson, rolling about in a semi-detached manner, stared vacantly at
the Mexican, who thrust his lean face forward while his fingers played
nervously at his hip. The New York kid could not follow Spanish well,
but he understood when the Mexican breathed softly: "Does the señor
want to fight?"
Benson simply gazed in gentle surprise. The woman next to him at
dinner had said something inventive. His tailor had presented his
bill. Something had occurred which was mildly out of the ordinary, and
his surcharged brain refused to cope with it. He displayed only the
agitation of a smoker temporarily without a light.
The New York kid had almost instantly grasped Benson's arm, and was
about to jerk him away, when the other kid, who up to this time had
been an automaton, suddenly projected himself forward, thrust the
rubber Benson aside, and said--"Yes."
There was no sound nor light in the world. The wall at the left
happened to be of the common prison-like construction--no door, no
window, no opening at all. Humanity was enclosed and asleep. Into the
mouth of the sober kid came a wretched bitter taste as if it had filled
with blood. He was transfixed as if he was already seeing the lightning
ripples on the knife-blade.
But the Mexican's hand did not move at that time. His face went still
further forward and he whispered--"So?" The sober kid saw this face
as if he and it were alone in space--a yellow mask smiling in eager
cruelty, in satisfaction, and above all it was lit with sinister
decision. As for the features, they were reminiscent of an unplaced, a
forgotten type, which really resembled with precision those of a man
who had shaved him three times in Boston in 1888. But the expression
burned his mind as sealing-wax burns the palm, and fascinated,
stupefied, he actually watched the progress of the man's thought toward
the point where a knife would be wrenched from its sheath. The emotion,
a sort of mechanical fury, a breeze made by electric fans, a rage made
by vanity, smote the dark countenance in wave after wave.
Then the New York kid took a sudden step forward. His hand was at his
hip. He was gripping there a revolver of robust size. He recalled that
upon its black handle was stamped a hunting scene in which a sportsman
in fine leggings and a peaked cap was taking aim at a stag less than
one-eighth of an inch away.
His pace forward caused instant movement of the Mexicans. One
immediately took two steps to face him squarely. There was a general
adjustment, pair and pair. This opponent of the New York kid was a
tall man and quite stout. His sombrero was drawn low over his eyes.
His serape was flung on his left shoulder. His back was bended in the
supposed manner of a Spanish grandee. This concave gentleman cut a fine
and terrible figure. The lad, moved by the spirits of his modest and
perpendicular ancestors, had time to feel his blood roar at sight of
the pose.
He was aware that the third Mexican was over on the left fronting
Benson, and he was aware that Benson was leaning against the wall
sleepily and peacefully eying the convention. So it happened that
these six men stood, side fronting side, five of them with their right
hands at their hips and with their bodies lifted nervously, while the
central pair exchanged a crescendo of provocations. The meaning of
their words rose and rose. They were travelling in a straight line
toward collision.
The New York kid contemplated his Spanish grandee. He drew his revolver
upward until the hammer was surely free of the holster. He waited
immovable and watchful while the garrulous Frisco kid expended two and
a half lexicons on the middle Mexican.
The eastern lad suddenly decided that he was going to be killed. His
mind leaped forward and studied the aftermath. The story would be a
marvel of brevity when first it reached the far New York home, written
in a careful hand on a bit of cheap paper, topped and footed and
backed by the printed fortifications of the cable company. But they
are often as stones flung into mirrors, these bits of paper upon which
are laconically written all the most terrible chronicles of the times.
He witnessed the uprising of his mother and sister, and the invincible
calm of his hard-mouthed old father, who would probably shut himself
in his library and smoke alone. Then his father would come, and they
would bring him here and say--"This is the place." Then, very likely,
each would remove his hat. They would stand quietly with their hats in
their hands for a decent minute. He pitied his old financing father,
unyielding and millioned, a man who commonly spoke twenty-two words a
year to his beloved son. The kid understood it at this time. If his
fate was not impregnable, he might have turned out to be a man and have
been liked by his father.
The other kid would mourn his death. He would be preternaturally
correct for some weeks, and recite the tale without swearing. But it
would not bore him. For the sake of his dead comrade he would be glad
to be preternaturally correct, and to recite the tale without swearing.
These views were perfectly stereopticon, flashing in and away from his
thought with an inconceivable rapidity until after all they were simply
one quick dismal impression. And now here is the unreal real: into this
kid's nostrils, at the expectant moment of slaughter, had come the
scent of new-mown hay, a fragrance from a field of prostrate grass, a
fragrance which contained the sunshine, the bees, the peace of meadows,
and the wonder of a distant crooning stream. It had no right to be
supreme, but it was supreme, and he breathed it as he waited for pain
and a sight of the unknown.
But in the same instant, it may be, his thought flew to the Frisco kid,
and it came upon him like a flicker of lightning that the Frisco kid
was not going to be there to perform, for instance, the extraordinary
office of respectable mourner. The other kid's head was muddled, his
hand was unsteady, his agility was gone. This other kid was facing the
determined and most ferocious gentleman of the enemy. The New York kid
became convinced that his friend was lost. There was going to be a
screaming murder. He was so certain of it that he wanted to shield his
eyes from sight of the leaping arm and the knife. It was sickening,
utterly sickening. The New York kid might have been taking his first
sea-voyage. A combination of honourable manhood and inability prevented
him from running away.
He suddenly knew that it was possible to draw his own revolver, and
by a swift manoeuvre face down all three Mexicans. If he was quick
enough he would probably be victor. If any hitch occurred in the draw
he would undoubtedly be dead with his friends. It was a new game; he
had never been obliged to face a situation of this kind in the Beacon
Club in New York. In this test, the lungs of the kid still continued to
perform their duty.
"Oh, five white mice of chance,
Shirts of wool and corduroy pants,
Gold and wine, women and sin,
All for you if you let me come in--
Into the house of chance."
He thought of the weight and size of his revolver, and dismay
pierced him. He feared that in his hands it would be as unwieldy as
a sewing-machine for this quick work. He imagined, too, that some
singular providence might cause him to lose his grip as he raised his
weapon. Or it might get fatally entangled in the tails of his coat.
Some of the eels of despair lay wet and cold against his back.
But at the supreme moment the revolver came forth as if it were greased
and it arose like a feather. This somnolent machine, after months of
repose, was finally looking at the breasts of men.
Perhaps in this one series of movements, the kid had unconsciously
used nervous force sufficient to raise a bale of hay. Before he
comprehended it he was standing behind his revolver glaring over the
barrel at the Mexicans, menacing first one and then another. His finger
was tremoring on the trigger. The revolver gleamed in the darkness with
a fine silver light.
The fulsome grandee sprang backward with a low cry. The man who had
been facing the Frisco kid took a quick step away. The beautiful array
of Mexicans was suddenly disorganized.
The cry and the backward steps revealed something of great importance
to the New York kid. He had never dreamed that he did not have a
complete monopoly of all possible trepidations. The cry of the grandee
was that of a man who suddenly sees a poisonous snake. Thus the kid
was able to understand swiftly that they were all human beings. They
were unanimous in not wishing for too bloody combat. There was a sudden
expression of the equality. He had vaguely believed that they were not
going to evince much consideration for his dramatic development as an
active factor. They even might be exasperated into an onslaught by
it. Instead, they had respected his movement with a respect as great
even as an ejaculation of fear and backward steps. Upon the instant he
pounced forward and began to swear, unreeling great English oaths as
thick as ropes, and lashing the faces of the Mexicans with them. He
was bursting with rage, because these men had not previously confided
to him that they were vulnerable. The whole thing had been an absurd
imposition. He had been seduced into respectful alarm by the concave
attitude of the grandee. And after all there had been an equality of
emotion, an equality: he was furious. He wanted to take the serape of
the grandee and swaddle him in it.
The Mexicans slunk back, their eyes burning wistfully. The kid took aim
first at one and then at another. After they had achieved a certain
distance they paused and drew up in a rank. They then resumed some of
their old splendour of manner. A voice hailed him in a tone of cynical
bravado as if it had come from between lips of smiling mockery. "Well,
señor, it is finished?"
The kid scowled into the darkness, his revolver drooping at his side.
After a moment he answered--"I am willing." He found it strange that he
should be able to speak after this silence of years.
"Good-night, señor."
"Good-night."
When he turned to look at the Frisco kid he found him in his original
position, his hand upon his hip. He was blinking in perplexity at the
point from whence the Mexicans had vanished.
"Well," said the sober kid crossly, "are you ready to go home now?"
The Frisco kid said--"Where they gone?" His voice was undisturbed but
inquisitive.
Benson suddenly propelled himself from his dreamful position against
the wall. "Frishco kid's all right. He's drunk's fool and he's all
right. But you New York kid, you're shober." He passed into a state of
profound investigation. "Kid shober 'cause didn't go with us. Didn't
go with us 'cause went to damn circus. Went to damn circus 'cause lose
shakin' dice. Lose shakin' dice 'cause--what make lose shakin' dice,
kid?"
The New York kid eyed the senile youth. "I don't know. The five white
mice, maybe."
Benson puzzled so over this reply that he had to be held erect by his
friends. Finally the Frisco kid said--"Let's go home."
Nothing had happened.
FLANAGAN AND HIS SHORT FILIBUSTERING ADVENTURE
I
"I have got twenty men at me back who will fight to the death," said
the warrior to the old filibuster.
"And they can be blowed for all me," replied the old filibuster.
"Common as sparrows. Cheap as cigarettes. Show me twenty men with steel
clamps on their mouths, with holes in their heads where memory ought to
be, and I want 'em. But twenty brave men merely? I'd rather have twenty
brave onions."
Thereupon the warrior removed sadly, feeling that no salaams were paid
to valour in these days of mechanical excellence.
Valour, in truth, is no bad thing to have when filibustering; but many
medals are to be won by the man who knows not the meaning of "pow-wow,"
before or afterwards. Twenty brave men with tongues hung lightly may
make trouble rise from the ground like smoke from grass, because of
their subsequent fiery pride; whereas twenty cow-eyed villains who
accept unrighteous and far-compelling kicks as they do the rain from
heaven may halo the ultimate history of an expedition with gold, and
plentifully bedeck their names, winning forty years of gratitude from
patriots, simply by remaining silent. As for the cause, it may be only
that they have no friends or other credulous furniture.
If it were not for the curse of the swinging tongue, it is surely to
be said that the filibustering industry, flourishing now in the United
States, would be pie. Under correct conditions, it is merely a matter
of dealing with some little detectives whose skill at search is rated
by those who pay them at a value of twelve or twenty dollars each week.
It is nearly axiomatic that normally a twelve dollar per week detective
cannot defeat a one hundred thousand dollar filibustering excursion.
Against the criminal, the detective represents the commonwealth, but in
this other case he represents his desire to show cause why his salary
should be paid. He represents himself merely, and he counts no more
than a grocer's clerk.
But the pride of the successful filibuster often smites him and his
cause like an axe, and men who have not confided in their mothers go
prone with him. It can make the dome of the Capitol tremble and incite
the Senators to over-turning benches. It can increase the salaries of
detectives who could not detect the location of a pain in the chest. It
is a wonderful thing, this pride.
Filibustering was once such a simple game. It was managed blandly by
gentle captains and smooth and undisturbed gentlemen, who at other
times dealt in law, soap, medicine, and bananas. It was a great pity
that the little cote of doves in Washington were obliged to rustle
officially, and naval men were kept from their berths at night, and
sundry Custom House people got wiggings, all because the returned
adventurer pow-wowed in his pride. A yellow and red banner would
have been long since smothered in a shame of defeat if a contract to
filibuster had been let to some admirable organization like one of our
trusts.
And yet the game is not obsolete. It is still played by the wise and
the silent men whose names are not display-typed and blathered from one
end of the country to the other.
There is in mind now a man who knew one side of a fence from the other
side when he looked sharply. They were hunting for captains then to
command the first vessels of what has since become a famous little
fleet. One was recommended to this man, and he said, "Send him down to
my office and I'll look him over." He was an attorney, and he liked to
lean back in his chair, twirl a paper-knife, and let the other fellow
talk.
The sea-faring man came and stood and appeared confounded. The attorney
asked the terrible first question of the filibuster to the applicant.
He said, "Why do you want to go?"
The captain reflected, changed his attitude three times, and decided
ultimately that he didn't know. He seemed greatly ashamed. The
attorney, looking at him, saw that he had eyes that resembled a
lambkin's eyes.
"Glory?" said the attorney at last.
"No-o," said the captain.
"Pay?"
"No-o. Not that so much."
"Think they'll give you a land grant when they win out?"
"No; never thought."
"No glory; no immense pay; no land grant. What are you going for, then?"
"Well, I don't know," said the captain, with his glance on the floor
and shifting his position again. "I don't know. I guess it's just for
fun mostly." The attorney asked him out to have a drink.
When he stood on the bridge of his out-going steamer, the attorney
saw him again. His shore meekness and uncertainty were gone. He was
clear-eyed and strong, aroused like a mastiff at night. He took his
cigar out of his mouth and yelled some sudden language at the deck.
This steamer had about her a quality of unholy mediæval disrepair,
which is usually accounted the principal prerogative of the United
States Revenue Marine. There is many a seaworthy ice-house if she were
a good ship. She swashed through the seas as genially as an old wooden
clock, burying her head under waves that came only like children at
play, and, on board, it cost a ducking to go from anywhere to anywhere.
The captain had commanded vessels that shore-people thought were
liners; but when a man gets the ant of desire-to-see-what-it's-like
stirring in his heart, he will wallow out to sea in a pail. The thing
surpasses a man's love for his sweetheart. The great tank-steamer
_Thunder-Voice_ had long been Flanagan's sweetheart, but he was far
happier off Hatteras watching this wretched little portmanteau boom
down the slant of a wave.
The crew scraped acquaintance one with another gradually. Each man came
ultimately to ask his neighbour what particular turn of ill-fortune
or inherited deviltry caused him to try this voyage. When one frank,
bold man saw another frank, bold man aboard, he smiled, and they became
friends. There was not a mind on board the ship that was not fastened
to the dangers of the coast of Cuba, and taking wonder at this prospect
and delight in it. Still, in jovial moments they termed each other
accursed idiots.
At first there was some trouble in the engine-room, where there were
many steel animals, for the most part painted red and in other places
very shiny--bewildering, complex, incomprehensible to any one who don't
care, usually thumping, thumping, thumping with the monotony of a snore.
It seems that this engine was as whimsical as a gas-meter. The chief
engineer was a fine old fellow with a grey moustache, but the engine
told him that it didn't intend to budge until it felt better. He came
to the bridge and said, "The blamed old thing has laid down on us, sir."
"Who was on duty?" roared the captain.
"The second, sir."
"Why didn't he call you?"
"Don't know, sir." Later the stokers had occasion to thank the stars
that they were not second engineers.
The _Foundling_ was soundly thrashed by the waves for loitering while
the captain and the engineers fought the obstinate machinery. During
this wait on the sea, the first gloom came to the faces of the company.
The ocean is wide, and a ship is a small place for the feet, and an
ill ship is worriment. Even when she was again under way, the gloom
was still upon the crew. From time to time men went to the engine-room
doors, and looking down, wanted to ask questions of the chief engineer,
who slowly prowled to and fro, and watched with careful eye his
red-painted mysteries. No man wished to have a companion know that he
was anxious, and so questions were caught at the lips. Perhaps none
commented save the first mate, who remarked to the captain, "Wonder
what the bally old thing will do, sir, when we're chased by a Spanish
cruiser?"
The captain merely grinned. Later he looked over the side and said to
himself with scorn, "Sixteen knots! sixteen knots! Sixteen hinges on
the inner gates of Hades! Sixteen knots! Seven is her gait, and nine if
you crack her up to it."
There may never be a captain whose crew can't sniff his misgivings.
They scent it as a herd scents the menace far through the trees
and over the ridges. A captain that does not know that he is on a
foundering ship sometimes can take his men to tea and buttered toast
twelve minutes before the disaster, but let him fret for a moment in
the loneliness of his cabin, and in no time it affects the liver of
a distant and sensitive seaman. Even as Flanagan reflected on the
_Foundling_, viewing her as a filibuster, word arrived that a winter
of discontent had come to the stoke-room.
The captain knew that it requires sky to give a man courage. He sent
for a stoker and talked to him on the bridge. The man, standing under
the sky, instantly and shamefacedly denied all knowledge of the
business; nevertheless, a jaw had presently to be broken by a fist
because the _Foundling_ could only steam nine knots, and because the
stoke-room has no sky, no wind, no bright horizon.
When the _Foundling_ was somewhere off Savannah a blow came from the
north-east, and the steamer, headed south-east, rolled like a boiling
potato. The first mate was a fine officer, and so a wave crashed him
into the deck-house and broke his arm. The cook was a good cook, and so
the heave of the ship flung him heels over head with a pot of boiling
water, and caused him to lose interest in everything save his legs. "By
the piper," said Flanagan to himself, "this filibustering is no trick
with cards."
Later there was more trouble in the stoke-room. All the stokers
participated save the one with a broken jaw, who had become
discouraged. The captain had an excellent chest development. When he
went aft, roaring, it was plain that a man could beat carpets with a
voice like that one.
II
One night the _Foundling_ was off the southern coast of Florida, and
running at half-speed towards the shore. The captain was on the
bridge. "Four flashes at intervals of one minute," he said to himself,
gazing steadfastly towards the beach. Suddenly a yellow eye opened in
the black face of the night, and looked at the _Foundling_ and closed
again. The captain studied his watch and the shore. Three times more
the eye opened and looked at the _Foundling_ and closed again. The
captain called to the vague figures on the deck below him. "Answer it."
The flash of a light from the bow of the steamer displayed for a moment
in golden colour the crests of the inriding waves.
The _Foundling_ lay to and waited. The long swells rolled her
gracefully, and her two stub masts reaching into the darkness swung
with the solemnity of batons timing a dirge. When the ship had left
Boston she had been as encrusted with ice as a Dakota stage-driver's
beard, but now the gentle wind of Florida softly swayed the lock on
the forehead of the coatless Flanagan, and he lit a new cigar without
troubling to make a shield of his hands.
Finally a dark boat came plashing over the waves. As it came very near,
the captain leaned forward and perceived that the men in her rowed like
seamstresses, and at the same time a voice hailed him in bad English.
"It's a dead sure connection," said he to himself.
At sea, to load two hundred thousand rounds of rifle ammunition, seven
hundred and fifty rifles, two rapid-fire field guns with a hundred
shells, forty bundles of machetes, and a hundred pounds of dynamite,
from yawls, and by men who are not born stevedores, and in a heavy
ground swell, and with the searchlight of a United States cruiser
sometimes flashing like lightning in the sky to the southward, is no
business for a Sunday-school class. When at last the _Foundling_ was
steaming for the open over the grey sea at dawn, there was not a man of
the forty come aboard from the Florida shore, nor of the fifteen sailed
from Boston, who was not glad, standing with his hair matted to his
forehead with sweat, smiling at the broad wake of the _Foundling_ and
the dim streak on the horizon which was Florida.
But there is a point of the compass in these waters men call the
north-east. When the strong winds come from that direction they kick
up a turmoil that is not good for a _Foundling_ stuffed with coals
and war-stores. In the gale which came, this ship was no more than a
drunken soldier.
The Cuban leader, standing on the bridge with the captain, was
presently informed that of his men, thirty-nine out of a possible
thirty-nine were sea-sick. And in truth they were sea-sick. There
are degrees in this complaint, but that matter was waived between
them. They were all sick to the limits. They strewed the deck in
every posture of human anguish, and when the _Foundling_ ducked and
water came sluicing down from the bows, they let it sluice. They were
satisfied if they could keep their heads clear of the wash; and if
they could not keep their heads clear of the wash, they didn't care.
Presently the _Foundling_ swung her course to the south-east, and the
waves pounded her broadside. The patriots were all ordered below decks,
and there they howled and measured their misery one against another.
All day the _Foundling_ plopped and floundered over a blazing bright
meadow of an ocean whereon the white foam was like flowers.
The captain on the bridge mused and studied the bare horizon. "Hell!"
said he to himself, and the word was more in amazement than in
indignation or sorrow. "Thirty-nine sea-sick passengers, the mate with
a broken arm, a stoker with a broken jaw, the cook with a pair of
scalded legs, and an engine likely to be taken with all these diseases,
if not more! If I get back to a home port with a spoke of the wheel
gripped in my hands, it'll be fair luck!"
There is a kind of corn-whisky bred in Florida which the natives
declare is potent in the proportion of seven fights to a drink. Some of
the Cuban volunteers had had the forethought to bring a small quantity
of this whisky aboard with them, and being now in the fire-room and
sea-sick, feeling that they would not care to drink liquor for two or
three years to come, they gracefully tendered their portions to the
stokers. The stokers accepted these gifts without avidity, but with a
certain earnestness of manner.
As they were stokers, and toiling, the whirl of emotion was delayed,
but it arrived ultimately, and with emphasis. One stoker called another
stoker a weird name, and the latter, righteously inflamed at it, smote
his mate with an iron shovel, and the man fell headlong over a heap of
coal, which crashed gently while piece after piece rattled down upon
the deck.
A third stoker was providently enraged at the scene, and assailed the
second stoker. They fought for some moments, while the sea-sick Cubans
sprawled on the deck watched with languid rolling glances the ferocity
of this scuffle. One was so indifferent to the strategic importance of
the space he occupied that he was kicked on the shins.
When the second engineer came to separating the combatants, he was
sincere in his efforts, and he came near to disabling them for life.
The captain said, "I'll go down there and----" But the leader of the
Cubans restrained him. "No, no," he cried, "you must not. We must treat
them like children, very gently, all the time, you see, or else when we
get back to a United States port they will--what you call? Spring? Yes,
spring the whole business. We must--jolly them, you see?"
"You mean," said the captain thoughtfully, "they are likely to get mad,
and give the expedition dead away when we reach port again unless we
blarney them now?"
"Yes, yes," cried the Cuban leader, "unless we are so very gentle with
them they will make many troubles afterwards for us in the newspapers
and then in court."
"Well, but I won't have my crew----" began the captain.
"But you must," interrupted the Cuban, "you must. It is the only thing.
You are like the captain of a pirate ship. You see? Only you can't
throw them overboard like him. You see?"
"Hum," said the captain, "this here filibustering business has got a
lot to it when you come to look it over."
He called the fighting stokers to the bridge, and the three came, meek
and considerably battered. He was lecturing them soundly but sensibly,
when he suddenly tripped a sentence and cried--"Here! Where's that
other fellow? How does it come he wasn't in the fight?"
The row of stokers cried at once eagerly, "He's hurt, sir. He's got a
broken jaw, sir."
