Then we backed out of that assembly. Seemed to me it was a proposition a man might as well dodge. Only, I recollect how little Kiyi looked like a wisp of dry hay, and Sadler uncommon large, with his fists on the stone floor on either side, and his head hung over Kiyi, and how the yellow men squatted and said nothing.

Maybe Sadler is studying the "Kiyi Proposition," still, to find out how the three hundred bronze Buddhas can give three hundred cheerful agreements to the statement that "All things are one," when, on the contrary, some things have Kiyi luck and some don't. I don't know. The rights and wrongs of this world always seemed to me pretty complicated. There was Julius R. that was slippery and ambitious; there was Sadler that had a worm in his soul; there was Clyde that kept one conscience for argument, and another for the trade; there was Tommy Buckingham who was getting older and troubled about the intentions of things. And yet again there was folks like Kreps and Stevey Todd, say, mild and warm people, and a bit simple, each in his way, and yet they always kept themselves entertained somehow. "All things are one," are they? I couldn't see it either, no more than Sadler. For this is the Kiyi Proposition. You says: "Here's a bad job. Who did it?" I says: "I don't know." You says: "Well, who pays for it?" I says: "Ain't any doubt about that. It's Kiyi."

It was quite a parcel of years I sailed the Pacific, ten years, or thereabout, altogether. The time I saw Sadler behind the Green Dragons was my last cruise there. I says to myself:

"Tommy, you ain't a 'bonny sailor boy' any more. Why don't you sail your own ship? Haven't you got a bank in the West Indies? Why don't you liquidate on Clyde? Why don't you quit your foolishness?" and when Stevey Todd and I got back to San Francisco, I left Shan Brothers and the Good Sister for good, and we came east by railroad to New Orleans.



CHAPTER XI.

THE VOYAGE OF THE "VOODOO".—NARRATIVE CONTINUED.

Monson was the man's name that I came to deal with in New Orleans. He had a schooner named the Voodoo, a coast cruiser that never went further to sea than the Windwards. There was another white man on the crew, but the rest were negroes. Monson was billed already for Martinique and Trinidad, and that was why I dealt with him, and got him cheap for a short trip beyond Tobago.

Stevey Todd set out for the north to find some relatives he thought he had, but found none to his mind, and concluded he was an orphan. But he found a restaurant to his mind in South Street in New York, and there he settled himself and waited for me to come along. It's a place where seamen generally turn up sooner or later, and I told him I would come there. Monson and I set sail the third of September in the year '