"So he has; so he has," murmured the captain, much embarrassed.
And because of all these affairs, the _Foundling_ steamed toward Cuba
with its crew in a sling, if one may be allowed to speak in that way.
III
At night the _Foundling_ approached the coast like a thief. Her
lights were muffled, so that from the deck the sea shone with its own
radiance, like the faint shimmer of some kinds of silk. The men on deck
spoke in whispers, and even down in the fire-room the hidden stokers
working before the blood-red furnace doors used no words and walked on
tip-toe. The stars were out in the blue-velvet sky, and their light
with the soft shine of the sea caused the coast to appear black as the
side of a coffin. The surf boomed in low thunder on the distant beach.
The _Foundling's_ engines ceased their thumping for a time. She glided
quietly forward until a bell chimed faintly in the engine-room. Then
she paused with a flourish of phosphorescent waters.
"Give the signal," said the captain. Three times a flash of light went
from the bow. There was a moment of waiting. Then an eye like the one
on the coast of Florida opened and closed, opened and closed, opened
and closed. The Cubans, grouped in a great shadow on deck, burst into a
low chatter of delight. A hiss from their leader silenced them.
"Well?" said the captain.
"All right," said the leader.
At the giving of the word it was not apparent that any one on board
of the _Foundling_ had ever been sea-sick. The boats were lowered
swiftly--too swiftly. Boxes of cartridges were dragged from the hold
and passed over the side with a rapidity that made men in the boats
exclaim against it. They were being bombarded. When a boat headed for
shore its rowers pulled like madmen. The captain paced slowly to and
fro on the bridge. In the engine-room the engineers stood at their
station, and in the stoke-hold the firemen fidgeted silently around the
furnace doors.
On the bridge Flanagan reflected. "Oh, I don't know!" he observed.
"This filibustering business isn't so bad. Pretty soon it'll be off to
sea again with nothing to do but some big lying when I get into port."
In one of the boats returning from shore came twelve Cuban officers,
the greater number of them convalescing from wounds, while two or three
of them had been ordered to America on commissions from the insurgents.
The captain welcomed them, and assured them of a speedy and safe voyage.
Presently he went again to the bridge and scanned the horizon. The sea
was lonely like the spaces amid the suns. The captain grinned and
softly smote his chest. "It's dead easy," he said.
It was near the end of the cargo, and the men were breathing like spent
horses, although their elation grew with each moment, when suddenly a
voice spoke from the sky. It was not a loud voice, but the quality of
it brought every man on deck to full stop and motionless, as if they
had all been changed to wax. "Captain," said the man at the masthead,
"there's a light to the west'ard, sir. Think it's a steamer, sir."
There was a still moment until the captain called, "Well, keep your
eye on it now." Speaking to the deck, he said, "Go ahead with your
unloading."
The second engineer went to the galley to borrow a tin cup. "Hear the
news, second?" asked the cook. "Steamer coming up from the west'ard."
"Gee!" said the second engineer. In the engine-room he said to the
chief, "Steamer coming up from the west'ard, sir." The chief engineer
began to test various little machines with which his domain was
decorated. Finally he addressed the stoke-room. "Boys, I want you to
look sharp now. There's a steamer coming up to the west'ard."
"All right, sir," said the stoke-room.
From time to time the captain hailed the masthead. "How is she now?"
"Seems to be coming down on us pretty fast, sir."
The Cuban leader came anxiously to the captain. "Do you think we can
save all the cargo? It is rather delicate business. No?"
"Go ahead," said Flanagan. "Fire away! I'll wait."
There continued the hurried shuffling of feet on deck, and the low
cries of the men unloading the cargo. In the engine-room the chief and
his assistant were staring at the gong. In the stoke-room the firemen
breathed through their teeth. A shovel slipped from where it leaned
against the side and banged on the floor. The stokers started and
looked around quickly.
Climbing to the rail and holding on to a stay, the captain gazed
westward. A light had raised out of the deep. After watching this light
for a time he called to the Cuban leader. "Well, as soon as you're
ready now, we might as well be skipping out."
Finally, the Cuban leader told him, "Well, this is the last load. As
soon as the boats come back you can be off."
"Shan't wait for all the boats," said the captain. "That fellow is too
close." As the second boat came aboard, the _Foundling_ turned, and
like a black shadow stole seaward to cross the bows of the oncoming
steamer. "Waited about ten minutes too long," said the captain to
himself.
Suddenly the light in the west vanished. "Hum!" said Flanagan, "he's
up to some meanness." Every one outside of the engine-rooms was set
on watch. The _Foundling_, going at full speed into the north-east,
slashed a wonderful trail of blue silver on the dark bosom of the sea.
A man on deck cried out hurriedly, "There she is, sir." Many eyes
searched the western gloom, and one after another the glances of the
men found a tiny shadow on the deep with a line of white beneath it.
"He couldn't be heading better if he had a line to us," said Flanagan.
There was a thin flash of red in the darkness. It was long and keen
like a crimson rapier. A short, sharp report sounded, and then a shot
whined swiftly in the air and blipped into the sea. The captain had
been about to take a bite of plug tobacco at the beginning of this
incident, and his arm was raised. He remained like a frozen figure
while the shot whined, and then, as it blipped into the sea, his hand
went to his mouth and he bit the plug. He looked wide-eyed at the
shadow with its line of white.
The senior Cuban officer came hurriedly to the bridge. "It is no good
to surrender," he cried. "They would only shoot or hang all of us."
There was another thin red flash and a report. A loud whirring noise
passed over the ship.
"I'm not going to surrender," said the captain, hanging with both hands
to the rail. He appeared like a man whose traditions of peace are
clinched in his heart. He was as astonished as if his hat had turned
into a dog. Presently he wheeled quickly and said--"What kind of a gun
is that?"
"It is a one-pounder," cried the Cuban officer. "The boat is one of
those little gunboats made from a yacht. You see?"
"Well, if it's only a yawl, he'll sink us in five more minutes," said
Flanagan. For a moment he looked helplessly off at the horizon. His
under-jaw hung low. But a moment later, something touched him, like
a stiletto point of inspiration. He leaped to the pilothouse and
roared at the man at the wheel. The _Foundling_ sheered suddenly to
starboard, made a clumsy turn, and Flanagan was bellowing through the
tube to the engine-room before everybody discovered that the old basket
was heading straight for the Spanish gun-boat. The ship lunged forward
like a draught-horse on the gallop.
This strange manoeuvre by the _Foundling_ first dealt consternation
on board of the _Foundling_. Men instinctively crouched on the instant,
and then swore their supreme oath, which was unheard by their own ears.
Later the manoeuvre of the _Foundling_ dealt consternation on board
of the gunboat. She had been going victoriously forward dim-eyed from
the fury of her pursuit. Then this tall threatening shape had suddenly
loomed over her like a giant apparition.
The people on board the _Foundling_ heard panic shouts, hoarse orders.
The little gunboat was paralyzed with astonishment.
Suddenly Flanagan yelled with rage and sprang for the wheel. The
helmsman had turned his eyes away. As the captain whirled the wheel far
to starboard he heard a crunch as the _Foundling_, lifted on a wave,
smashed her shoulder against the gunboat, and he saw shooting past a
little launch sort of a thing with men on her that ran this way and
that way. The Cuban officers, joined by the cook and a seaman, emptied
their revolvers into the surprised terror of the seas.
There was naturally no pursuit. Under comfortable speed the _Foundling_
stood to the northwards.
The captain went to his berth chuckling. "There, by God!" he said.
"There now!"
IV
When Flanagan came again on deck, the first mate, his arm in a sling,
walked the bridge. Flanagan was smiling a wide smile. The bridge of
the _Foundling_ was dipping afar and then afar. With each lunge of the
little steamer the water seethed and boomed alongside, and the spray
dashed high and swiftly.
"Well," said Flanagan, inflating himself, "we've had a great deal of a
time, and we've come through it all right, and thank Heaven it is all
over."
The sky in the north-east was of a dull brick-red in tone, shaded here
and there by black masses that billowed out in some fashion from the
flat heavens.
"Look there," said the mate.
"Hum!" said the captain. "Looks like a blow, don't it?"
Later the surface of the water rippled and flickered in the preliminary
wind. The sea had become the colour of lead. The swashing sound of the
waves on the sides of the _Foundling_ was now provided with some manner
of ominous significance. The men's shouts were hoarse.
A squall struck the _Foundling_ on her starboard quarter, and she
leaned under the force of it as if she were never to return to the even
keel. "I'll be glad when we get in," said the mate. "I'm going to quit
then. I've got enough."
"Hell!" said the beaming Flanagan.
The steamer crawled on into the north-west. The white water, sweeping
out from her, deadened the chug-chug-chug of the tired old engines.
Once, when the boat careened, she laid her shoulder flat on the sea and
rested in that manner. The mate, looking down the bridge, which slanted
more than a coal-shute, whistled softly to himself. Slowly, heavily,
the _Foundling_ arose to meet another sea.
At night waves thundered mightily on the bows of the steamer, and water
lit with the beautiful phosphorescent glamour went boiling and howling
along deck.
By good fortune the chief engineer crawled safely, but utterly
drenched, to the galley for coffee. "Well, how goes it, chief?" said
the cook, standing with his fat arms folded in order to prove that he
could balance himself under any conditions.
The engineer shook his head dejectedly. "This old biscuit-box will
never see port again. Why, she'll fall to pieces."
Finally at night the captain said, "Launch the boats." The Cubans
hovered about him. "Is the ship going to sink?" The captain addressed
them politely. "Gentlemen, we are in trouble, but all I ask of you is
that you just do what I tell you, and no harm will come to anybody."
The mate directed the lowering of the first boat, and the men performed
this task with all decency, like people at the side of a grave.
A young oiler came to the captain. "The chief sends word, sir, that the
water is almost up to the fires."
"Keep at it as long as you can."
"Keep at it as long as we can, sir?"
Flanagan took the senior Cuban officer to the rail, and, as the steamer
sheered high on a great sea, showed him a yellow dot on the horizon. It
was smaller than a needle when its point is towards you.
"There," said the captain. The wind-driven spray was lashing his face.
"That's Jupiter Light on the Florida coast. Put your men in the boat
we've just launched, and the mate will take you to that light."
Afterwards Flanagan turned to the chief engineer. "We can never beach,"
said the old man. "The stokers have got to quit in a minute." Tears
were in his eyes.
The _Foundling_ was a wounded thing. She lay on the water with gasping
engines, and each wave resembled her death-blow.
Now the way of a good ship on the sea is finer than sword-play. But
this is when she is alive. If a time comes that the ship dies, then
her way is the way of a floating old glove, and she has that much vim,
spirit, buoyancy. At this time many men on the _Foundling_ suddenly
came to know that they were clinging to a corpse.
The captain went to the stoke-room, and what he saw as he swung
down the companion suddenly turned him hesitant and dumb. Water was
swirling to and fro with the roll of the ship, fuming greasily around
half-strangled machinery that still attempted to perform its duty.
Steam arose from the water, and through its clouds shone the red glare
of the dying fires. As for the stokers, death might have been with
silence in this room. One lay in his berth, his hands under his head,
staring moodily at the wall. One sat near the foot of the companion,
his face hidden in his arms. One leaned against the side and gazed at
the snarling water as it rose, and its mad eddies among the machinery.
In the unholy red light and grey mist of this stifling dim Inferno
they were strange figures with their silence and their immobility. The
wretched _Foundling_ groaned deeply as she lifted, and groaned deeply
as she sank into the trough, while hurried waves then thundered over
her with the noise of landslides. The terrified machinery was making
gestures.
But Flanagan took control of himself suddenly. Then he stirred the
fire-room. The stillness had been so unearthly that he was not
altogether inapprehensive of strange and grim deeds when he charged
into them; but precisely as they had submitted to the sea so they
submitted to Flanagan. For a moment they rolled their eyes like hurt
cows, but they obeyed the Voice. The situation simply required a Voice.
When the captain returned to the deck the hue of this fire-room was in
his mind, and then he understood doom and its weight and complexion.
When finally the _Foundling_ sank she shifted and settled as calmly as
an animal curls down in the bush grass. Away over the waves two bobbing
boats paused to witness this quiet death. It was a slow manoeuvre,
altogether without the pageantry of uproar, but it flashed pallor into
the faces of all men who saw it, and they groaned when they said,
"There she goes!" Suddenly the captain whirled and knocked his hand on
the gunwale. He sobbed for a time, and then he sobbed and swore also.
* * * * *
There was a dance at the Imperial Inn. During the evening some
irresponsible young men came from the beach bringing the statement that
several boatloads of people had been perceived off shore. It was a
charming dance, and none cared to take time to believe this tale. The
fountain in the court-yard splashed softly, and couple after couple
paraded through the aisles of palms, where lamps with red shades threw
a rose light upon the gleaming leaves. The band played its waltzes
slumberously, and its music came faintly to the people among the palms.
Sometimes a woman said--"Oh, it is not really true, is it, that there
was a wreck out at sea?"
A man usually said--"No, of course not."
At last, however, a youth came violently from the beach. He was
triumphant in manner. "They're out there," he cried. "A whole
boat-load!" He received eager attention, and he told all that he
supposed. His news destroyed the dance. After a time the band was
playing beautifully to space. The guests had hurried to the beach. One
little girl cried, "Oh, mamma, may I go too?" Being refused permission
she pouted.
As they came from the shelter of the great hotel, the wind was blowing
swiftly from the sea, and at intervals a breaker shone livid. The women
shuddered, and their bending companions seized the opportunity to draw
the cloaks closer.
"Oh, dear!" said a girl; "supposin' they were out there drowning while
we were dancing!"
"Oh, nonsense!" said her younger brother; "that don't happen."
"Well, it might, you know, Roger. How can you tell?"
A man who was not her brother gazed at her then with profound
admiration. Later, she complained of the damp sand, and, drawing back
her skirts, looked ruefully at her little feet.
A mother's son was venturing too near to the water in his interest and
excitement. Occasionally she cautioned and reproached him from the
background.
Save for the white glare of the breakers, the sea was a great
wind-crossed void. From the throng of charming women floated the
perfume of many flowers. Later there floated to them a body with a calm
face of an Irish type. The expedition of the _Foundling_ will never be
historic.
HORSES
Richardson pulled up his horse, and looked back over the trail where
the crimson serape of his servant flamed amid the dusk of the mesquit.
The hills in the west were carved into peaks, and were painted the
most profound blue. Above them the sky was of that marvellous tone of
green--like still, sun-shot water--which people denounce in pictures.
José was muffled deep in his blanket, and his great toppling sombrero
was drawn low over his brow. He shadowed his master along the dimming
trail in the fashion of an assassin. A cold wind of the impending night
swept over the wilderness of mesquit.
"Man," said Richardson in lame Mexican as the servant drew near, "I
want eat! I want sleep! Understand--no? Quickly! Understand?"
"Si, señor," said José, nodding. He stretched one arm out of his
blanket and pointed a yellow finger into the gloom. "Over there, small
village. Si, señor."
They rode forward again. Once the American's horse shied and breathed
quiveringly at something which he saw or imagined in the darkness,
and the rider drew a steady, patient rein, and leaned over to speak
tenderly as if he were addressing a frightened woman. The sky had faded
to white over the mountains, and the plain was a vast, pointless ocean
of black.
Suddenly some low houses appeared squatting amid the bushes. The
horsemen rode into a hollow until the houses rose against the sombre
sundown sky, and then up a small hillock, causing these habitations to
sink like boats in the sea of shadow.
A beam of red firelight fell across the trail. Richardson sat sleepily
on his horse while his servant quarrelled with somebody--a mere voice
in the gloom--over the price of bed and board. The houses about him
were for the most part like tombs in their whiteness and silence, but
there were scudding black figures that seemed interested in his arrival.
José came at last to the horses' heads, and the American slid stiffly
from his seat. He muttered a greeting, as with his spurred feet he
clicked into the adobe house that confronted him. The brown stolid face
of a woman shone in the light of the fire. He seated himself on the
earthen floor and blinked drowsily at the blaze. He was aware that the
woman was clinking earthenware, and hieing here and everywhere in the
manoeuvres of the housewife. From a dark corner there came the sound
of two or three snores twining together.
The woman handed him a bowl of tortillas. She was a submissive
creature, timid and large-eyed. She gazed at his enormous silver spurs,
his large and impressive revolver, with the interest and admiration
of the highly-privileged cat of the adage. When he ate, she seemed
transfixed off there in the gloom, her white teeth shining.
José entered, staggering under two Mexican saddles, large enough for
building-sites. Richardson decided to smoke a cigarette, and then
changed his mind. It would be much finer to go to sleep. His blanket
hung over his left shoulder, furled into a long pipe of cloth,
according to the Mexican fashion. By doffing his sombrero, unfastening
his spurs and his revolver belt, he made himself ready for the slow,
blissful twist into the blanket. Like a cautious man he lay close to
the wall, and all his property was very near his hand.
The mesquit brush burned long. José threw two gigantic wings of shadow
as he flapped his blanket about him--first across his chest under his
arms, and then around his neck and across his chest again--this time
over his arms, with the end tossed on his right shoulder. A Mexican
thus snugly enveloped can nevertheless free his fighting arm in a
beautifully brisk way, merely shrugging his shoulder as he grabs for
the weapon at his belt. (They always wear their serapes in this manner.)
The firelight smothered the rays which, streaming from a moon as large
as a drum-head, were struggling at the open door. Richardson heard from
the plain the fine, rhythmical trample of the hoofs of hurried horses.
He went to sleep wondering who rode so fast and so late. And in the
deep silence the pale rays of the moon must have prevailed against the
red spears of the fire until the room was slowly flooded to its middle
with a rectangle of silver light.
Richardson was awakened by the sound of a guitar. It was badly
played--in this land of Mexico, from which the romance of the
instrument ascends to us like a perfume. The guitar was groaning and
whining like a badgered soul. A noise of scuffling feet accompanied the
music. Sometimes laughter arose, and often the voices of men saying
bitter things to each other, but always the guitar cried on, the treble
sounding as if some one were beating iron, and the bass humming like
bees. "Damn it--they're having a dance," he muttered, fretfully. He
heard two men quarrelling in short, sharp words, like pistol shots;
they were calling each other worse names than common people know in
other countries. He wondered why the noise was so loud. Raising his
head from his saddle pillow, he saw, with the help of the valiant
moonbeams, a blanket hanging flat against the wall at the further end
of the room. Being of opinion that it concealed a door, and remembering
that Mexican drink made men very drunk, he pulled his revolver closer
to him and prepared for sudden disaster.
Richardson was dreaming of his far and beloved north.
"Well, I would kill him, then!"
"No, you must not!"
"Yes, I will kill him! Listen! I will ask this American beast for his
beautiful pistol and spurs and money and saddle, and if he will not
give them--you will see!"
"But these Americans--they are a strange people. Look out, señor."
Then twenty voices took part in the discussion. They rose in quavering
shrillness, as from men badly drunk. Richardson felt the skin draw
tight around his mouth, and his knee-joints turned to bread. He slowly
came to a sitting posture, glaring at the motionless blanket at the
far end of the room. This stiff and mechanical movement, accomplished
entirely by the muscles of the waist, must have looked like the rising
of a corpse in the wan moonlight, which gave everything a hue of the
grave.
My friend, take my advice and never be executed by a hangman who
doesn't talk the English language. It, or anything that resembles
it, is the most difficult of deaths. The tumultuous emotions of
Richardson's terror destroyed that slow and careful process of thought
by means of which he understood Mexican. Then he used his instinctive
comprehension of the first and universal language, which is tone.
Still, it is disheartening not to be able to understand the detail of
threats against the blood of your body.
Suddenly, the clamour of voices ceased. There was a silence--a silence
of decision. The blanket was flung aside, and the red light of a torch
flared into the room. It was held high by a fat, round-faced Mexican,
whose little snake-like moustache was as black as his eyes, and whose
eyes were black as jet. He was insane with the wild rage of a man
whose liquor is dully burning at his brain. Five or six of his fellows
crowded after him. The guitar, which had been thrummed doggedly during
the time of the high words, now suddenly stopped. They contemplated
each other. Richardson sat very straight and still, his right hand lost
in his blanket. The Mexicans jostled in the light of the torch, their
eyes blinking and glittering.
The fat one posed in the manner of a grandee. Presently his hand
dropped to his belt, and from his lips there spun an epithet--a hideous
word which often foreshadows knife-blows, a word peculiarly of Mexico,
where people have to dig deep to find an insult that has not lost its
savour. The American did not move. He was staring at the fat Mexican
with a strange fixedness of gaze, not fearful, not dauntless, not
anything that could be interpreted. He simply stared.
The fat Mexican must have been disconcerted, for he continued to
pose as a grandee, with more and more sublimity, until it would have
been easy for him to have fallen over backward. His companions were
swaying very drunkenly. They still blinked their little beady eyes at
Richardson. Ah, well, sirs, here was a mystery! At the approach of
their menacing company, why did not this American cry out and turn
pale, or run, or pray them mercy? The animal merely sat still, and
stared, and waited for them to begin. Well, evidently he was a great
fighter! Or perhaps he was an idiot? Indeed, this was an embarrassing
situation, for who was going forward to discover whether he was a great
fighter or an idiot?
To Richardson, whose nerves were tingling and twitching like live
wires, and whose heart jolted inside him, this pause was a long horror;
and for these men, who could so frighten him, there began to swell in
him a fierce hatred--a hatred that made him long to be capable of
fighting all of them, a hatred that made him capable of fighting all
of them. A 44-calibre revolver can make a hole large enough for little
boys to shoot marbles through; and there was a certain fat Mexican with
a moustache like a snake who came extremely near to have eaten his last
tomale merely because he frightened a man too much.
José had slept the first part of the night in his fashion, his body
hunched into a heap, his legs crooked, his head touching his knees.
Shadows had obscured him from the sight of the invaders. At this point
he arose, and began to prowl quakingly over toward Richardson, as if he
meant to hide behind him.
Of a sudden the fat Mexican gave a howl of glee. José had come within
the torch's circle of light. With roars of ferocity the whole group of
Mexicans pounced on the American's servant. He shrank shuddering away
from them, beseeching by every device of word and gesture. They pushed
him this way and that. They beat him with their fists. They stung him
with their curses. As he grovelled on his knees, the fat Mexican took
him by the throat and said--"I am going to kill you!" And continually
they turned their eyes to see if they were to succeed in causing the
initial demonstration by the American. But he looked on impassively.
Under the blanket his fingers were clenched, as iron, upon the handle
of his revolver.
Here suddenly two brilliant clashing chords from the guitar were
heard, and a woman's voice, full of laughter and confidence, cried
from without--"Hello! hello! Where are you?" The lurching company of
Mexicans instantly paused and looked at the ground. One said, as he
stood with his legs wide apart in order to balance himself--"It is the
girls. They have come!" He screamed in answer to the question of the
woman--"Here!" And without waiting he started on a pilgrimage toward
the blanket-covered door. One could now hear a number of female voices
giggling and chattering.
Two other Mexicans said--"Yes, it is the girls! Yes!" They also started
quietly away. Even the fat Mexican's ferocity seemed to be affected.
He looked uncertainly at the still immovable American. Two of his
friends grasped him gaily--"Come, the girls are here! Come!" He cast
another glower at Richardson. "But this----," he began. Laughing, his
comrades hustled him toward the door. On its threshold, and holding
back the blanket, with one hand, he turned his yellow face with a last
challenging glare toward the American. José, bewailing his state in
little sobs of utter despair and woe, crept to Richardson and huddled
near his knee. Then the cries of the Mexicans meeting the girls were
heard, and the guitar burst out in joyous humming.
The moon clouded, and but a faint square of light fell through the
open main door of the house. The coals of the fire were silent, save
for occasional sputters. Richardson did not change his position. He
remained staring at the blanket which hid the strategic door in the far
end. At his knees José was arguing, in a low, aggrieved tone, with the
saints. Without, the Mexicans laughed and danced, and--it would appear
from the sound--drank more.
In the stillness and the night Richardson sat wondering if some
serpent-like Mexican were sliding towards him in the darkness, and if
the first thing he knew of it would be the deadly sting of a knife.
"Sssh," he whispered, to José. He drew his revolver from under the
blanket, and held it on his leg. The blanket over the door fascinated
him. It was a vague form, black and unmoving. Through the opening it
shielded were to come, probably, threats, death. Sometimes he thought
he saw it move. As grim white sheets, the black and silver of coffins,
all the panoply of death, affect us, because of that which they hide,
so this blanket, dangling before a hole in an adobe wall, was to
Richardson a horrible emblem, and a horrible thing in itself. In his
present mood he could not have been brought to touch it with his finger.
The celebrating Mexicans occasionally howled in song. The guitarist
played with speed and enthusiasm. Richardson longed to run. But in this
vibrating and threatening gloom his terror convinced him that a move
on his part would be a signal for the pounce of death. José, crouching
abjectly, mumbled now and again. Slowly, and ponderous as stars, the
minutes went.
Suddenly Richardson thrilled and started. His breath for a moment left
him. In sleep his nerveless fingers had allowed his revolver to fall
and clang upon the hard floor. He grabbed it up hastily, and his glance
swept apprehensively over the room. A chill blue light of dawn was
in the place. Every outline was slowly growing; detail was following
detail. The dread blanket did not move. The riotous company had gone
or fallen silent. He felt the effect of this cold dawn in his blood.
The candour of breaking day brought his nerve. He touched José. "Come,"
he said. His servant lifted his lined yellow face, and comprehended.
Richardson buckled on his spurs and strode up; José obediently lifted
the two great saddles. Richardson held two bridles and a blanket on his
left arm; in his right hand he had his revolver. They sneaked toward
the door.
The man who said that spurs jingled was insane. Spurs have a mellow
clash--clash--clash. Walking in spurs--notably Mexican spurs--you
remind yourself vaguely of a telegraphic linesman. Richardson was
inexpressibly shocked when he came to walk. He sounded to himself like
a pair of cymbals. He would have known of this if he had reflected; but
then, he was escaping, not reflecting. He made a gesture of despair,
and from under the two saddles José tried to make one of hopeless
horror. Richardson stooped, and with shaking fingers unfastened the
spurs. Taking them in his left hand, he picked up his revolver, and
they slunk on toward the door. On the threshold he looked back. In a
corner he saw, watching him with large eyes, the Indian man and woman
who had been his hosts. Throughout the night they had made no sign, and
now they neither spoke nor moved. Yet Richardson thought he detected
meek satisfaction at his departure.
The street was still and deserted. In the eastern sky there was a
lemon-coloured patch. José had picketed the horses at the side of the
house. As the two men came round the corner Richardson's beast set up
a whinny of welcome. The little horse had heard them coming. He stood
facing them, his ears cocked forward, his eyes bright with welcome.
Richardson made a frantic gesture, but the horse, in his happiness at
the appearance of his friends, whinnied with enthusiasm. The American
felt that he could have strangled his well-beloved steed. Upon the
threshold of safety, he was being betrayed by his horse, his friend! He
felt the same hate that he would have felt for a dragon. And yet, as he
glanced wildly about him, he could see nothing stirring in the street,
nothing at the doors of the tomb-like houses.
José had his own saddle-girth and both bridles buckled in a moment. He
curled the picket-ropes with a few sweeps of his arm. The American's
fingers, however, were shaking so that he could hardly buckle the
girth. His hands were in invisible mittens. He was wondering,
calculating, hoping about his horse. He knew the little animal's
willingness and courage under all circumstances up to this time; but
then--here it was different. Who could tell if some wretched instance
of equine perversity was not about to develop? Maybe the little fellow
would not feel like smoking over the plain at express speed this
morning, and so he would rebel, and kick, and be wicked. Maybe he would
be without feeling of interest, and run listlessly. All riders who have
had to hurry in the saddle know what it is to be on a horse who does
not understand the dramatic situation. Riding a lame sheep is bliss
to it. Richardson, fumbling furiously at the girth, thought of these
things.
Presently he had it fastened. He swung into the saddle, and as he did
so his horse made a mad jump forward. The spurs of José scratched and
tore the flanks of his great black beast, and side by side the two
horses raced down the village street. The American heard his horse
breathe a quivering sigh of excitement. Those four feet skimmed. They
were as light as fairy puff balls. The houses glided past in a moment,
and the great, clear, silent plain appeared like a pale blue sea of
mist and wet bushes. Above the mountains the colours of the sunlight
were like the first tones, the opening chords of the mighty hymn of the
morning.
The American looked down at his horse. He felt in his heart the first
thrill of confidence. The little animal, unurged and quite tranquil,
moving his ears this way and that way with an air of interest in the
scenery, was nevertheless bounding into the eye of the breaking day
with the speed of a frightened antelope. Richardson, looking down, saw
the long, fine reach of forelimb as steady as steel machinery. As the
ground reeled past, the long, dried grasses hissed, and cactus plants
were dull blurs. A wind whirled the horse's mane over his rider's
bridle hand.
José's profile was lined against the pale sky. It was as that of a man
who swims alone in an ocean. His eyes glinted like metal, fastened
on some unknown point ahead of him, some fabulous place of safety.
Occasionally his mouth puckered in a little unheard cry; and his legs,
bended back, worked spasmodically as his spurred heels sliced his
charger's sides.
Richardson consulted the gloom in the west for signs of a hard-riding,
yelling cavalcade. He knew that, whereas his friends the enemy had
not attacked him when he had sat still and with apparent calmness
confronted them, they would take furiously after him now that he had
run from them--now that he had confessed himself the weaker. Their
valour would grow like weeds in the spring, and upon discovering his
escape they would ride forth dauntless warriors. Sometimes he was sure
he saw them. Sometimes he was sure he heard them. Continually looking
backward over his shoulder, he studied the purple expanses where the
night was marching away. José rolled and shuddered in his saddle,
persistently disturbing the stride of the black horse, fretting and
worrying him until the white foam flew, and the great shoulders shone
like satin from the sweat.
At last, Richardson drew his horse carefully down to a walk. José
wished to rush insanely on, but the American spoke to him sternly. As
the two paced forward side by side, Richardson's little horse thrust
over his soft nose and inquired into the black's condition.
Riding with José was like riding with a corpse. His face resembled a
cast in lead. Sometimes he swung forward and almost pitched from his
seat. Richardson was too frightened himself to do anything but hate
this man for his fear. Finally, he issued a mandate which nearly caused
José's eyes to slide out of his head and fall to the ground, like two
coins:--"Ride behind me--about fifty paces."
"Señor----" stuttered the servant. "Go," cried the American furiously.
He glared at the other and laid his hand on his revolver. José looked
at his master wildly. He made a piteous gesture. Then slowly he fell
back, watching the hard face of the American for a sign of mercy. But
Richardson had resolved in his rage that at any rate he was going to
use the eyes and ears of extreme fear to detect the approach of danger;
so he established his panic-stricken servant as a sort of outpost.
As they proceeded, he was obliged to watch sharply to see that the
servant did not slink forward and join him. When José made beseeching
circles in the air with his arm, he replied by menacingly gripping his
revolver. José had a revolver too; nevertheless it was very clear in
his mind that the revolver was distinctly an American weapon. He had
been educated in the Rio Grande country.
Richardson lost the trail once. He was recalled to it by the loud sobs
of his servant.
Then at last José came clattering forward, gesticulating and wailing.
The little horse sprang to the shoulder of the black. They were off.
Richardson, again looking backward, could see a slanting flare of dust
on the whitening plain. He thought that he could detect small moving
figures in it.
José's moans and cries amounted to a university course in theology.
They broke continually from his quivering lips. His spurs were
as motors. They forced the black horse over the plain in great
headlong leaps. But under Richardson there was a little insignificant
rat-coloured beast who was running apparently with almost as much
effort as it takes a bronze statue to stand still. The ground seemed
merely something to be touched from time to time with hoofs that were
as light as blown leaves. Occasionally Richardson lay back and pulled
stoutly at the bridle to keep from abandoning his servant. José harried
at his horse's mouth, flopped about in the saddle, and made his two
heels beat like flails. The black ran like a horse in despair.
Crimson serapes in the distance resemble drops of blood on the great
cloth of plain. Richardson began to dream of all possible chances.
Although quite a humane man, he did not once think of his servant. José
being a Mexican, it was natural that he should be killed in Mexico;
but for himself, a New Yorker----! He remembered all the tales of such
races for life, and he thought them badly written.
The great black horse was growing indifferent. The jabs of José's spurs
no longer caused him to bound forward in wild leaps of pain. José had
at last succeeded in teaching him that spurring was to be expected,
speed or no speed, and now he took the pain of it dully and stolidly,
as an animal who finds that doing his best gains him no respite. José
was turned into a raving maniac. He bellowed and screamed, working his
arms and his heels like one in a fit. He resembled a man on a sinking
ship, who appeals to the ship. Richardson, too, cried madly to the
black horse. The spirit of the horse responded to these calls, and
quivering and breathing heavily he made a great effort, a sort of a
final rush, not for himself apparently, but because he understood
that his life's sacrifice, perhaps, had been invoked by these two men
who cried to him in the universal tongue. Richardson had no sense of
appreciation at this time--he was too frightened; but often now he
remembers a certain black horse.
From the rear could be heard a yelling, and once a shot was fired--in
the air, evidently. Richardson moaned as he looked back. He kept his
hand on his revolver. He tried to imagine the brief tumult of his
capture--the flurry of dust from the hoofs of horses pulled suddenly
to their haunches, the shrill, biting curses of the men, the ring of
the shots, his own last contortion. He wondered, too, if he could not
somehow manage to pelt that fat Mexican, just to cure his abominable
egotism.
It was José, the terror-stricken, who at last discovered safety.
Suddenly he gave a howl of delight and astonished his horse into a
new burst of speed. They were on a little ridge at the time, and the
American at the top of it saw his servant gallop down the slope and
into the arms, so to speak, of a small column of horsemen in grey and
silver clothes. In the dim light of the early morning they were as
vague as shadows, but Richardson knew them at once for a detachment of
Rurales, that crack cavalry corps of the Mexican army which polices
the plain so zealously, being of themselves the law and the arm of
it--a fierce and swift-moving body that knows little of prevention
but much of vengeance. They drew up suddenly, and the rows of great
silver-trimmed sombreros bobbed in surprise.
Richardson saw José throw himself from his horse and begin to jabber
at the leader. When he arrived he found that his servant had already
outlined the entire situation, and was then engaged in describing him,
Richardson, as an American señor of vast wealth, who was the friend
of almost every governmental potentate within two hundred miles.
This seemed profoundly to impress the officer. He bowed gravely to
Richardson and smiled significantly at his men, who unslung their
carbines.
The little ridge hid the pursuers from view, but the rapid thud of
their horses' feet could be heard. Occasionally they yelled and called
to each other. Then at last they swept over the brow of the hill, a
wild mob of almost fifty drunken horsemen. When they discerned the
pale-uniformed Rurales, they were sailing down the slope at top speed.
If toboggans half-way down a hill should suddenly make up their minds
to turn round and go back, there would be an effect something like that
produced by the drunken horsemen. Richardson saw the Rurales serenely
swing their carbines forward, and, peculiar-minded person that he was,
felt his heart leap into his throat at the prospective volley. But the
officer rode forward alone.
It appeared that the man who owned the best horse in this astonished
company was the fat Mexican with the snaky moustache, and, in
consequence, this gentleman was quite a distance in the van. He tried
to pull up, wheel his horse, and scuttle back over the hill as some of
his companions had done, but the officer called to him in a voice harsh
with rage. "----!" howled the officer. "This señor is my friend, the
friend of my friends. Do you dare pursue him,----?----!----!----!----!"
These dashes represent terrible names, all different, used by the
officer.
The fat Mexican simply grovelled on his horse's neck. His face was
green: it could be seen that he expected death. The officer stormed
with magnificent intensity: "----!----!----!" Finally he sprang from
his saddle, and, running to the fat Mexican's side, yelled--"Go!" and
kicked the horse in the belly with all his might. The animal gave
a mighty leap into the air, and the fat Mexican, with one wretched
glance at the contemplative Rurales, aimed his steed for the top of the
ridge. Richardson gulped again in expectation of a volley, for--it is
said--this is a favourite method for disposing of objectionable people.
The fat, green Mexican also thought that he was to be killed on the
run, from the miserable look he cast at the troops. Nevertheless, he
was allowed to vanish in a cloud of yellow dust at the ridge-top.
José was exultant, defiant, and, oh! bristling with courage. The black
horse was drooping sadly, his nose to the ground. Richardson's little
animal, with his ears bent forward, was staring at the horses of the
Rurales as if in an intense study. Richardson longed for speech, but
he could only bend forward and pat the shining, silken shoulders. The
little horse turned his head and looked back gravely.
DEATH AND THE CHILD
I
The peasants who were streaming down the mountain trail had in their
sharp terror evidently lost their ability to count. The cattle and
the huge round bundles seemed to suffice to the minds of the crowd
if there were now two in each case where there had been three. This
brown stream poured on with a constant wastage of goods and beasts.
A goat fell behind to scout the dried grass and its owner, howling,
flogging his donkeys, passed far ahead. A colt, suddenly frightened,
made a stumbling charge up the hill-side. The expenditure was always
profligate and always unnamed, unnoted. It was as if fear was a river,
and this horde had simply been caught in the torrent, man tumbling
over beast, beast over man, as helpless in it as the logs that fall
and shoulder grindingly through the gorges of a lumber country. It
was a freshet that might sear the face of the tall quiet mountain; it
might draw a livid line across the land, this downpour of fear with
a thousand homes adrift in the current--men, women, babes, animals.
From it there arose a constant babble of tongues, shrill, broken, and
sometimes choking as from men drowning. Many made gestures, painting
their agonies on the air with fingers that twirled swiftly.
The blue bay with its pointed ships and the white town lay below them,
distant, flat, serene. There was upon this vista a peace that a bird
knows when high in the air it surveys the world, a great calm thing
rolling noiselessly toward the end of the mystery. Here on the height
one felt the existence of the universe scornfully defining the pain
in ten thousand minds. The sky was an arch of stolid sapphire. Even
to the mountains raising their mighty shapes from the valley, this
headlong rush of the fugitives was too minute. The sea, the sky, and
the hills combined in their grandeur to term this misery inconsequent.
Then too it sometimes happened that a face seen as it passed on the
flood reflected curiously the spirit of them all and still more. One
saw then a woman of the opinion of the vaults above the clouds. When
a child cried it cried always because of some adjacent misfortune,
some discomfort of a pack-saddle or rudeness of an encircling arm. In
the dismal melody of this flight there were often sounding chords of
apathy. Into these preoccupied countenances, one felt that needles
could be thrust without purchasing a scream. The trail wound here and
there as the sheep had willed in the making of it.
Although this throng seemed to prove that the whole of humanity was
fleeing in one direction--with every tie severed that binds us to the
soil--a young man was walking rapidly up the mountain, hastening to
a side of the path from time to time to avoid some particularly wide
rush of people and cattle. He looked at everything in agitation and
pity. Frequently he called admonitions to maniacal fugitives, and at
other moments he exchanged strange stares with the imperturbable ones.
They seemed to him to wear merely the expressions of so many boulders
rolling down the hill. He exhibited wonder and awe with his pitying
glances.
Turning once toward the rear, he saw a man in the uniform of a
lieutenant of infantry marching the same way. He waited then,
subconsciously elate at a prospect of being able to make into words
the emotion which heretofore had only been expressed in the flash of
eyes and sensitive movements of his flexible mouth. He spoke to the
officer in rapid French, waving his arms wildly, and often pointing
with a dramatic finger. "Ah, this is too cruel, too cruel, too cruel.
Is it not? I did not think it would be as bad as this. I did not
think--God's mercy--I did not think at all. And yet I am a Greek. Or at
least my father was a Greek. I did not come here to fight. I am really
a correspondent, you see? I was to write for an Italian paper. I have
been educated in Italy. I have spent nearly all my life in Italy. At
the schools and universities! I knew nothing of war! I was a student--a
student. I came here merely because my father was a Greek, and for his
sake I thought of Greece--I loved Greece. But I did not dream----"
He paused, breathing heavily. His eyes glistened from that soft
overflow which comes on occasion to the glance of a young woman.
Eager, passionate, profoundly moved, his first words, while facing
the procession of fugitives, had been an active definition of his own
dimension, his personal relation to men, geography, life. Throughout he
had preserved the fiery dignity of a tragedian.
The officer's manner at once deferred to this outburst. "Yes," he said,
polite but mournful, "these poor people! These poor people! I do not
know what is to become of these poor people."
The young man declaimed again. "I had no dream--I had no dream that it
would be like this! This is too cruel! Too cruel! Now I want to be a
soldier. Now I want to fight. Now I want to do battle for the land of
my father." He made a sweeping gesture into the north-west.
The officer was also a young man, but he was very bronzed and steady.
Above his high military collar of crimson cloth with one silver star
upon it, appeared a profile stern, quiet, and confident, respecting
fate, fearing only opinion. His clothes were covered with dust; the
only bright spot was the flame of the crimson collar. At the violent
cries of his companion he smiled as if to himself, meanwhile keeping
his eyes fixed in a glance ahead.
From a land toward which their faces were bent came a continuous
boom of artillery fire. It was sounding in regular measures like the
beating of a colossal clock, a clock that was counting the seconds in
the lives of the stars, and men had time to die between the ticks.
Solemn, oracular, inexorable, the great seconds tolled over the hills
as if God fronted this dial rimmed by the horizon. The soldier and
the correspondent found themselves silent. The latter in particular
was sunk in a great mournfulness, as if he had resolved willy-nilly
to swing to the bottom of the abyss where dwell secrets of his kind,
and had learned beforehand that all to be met there was cruelty
and hopelessness. A strap of his bright new leather leggings came
unfastened, and he bowed over it slowly, impressively, as one bending
over the grave of a child.
Then suddenly, the reverberations mingled until one could not separate
an explosion from another, and into the hubbub came the drawling sound
of a leisurely musketry fire. Instantly, for some reason of cadence,
the noise was irritating, silly, infantile. This uproar was childish.
It forced the nerves to object, to protest against this racket which
was as idle as the din of a lad with a drum.
The lieutenant lifted his finger and pointed. He spoke in vexed
tones, as if he held the other man personally responsible for the
noise. "Well, there!" he said. "If you wish for war you now have an
opportunity magnificent."
The correspondent raised himself upon his toes. He tapped his chest
with gloomy pride. "Yes! There is war! There is the war I wish to
enter. I fling myself in. I am a Greek, a Greek, you understand. I wish
to fight for my country. You know the way. Lead me. I offer myself."
Struck by a sudden thought he brought a case from his pocket, and
extracting a card handed it to the officer with a bow. "My name is
Peza," he said simply.
A strange smile passed over the soldier's face. There was pity and
pride--the vanity of experience--and contempt in it. "Very well," he
said, returning the bow. "If my company is in the middle of the fight
I shall be glad for the honour of your companionship. If my company is
not in the middle of the fight--I will make other arrangements for you."
Peza bowed once more, very stiffly, and correctly spoke his thanks.
On the edge of what he took to be a great venture toward death, he
discovered that he was annoyed at something in the lieutenant's tone.
Things immediately assumed new and extraordinary proportions. The
battle, the great carnival of woe, was sunk at once to an equation with
a vexation by a stranger. He wanted to ask the lieutenant what was his
meaning. He bowed again majestically; the lieutenant bowed. They flung
a shadow of manners, of capering tinsel ceremony across a land that
groaned, and it satisfied something within themselves completely.
In the meantime, the river of fleeing villagers had changed to simply
a last dropping of belated creatures, who fled past stammering and
flinging their hands high. The two men had come to the top of the great
hill. Before them was a green plain as level as an inland sea. It swept
northward, and merged finally into a length of silvery mist. Upon the
near part of this plain, and upon two grey treeless mountains at the
side of it, were little black lines from which floated slanting sheets
of smoke. It was not a battle to the nerves. One could survey it with
equanimity, as if it were a tea-table; but upon Peza's mind it struck a
loud clanging blow. It was war. Edified, aghast, triumphant, he paused
suddenly, his lips apart. He remembered the pageants of carnage that
had marched through the dreams of his childhood. Love he knew that he
had confronted, alone, isolated, wondering, an individual, an atom
taking the hand of a titanic principle. But, like the faintest breeze
on his forehead, he felt here the vibration from the hearts of forty
thousand men.
The lieutenant's nostrils were moving. "I must go at once," he said. "I
must go at once."
"I will go with you wherever you go," shouted Peza loudly.
A primitive track wound down the side of the mountain, and in their
rush they bounded from here to there, choosing risks which in the
ordinary caution of man would surely have seemed of remarkable danger.
The ardour of the correspondent surpassed the full energy of the
soldier. Several times he turned and shouted, "Come on! Come on!"
At the foot of the path they came to a wide road, which extended
toward the battle in a yellow and straight line. Some men were
trudging wearily to the rear. They were without rifles; their clumsy
uniforms were dirty and all awry. They turned eyes dully aglow with
fever upon the pair striding toward the battle. Others were bandaged
with the triangular kerchief upon which one could still see through
bloodstains the little explanatory pictures illustrating the ways to
bind various wounds. "Fig. 1."--"Fig. 2."--"Fig. 7." Mingled with
the pacing soldiers were peasants, indifferent, capable of smiling,
gibbering about the battle, which was to them an ulterior drama. A man
was leading a string of three donkeys to the rear, and at intervals
he was accosted by wounded or fevered soldiers, from whom he defended
his animals with ape-like cries and mad gesticulation. After much
chattering they usually subsided gloomily, and allowed him to go with
his sleek little beasts unburdened. Finally he encountered a soldier
who walked slowly with the assistance of a staff. His head was bound
with a wide bandage, grimey from blood and mud. He made application to
the peasant, and immediately they were involved in a hideous Levantine
discussion. The peasant whined and clamoured, sometimes spitting like
a kitten. The wounded soldier jawed on thunderously, his great hands
stretched in claw-like graspings over the peasant's head. Once he
raised his staff and made threat with it. Then suddenly the row was at
an end. The other sick men saw their comrade mount the leading donkey
and at once begin to drum with his heels. None attempted to gain the
backs of the remaining animals. They gazed after them dully. Finally
they saw the caravan outlined for a moment against the sky. The soldier
was still waving his arms passionately, having it out with the peasant.
Peza was alive with despair for these men who looked at him with such
doleful, quiet eyes. "Ah, my God!" he cried to the lieutenant, "these
poor souls! These poor souls!"
The officer faced about angrily. "If you are coming with me there is
no time for this." Peza obeyed instantly and with a sudden meekness. In
the moment some portion of egotism left him, and he modestly wondered
if the universe took cognizance of him to an important degree. This
theatre for slaughter, built by the inscrutable needs of the earth, was
an enormous affair, and he reflected that the accidental destruction of
an individual, Peza by name, would perhaps be nothing at all.
With the lieutenant he was soon walking along behind a series of little
crescent-shape trenches, in which were soldiers, tranquilly interested,
gossiping with the hum of a tea-party. Although these men were not at
this time under fire, he concluded that they were fabulously brave.
Else they would not be so comfortable, so at home in their sticky brown
trenches. They were certain to be heavily attacked before the day was
old. The universities had not taught him to understand this attitude.
At the passing of the young man in very nice tweed, with his new
leggings, his new white helmet, his new field-glass case, his new
revolver holster, the soiled soldiers turned with the same curiosity
which a being in strange garb meets at the corners of streets. He might
as well have been promenading a populous avenue. The soldiers volubly
discussed his identity.
To Peza there was something awful in the absolute familiarity of each
tone, expression, gesture. These men, menaced with battle, displayed
the curiosity of the café. Then, on the verge of his great encounter
toward death, he found himself extremely embarrassed, composing his
face with difficulty, wondering what to do with his hands, like a gawk
at a levée.
He felt ridiculous, and also he felt awed, aghast, at these men who
could turn their faces from the ominous front and debate his clothes,
his business. There was an element which was new born into his theory
of war. He was not averse to the brisk pace at which the lieutenant
moved along the line.
The roar of fighting was always in Peza's ears. It came from some short
hills ahead and to the left. The road curved suddenly and entered a
wood. The trees stretched their luxuriant and graceful branches over
grassy slopes. A breeze made all this verdure gently rustle and speak
in long silken sighs. Absorbed in listening to the hurricane racket
from the front, he still remembered that these trees were growing, the
grass-blades were extending according to their process. He inhaled a
deep breath of moisture and fragrance from the grove, a wet odour which
expressed all the opulent fecundity of unmoved nature, marching on with
her million plans for multiple life, multiple death.
Further on, they came to a place where the Turkish shells were landing.
There was a long hurtling sound in the air, and then one had sight of a
shell. To Peza it was of the conical missiles which friendly officers
had displayed to him on board warships. Curiously enough, too, this
first shell smacked of the foundry, of men with smudged faces, of the
blare of furnace fires. It brought machinery immediately into his mind.
He thought that if he was killed there at that time it would be as
romantic, to the old standards, as death by a bit of falling iron in a
factory.
II
A child was playing on a mountain and disregarding a battle that was
waging on the plain. Behind him was the little cobbled hut of his fled
parents. It was now occupied by a pearl-coloured cow that stared out
from the darkness thoughtful and tender-eyed. The child ran to and fro,
fumbling with sticks and making great machinations with pebbles. By a
striking exercise of artistic license the sticks were ponies, cows, and
dogs, and the pebbles were sheep. He was managing large agricultural
and herding affairs. He was too intent on them to pay much heed to
the fight four miles away, which at that distance resembled in sound
the beating of surf upon rocks. However, there were occasions when
some louder outbreak of that thunder stirred him from his serious
occupation, and he turned then a questioning eye upon the battle, a
small stick poised in his hand, interrupted in the act of sending his
dog after his sheep. His tranquillity in regard to the death on the
plain was as invincible as that of the mountain on which he stood.
It was evident that fear had swept the parents away from their home
in a manner that could make them forget this child, the first-born.
Nevertheless, the hut was clean bare. The cow had committed no
impropriety in billeting herself at the domicile of her masters. This
smoke-coloured and odorous interior contained nothing as large as
a humming-bird. Terror had operated on these runaway people in its
sinister fashion, elevating details to enormous heights, causing a man
to remember a button while he forgot a coat, overpowering every one
with recollections of a broken coffee-cup, deluging them with fears for
the safety of an old pipe, and causing them to forget their first-born.
Meanwhile the child played soberly with his trinkets.
He was solitary; engrossed in his own pursuits, it was seldom that he
lifted his head to inquire of the world why it made so much noise. The
stick in his hand was much larger to him than was an army corps of the
distance. It was too childish for the mind of the child. He was dealing
with sticks.
The battle lines writhed at times in the agony of a sea-creature on
the sands. These tentacles flung and waved in a supreme excitement of
pain, and the struggles of the great outlined body brought it nearer
and nearer to the child. Once he looked at the plain and saw some men
running wildly across a field. He had seen people chasing obdurate
beasts in such fashion, and it struck him immediately that it was
a manly thing which he would incorporate in his game. Consequently
he raced furiously at his stone sheep, flourishing a cudgel, crying
the shepherd calls. He paused frequently to get a cue of manner from
the soldiers fighting on the plain. He reproduced, to a degree, any
movements which he accounted rational to his theory of sheep-herding,
the business of men, the traditional and exalted living of his father.
III
It was as if Peza was a corpse walking on the bottom of the sea, and
finding there fields of grain, groves, weeds, the faces of men, voices.
War, a strange employment of the race, presented to him a scene crowded
with familiar objects which wore the livery of their commonness,
placidly, undauntedly. He was smitten with keen astonishment; a spread
of green grass lit with the flames of poppies was too old for the
company of this new ogre. If he had been devoting the full lens of his
mind to this phase, he would have known he was amazed that the trees,
the flowers, the grass, all tender and peaceful nature had not taken to
heels at once upon the outbreak of battle. He venerated the immovable
poppies.
The road seemed to lead into the apex of an angle formed by the two
defensive lines of the Greeks. There was a straggle of wounded men and
of gunless and jaded men. These latter did not seem to be frightened.
They remained very cool, walking with unhurried steps and busy in
gossip. Peza tried to define them. Perhaps during the fight they
had reached the limit of their mental storage, their capacity for
excitement, for tragedy, and had then simply come away. Peza remembered
his visit to a certain place of pictures, where he had found himself
amid heavenly skies and diabolic midnights--the sunshine beating
red upon desert sands, nude bodies flung to the shore in the green
moon-glow, ghastly and starving men clawing at a wall in darkness, a
girl at her bath with screened rays falling upon her pearly shoulders,
a dance, a funeral, a review, an execution, all the strength of
argus-eyed art: and he had whirled and whirled amid this universe with
cries of woe and joy, sin and beauty piercing his ears until he had
been obliged to simply come away. He remembered that as he had emerged
he had lit a cigarette with unction and advanced promptly to a café. A
great hollow quiet seemed to be upon the earth.
This was a different case, but in his thoughts he conceded the same
causes to many of these gunless wanderers. They too may have dreamed
at lightning speed until the capacity for it was overwhelmed. As he
watched them, he again saw himself walking toward the café, puffing
upon his cigarette. As if to reinforce his theory, a soldier stopped
him with an eager but polite inquiry for a match. He watched the
man light his little roll of tobacco and paper and begin to smoke
ravenously.
Peza no longer was torn with sorrow at the sight of wounded men.
Evidently he found that pity had a numerical limit, and when this was
passed the emotion became another thing. Now, as he viewed them, he
merely felt himself very lucky, and beseeched the continuance of his
superior fortune. At the passing of these slouched and stained figures
he now heard a reiteration of warning. A part of himself was appealing
through the medium of these grim shapes. It was plucking at his sleeve
and pointing, telling him to beware; and so it had come to pass that he
cared for the implacable misery of these soldiers only as he would have
cared for the harms of broken dolls. His whole vision was focussed
upon his own chance.
The lieutenant suddenly halted. "Look," he said. "I find that my duty
is in another direction. I must go another way. But if you wish to
fight you have only to go forward, and any officer of the fighting
line will give you opportunity." He raised his cap ceremoniously; Peza
raised his new white helmet. The stranger to battles uttered thanks to
his chaperon, the one who had presented him. They bowed punctiliously,
staring at each other with civil eyes.
The lieutenant moved quietly away through a field. In an instant it
flashed upon Peza's mind that this desertion was perfidious. He had
been subjected to a criminal discourtesy. The officer had fetched him
into the middle of the thing, and then left him to wander helplessly
toward death. At one time he was upon the point of shouting at the
officer.
In the vale there was an effect as if one was then beneath the battle.
It was going on above somewhere. Alone, unguided, Peza felt like a
man groping in a cellar. He reflected too that one should always see
the beginning of a fight. It was too difficult to thus approach it
when the affair was in full swing. The trees hid all movements of
troops from him, and he thought he might be walking out to the very
spot which chance had provided for the reception of a fool. He asked
eager questions of passing soldiers. Some paid no heed to him; others
shook their heads mournfully. They knew nothing save that war was hard
work. If they talked at all it was in testimony of having fought well,
savagely. They did not know if the army was going to advance, hold its
ground, or retreat; they were weary.
A long pointed shell flashed through the air and struck near the base
of a tree, with a fierce upheaval, compounded of earth and flames.
Looking back, Peza could see the shattered tree quivering from head
to foot. Its whole being underwent a convulsive tremor which was an
exhibition of pain, and, furthermore, deep amazement. As he advanced
through the vale, the shells continued to hiss and hurtle in long low
flights, and the bullets purred in the air. The missiles were flying
into the breast of an astounded nature. The landscape, bewildered,
agonized, was suffering a rain of infamous shots, and Peza imagined a
million eyes gazing at him with the gaze of startled antelopes.
There was a resolute crashing of musketry from the tall hill on the
left, and from directly in front there was a mingled din of artillery
and musketry firing. Peza felt that his pride was playing a great trick
in forcing him forward in this manner under conditions of strangeness,
isolation, and ignorance. But he recalled the manner of the lieutenant,
the smile on the hill-top among the flying peasants. Peza blushed and
pulled the peak of his helmet down on his forehead. He strode onward
firmly. Nevertheless he hated the lieutenant, and he resolved that on
some future occasion he would take much trouble to arrange a stinging
social revenge upon that grinning jackanapes. It did not occur to
him until later that he was now going to battle mainly because at a
previous time a certain man had smiled.
IV
The road curved round the base of a little hill, and on this hill a
battery of mountain guns was leisurely shelling something unseen. In
the lee of the height the mules, contented under their heavy saddles,
were quietly browsing the long grass. Peza ascended the hill by a
slanting path. He felt his heart beat swiftly; once at the top of
the hill he would be obliged to look this phenomenon in the face. He
hurried, with a mysterious idea of preventing by this strategy the
battle from making his appearance a signal for some tremendous renewal.
This vague thought seemed logical at the time. Certainly this living
thing had knowledge of his coming. He endowed it with the intelligence
of a barbaric deity. And so he hurried; he wished to surprise war, this
terrible emperor, when it was growling on its throne. The ferocious and
horrible sovereign was not to be allowed to make the arrival a pretext
for some fit of smoky rage and blood. In this half-lull, Peza had
distinctly the sense of stealing upon the battle unawares.
The soldiers watching the mules did not seem to be impressed by
anything august. Two of them sat side by side and talked comfortably;
another lay flat upon his back staring dreamily at the sky; another
cursed a mule for certain refractions. Despite their uniforms, their
bandoliers and rifles, they were dwelling in the peace of hostlers.
However, the long shells were whooping from time to time over the brow
of the hill, and swirling in almost straight lines toward the vale of
trees, flowers, and grass. Peza, hearing and seeing the shells, and
seeing the pensive guardians of the mules, felt reassured. They were
accepting the condition of war as easily as an old sailor accepts
the chair behind the counter of a tobacco-shop. Or, it was merely
that the farm-boy had gone to sea, and he had adjusted himself to the
circumstances immediately, and with only the usual first misadventures
in conduct. Peza was proud and ashamed that he was not of them, these
stupid peasants, who, throughout the world, hold potentates on their
thrones, make statesmen illustrious, provide generals with lasting
victories, all with ignorance, indifference, or half-witted hatred,
moving the world with the strength of their arms and getting their
heads knocked together in the name of God, the king, or the Stock
Exchange; immortal, dreaming, hopeless asses who surrender their reason
to the care of a shining puppet, and persuade some toy to carry their
lives in his purse. Peza mentally abased himself before them, and
wished to stir them with furious kicks.
As his eyes ranged above the rim of the plateau, he saw a group of
artillery officers talking busily. They turned at once and regarded
his ascent. A moment later a row of infantry soldiers in a trench
beyond the little guns all faced him. Peza bowed to the officers. He
understood at the time that he had made a good and cool bow, and he
wondered at it, for his breath was coming in gasps, he was stifling
from sheer excitement. He felt like a tipsy man trying to conceal his
muscular uncertainty from the people in the street. But the officers
did not display any knowledge. They bowed. Behind them Peza saw the
plain, glittering green, with three lines of black marked upon it
heavily. The front of the first of these lines was frothy with smoke.
To the left of this hill was a craggy mountain, from which came a
continual dull rattle of musketry. Its summit was ringed with the white
smoke. The black lines on the plain slowly moved. The shells that came
from there passed overhead with the sound of great birds frantically
flapping their wings. Peza thought of the first sight of the sea during
a storm. He seemed to feel against his face the wind that races over
the tops of cold and tumultuous billows.
He heard a voice afar off--"Sir, what would you?" He turned, and saw
the dapper captain of the battery standing beside him. Only a moment
had elapsed. "Pardon me, sir," said Peza, bowing again. The officer was
evidently reserving his bows; he scanned the new-comer attentively.
"Are you a correspondent?" he asked. Peza produced a card. "Yes, I came
as a correspondent," he replied, "but now, sir, I have other thoughts.
I wish to help. You see? I wish to help."
"What do you mean?" said the captain. "Are you a Greek? Do you wish to
fight?"
"Yes, I am a Greek. I wish to fight." Peza's voice surprised him
by coming from his lips in even and deliberate tones. He thought
with gratification that he was behaving rather well. Another shell
travelling from some unknown point on the plain whirled close and
furiously in the air, pursuing an apparently horizontal course as if it
were never going to touch the earth. The dark shape swished across the
sky.
"Ah," cried the captain, now smiling, "I am not sure that we will be
able to accommodate you with a fierce affair here just at this time,
but----" He walked gaily to and fro behind the guns with Peza, pointing
out to him the lines of the Greeks, and describing his opinion of the
general plan of defence. He wore the air of an amiable host. Other
officers questioned Peza in regard to the politics of the war. The
king, the ministry, Germany, England, Russia, all these huge words
were continually upon their tongues. "And the people in Athens? Were
they----" Amid this vivacious babble Peza, seated upon an ammunition
box, kept his glance high, watching the appearance of shell after
shell. These officers were like men who had been lost for days in the
forest. They were thirsty for any scrap of news. Nevertheless, one of
them would occasionally dispute their informant courteously. What would
Servia have to say to that? No, no, France and Russia could never allow
it. Peza was elated. The shells killed no one; war was not so bad. He
was simply having coffee in the smoking-room of some embassy where
reverberate the names of nations.
A rumour had passed along the motley line of privates in the trench.
The new arrival with the clean white helmet was a famous English
cavalry officer come to assist the army with his counsel. They stared
at the figure of him, surrounded by officers. Peza, gaining sense of
the glances and whispers, felt that his coming was an event.
Later, he resolved that he could with temerity do something finer.
He contemplated the mountain where the Greek infantry was engaged,
and announced leisurely to the captain of the battery that he thought
presently of going in that direction and getting into the fight. He
re-affirmed the sentiments of a patriot. The captain seemed surprised.
"Oh, there will be fighting here at this knoll in a few minutes," he
said orientally. "That will be sufficient? You had better stay with us.
Besides, I have been ordered to resume fire." The officers all tried to
dissuade him from departing. It was really not worth the trouble. The
battery would begin again directly. Then it would be amusing for him.
Peza felt that he was wandering with his protestations of high
patriotism through a desert of sensible men. These officers gave no
heed to his exalted declarations. They seemed too jaded. They were
fighting the men who were fighting them. Palaver of the particular kind
had subsided before their intense pre-occupation in war as a craft.
Moreover, many men had talked in that manner and only talked.
Peza believed at first that they were treating him delicately. They
were considerate of his inexperience. War had turned out to be such a
gentle business that Peza concluded he could scorn this idea. He bade
them a heroic farewell despite their objections.
However, when he reflected upon their ways afterward, he saw dimly that
they were actuated principally by some universal childish desire for a
spectator of their fine things. They were going into action, and they
wished to be seen at war, precise and fearless.
V
Climbing slowly to the high infantry position, Peza was amazed to
meet a soldier whose jaw had been half shot away, and who was being
helped down the sheep track by two tearful comrades. The man's breast
was drenched with blood, and from a cloth which he held to the wound
drops were splashing wildly upon the stones of the path. He gazed at
Peza for a moment. It was a mystic gaze, which Peza withstood with
difficulty. He was exchanging looks with a spectre; all aspect of the
man was somehow gone from this victim. As Peza went on, one of the
unwounded soldiers loudly shouted to him to return and assist in this
tragic march. But even Peza's fingers revolted; he was afraid of the
spectre; he would not have dared to touch it. He was surely craven in
the movement of refusal he made to them. He scrambled hastily on up the
path. He was running away.
At the top of the hill he came immediately upon a part of the line that
was in action. Another battery of mountain guns was here firing at the
streaks of black on the plain. There were trenches filled with men
lining parts of the crest, and near the base were other trenches, all
crashing away mightily. The plain stretched as far as the eye can see,
and from where silver mist ended this emerald ocean of grass, a great
ridge of snow-topped mountains poised against a fleckless blue sky. Two
knolls, green and yellow with grain, sat on the prairie confronting the
dark hills of the Greek position. Between them were the lines of the
enemy. A row of trees, a village, a stretch of road, showed faintly
on this great canvas, this tremendous picture, but men, the Turkish
battalions, were emphasized startlingly upon it. The ranks of troops
between the knolls and the Greek position were as black as ink.
The first line of course was muffled in smoke, but at the rear of it
battalions crawled up and to and fro plainer than beetles on a plate.
Peza had never understood that masses of men were so declarative, so
unmistakable, as if nature makes every arrangement to give information
of the coming and the presence of destruction, the end, oblivion. The
firing was full, complete, a roar of cataracts, and this pealing of
connected volleys was adjusted to the grandeur of the far-off range of
snowy mountains. Peza, breathless, pale, felt that he had been set upon
a pillar and was surveying mankind, the world. In the meantime dust had
got in his eye. He took his handkerchief and mechanically administered
to it.
An officer with a double stripe of purple on his trousers paced in the
rear of the battery of howitzers. He waved a little cane. Sometimes
he paused in his promenade to study the field through his glasses. "A
fine scene, sir," he cried airily, upon the approach of Peza. It was
like a blow in the chest to the wide-eyed volunteer. It revealed to him
a point of view. "Yes, sir, it is a fine scene," he answered. They
spoke in French. "I am happy to be able to entertain monsieur with a
little practice," continued the officer. "I am firing upon that mass of
troops you see there a little to the right. They are probably forming
for another attack." Peza smiled; here again appeared manners, manners
erect by the side of death.
The right-flank gun of the battery thundered; there was a belch of
fire and smoke; the shell flung swiftly and afar was known only to the
ear in which rang a broadening hooting wake of sound. The howitzer had
thrown itself backward convulsively, and lay with its wheels moving
in the air as a squad of men rushed toward it. And later, it seemed
as if each little gun had made the supreme effort of its being in
each particular shot. They roared with voices far too loud, and the
thunderous effort caused a gun to bound as in a dying convulsion. And
then occasionally one was hurled with wheels in air. These shuddering
howitzers presented an appearance of so many cowards always longing to
bolt to the rear, but being implacably held to their business by this
throng of soldiers who ran in squads to drag them up again to their
obligation. The guns were herded and cajoled and bullied interminably.
One by one, in relentless program, they were dragged forward to
contribute a profound vibration of steel and wood, a flash and a roar,
to the important happiness of man.
The adjacent infantry celebrated a good shot with smiles and an
outburst of gleeful talk.
"Look, sir," cried an officer to Peza. Thin smoke was drifting lazily
before Peza, and dodging impatiently he brought his eyes to bear upon
that part of the plain indicated by the officer's finger. The enemy's
infantry was advancing to attack. From the black lines had come forth
an inky mass which was shaped much like a human tongue. It advanced
slowly, casually, without apparent spirit, but with an insolent
confidence that was like a proclamation of the inevitable.
The impetuous part was all played by the defensive side. Officers
called, men plucked each other by the sleeve; there were shouts,
motions, all eyes were turned upon the inky mass which was flowing
toward the base of the hills, heavily, languorously, as oily and thick
as one of the streams that ooze through a swamp.
Peza was chattering a question at every one. In the way, pushed aside,
or in the way again, he continued to repeat it. "Can they take the
position? Can they take the position? Can they take the position?"
He was apparently addressing an assemblage of deaf men. Every eye
was busy watching every hand. The soldiers did not even seem to see
the interesting stranger in the white helmet who was crying out so
feverishly.
Finally, however, the hurried captain of the battery espied him and
heeded his question. "No, sir! no, sir! It is impossible," he shouted
angrily. His manner seemed to denote that if he had sufficient time he
would have completely insulted Peza. The latter swallowed the crumb of
news without regard to the coating of scorn, and, waving his hand in
adieu, he began to run along the crest of the hill toward the part of
the Greek line against which the attack was directed.
VI
Peza, as he ran along the crest of the mountain, believed that his
action was receiving the wrathful attention of the hosts of the foe.
To him then it was incredible foolhardiness thus to call to himself
the stares of thousands of hateful eyes. He was like a lad induced by
playmates to commit some indiscretion in a cathedral. He was abashed;
perhaps he even blushed as he ran. It seemed to him that the whole
solemn ceremony of war had paused during this commission. So he
scrambled wildly over the rocks in his haste to end the embarrassing
ordeal. When he came among the crowning rifle-pits filled with eager
soldiers he wanted to yell with joy. None noticed him save a young
officer of infantry, who said--"Sir, what do you want?" It was obvious
that people had devoted some attention to their own affairs.
Peza asserted, in Greek, that he wished above everything to battle for
the fatherland. The officer nodded; with a smile he pointed to some
dead men covered with blankets, from which were thrust upturned dusty
shoes.
"Yes, I know, I know," cried Peza. He thought the officer was
poetically alluding to the danger.
"No," said the officer at once. "I mean cartridges--a bandolier. Take
a bandolier from one of them."
Peza went cautiously toward a body. He moved a hand toward the corner
of a blanket. There he hesitated, stuck, as if his arm had turned to
plaster. Hearing a rustle behind him he spun quickly. Three soldiers of
the close rank in the trench were regarding him. The officer came again
and tapped him on the shoulder. "Have you any tobacco?" Peza looked at
him in bewilderment. His hand was still extended toward the blanket
which covered the dead soldier. "Yes," he said, "I have some tobacco."
He gave the officer his pouch. As if in compensation, the other
directed a soldier to strip the bandolier from the corpse. Peza, having
crossed the long cartridge belt on his breast, felt that the dead man
had flung his two arms around him.
A soldier with a polite nod and smile gave Peza a rifle, a relic of
another dead man. Thus, he felt, besides the clutch of a corpse about
his neck, that the rifle was as inhumanly horrible as a snake that
lives in a tomb. He heard at his ear something that was in effect like
the voices of those two dead men, their low voices speaking to him
of bloody death, mutilation. The bandolier gripped him tighter; he
wished to raise his hands to his throat like a man who is choking. The
rifle was clammy; upon his palms he felt the movement of the sluggish
currents of a serpent's life; it was crawling and frightful.
All about him were these peasants, with their interested countenances,
gibbering of the fight. From time to time a soldier cried out in
semi-humorous lamentations descriptive of his thirst. One bearded man
sat munching a great bit of hard bread. Fat, greasy, squat, he was like
an idol made of tallow. Peza felt dimly that there was a distinction
between this man and a young student who could write sonnets and play
the piano quite well. This old blockhead was coolly gnawing at the
bread, while he, Peza, was being throttled by a dead man's arms.
He looked behind him, and saw that a head by some chance had been
uncovered from its blanket. Two liquid-like eyes were staring into
his face. The head was turned a little sideways as if to get better
opportunity for the scrutiny. Peza could feel himself blanch; he was
being drawn and drawn by these dead men slowly, firmly down as to some
mystic chamber under the earth where they could walk, dreadful figures,
swollen and blood-marked. He was bidden; they had commanded him; he was
going, going, going.
When the man in the new white helmet bolted for the rear, many of the
soldiers in the trench thought that he had been struck, but those
who had been nearest to him knew better. Otherwise they would have
heard the silken sliding tender noise of the bullet and the thud
of its impact. They bawled after him curses, and also outbursts of
self-congratulation and vanity. Despite the prominence of the cowardly
part, they were enabled to see in this exhibition a fine comment upon
their own fortitude. The other soldiers thought that Peza had been
wounded somewhere in the neck, because as he ran he was tearing madly
at the bandolier, the dead man's arms. The soldier with the bread
paused in his eating and cynically remarked upon the speed of the
runaway.
An officer's voice was suddenly heard calling out the calculation of
the distance to the enemy, the readjustment of the sights. There was
a stirring rattle along the line. The men turned their eyes to the
front. Other trenches beneath them to the right were already heavily in
action. The smoke was lifting toward the blue sky. The soldier with the
bread placed it carefully on a bit of paper beside him as he turned to
kneel in the trench.
VII
In the late afternoon, the child ceased his play on the mountain with
his flocks and his dogs. Part of the battle had whirled very near to
the base of his hill, and the noise was great. Sometimes he could see
fantastic smoky shapes which resembled the curious figures in foam
which one sees on the slant of a rough sea. The plain indeed was etched
in white circles and whirligigs like the slope of a colossal wave. The
child took seat on a stone and contemplated the fight. He was beginning
to be astonished; he had never before seen cattle herded with such
uproar. Lines of flame flashed out here and there. It was mystery.
Finally, without any preliminary indication, he began to weep. If the
men struggling on the plain had had time and greater vision, they could
have seen this strange tiny figure seated on a boulder, surveying them
while the tears streamed. It was as simple as some powerful symbol.
As the magic clear light of day amid the mountains dimmed the
distances, and the plain shone as a pallid blue cloth marked by the red
threads of the firing, the child arose and moved off to the unwelcoming
door of his home. He called softly for his mother, and complained of
his hunger in the familiar formula. The pearl-coloured cow, grinding
her jaws thoughtfully, stared at him with her large eyes. The peaceful
gloom of evening was slowly draping the hills.
The child heard a rattle of loose stones on the hillside, and facing
the sound, saw a moment later a man drag himself up to the crest of the
hill and fall panting. Forgetting his mother and his hunger, filled
with calm interest, the child walked forward and stood over the heaving
form. His eyes too were now large and inscrutably wise and sad like
those of the animal in the house.
After a silence he spoke inquiringly. "Are you a man?"
Peza rolled over quickly and gazed up into the fearless cherubic
countenance. He did not attempt to reply. He breathed as if life was
about to leave his body. He was covered with dust; his face had been
cut in some way, and his cheek was ribboned with blood. All the spick
of his former appearance had vanished in a general dishevelment, in
which he resembled a creature that had been flung to and fro, up and
down, by cliffs and prairies during an earthquake. He rolled his eye
glassily at the child.
They remained thus until the child repeated his words. "Are you a man?"
Peza gasped in the manner of a fish. Palsied, windless, and abject, he
confronted the primitive courage, the sovereign child, the brother of
the mountains, the sky and the sea, and he knew that the definition of
his misery could be written on a grass-blade.
Part II
Midnight Sketches
AN EXPERIMENT IN MISERY
(From the Press, New York.)
It was late at night, and a fine rain was swirling softly down, causing
the pavements to glisten with hue of steel and blue and yellow in the
rays of the innumerable lights. A youth was trudging slowly, without
enthusiasm, with his hands buried deep in his trouser's pockets,
towards the down-town places where beds can be hired for coppers. He
was clothed in an aged and tattered suit, and his derby was a marvel
of dust-covered crown and torn rim. He was going forth to eat as the
wanderer may eat, and sleep as the homeless sleep. By the time he had
reached City Hall Park he was so completely plastered with yells of
"bum" and "hobo," and with various unholy epithets that small boys
had applied to him at intervals, that he was in a state of the most
profound dejection. The sifting rain saturated the old velvet collar of
his overcoat, and as the wet cloth pressed against his neck, he felt
that there no longer could be pleasure in life. He looked about him
searching for an outcast of highest degree that they too might share
miseries, but the lights threw a quivering glare over rows and circles
of deserted benches that glistened damply, showing patches of wet sod
behind them. It seemed that their usual freights had fled on this night
to better things. There were only squads of well-dressed Brooklyn
people who swarmed towards the bridge.
The young man loitered about for a time and then went shuffling off
down Park Row. In the sudden descent in style of the dress of the crowd
he felt relief, and as if he were at last in his own country. He began
to see tatters that matched his tatters. In Chatham Square there were
aimless men strewn in front of saloons and lodging-houses, standing
sadly, patiently, reminding one vaguely of the attitudes of chickens in
a storm. He aligned himself with these men, and turned slowly to occupy
himself with the flowing life of the great street.
Through the mists of the cold and storming night, the cable cars went
in silent procession, great affairs shining with red and brass, moving
with formidable power, calm and irresistible, dangerful and gloomy,
breaking silence only by the loud fierce cry of the gong. Two rivers of
people swarmed along the side walks, spattered with black mud, which
made each shoe leave a scar-like impression. Overhead elevated trains
with a shrill grinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon
its leg-like pillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab
squatting over the street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could
be heard. Down an alley there were sombre curtains of purple and black,
on which street lamps dully glittered like embroidered flowers.
A saloon stood with a voracious air on a corner. A sign leaning against
the front of the door-post announced "Free hot soup to-night!" The
swing doors, snapping to and fro like ravenous lips, made gratified
smacks as the saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with
astounding and endless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner
as the men came from all directions like sacrifices to a heathenish
superstition.
Caught by the delectable sign the young man allowed himself to be
swallowed. A bar-tender placed a schooner of dark and portentous beer
on the bar. Its monumental form up-reared until the froth a-top was
above the crown of the young man's brown derby.
"Soup over there, gents," said the bar-tender affably. A little yellow
man in rags and the youth grasped their schooners and went with speed
toward a lunch counter, where a man with oily but imposing whiskers
ladled genially from a kettle until he had furnished his two mendicants
with a soup that was steaming hot, and in which there were little
floating suggestions of chicken. The young man, sipping his broth, felt
the cordiality expressed by the warmth of the mixture, and he beamed
at the man with oily but imposing whiskers, who was presiding like a
priest behind an altar. "Have some more, gents?" he inquired of the two
sorry figures before him. The little yellow man accepted with a swift
gesture, but the youth shook his head and went out, following a man
whose wondrous seediness promised that he would have a knowledge of
cheap lodging-houses.
On the side-walk he accosted the seedy man. "Say, do you know a cheap
place to sleep?"
The other hesitated for a time gazing sideways. Finally he nodded in
the direction of the street, "I sleep up there," he said, "when I've
got the price."
"How much?"
"Ten cents."
The young man shook his head dolefully. "That's too rich for me."
At that moment there approached the two a reeling man in strange
garments. His head was a fuddle of bushy hair and whiskers, from
which his eyes peered with a guilty slant. In a close scrutiny it was
possible to distinguish the cruel lines of a mouth which looked as if
its lips had just closed with satisfaction over some tender and piteous
morsel. He appeared like an assassin steeped in crimes performed
awkwardly.
But at this time his voice was tuned to the coaxing key of an
affectionate puppy. He looked at the men with wheedling eyes, and began
to sing a little melody for charity.
"Say, gents, can't yeh give a poor feller a couple of cents t' git a
bed. I got five, and I gits anudder two I gits me a bed. Now, on th'
square, gents, can't yeh jest gimme two cents t' git a bed? Now, yeh
know how a respecter'ble gentlem'n feels when he's down on his luck,
an' I----"
The seedy man, staring with imperturbable countenance at a train which
clattered overhead, interrupted in an expressionless voice--"Ah, go t'
h--!"
But the youth spoke to the prayerful assassin in tones of astonishment
and inquiry. "Say, you must be crazy! Why don't yeh strike somebody
that looks as if they had money?"
The assassin, tottering about on his uncertain legs, and at intervals
brushing imaginary obstacles from before his nose, entered into a long
explanation of the psychology of the situation. It was so profound that
it was unintelligible.
When he had exhausted the subject, the young man said to him--
"Let's see th' five cents."
The assassin wore an expression of drunken woe at this sentence, filled
with suspicion of him. With a deeply pained air he began to fumble in
his clothing, his red hands trembling. Presently he announced in a
voice of bitter grief, as if he had been betrayed--"There's on'y four."
"Four," said the young man thoughtfully. "Well, look-a-here, I'm a
stranger here, an' if ye'll steer me to your cheap joint I'll find the
other three."
The assassin's countenance became instantly radiant with joy. His
whiskers quivered with the wealth of his alleged emotions. He seized
the young man's hand in a transport of delight and friendliness.
"B' Gawd," he cried, "if ye'll do that, b' Gawd, I'd say yeh was a
damned good fellow, I would, an' I'd remember yeh all m' life, I would,
b' Gawd, an' if I ever got a chance I'd return the compliment"--he
spoke with drunken dignity,--"b' Gawd, I'd treat yeh white, I would,
an' I'd allus remember yeh."
The young man drew back, looking at the assassin coldly. "Oh, that's
all right," he said. "You show me th' joint--that's all you've got t'
do."
The assassin, gesticulating gratitude, led the young man along a dark
street. Finally he stopped before a little dusty door. He raised his
hand impressively. "Look-a-here," he said, and there was a thrill of
deep and ancient wisdom upon his face, "I've brought yeh here, an'
that's my part, ain't it? If th' place don't suit yeh, yeh needn't git
mad at me, need yeh? There won't be no bad feelin', will there?"
"No," said the young man.
The assassin waved his arm tragically, and led the march up the
steep stairway. On the way the young man furnished the assassin with
three pennies. At the top a man with benevolent spectacles looked at
them through a hole in a board. He collected their money, wrote some
names on a register, and speedily was leading the two men along a
gloom-shrouded corridor.
Shortly after the beginning of this journey the young man felt his
liver turn white, for from the dark and secret places of the building
there suddenly came to his nostrils strange and unspeakable odours,
that assailed him like malignant diseases with wings. They seemed to
be from human bodies closely packed in dens; the exhalations from
a hundred pairs of reeking lips; the fumes from a thousand bygone
debauches; the expression of a thousand present miseries.
A man, naked save for a little snuff-coloured undershirt, was parading
sleepily along the corridor. He rubbed his eyes, and, giving vent to a
prodigious yawn, demanded to be told the time.
"Half-past one."
The man yawned again. He opened a door, and for a moment his form was
outlined against a black, opaque interior. To this door came the three
men, and as it was again opened the unholy odours rushed out like
fiends, so that the young man was obliged to struggle as against an
overpowering wind.
It was some time before the youth's eyes were good in the intense gloom
within, but the man with benevolent spectacles led him skilfully,
pausing but a moment to deposit the limp assassin upon a cot. He took
the youth to a cot that lay tranquilly by the window, and showing him a
tall locker for clothes that stood near the head with the ominous air
of a tombstone, left him.
The youth sat on his cot and peered about him. There was a gas-jet in
a distant part of the room, that burned a small flickering orange-hued
flame. It caused vast masses of tumbled shadows in all parts of the
place, save where, immediately about it, there was a little grey haze.
As the young man's eyes became used to the darkness, he could see upon
the cots that thickly littered the floor the forms of men sprawled out,
lying in death-like silence, or heaving and snoring with tremendous
effort, like stabbed fish.
The youth locked his derby and his shoes in the mummy case near him,
and then lay down with an old and familiar coat around his shoulders.
A blanket he handed gingerly, drawing it over part of the coat. The
cot was covered with leather, and as cold as melting snow. The youth
was obliged to shiver for some time on this affair, which was like a
slab. Presently, however, his chill gave him peace, and during this
period of leisure from it he turned his head to stare at his friend the
assassin, whom he could dimly discern where he lay sprawled on a cot in
the abandon of a man filled with drink. He was snoring with incredible
vigour. His wet hair and beard dimly glistened, and his inflamed nose
shone with subdued lustre like a red light in a fog.
Within reach of the youth's hand was one who lay with yellow breast and
shoulders bare to the cold drafts. One arm hung over the side of the
cot, and the fingers lay full length upon the wet cement floor of the
room. Beneath the inky brows could be seen the eyes of the man exposed
by the partly opened lids. To the youth it seemed that he and this
corpse-like being were exchanging a prolonged stare, and that the other
threatened with his eyes. He drew back watching his neighbour from the
shadows of his blanket edge. The man did not move once through the
night, but lay in this stillness as of death like a body stretched out
expectant of the surgeon's knife.
And all through the room could be seen the tawny hues of naked flesh,
limbs thrust into the darkness, projecting beyond the cots; upreared
knees, arms hanging long and thin over the cot edges. For the most part
they were statuesque, carven, dead. With the curious lockers standing
all about like tombstones, there was a strange effect of a graveyard
where bodies were merely flung.
Yet occasionally could be seen limbs wildly tossing in fantastic
nightmare gestures, accompanied by guttural cries, grunts, oaths. And
there was one fellow off in a gloomy corner, who in his dreams was
oppressed by some frightful calamity, for of a sudden he began to utter
long wails that went almost like yells from a hound, echoing wailfully
and weird through this chill place of tombstones where men lay like the
dead.
The sound in its high piercing beginnings, that dwindled to final
melancholy moans, expressed a red and grim tragedy of the unfathomable
possibilities of the man's dreams. But to the youth these were not
merely the shrieks of a vision-pierced man: they were an utterance of
the meaning of the room and its occupants. It was to him the protest
of the wretch who feels the touch of the imperturbable granite wheels,
and who then cries with an impersonal eloquence, with a strength not
from him, giving voice to the wail of a whole section, a class, a
people. This, weaving into the young man's brain, and mingling with his
views of the vast and sombre shadows that, like mighty black fingers,
curled around the naked bodies, made the young man so that he did not
sleep, but lay carving the biographies for these men from his meagre
experience. At times the fellow in the corner howled in a writhing
agony of his imaginations.
Finally a long lance-point of grey light shot through the dusty panes
of the window. Without, the young man could see roofs drearily white
in the dawning. The point of light yellowed and grew brighter, until
the golden rays of the morning sun came in bravely and strong. They
touched with radiant colour the form of a small fat man, who snored
in stuttering fashion. His round and shiny bald head glowed suddenly
with the valour of a decoration. He sat up, blinked at the sun, swore
fretfully, and pulled his blanket over the ornamental splendours of his
head.
The youth contentedly watched this rout of the shadows before the
bright spears of the sun, and presently he slumbered. When he awoke
he heard the voice of the assassin raised in valiant curses. Putting
up his head, he perceived his comrade seated on the side of the cot
engaged in scratching his neck with long finger-nails that rasped like
files.
"Hully Jee, dis is a new breed. They've got can-openers on their feet."
He continued in a violent tirade.
The young man hastily unlocked his closet and took out his shoes
and hat. As he sat on the side of the cot lacing his shoes, he
glanced about and saw that daylight had made the room comparatively
common-place and uninteresting. The men, whose faces seemed stolid,
serene or absent, were engaged in dressing, while a great crackle of
bantering conversation arose.
A few were parading in unconcerned nakedness. Here and there were men
of brawn, whose skins shone clear and ruddy. They took splendid poses,
standing massively like chiefs. When they had dressed in their ungainly
garments there was an extraordinary change. They then showed bumps and
deficiencies of all kinds.
There were others who exhibited many deformities. Shoulders were
slanting, humped, pulled this way and pulled that way. And notable
among these latter men was the little fat man, who had refused to allow
his head to be glorified. His pudgy form, builded like a pear, bustled
to and fro, while he swore in fish-wife fashion. It appeared that some
article of his apparel had vanished.
The young man attired speedily, and went to his friend the assassin.
At first the latter looked dazed at the sight of the youth. This face
seemed to be appealing to him through the cloud wastes of his memory.
He scratched his neck and reflected. At last he grinned, a broad smile
gradually spreading until his countenance was a round illumination.
"Hello, Willie," he cried cheerily.
"Hello," said the young man. "Are yeh ready t' fly?"
"Sure." The assassin tied his shoe carefully with some twine and came
ambling.
When he reached the street the young man experienced no sudden relief
from unholy atmospheres. He had forgotten all about them, and had been
breathing naturally, and with no sensation of discomfort or distress.
He was thinking of these things as he walked along the street, when he
was suddenly startled by feeling the assassin's hand, trembling with
excitement, clutching his arm, and when the assassin spoke, his voice
went into quavers from a supreme agitation.
"I'll be hully, bloomin' blowed if there wasn't a feller with a
nightshirt on up there in that joint."
The youth was bewildered for a moment, but presently he turned to smile
indulgently at the assassin's humour.
"Oh, you're a d----d liar," he merely said.
Whereupon the assassin began to gesture extravagantly, and take oath by
strange gods. He frantically placed himself at the mercy of remarkable
fates if his tale were not true.
"Yes, he did! I cross m'heart thousan' times!" he protested, and at
the moment his eyes were large with amazement, his mouth wrinkled in
unnatural glee.
"Yessir! A nightshirt! A hully white nightshirt!"
"You lie!"
"No, sir! I hope ter die b'fore I kin git anudder ball if there wasn't
a jay wid a hully, bloomin' white nightshirt!"
His face was filled with the infinite wonder of it. "A hully white
nightshirt," he continually repeated.
The young man saw the dark entrance to a basement restaurant. There was
a sign which read "No mystery about our hash!" and there were other
age-stained and world-battered legends which told him that the place
was within his means. He stopped before it and spoke to the assassin.
"I guess I'll git somethin' t' eat."
At this the assassin, for some reason, appeared to be quite
embarrassed. He gazed at the seductive front of the eating place for a
moment. Then he started slowly up the street. "Well, good-bye, Willie,"
he said bravely.
For an instant the youth studied the departing figure. Then he called
out, "Hol' on a minnet." As they came together he spoke in a certain
fierce way, as if he feared that the other would think him to be
charitable. "Look-a-here, if yeh wanta git some breakfas' I'll lend
yeh three cents t' do it with. But say, look-a-here, you've gota git
out an' hustle. I ain't goin' t' support yeh, or I'll go broke b'fore
night. I ain't no millionaire."
"I take me oath, Willie," said the assassin earnestly, "th' on'y thing
I really needs is a ball. Me t'roat feels like a fryin'-pan. But as I
can't get a ball, why, th' next bes' thing is breakfast, an' if yeh do
that for me, b' Gawd, I say yeh was th' whitest lad I ever see."
They spent a few moments in dexterous exchanges of phrases, in which
they each protested that the other was, as the assassin had originally
said, "a respecter'ble gentlem'n." And they concluded with mutual
assurances that they were the souls of intelligence and virtue. Then
they went into the restaurant.
There was a long counter, dimly lighted from hidden sources. Two or
three men in soiled white aprons rushed here and there.
The youth bought a bowl of coffee for two cents and a roll for one
cent. The assassin purchased the same. The bowls were webbed with brown
seams, and the tin spoons wore an air of having emerged from the first
pyramid. Upon them were black moss-like encrustations of age, and they
were bent and scarred from the attacks of long-forgotten teeth. But
over their repast the wanderers waxed warm and mellow. The assassin
grew affable as the hot mixture went soothingly down his parched
throat, and the young man felt courage flow in his veins.
Memories began to throng in on the assassin, and he brought forth long
tales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness as
from an old woman. "---- great job out'n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin'
though all time. I was there three days, and then I went an' ask 'im t'
lend me a dollar. 'G-g-go ter the devil,' he ses, an' I lose me job."
"South no good. Damn niggers work for twenty-five an' thirty cents a
day. Run white man out. Good grub though. Easy livin'."
"Yas; useter work little in Toledo, raftin' logs. Make two or three
dollars er day in the spring. Lived high. Cold as ice though in the
winter."
"I was raised in northern N'York. O-o-oh, yeh jest oughto live there.
No beer ner whisky though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot
grub yeh can eat. B' Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till
th' ol' man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git
t' hell outa here, an' go die,' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father,' I
ses, 'you are,' an' I quit 'im."
As they were passing from the dim eating place, they encountered an old
man who was trying to steal forth with a tiny package of food, but a
tall man with an indomitable moustache stood dragon fashion, barring
the way of escape. They heard the old man raise a plaintive protest.
"Ah, you always want to know what I take out, and you never see that I
usually bring a package in here from my place of business."
As the wanderers trudged slowly along Park Row, the assassin began to
expand and grow blithe. "B' Gawd, we've been livin' like kings," he
said, smacking appreciative lips.
"Look out, or we'll have t' pay fer it t'night," said the youth with
gloomy warning.
But the assassin refused to turn his gaze toward the future. He went
with a limping step, into which he injected a suggestion of lamblike
gambols. His mouth was wreathed in a red grin.
In the City Hall Park the two wanderers sat down in the little circle
of benches sanctified by traditions of their class. They huddled in
their old garments, slumbrously conscious of the march of the hours
which for them had no meaning.
The people of the street hurrying hither and thither made a blend of
black figures changing yet frieze-like. They walked in their good
clothes as upon important missions, giving no gaze to the two wanderers
seated upon the benches. They expressed to the young man his infinite
distance from all that he valued. Social position, comfort, the
pleasures of living, were unconquerable kingdoms. He felt a sudden awe.
And in the background a multitude of buildings, of pitiless hues and
sternly high, were to him emblematic of a nation forcing its regal
head into the clouds, throwing no downward glances; in the sublimity
of its aspirations ignoring the wretches who may flounder at its feet.
The roar of the city in his ear was to him the confusion of strange
tongues, babbling heedlessly; it was the clink of coin, the voice of
the city's hopes which were to him no hopes.
He confessed himself an outcast, and his eyes from under the lowered
rim of his hat began to glance guiltily, wearing the criminal
expression that comes with certain convictions.
THE MEN IN THE STORM
The blizzard began to swirl great clouds of snow along the streets,
sweeping it down from the roofs, and up from the pavements, until
the faces of pedestrians tingled and burned as from a thousand
needle-prickings. Those on the walks huddled their necks closely in the
collars of their coats, and went along stooping like a race of aged
people. The drivers of vehicles hurried their horses furiously on their
way. They were made more cruel by the exposure of their position, aloft
on high seats. The street cars, bound up town, went slowly, the horses
slipping and straining in the spongy brown mass that lay between the
rails. The drivers, muffled to the eyes, stood erect, facing the wind,
models of grim philosophy. Overhead trains rumbled and roared, and the
dark structure of the elevated railroad, stretching over the avenue,
dripped little streams and drops of water upon the mud and snow beneath.
All the clatter of the street was softened by the masses that lay upon
the cobbles, until, even to one who looked from a window, it became
important music, a melody of life made necessary to the ear by the
dreariness of the pitiless beat and sweep of the storm. Occasionally
one could see black figures of men busily shovelling the white drifts
from the walks. The sounds from their labour created new recollections
of rural experiences which every man manages to have in a measure.
Later, the immense windows of the shops became aglow with light,
throwing great beams of orange and yellow upon the pavement. They
were infinitely cheerful, yet in a way they accentuated the force and
discomfort of the storm, and gave a meaning to the pace of the people
and the vehicles, scores of pedestrians and drivers, wretched with
cold faces, necks and feet, speeding for scores of unknown doors and
entrances, scattering to an infinite variety of shelters, to places
which the imagination made warm with the familiar colours of home.
There was an absolute expression of hot dinners in the pace of the
people. If one dared to speculate upon the destination of those who
came trooping, he lost himself in a maze of social calculation; he
might fling a handful of sand and attempt to follow the flight of each
particular grain. But as to the suggestion of hot dinners, he was in
firm lines of thought, for it was upon every hurrying face. It is a
matter of tradition; it is from the tales of childhood. It comes forth
with every storm.
However, in a certain part of a dark west-side street, there was a
collection of men to whom these things were as if they were not. In
this street was located a charitable house, where for five cents the
homeless of the city could get a bed at night, and in the morning
coffee and bread.
During the afternoon of the storm, the whirling snows acted as drivers,
as men with whips, and at half-past three the walk before the closed
doors of the house was covered with wanderers of the street, waiting.
For some distance on either side of the place they could be seen
lurking in the doorways and behind projecting parts of buildings,
gathering in close bunches in an effort to get warm. A covered wagon
drawn up near the curb sheltered a dozen of them. Under the stairs
that led to the elevated railway station, there were six or eight,
their hands stuffed deep in their pockets, their shoulders stooped,
jiggling their feet. Others always could be seen coming, a strange
procession, some slouching along with the characteristic hopeless gait
of professional strays, some coming with hesitating steps, wearing the
air of men to whom this sort of thing was new.
It was an afternoon of incredible length. The snow, blowing in twisting
clouds, sought out the men in their meagre hiding-places, and skilfully
beat in among them, drenching their persons with showers of fine
stinging flakes. They crowded together, muttering, and fumbling in
their pockets to get their red inflamed wrists covered by the cloth.
New-comers usually halted at one end of the groups and addressed a
question, perhaps much as a matter of form, "Is it open yet?"
Those who had been waiting inclined to take the questioner seriously
and became contemptuous. "No; do yeh think we'd be standin' here?"
The gathering swelled in numbers steadily and persistently. One could
always see them coming, trudging slowly through the storm.
Finally, the little snow plains in the street began to assume a leaden
hue from the shadows of evening. The buildings upreared gloomily save
where various windows became brilliant figures of light, that made
shimmers and splashes of yellow on the snow. A street lamp on the curb
struggled to illuminate, but it was reduced to impotent blindness by
the swift gusts of sleet crusting its panes.
In this half-darkness, the men began to come from their shelter places
and mass in front of the doors of charity. They were of all types, but
the nationalities were mostly American, German, and Irish. Many were
strong, healthy, clear-skinned fellows, with that stamp of countenance
which is not frequently seen upon seekers after charity. There were
men of undoubted patience, industry, and temperance, who, in time of
ill-fortune, do not habitually turn to rail at the state of society,
snarling at the arrogance of the rich, and bemoaning the cowardice of
the poor, but who at these times are apt to wear a sudden and singular
meekness, as if they saw the world's progress marching from them, and
were trying to perceive where they had failed, what they had lacked, to
be thus vanquished in the race. Then there were others of the shifting,
Bowery element, who were used to paying ten cents for a place to sleep,
but who now came here because it was cheaper.
But they were all mixed in one mass so thoroughly that one could not
have discerned the different elements, but for the fact that the
labouring men, for the most part, remained silent and impassive in the
blizzard, their eyes fixed on the windows of the house, statues of
patience.
The sidewalk soon became completely blocked by the bodies of the men.
They pressed close to one another like sheep in a winter's gale,
keeping one another warm by the heat of their bodies. The snow came
down upon this compressed group of men until, directly from above, it
might have appeared like a heap of snow-covered merchandise, if it
were not for the fact that the crowd swayed gently with a unanimous,
rhythmical motion. It was wonderful to see how the snow lay upon the
heads and shoulders of these men, in little ridges an inch thick
perhaps in places, the flakes steadily adding drop and drop, precisely
as they fall upon the unresisting grass of the fields. The feet of the
men were all wet and cold, and the wish to warm them accounted for the
slow, gentle, rhythmical motion. Occasionally some man whose ear or
nose tingled acutely from the cold winds would wriggle down until his
head was protected by the shoulders of his companions.
There was a continuous murmuring discussion as to the probability of
the doors being speedily opened. They persistently lifted their eyes
towards the windows. One could hear little combats of opinion.
"There's a light in th' winder!"
"Naw; it's a reflection f'm across th' way."
"Well, didn't I see 'em light it?"
"You did?"
"I did!"
"Well, then, that settles it!"
As the time approached when they expected to be allowed to enter, the
men crowded to the doors in an unspeakable crush, jamming and wedging
in a way that it seemed would crack bones. They surged heavily against
the building in a powerful wave of pushing shoulders. Once a rumour
flitted among all the tossing heads.
"They can't open th' door! Th' fellers er smack up agin 'em."
Then a dull roar of rage came from the men on the outskirts; but all
the time they strained and pushed until it appeared to be impossible
for those that they cried out against to do anything but be crushed
into pulp.
"Ah, git away f'm th' door!"
"Git outa that!"
"Throw 'em out!"
"Kill 'em!"
"Say, fellers, now, what th' 'ell? G've 'em a chance t' open th' door!"
"Yeh dam pigs, give 'em a chance t' open th' door!"
Men in the outskirts of the crowd occasionally yelled when a boot-heel
of one of trampling feet crushed on their freezing extremities.
"Git off me feet, yeh clumsy tarrier!"
"Say, don't stand on me feet! Walk on th' ground!"
A man near the doors suddenly shouted--"O-o-oh! Le' me out--le' me
out!" And another, a man of infinite valour, once twisted his head
so as to half face those who were pushing behind him. "Quit yer
shovin', yeh"--and he delivered a volley of the most powerful and
singular invective, straight into the faces of the men behind him. It
was as if he was hammering the noses of them with curses of triple
brass. His face, red with rage, could be seen upon it, an expression
of sublime disregard of consequences. But nobody cared to reply to
his imprecations; it was too cold. Many of them snickered, and all
continued to push.
In occasional pauses of the crowd's movement the men had opportunities
to make jokes; usually grim things, and no doubt very uncouth.
Nevertheless, they were notable--one does not expect to find the
quality of humour in a heap of old clothes under a snow-drift.
The winds seemed to grow fiercer as time wore on. Some of the gusts of
snow that came down on the close collection of heads, cut like knives
and needles, and the men huddled, and swore, not like dark assassins,
but in a sort of American fashion, grimly and desperately, it is true,
but yet with a wondrous under-effect, indefinable and mystic, as if
there was some kind of humour in this catastrophe, in this situation in
a night of snow-laden winds.
Once the window of the huge dry-goods shop across the street furnished
material for a few moments of forgetfulness. In the brilliantly-lighted
space appeared the figure of a man. He was rather stout and very well
clothed. His beard was fashioned charmingly after that of the Prince
of Wales. He stood in an attitude of magnificent reflection. He slowly
stroked his moustache with a certain grandeur of manner, and looked
down at the snow-encrusted mob. From below, there was denoted a supreme
complacence in him. It seemed that the sight operated inversely, and
enabled him to more clearly regard his own delightful environment.
One of the mob chanced to turn his head, and perceived the figure in
the window. "Hello, lookit 'is whiskers," he said genially.
Many of the men turned then, and a shout went up. They called to him
in all strange keys. They addressed him in every manner, from familiar
and cordial greetings, to carefully-worded advice concerning changes in
his personal appearance. The man presently fled, and the mob chuckled
ferociously, like ogres who had just devoured something.
They turned then to serious business. Often they addressed the stolid
front of the house.
"Oh, let us in fer Gawd's sake!"
"Let us in, or we'll all drop dead!"
"Say, what's th' use o' keepin' us poor Indians out in th' cold?"
And always some one was saying, "Keep off my feet."
The crushing of the crowd grew terrific toward the last. The men, in
keen pain from the blasts, began almost to fight. With the pitiless
whirl of snow upon them, the battle for shelter was going to the
strong. It became known that the basement door at the foot of a little
steep flight of stairs was the one to be opened, and they jostled and
heaved in this direction like labouring fiends. One could hear them
panting and groaning in their fierce exertion.
Usually some one in the front ranks was protesting to those in the
rear--"O-o-ow! Oh, say now, fellers, let up, will yeh? Do yeh wanta
kill somebody!"
A policeman arrived and went into the midst of them, scolding and
be-rating, occasionally threatening, but using no force but that of his
hands and shoulders against these men who were only struggling to get
in out of the storm. His decisive tones rang out sharply--"Stop that
pushin' back there! Come, boys, don't push! Stop that! Here you, quit
yer shovin'! Cheese that!"
When the door below was opened, a thick stream of men forced a way down
the stairs, which were of an extraordinary narrowness, and seemed only
wide enough for one at a time. Yet they somehow went down almost three
abreast. It was a difficult and painful operation. The crowd was like
a turbulent water forcing itself through one tiny outlet. The men in
the rear, excited by the success of the others, made frantic exertions,
for it seemed that this large band would more than fill the quarters,
and that many would be left upon the pavements. It would be disastrous
to be of the last, and accordingly men with the snow biting their
faces, writhed and twisted with their might. One expected that from the
tremendous pressure, the narrow passage to the basement door would be
so choked and clogged with human limbs and bodies that movement would
be impossible. Once indeed the crowd was forced to stop, and a cry
went along that a man had been injured at the foot of the stairs. But
presently the slow movement began again, and the policeman fought at
the top of the flight to ease the pressure of those that were going
down.
A reddish light from a window fell upon the faces of the men, when
they, in turn, arrived at the last three steps, and were about to
enter. One could then note a change of expression that had come over
their features. As they stood thus upon the threshold of their hopes,
they looked suddenly contented and complacent. The fire had passed from
their eyes and the snarl had vanished from their lips. The very force
of the crowd in the rear, which had previously vexed them, was regarded
from another point of view, for it now made it inevitable that they
should go through the little doors into the place that was cheery and
warm with light.
The tossing crowd on the sidewalk grew smaller and smaller. The snow
beat with merciless persistence upon the bowed heads of those who
waited. The wind drove it up from the pavements in frantic forms of
winding white, and it seethed in circles about the huddled forms
passing in one by one, three by three, out of the storm.
THE DUEL THAT WAS NOT FOUGHT
Patsy Tulligan was not as wise as seven owls, but his courage could
throw a shadow as long as the steeple of a cathedral. There were men on
Cherry Street who had whipped him five times, but they all knew that
Patsy would be as ready for the sixth time as if nothing had happened.
Once he and two friends had been away up on Eighth Avenue, far out
of their country, and upon their return journey that evening they
stopped frequently in saloons until they were as independent of their
surroundings as eagles, and cared much less about thirty days on
Blackwell's.
On Lower Sixth Avenue they paused in a saloon where there was a good
deal of lamp-glare and polished wood to be seen from the outside,
and within, the mellow light shone on much furbished brass and more
polished wood. It was a better saloon than they were in the habit of
seeing, but they did not mind it. They sat down at one of the little
tables that were in a row parallel to the bar and ordered beer. They
blinked stolidly at the decorations, the bar-tender, and the other
customers. When anything transpired they discussed it with dazzling
frankness, and what they said of it was as free as air to the other
people in the place.
At midnight there were few people in the saloon. Patsy and his friends
still sat drinking. Two well-dressed men were at another table,
smoking cigars slowly and swinging back in their chairs. They occupied
themselves with themselves in the usual manner, never betraying by a
wink of an eyelid that they knew that other folk existed. At another
table directly behind Patsy and his companions was a slim little Cuban,
with miraculously small feet and hands, and with a youthful touch of
down upon his lip. As he lifted his cigarette from time to time his
little finger was bended in dainty fashion, and there was a green flash
when a huge emerald ring caught the light. The bar-tender came often
with his little brass tray. Occasionally Patsy and his two friends
quarrelled.
Once this little Cuban happened to make some slight noise and Patsy
turned his head to observe him. Then Patsy made a careless and rather
loud comment to his two friends. He used a word which is no more than
passing the time of day down in Cherry Street, but to the Cuban it was
a dagger-point. There was a harsh scraping sound as a chair was pushed
swiftly back.
The little Cuban was upon his feet. His eyes were shining with a rage
that flashed there like sparks as he glared at Patsy. His olive face
had turned a shade of grey from his anger. Withal his chest was thrust
out in portentous dignity, and his hand, still grasping his wine-glass,
was cool and steady, the little finger still bended, the great emerald
gleaming upon it. The others, motionless, stared at him.
"Sir," he began ceremoniously. He spoke gravely and in a slow way, his
tone coming in a marvel of self-possessed cadences from between those
lips which quivered with wrath. "You have insult me. You are a dog, a
hound, a cur. I spit upon you. I must have some of your blood."
Patsy looked at him over his shoulder.
"What's th' matter wi' che?" he demanded. He did not quite understand
the words of this little man who glared at him steadily, but he knew
that it was something about fighting. He snarled with the readiness of
his class and heaved his shoulders contemptuously. "Ah, what's eatin'
yeh? Take a walk! You h'ain't got nothin' t' do with me, have yeh?
Well, den, go sit on yerself."
And his companions leaned back valorously in their chairs, and
scrutinized this slim young fellow who was addressing Patsy.
"What's de little Dago chewin' about?"
"He wants t' scrap!"
"What!"
The Cuban listened with apparent composure. It was only when they
laughed that his body cringed as if he was receiving lashes. Presently
he put down his glass and walked over to their table. He proceeded
always with the most impressive deliberation.
"Sir," he began again. "You have insult me. I must have
s-s-satisfac-shone. I must have your body upon the point of my
sword. In my country you would already be dead. I must have
s-s-satisfac-shone."
Patsy had looked at the Cuban with a trifle of bewilderment. But at
last his face began to grow dark with belligerency, his mouth curve in
that wide sneer with which he would confront an angel of darkness. He
arose suddenly in his seat and came towards the little Cuban. He was
going to be impressive too.
"Say, young feller, if yeh go shootin' off fer face at me, I'll wipe
d' joint wid yeh. What'cher gaffin' about, hey? Are yeh givin' me er
jolly? Say, if yeh pick me up fer a cinch, I'll fool yeh. Dat's what!
Don't take me fer no dead easy mug." And as he glowered at the little
Cuban, he ended his oration with one eloquent word, "Nit!"
The bar-tender nervously polished his bar with a towel, and kept his
eyes fastened upon the men. Occasionally he became transfixed with
interest, leaning forward with one hand upon the edge of the bar and
the other holding the towel grabbed in a lump, as if he had been turned
into bronze when in the very act of polishing.
The Cuban did not move when Patsy came toward him and delivered his
oration. At its conclusion he turned his livid face toward where, above
him, Patsy was swaggering and heaving his shoulders in a consummate
display of bravery and readiness. The Cuban, in his clear, tense tones,
spoke one word. It was the bitter insult. It seemed to fairly spin from
his lips and crackle in the air like breaking glass.
Every man save the little Cuban made an electric movement. Patsy
roared a black oath and thrust himself forward until he towered almost
directly above the other man. His fists were doubled into knots of bone
and hard flesh. The Cuban had raised a steady finger.
"If you touch me wis your hand, I will keel you."
The two well-dressed men had come swiftly, uttering protesting cries.
They suddenly intervened in this second of time in which Patsy had
sprung forward and the Cuban had uttered his threat. The four men were
now a tossing, arguing, violent group, one well-dressed man lecturing
the Cuban, and the other holding off Patsy, who was now wild with rage,
loudly repeating the Cuban's threat, and manoeuvring and struggling
to get at him for revenge's sake.
The bar-tender, feverishly scouring away with his towel, and at times
pacing to and fro with nervous and excited tread, shouted out--
"Say, for heaven's sake, don't fight in here. If yeh wanta fight, go
out in the street and fight all yeh please. But don't fight in here."
Patsy knew only one thing, and this he kept repeating--
"Well, he wants t' scrap! I didn't begin dis! He wants t' scrap."
The well-dressed man confronting him continually replied--
"Oh, well, now, look here, he's only a lad. He don't know what he's
doing. He's crazy mad. You wouldn't slug a kid like that."
Patsy and his aroused companions, who cursed and growled, were
persistent with their argument. "Well, he wants t' scrap!" The whole
affair was as plain as daylight when one saw this great fact. The
interference and intolerable discussion brought the three of them
forward, battleful and fierce.
"What's eatin' you, anyhow?" they demanded. "Dis ain't your business,
is it? What business you got shootin' off your face?"
The other peacemaker was trying to restrain the little Cuban, who had
grown shrill and violent.
"If he touch me wis his hand I will keel him. We must fight like
gentlemen or else I keel him when he touch me wis his hand."
The man who was fending off Patsy comprehended these sentences that
were screamed behind his back, and he explained to Patsy--
"But he wants to fight you with swords. With swords, you know."
The Cuban, dodging around the peacemakers, yelled in Patsy's face--
"Ah, if I could get you before me wis my sword! Ah! Ah! A-a-ah!" Patsy
made a furious blow with a swift fist, but the peacemakers bucked
against his body suddenly like football players.
Patsy was greatly puzzled. He continued doggedly to try to get near
enough to the Cuban to punch him. To these attempts the Cuban replied
savagely--
"If you touch me wis your hand, I will cut your heart in two piece."
At last Patsy said--"Well, if he's so dead stuck on fightin' wid
swords, I'll fight 'im. Soitenly! I'll fight 'im." All this palaver had
evidently tired him, and he now puffed out his lips with the air of a
man who is willing to submit to any conditions if he can only bring on
the row soon enough. He swaggered, "I'll fight 'im wid swords. Let 'im
bring on his swords, an' I'll fight 'im 'til he's ready t' quit."
The two well-dressed men grinned. "Why, look here," they said to Patsy,
"he'd punch you full of holes. Why, he's a fencer. You can't fight him
with swords. He'd kill you in 'bout a minute."
"Well, I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow," said Patsy, stout-hearted and
resolute. "I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow, an' I'll stay wid 'im long
as I kin."
As for the Cuban, his lithe little body was quivering in an ecstasy of
the muscles. His face radiant with a savage joy, he fastened his glance
upon Patsy, his eyes gleaming with a gloating, murderous light. A most
unspeakable, animal-like rage was in his expression.
"Ah! ah! He will fight me! Ah!" He bended unconsciously in the posture
of a fencer. He had all the quick, springy movements of a skilful
swordsman. "Ah, the b-r-r-rute! The b-r-r-rute! I will stick him like a
pig!"
The two peacemakers, still grinning broadly, were having a great time
with Patsy.
"Why, you infernal idiot, this man would slice you all up. You better
jump off the bridge if you want to commit suicide. You wouldn't stand a
ghost of a chance to live ten seconds."
Patsy was as unshaken as granite. "Well, if he wants t' fight wid
swords, he'll get it. I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow."
One man said--"Well, have you got a sword? Do you know what a sword is?
Have you got a sword?"
"No, I ain't got none," said Patsy honestly, "but I kin git one." Then
he added valiantly--"An' quick too."
The two men laughed. "Why, can't you understand it would be sure death
to fight a sword duel with this fellow?"
"Dat's all right! See? I know me own business. If he wants t' fight one
of dees d--n duels, I'm in it, understan'?"
"Have you ever fought one, you fool?"
"No, I ain't. But I will fight one, dough! I ain't no muff. If he want
t' fight a duel, by Gawd, I'm wid 'im! D'yeh understan' dat!" Patsy
cocked his hat and swaggered. He was getting very serious.
The little Cuban burst out--"Ah, come on, sirs: come on! We can take
cab. Ah, you big cow, I will stick you, I will stick you. Ah, you will
look very beautiful, very beautiful. Ah, come on, sirs. We will stop at
hotel--my hotel. I there have weapons."
"Yeh will, will yeh? Yeh bloomin' little black Dago," cried Patsy in
hoarse and maddened reply to the personal part of the Cuban's speech.
He stepped forward. "Git yer d--n swords," he commanded. "Git yer
swords. Git 'em quick! I'll fight wi' che! I'll fight wid anyting, too!
See? I'll fight yeh wid a knife an' fork if yeh say so! I'll fight yer
standin' up er sittin' down!" Patsy delivered this intense oration
with sweeping, intensely emphatic gestures, his hands stretched out
eloquently, his jaw thrust forward, his eyes glaring.
"Ah," cried the little Cuban joyously. "Ah, you are in very pretty
temper. Ah, how I will cut your heart in two piece, my dear, d-e-a-r
friend." His eyes, too, shone like carbuncles, with a swift, changing
glitter, always fastened upon Patsy's face.
The two peacemakers were perspiring and in despair. One of them blurted
out--
"Well, I'll be blamed if this ain't the most ridiculous thing I ever
saw."
The other said--"For ten dollars I'd be tempted to let these two
infernal blockheads have their duel."
Patsy was strutting to and fro, and conferring grandly with his friends.
"He took me for a muff. He tought he was goin' t' bluff me out, talkin'
'bout swords. He'll get fooled." He addressed the Cuban--"You're a fine
little dirty picter of a scrapper, ain't che? I'll chew yez up, dat's
what I will."
There began then some rapid action. The patience of well-dressed men
is not an eternal thing. It began to look as if it would at last be a
fight with six corners to it. The faces of the men were shining red
with anger. They jostled each other defiantly, and almost every one
blazed out at three or four of the others. The bar-tender had given up
protesting. He swore for a time, and banged his glasses. Then he jumped
the bar and ran out of the saloon, cursing sullenly.
When he came back with a policeman, Patsy and the Cuban were preparing
to depart together. Patsy was delivering his last oration--
"I'll fight yer wid swords! Sure I will! Come ahead, Dago! I'll fight
yeh anywheres wid anyting! We'll have a large, juicy scrap, an' don't
yeh forgit dat! I'm right wid yez. I ain't no muff! I scrap wid a man
jest as soon as he ses scrap, an' if yeh wanta scrap, I'm yer kitten.
Understan' dat?"
The policeman said sharply--"Come, now; what's all this?" He had a
distinctly business air.
The little Cuban stepped forward calmly. "It is none of your business."
The policeman flushed to his ears. "What?"
One well-dressed man touched the other on the sleeve. "Here's the time
to skip," he whispered. They halted a block away from the saloon and
watched the policeman pull the Cuban through the door. There was a
minute of scuffle on the sidewalk, and into this deserted street at
midnight fifty people appeared at once as if from the sky to watch it.
At last the three Cherry Hill men came from the saloon, and swaggered
with all their old valour toward the peacemakers.
"Ah," said Patsy to them, "he was so hot talkin' about this duel
business, but I would a-given 'im a great scrap, an' don't yeh forgit
it."
For Patsy was not as wise as seven owls, but his courage could throw a
shadow as long as the steeple of a cathedral.
AN OMINOUS BABY
A baby was wandering in a strange country. He was a tattered child with
a frowsled wealth of yellow hair. His dress, of a checked stuff, was
soiled, and showed the marks of many conflicts, like the chain-shirt
of a warrior. His sun-tanned knees shone above wrinkled stockings,
which he pulled up occasionally with an impatient movement when they
entangled his feet. From a gaping shoe there appeared an array of tiny
toes.
He was toddling along an avenue between rows of stolid brown houses.
He went slowly, with a look of absorbed interest on his small flushed
face. His blue eyes stared curiously. Carriages went with a musical
rumble over the smooth asphalt. A man with a chrysanthemum was going
up steps. Two nursery maids chatted as they walked slowly, while their
charges hobnobbed amiably between perambulators. A truck wagon roared
thunderously in the distance.
The child from the poor district made his way along the brown street
filled with dull grey shadows. High up, near the roofs, glancing
sun-rays changed cornices to blazing gold and silvered the fronts of
windows. The wandering baby stopped and stared at the two children
laughing and playing in their carriages among the heaps of rugs and
cushions. He braced his legs apart in an attitude of earnest attention.
His lower jaw fell, and disclosed his small, even teeth. As they moved
on, he followed the carriages with awe in his face as if contemplating
a pageant. Once one of the babies, with twittering laughter, shook a
gorgeous rattle at him. He smiled jovially in return.
Finally a nursery maid ceased conversation and, turning, made a gesture
of annoyance.
"Go 'way, little boy," she said to him. "Go 'way. You're all dirty."
He gazed at her with infant tranquillity for a moment, and then went
slowly off dragging behind him a bit of rope he had acquired in another
street. He continued to investigate the new scenes. The people and
houses struck him with interest as would flowers and trees. Passengers
had to avoid the small, absorbed figure in the middle of the sidewalk.
They glanced at the intent baby face covered with scratches and dust as
with scars and with powder smoke.
After a time, the wanderer discovered upon the pavement a pretty child
in fine clothes playing with a toy. It was a tiny fire-engine, painted
brilliantly in crimson and gold. The wheels rattled as its small owner
dragged it uproariously about by means of a string. The babe with his
bit of rope trailing behind him paused and regarded the child and
the toy. For a long while he remained motionless, save for his eyes,
which followed all movements of the glittering thing. The owner paid
no attention to the spectator, but continued his joyous imitations of
phases of the career of a fire-engine. His gleeful baby laugh rang
against the calm fronts of the houses. After a little the wandering
baby began quietly to sidle nearer. His bit of rope, now forgotten,
dropped at his feet. He removed his eyes from the toy and glanced
expectantly at the other child.
"Say," he breathed softly.
The owner of the toy was running down the walk at top speed. His tongue
was clanging like a bell and his legs were galloping. He did not look
around at the coaxing call from the small tattered figure on the curb.
The wandering baby approached still nearer, and presently spoke again.
"Say," he murmured, "le' me play wif it?"
The other child interrupted some shrill tootings. He bended his head
and spoke disdainfully over his shoulder.
"No," he said.
The wanderer retreated to the curb. He failed to notice the bit of
rope, once treasured. His eyes followed as before the winding course of
the engine, and his tender mouth twitched.
"Say," he ventured at last, "is dat yours?"
"Yes," said the other, tilting his round chin. He drew his property
suddenly behind him as if it were menaced. "Yes," he repeated, "it's
mine."
"Well, le' me play wif it?" said the wandering baby, with a trembling
note of desire in his voice.
"No," cried the pretty child with determined lips. "It's mine. My ma-ma
buyed it."
"Well, tan't I play wif it?" His voice was a sob. He stretched forth
little covetous hands.
"No," the pretty child continued to repeat. "No, it's mine."
"Well, I want to play wif it," wailed the other. A sudden fierce frown
mantled his baby face. He clenched his fat hands and advanced with a
formidable gesture. He looked some wee battler in a war.
"It's mine! It's mine," cried the pretty child, his voice in the treble
of outraged rights.
"I want it," roared the wanderer.
"It's mine! It's mine!"
"I want it!"
"It's mine!"
The pretty child retreated to the fence, and there paused at bay. He
protected his property with outstretched arms. The small vandal made a
charge. There was a short scuffle at the fence. Each grasped the string
to the toy and tugged. Their faces were wrinkled with baby rage, the
verge of tears. Finally, the child in tatters gave a supreme tug and
wrenched the string from the other's hands. He set off rapidly down the
street, bearing the toy in his arms. He was weeping with the air of
a wronged one who has at last succeeded in achieving his rights. The
other baby was squalling lustily. He seemed quite helpless. He rung his
chubby hands and railed.
After the small barbarian had got some distance away, he paused and
regarded his booty. His little form curved with pride. A soft, gleeful
smile loomed through the storm of tears. With great care he prepared
the toy for travelling. He stopped a moment on a corner and gazed at
the pretty child, whose small figure was quivering with sobs. As the
latter began to show signs of beginning pursuit, the little vandal
turned and vanished down a dark side street as into a cavern.
A GREAT MISTAKE
An Italian kept a fruit-stand on a corner where he had good aim at the
people who came down from the elevated station, and at those who went
along two thronged streets. He sat most of the day in a backless chair
that was placed strategically.
There was a babe living hard by, up five flights of stairs, who
regarded this Italian as a tremendous being. The babe had investigated
this fruit-stand. It had thrilled him as few things he had met with in
his travels had thrilled him. The sweets of the world had laid there
in dazzling rows, tumbled in luxurious heaps. When he gazed at this
Italian seated amid such splendid treasures, his lower lip hung low and
his eyes, raised to the vendor's face, were filled with deep respect,
worship, as if he saw omnipotence.
The babe came often to this corner. He hovered about the stand
and watched each detail of the business. He was fascinated by the
tranquillity of the vendor, the majesty of power and possession. At
times he was so engrossed in his contemplation that people, hurrying,
had to use care to avoid bumping him down.
He had never ventured very near to the stand. It was his habit to
hang warily about the curb. Even there he resembled a babe who looks
unbidden at a feast of gods.
One day, however, as the baby was thus staring, the vendor arose, and
going along the front of the stand, began to polish oranges with a
red pocket handkerchief. The breathless spectator moved across the
side walk until his small face almost touched the vendor's sleeve. His
fingers were gripped in a fold of his dress.
At last, the Italian finished with the oranges and returned to his
chair. He drew a newspaper printed in his language from behind a bunch
of bananas. He settled himself in a comfortable position, and began to
glare savagely at the print. The babe was left face to face with the
massed joys of the world. For a time he was a simple worshipper at this
golden shrine. Then tumultuous desires began to shake him. His dreams
were of conquest. His lips moved. Presently into his head there came a
little plan. He sidled nearer, throwing swift and cunning glances at
the Italian. He strove to maintain his conventional manner, but the
whole plot was written upon his countenance.
At last he had come near enough to touch the fruit. From the tattered
skirt came slowly his small dirty hand. His eyes were still fixed upon
the vendor. His features were set, save for the under lip, which had a
faint fluttering movement. The hand went forward.
Elevated trains thundered to the station and the stairway poured people
upon the sidewalks. There was a deep sea roar from feet and wheels
going ceaselessly. None seemed to perceive the babe engaged in a great
venture.
The Italian turned his paper. Sudden panic smote the babe. His hand
dropped, and he gave vent to a cry of dismay. He remained for a moment
staring at the vendor. There was evidently a great debate in his
mind. His infant intellect had defined this Italian. The latter was
undoubtedly a man who would eat babes that provoked him. And the alarm
in the babe when this monarch had turned his newspaper brought vividly
before him the consequences if he were detected. But at this moment the
vendor gave a blissful grunt, and tilting his chair against a wall,
closed his eyes. His paper dropped unheeded.
The babe ceased his scrutiny and again raised his hand. It was
moved with supreme caution toward the fruit. The fingers were bent,
claw-like, in the manner of great heart-shaking greed. Once he stopped
and chattered convulsively, because the vendor moved in his sleep. The
babe, with his eyes still upon the Italian, again put forth his hand,
and the rapacious fingers closed over a round bulb.
And it was written that the Italian should at this moment open his
eyes. He glared at the babe a fierce question. Thereupon the babe
thrust the round bulb behind him, and with a face expressive of the
deepest guilt, began a wild but elaborate series of gestures declaring
his innocence. The Italian howled. He sprang to his feet, and with
three steps overtook the babe. He whirled him fiercely, and took from
the little fingers a lemon.
AN ELOQUENCE OF GRIEF
The windows were high and saintly, of the shape that is found in
churches. From time to time a policeman at the door spoke sharply to
some incoming person. "Take your hat off!" He displayed in his voice
the horror of a priest when the sanctity of a chapel is defied or
forgotten. The court-room was crowded with people who sloped back
comfortably in their chairs, regarding with undeviating glances the
procession and its attendant and guardian policemen that moved slowly
inside the spear-topped railing. All persons connected with a case went
close to the magistrate's desk before a word was spoken in the matter,
and then their voices were toned to the ordinary talking strength. The
crowd in the court-room could not hear a sentence; they could merely
see shifting figures, men that gestured quietly, women that sometimes
raised an eager eloquent arm. They could not always see the judge,
although they were able to estimate his location by the tall stands
surmounted by white globes that were at either hand of him. And so
those who had come for curiosity's sweet sake wore an air of being in
wait for a cry of anguish, some loud painful protestation that would
bring the proper thrill to their jaded, world-weary nerves--wires that
refused to vibrate for ordinary affairs.
Inside the railing the court officers shuffled the various groups with
speed and skill; and behind the desk the magistrate patiently toiled
his way through mazes of wonderful testimony.
In a corner of this space, devoted to those who had business before
the judge, an officer in plain clothes stood with a girl that wept
constantly. None seemed to notice the girl, and there was no reason why
she should be noticed, if the curious in the body of the court-room
were not interested in the devastation which tears bring upon some
complexions. Her tears seemed to burn like acid, and they left fierce
pink marks on her face. Occasionally the girl looked across the room,
where two well-dressed young women and a man stood waiting with the
serenity of people who are not concerned as to the interior fittings of
a jail.
The business of the court progressed, and presently the girl, the
officer, and the well-dressed contingent stood before the judge.
Thereupon two lawyers engaged in some preliminary fire-wheels, which
were endured generally in silence. The girl, it appeared, was accused
of stealing fifty dollars' worth of silk clothing from the room of one
of the well-dressed women. She had been a servant in the house.
In a clear way, and with none of the ferocity that an accuser often
exhibits in a police-court, calmly and moderately, the two young women
gave their testimony. Behind them stood their escort, always mute.
His part, evidently, was to furnish the dignity, and he furnished it
heavily, almost massively.
When they had finished, the girl told her part. She had full, almost
Afric, lips, and they had turned quite white. The lawyer for the others
asked some questions, which he did--be it said, in passing--with the
air of a man throwing flower-pots at a stone house.
It was a short case and soon finished. At the end of it the judge said
that, considering the evidence, he would have to commit the girl for
trial. Instantly the quick-eyed court officer began to clear the way
for the next case. The well-dressed women and their escort turned one
way and the girl turned another, toward a door with an austere arch
leading into a stone-paved passage. Then it was that a great cry rang
through the court-room, the cry of this girl who believed that she was
lost.
The loungers, many of them, underwent a spasmodic movement as if they
had been knived. The court officers rallied quickly. The girl fell back
opportunely for the arms of one of them, and her wild heels clicked
twice on the floor. "I am innocent! Oh, I am innocent!"
People pity those who need none, and the guilty sob alone; but innocent
or guilty, this girl's scream described such a profound depth of
woe--it was so graphic of grief, that it slit with a dagger's sweep the
curtain of common-place, and disclosed the gloom-shrouded spectre that
sat in the young girl's heart so plainly, in so universal a tone of the
mind, that a man heard expressed some far-off midnight terror of his
own thought.
The cries died away down the stone-paved passage. A patrol-man leaned
one arm composedly on the railing, and down below him stood an aged,
almost toothless wanderer, tottering and grinning.
"Plase, yer honer," said the old man as the time arrived for him to
speak, "if ye'll lave me go this time, I've niver been dhrunk befoor,
sir."
A court officer lifted his hand to hide a smile.
THE AUCTION
Some said that Ferguson gave up sailoring because he was tired of the
sea. Some said that it was because he loved a woman. In truth it was
because he was tired of the sea and because he loved a woman.
He saw the woman once, and immediately she became for him the symbol
of all things unconnected with the sea. He did not trouble to look
again at the grey old goddess, the muttering slave of the moon. Her
splendours, her treacheries, her smiles, her rages, her vanities, were
no longer on his mind. He took heels after a little human being, and
the woman made his thought spin at all times like a top; whereas the
ocean had only made him think when he was on watch.
He developed a grin for the power of the sea, and, in derision, he
wanted to sell the red and green parrot which had sailed four voyages
with him. The woman, however, had a sentiment concerning the bird's
plumage, and she commanded Ferguson to keep it in order, as it
happened, that she might forget to put food in its cage.
The parrot did not attend the wedding. It stayed at home and
blasphemed at a stock of furniture, bought on the installment plan, and
arrayed for the reception of the bride and groom.
As a sailor, Ferguson had suffered the acute hankering for port; and
being now always in port, he tried to force life to become an endless
picnic. He was not an example of diligent and peaceful citizenship.
Ablution became difficult in the little apartment, because Ferguson
kept the wash-basin filled with ice and bottles of beer: and so,
finally, the dealer in second-hand furniture agreed to auction the
household goods on commission. Owing to an exceedingly liberal
definition of a term, the parrot and cage were included. "On the
level?" cried the parrot, "On the level? On the level? On the level?"
On the way to the sale, Ferguson's wife spoke hopefully. "You can't
tell, Jim," she said. "Perhaps some of 'em will get to biddin', and we
might get almost as much as we paid for the things."
The auction room was in a cellar. It was crowded with people and with
house furniture; so that as the auctioneer's assistant moved from one
piece to another he caused a great shuffling. There was an astounding
number of old women in curious bonnets. The rickety stairway was
thronged with men who wished to smoke and be free from the old women.
Two lamps made all the faces appear yellow as parchment. Incidentally
they could impart a lustre of value to very poor furniture.
The auctioneer was a fat, shrewd-looking individual, who seemed also to
be a great bully. The assistant was the most imperturbable of beings,
moving with the dignity of an image on rollers. As the Fergusons
forced their way down the stair-way, the assistant roared: "Number
twenty-one!"
"Number twenty-one!" cried the auctioneer. "Number twenty-one! A fine
new handsome bureau! Two dollars? Two dollars is bid! Two and a half!
Two and a half! Three? Three is bid. Four! Four dollars! A fine new
handsome bureau at four dollars! Four dollars! Four dollars! F-o-u-r
d-o-l-l-a-r-s! Sold at four dollars."
"On the level?" cried the parrot, muffled somewhere among furniture and
carpets. "On the level? On the level?" Every one tittered.
Mrs. Ferguson had turned pale, and gripped her husband's arm. "Jim! Did
you hear? The bureau--four dollars--"
Ferguson glowered at her with the swift brutality of a man afraid of a
scene. "Shut up, can't you!"
Mrs. Ferguson took a seat upon the steps; and hidden there by the thick
ranks of men, she began to softly sob. Through her tears appeared
the yellowish mist of the lamplight, streaming about the monstrous
shadows of the spectators. From time to time these latter whispered
eagerly: "See, that went cheap!" In fact when anything was bought at a
particularly low price, a murmur of admiration arose for the successful
bidder.
The bedstead was sold for two dollars, the mattresses and springs
for one dollar and sixty cents. This figure seemed to go through the
woman's heart. There was derision in the sound of it. She bowed her
head in her hands. "Oh, God, a dollar-sixty! Oh, God, a dollar-sixty!"
The parrot was evidently under heaps of carpet, but the dauntless bird
still raised the cry, "On the level?"
Some of the men near Mrs. Ferguson moved timidly away upon hearing her
low sobs. They perfectly understood that a woman in tears is formidable.
The shrill voice went like a hammer, beat and beat, upon the woman's
heart. An odour of varnish, of the dust of old carpets, assailed her
and seemed to possess a sinister meaning. The golden haze from the two
lamps was an atmosphere of shame, sorrow, greed. But it was when the
parrot called that a terror of the place and of the eyes of the people
arose in her so strongly that she could not have lifted her head any
more than if her neck had been of iron.
At last came the parrot's turn. The assistant fumbled until he found
the ring of the cage, and the bird was drawn into view. It adjusted its
feathers calmly and cast a rolling wicked eye over the crowd.
"Oh, the good ship Sarah sailed the seas,
And the wind it blew all day--"
This was the part of a ballad which Ferguson had tried to teach it.
With a singular audacity and scorn, the parrot bawled these lines at
the auctioneer as if it considered them to bear some particular insult.
The throng in the cellar burst into laughter. The auctioneer attempted
to start the bidding, and the parrot interrupted with a repetition
of the lines. It swaggered to and fro on its perch, and gazed at the
faces of the crowd, with so much rowdy understanding and derision that
even the auctioneer could not confront it. The auction was brought to a
halt; a wild hilarity developed, and every one gave jeering advice.
Ferguson looked down at his wife and groaned. She had cowered against
the wall, hiding her face. He touched her shoulder and she arose. They
sneaked softly up the stairs with heads bowed.
Out in the street, Ferguson gripped his fists and said: "Oh, but
wouldn't I like to strangle it!"
His wife cried in a voice of wild grief: "It--it m--made us a
laughing-stock in--in front of all that crowd!"
For the auctioning of their household goods, the sale of their
home--this financial calamity lost its power in the presence of the
social shame contained in a crowd's laughter.
THE PACE OF YOUTH
I
Stimson stood in a corner and glowered. He was a fierce man and had
indomitable whiskers, albeit he was very small.
"That young tarrier," he whispered to himself. "He wants to quit makin'
eyes at Lizzie. This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know,
he'll get fired."
His brow creased in a frown, he strode over to the huge open doors and
looked at a sign. "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round," it read, and the
glory of it was great. Stimson stood and contemplated the sign. It was
an enormous affair; the letters were as large as men. The glow of it,
the grandeur of it was very apparent to Stimson. At the end of his
contemplation, he shook his head thoughtfully, determinedly. "No, no,"
he muttered. "This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know,
he'll get fired."
A soft booming sound of surf, mingled with the cries of bathers, came
from the beach. There was a vista of sand and sky and sea that drew to
a mystic point far away in the northward. In the mighty angle, a girl
in a red dress was crawling slowly like some kind of a spider on the
fabric of nature. A few flags hung lazily above where the bath-houses
were marshalled in compact squares. Upon the edge of the sea stood
a ship with its shadowy sails painted dimly upon the sky, and high
overhead in the still, sun-shot air a great hawk swung and drifted
slowly.
Within the Merry-Go-Round there was a whirling circle of ornamental
lions, giraffes, camels, ponies, goats, glittering with varnish and
metal that caught swift reflections from windows high above them. With
stiff wooden legs, they swept on in a never-ending race, while a great
orchestrion clamoured in wild speed. The summer sunlight sprinkled its
gold upon the garnet canopies carried by the tireless racers and upon
all the devices of decoration that made Stimson's machine magnificent
and famous. A host of laughing children bestrode the animals, bending
forward like charging cavalrymen, and shaking reins and whooping in
glee. At intervals they leaned out perilously to clutch at iron rings
that were tendered to them by a long wooden arm. At the intense moment
before the swift grab for the rings one could see their little nervous
bodies quiver with eagerness; the laughter rang shrill and excited.
Down in the long rows of benches, crowds of people sat watching
the game, while occasionally a father might arise and go near to
shout encouragement, cautionary commands, or applause at his flying
offspring. Frequently mothers called out: "Be careful, Georgie!" The
orchestrion bellowed and thundered on its platform, filling the ears
with its long monotonous song. Over in a corner, a man in a white apron
and behind a counter roared above the tumult: "Pop corn! Pop corn!"
A young man stood upon a small, raised platform, erected in a manner
of a pulpit, and just without the line of the circling figures. It was
his duty to manipulate the wooden arm and affix the rings. When all
were gone into the hands of the triumphant children, he held forth a
basket, into which they returned all save the coveted brass one, which
meant another ride free and made the holder very illustrious. The young
man stood all day upon his narrow platform, affixing rings or holding
forth the basket. He was a sort of general squire in these lists of
childhood. He was very busy.
And yet Stimson, the astute, had noticed that the young man frequently
found time to twist about on his platform and smile at a girl who shyly
sold tickets behind a silvered netting. This, indeed, was the great
reason of Stimson's glowering. The young man upon the raised platform
had no manner of licence to smile at the girl behind the silvered
netting. It was a most gigantic insolence. Stimson was amazed at it.
"By Jiminy," he said to himself again, "that fellow is smiling at my
daughter." Even in this tone of great wrath it could be discerned that
Stimson was filled with wonder that any youth should dare smile at the
daughter in the presence of the august father.
Often the dark-eyed girl peered between the shining wires, and, upon
being detected by the young man, she usually turned her head away
quickly to prove to him that she was not interested. At other times,
however, her eyes seemed filled with a tender fear lest he should
fall from that exceedingly dangerous platform. As for the young man,
it was plain that these glances filled him with valour, and he stood
carelessly upon his perch, as if he deemed it of no consequence that
he might fall from it. In all the complexities of his daily life and
duties he found opportunity to gaze ardently at the vision behind the
netting.
This silent courtship was conducted over the heads of the crowd who
thronged about the bright machine. The swift eloquent glances of the
young man went noiselessly and unseen with their message. There had
finally become established between the two in this manner a subtle
understanding and companionship. They communicated accurately all
that they felt. The boy told his love, his reverence, his hope in the
changes of the future. The girl told him that she loved him, that she
did not love him, that she did not know if she loved him, that she
loved him. Sometimes a little sign saying "cashier" in gold letters,
and hanging upon the silvered netting, got directly in range and
interfered with the tender message.
The love affair had not continued without anger, unhappiness, despair.
The girl had once smiled brightly upon a youth who came to buy some
tickets for his little sister, and the young man upon the platform
observing this smile had been filled with gloomy rage. He stood like
a dark statue of vengeance upon his pedestal and thrust out the basket
to the children with a gesture that was full of scorn for their hollow
happiness, for their insecure and temporary joy. For five hours he did
not once look at the girl when she was looking at him. He was going
to crush her with his indifference; he was going to demonstrate that
he had never been serious. However, when he narrowly observed her in
secret he discovered that she seemed more blythe than was usual with
her. When he found that his apparent indifference had not crushed
her he suffered greatly. She did not love him, he concluded. If she
had loved him she would have been crushed. For two days he lived
a miserable existence upon his high perch. He consoled himself by
thinking of how unhappy he was, and by swift, furtive glances at the
loved face. At any rate he was in her presence, and he could get a good
view from his perch when there was no interference by the little sign:
"Cashier."
But suddenly, swiftly, these clouds vanished, and under the imperial
blue sky of the restored confidence they dwelt in peace, a peace
that was satisfaction, a peace that, like a babe, put its trust in
the treachery of the future. This confidence endured until the next
day, when she, for an unknown cause, suddenly refused to look at
him. Mechanically he continued his task, his brain dazed, a tortured
victim of doubt, fear, suspicion. With his eyes he supplicated her to
telegraph an explanation. She replied with a stony glance that froze
his blood. There was a great difference in their respective reasons
for becoming angry. His were always foolish, but apparent, plain as
the moon. Hers were subtle, feminine, as incomprehensible as the stars,
as mysterious as the shadows at night.
They fell and soared, and soared and fell in this manner until they
knew that to live without each other would be a wandering in deserts.
They had grown so intent upon the uncertainties, the variations,
the guessings of their affair that the world had become but a huge
immaterial background. In time of peace their smiles were soft and
prayerful, caresses confided to the air. In time of war, their youthful
hearts, capable of profound agony, were wrung by the intricate emotions
of doubt. They were the victims of the dread angel of affectionate
speculation that forces the brain endlessly on roads that lead nowhere.
At night, the problem of whether she loved him confronted the young man
like a spectre, looming as high as a hill and telling him not to delude
himself. Upon the following day, this battle of the night displayed
itself in the renewed fervour of his glances and in their increased
number. Whenever he thought he could detect that she too was suffering,
he felt a thrill of joy.
But there came a time when the young man looked back upon these
contortions with contempt. He believed then that he had imagined his
pain. This came about when the redoubtable Stimson marched forward to
participate.
"This has got to stop," Stimson had said to himself, as he stood and
watched them. They had grown careless of the light world that clattered
about them; they were become so engrossed in their personal drama
that the language of their eyes was almost as obvious as gestures. And
Stimson, through his keenness, his wonderful, infallible penetration,
suddenly came into possession of these obvious facts. "Well, of all the
nerves," he said, regarding with a new interest the young man upon the
perch.
He was a resolute man. He never hesitated to grapple with a crisis. He
decided to overturn everything at once, for, although small, he was
very fierce and impetuous. He resolved to crush this dreaming.
He strode over to the silvered netting. "Say, you want to quit your
everlasting grinning at that idiot," he said, grimly.
The girl cast down her eyes and made a little heap of quarters into a
stack. She was unable to withstand the terrible scrutiny of her small
and fierce father.
Stimson turned from his daughter and went to a spot beneath the
platform. He fixed his eyes upon the young man and said--
"I've been speakin' to Lizzie. You better attend strictly to your own
business or there'll be a new man here next week." It was as if he had
blazed away with a shot-gun. The young man reeled upon his perch. At
last he in a measure regained his composure and managed to stammer:
"A--all right, sir." He knew that denials would be futile with the
terrible Stimson. He agitatedly began to rattle the rings in the
basket, and pretend that he was obliged to count them or inspect them
in some way. He, too, was unable to face the great Stimson.
For a moment, Stimson stood in fine satisfaction and gloated over the
effect of his threat.
"I've fixed them," he said complacently, and went out to smoke a cigar
and revel in himself. Through his mind went the proud reflection that
people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended in quick
and abject submission.
II
One evening, a week after Stimson had indulged in the proud reflection
that people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended
in quick and abject submission, a young feminine friend of the girl
behind the silvered netting came to her there and asked her to walk on
the beach after "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round" was closed for the
night. The girl assented with a nod.
The young man upon the perch holding the rings saw this nod and judged
its meaning. Into his mind came an idea of defeating the watchfulness
of the redoubtable Stimson.
When the Merry-Go-Round was closed and the two girls started for the
beach, he wandered off aimlessly in another direction, but he kept
them in view, and as soon as he was assured that he had escaped the
vigilance of Stimson, he followed them.
The electric lights on the beach made a broad band of tremoring
light, extending parallel to the sea, and upon the wide walk there
slowly paraded a great crowd, intermingling, intertwining, sometimes
colliding. In the darkness stretched the vast purple expanse of the
ocean, and the deep indigo sky above was peopled with yellow stars.
Occasionally out upon the water a whirling mass of froth suddenly
flashed into view, like a great ghostly robe appearing, and then
vanished, leaving the sea in its darkness, from whence came those bass
tones of the water's unknown emotion. A wind, cool, reminiscent of the
wave wastes, made the women hold their wraps about their throats, and
caused the men to grip the rims of their straw hats. It carried the
noise of the band in the pavilion in gusts. Sometimes people unable
to hear the music, glanced up at the pavilion and were reassured upon
beholding the distant leader still gesticulating and bobbing, and the
other members of the band with their lips glued to their instruments.
High in the sky soared an unassuming moon, faintly silver.
For a time the young man was afraid to approach the two girls; he
followed them at a distance and called himself a coward. At last,
however, he saw them stop on the outer edge of the crowd and stand
silently listening to the voices of the sea. When he came to where they
stood, he was trembling in his agitation. They had not seen him.
"Lizzie," he began. "I----"
The girl wheeled instantly and put her hand to her throat.
"Oh, Frank, how you frightened me," she said--inevitably.
"Well, you know I--I----" he stuttered.
But the other girl was one of those beings who are born to attend
at tragedies. She had for love a reverence, an admiration that was
greater the more that she contemplated the fact that she knew nothing
of it. This couple, with their emotions, awed her and made her humbly
wish that she might be destined to be of some service to them. She was
very homely.
When the young man faltered before them, she, in her sympathy, actually
over-estimated the crisis, and felt that he might fall dying at their
feet. Shyly, but with courage, she marched to the rescue.
"Won't you come and walk on the beach with us?" she said.
The young woman gave her a glance of deep gratitude which was not
without the patronage which a man in his condition naturally feels for
one who pities it. The three walked on.
Finally, the being who was born to attend at this tragedy, said that
she wished to sit down and gaze at the sea, alone.
They politely urged her to walk on with them, but she was obstinate.
She wished to gaze at the sea, alone. The young man swore to himself
that he would be her friend until he died.
And so the two young lovers went on without her. They turned once to
look at her.
"Jennie's awful nice," said the girl.
"You bet she is," replied the young man, ardently.
They were silent for a little time.
At last the girl said--
"You were angry at me yesterday."
"No, I wasn't."
"Yes, you were, too. You wouldn't look at me once all day."
"No, I wasn't angry. I was only putting on."
Though she had, of course, known it, this confession seemed to make her
very indignant. She flashed a resentful glance at him.
"Oh, were you, indeed?" she said with a great air.
For a few minutes she was so haughty with him that he loved her to
madness. And directly this poem, which stuck at his lips, came forth
lamely in fragments.
When they walked back toward the other girl and saw the patience of
her attitude, their hearts swelled in a patronizing and secondary
tenderness for her.
They were very happy. If they had been miserable they would have
charged this fairy scene of the night with a criminal heartlessness;
but as they were joyous, they vaguely wondered how the purple sea, the
yellow stars, the changing crowds under the electric lights could be so
phlegmatic and stolid.
They walked home by the lake-side way, and out upon the water those gay
paper lanterns, flashing, fleeting, and careering, sang to them, sang a
chorus of red and violet, and green and gold; a song of mystic bands of
the future.
One day, when business paused during a dull sultry afternoon, Stimson
went up town. Upon his return, he found that the popcorn man, from his
stand over in a corner, was keeping an eye upon the cashier's cage, and
that nobody at all was attending to the wooden arm and the iron rings.
He strode forward like a sergeant of grenadiers.
"Where in thunder is Lizzie?" he demanded, a cloud of rage in his eyes.
The popcorn man, although associated long with Stimson, had never got
over being dazed.
"They've--they've--gone round to th'--th'--house," he said with
difficulty, as if he had just been stunned.
"Whose house?" snapped Stimson.
"Your--your house, I 'spose," said the popcorn man.
Stimson marched round to his home. Kingly denunciations surged, already
formulated, to the tip of his tongue, and he bided the moment when his
anger could fall upon the heads of that pair of children. He found his
wife convulsive and in tears.
"Where's Lizzie?"
And then she burst forth--"Oh--John--John-they've run away, I know they
have. They drove by here not three minutes ago. They must have done
it on purpose to bid me good-bye, for Lizzie waved her hand sad-like;
and then, before I could get out to ask where they were going or what,
Frank whipped up the horse."
Stimson gave vent to a dreadful roar.
"Get my revolver--get a hack--get my revolver, do you hear--what the
devil----" His voice became incoherent.
He had always ordered his wife about as if she were a battalion of
infantry, and despite her misery, the training of years forced her to
spring mechanically to obey; but suddenly she turned to him with a
shrill appeal.
"Oh, John--not--the--revolver."
"Confound it, let go of me," he roared again, and shook her from him.
He ran hatless upon the street. There were a multitude of hacks at the
summer resort, but it was ages to him before he could find one. Then he
charged it like a bull.
"Uptown," he yelled, as he tumbled into the rear seat.
The hackman thought of severed arteries. His galloping horse distanced
a large number of citizens who had been running to find what caused
such contortions by the little hatless man.
It chanced as the bouncing hack went along near the lake, Stimson gazed
across the calm grey expanse and recognized a colour in a bonnet and
a pose of a head. A buggy was travelling along a highway that led to
Sorington. Stimson bellowed--"There--there--there they are--in that
buggy."
The hackman became inspired with the full knowledge of the situation.
He struck a delirious blow with the whip. His mouth expanded in a grin
of excitement and joy. It came to pass that this old vehicle, with its
drowsy horse and its dusty-eyed and tranquil driver, seemed suddenly to
awaken, to become animated and fleet. The horse ceased to ruminate on
his state, his air of reflection vanished. He became intent upon his
aged legs and spread them in quaint and ridiculous devices for speed.
The driver, his eyes shining, sat critically in his seat. He watched
each motion of this rattling machine down before him. He resembled
an engineer. He used the whip with judgment and deliberation as the
engineer would have used coal or oil. The horse clacked swiftly upon
the macadam, the wheels hummed, the body of the vehicle wheezed and
groaned.
Stimson, in the rear seat, was erect in that impassive attitude that
comes sometimes to the furious man when he is obliged to leave the
battle to others. Frequently, however, the tempest in his breast came
to his face and he howled--
"Go it--go it--you're gaining; pound 'im! Thump the life out of 'im;
hit 'im hard, you fool." His hand grasped the rod that supported the
carriage top, and it was clenched so that the nails were faintly blue.
Ahead, that other carriage had been flying with speed, as from
realization of the menace in the rear. It bowled away rapidly, drawn
by the eager spirit of a young and modern horse. Stimson could see
the buggy-top bobbing, bobbing. That little pane, like an eye, was a
derision to him. Once he leaned forward and bawled angry sentences. He
began to feel impotent; his whole expedition was a tottering of an old
man upon a trail of birds. A sense of age made him choke again with
wrath. That other vehicle, that was youth, with youth's pace; it was
swift-flying with the hope of dreams. He began to comprehend those two
children ahead of him, and he knew a sudden and strange awe, because he
understood the power of their young blood, the power to fly strongly
into the future and feel and hope again, even at that time when his
bones must be laid in the earth. The dust rose easily from the hot road
and stifled the nostrils of Stimson.
The highway vanished far away in a point with a suggestion of
intolerable length. The other vehicle was becoming so small that
Stimson could no longer see the derisive eye.
At last the hackman drew rein to his horse and turned to look at
Stimson.
"No use, I guess," he said.
Stimson made a gesture of acquiescence, rage, despair. As the
hackman turned his dripping horse about, Stimson sank back with the
astonishment and grief of a man who has been defied by the universe. He
had been in a great perspiration, and now his bald head felt cool and
uncomfortable. He put up his hand with a sudden recollection that he
had forgotten his hat.
At last he made a gesture. It meant that at any rate he was not
responsible.
A DETAIL
The tiny old lady in the black dress and curious little black bonnet
had at first seemed alarmed at the sound made by her feet upon the
stone pavements. But later she forgot about it, for she suddenly came
into the tempest of the Sixth Avenue shopping district, where from the
streams of people and vehicles went up a roar like that from headlong
mountain torrents.
She seemed then like a chip that catches, recoils, turns and wheels, a
reluctant thing in the clutch of the impetuous river. She hesitated,
faltered, debated with herself. Frequently she seemed about to address
people; then of a sudden she would evidently lose her courage.
Meanwhile the torrent jostled her, swung her this and that way.
At last, however, she saw two young women gazing in at a shop-window.
They were well-dressed girls; they wore gowns with enormous sleeves
that made them look like full-rigged ships with all sails set. They
seemed to have plenty of time; they leisurely scanned the goods in the
window. Other people had made the tiny old woman much afraid because
obviously they were speeding to keep such tremendously important
engagements. She went close to the girls and peered in at the same
window. She watched them furtively for a time. Then finally she said--
"Excuse me!"
The girls looked down at this old face with its two large eyes turned
towards them.
"Excuse me, can you tell me where I can get any work?"
For an instant the two girls stared. Then they seemed about to exchange
a smile, but, at the last moment, they checked it. The tiny old lady's
eyes were upon them. She was quaintly serious, silently expectant.
She made one marvel that in that face the wrinkles showed no trace of
experience, knowledge; they were simply little, soft, innocent creases.
As for her glance, it had the trustfulness of ignorance and the candour
of babyhood.
"I want to get something to do, because I need the money," she
continued since, in their astonishment, they had not replied to her
first question. "Of course I'm not strong and I couldn't do very much,
but I can sew well; and in a house where there was a good many men
folks, I could do all the mending. Do you know any place where they
would like me to come?"
The young women did then exchange a smile, but it was a subtle tender
smile, the edge of personal grief.
"Well, no, madame," hesitatingly said one of them at last; "I don't
think I know any one."
A shade passed over the tiny old lady's face, a shadow of the wing of
disappointment.
"Don't you?" she said, with a little struggle to be brave, in her voice.
Then the girl hastily continued--"But if you will give me your address,
I may find some one, and if I do, I will surely let you know of it."
The tiny old lady dictated her address, bending over to watch the girl
write on a visiting card with a little silver pencil. Then she said--
"I thank you very much." She bowed to them, smiling, and went on down
the avenue.
As for the two girls, they walked to the curb and watched this aged
figure, small and frail, in its black gown and curious black bonnet.
At last, the crowd, the innumerable wagons, intermingling and changing
with uproar and riot, suddenly engulfed it.
*************************************
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.
*************************************
STEPHEN CRANE'S WORKS
---------
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
_Post 8vo, cloth, 3s. net; ornamental
wrapper, 2s. 6d. net._
[PIONEER SERIES.
_The Saturday Review_--"Mr. Stephen Crane's picture of the effect of
actual fighting on a raw regiment is simply unapproached in intimate
knowledge and sustained imaginative strength. In the supreme moments
of the fight he is possessed by the fiery breath of battle, and finds
an inspired utterance that will reach the universal heart of man. This
extraordinary book will appeal strongly to the insatiable desire to
know the psychology of war--how the sights and sounds, the terrible
details of the drama of battle, affect the senses and the soul of man."
_St. James's Gazette_--"This is not merely a remarkable book; it is a
revelation Mr. Crane has laid the War God on the dissecting-table, and
exposed his every bone and nerve and sinew and artery to the public
gaze."
_The Speaker_--"Every page is crowded, not merely with incidents such
as the war correspondent describes, but with the tragedy of life. The
reader sees the battle, not from afar, but from the inside. He hears
the laboured breathing of the wearied soldiers, sees the colour rising
and falling in their cheeks, and feels at heart as they themselves did
in this first act in the tremendous drama which so many people talk
about and so few understand.... As a work of art, _The Red Badge of
Courage_ deserves high praise. As a moral lesson that mankind still
needs, the praise it deserves is higher still."
---------
THE LITTLE REGIMENT
_Post 8vo, cloth, 3s. net; ornamental
wrapper, 2s. 6d. net._
[PIONEER SERIES.
_The Athenæum_--"The extraordinary power of imagination is more
wonderful than that of Defoe. It is in dialogue that he is at his
strongest, for in this the words are used as the soldiers would have
used them."
---------------
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
*************************************
STEPHEN CRANE'S WORKS
---------
THE THIRD VIOLET
_Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s._
_The Athenæum_--"A vividness of portraiture which puts _The Third
Violet_ on a high level--higher, we think, than Mr. Crane's very
different _Maggie_, though perhaps lower than _The Little Regiment_,
which is also very different. In his present book Mr. Crane is more
the rival of Mr. Henry James than of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. But he is
intensely American, which can hardly be said of Mr. Henry James, and
it is possible that if he continues in his present line of writing he
may be the author who will introduce the United States to the ordinary
English world. We have never come across a book that brought certain
sections of American society so perfectly before the reader as does
_The Third Violet_. The picture is an extremely pleasant one, and its
truth appeals to the English reader, so that the effect of the book
is to draw him nearer to his American cousins. _The Third Violet_
incidentally contains the best dog that we have come across in modern
fiction. Mr. Crane's dialogue is excellent, and it is dialogue of a
type for which neither _The Red Badge of Courage_ nor his other books
had prepared us."
_The Academy_--"By this latest product of his genius our impression of
Mr. Crane is confirmed: that for psychological insight, for dramatic
intensity, and for potency of phrase he is already in the front rank of
English-American writers of fiction, and that he possesses a certain
separate quality which places him apart. It is a short story and a
slender, but taking it in conjunction with what he has previously given
us, there remains, in our judgment, no room for doubt."
_The Bookman_--"An idyll, and a very pretty one. In _The Red Badge of
Courage_ and _Maggie_ there is an intenser force; but in this slighter
effort we feel the same directness, the same true reading of the
workings of the mind, the same contempt for conventions and clap-trap
sentiment."
_The Sketch_--"There is a strong human interest in it, and a boyish
vigour which is refreshing."
_The Scotsman_--"It is very light, very amusing, and very American. The
literary touch is singularly deft and felicitous, the strokes playful
but unerring.... The treatment has the distinction which only a vivid
imagination, a fine dramatic faculty and an intuitive perception of the
deeper things of human nature can give to a book."
_Manchester Guardian_--"It is invigorating to follow the breezy
mountain life up in the pine woods.... The book abounds in those
felicitous descriptions and bright dialogues of which Mr. Crane is
master.... One more delightful dog is added to the heroes of fiction."
_Daily Mail_--"We would not for the world have it other than it is....
In its short tantalisingly abrupt chapters, the tale gives the history
of a wooing, a history clear, simple, and often sparkling as a rill of
spring water."
---------
MAGGIE: A Child of the Streets
_12mo, buckram, gilt top, 2s._
_The Literary World_--"Contains all the force, all the power, and all
the reality which Mr. Crane has proved his pen to possess."
---------
THE BLACK RIDERS: Verse
_12mo, leather, gilt top, 3s. net._
---------------
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
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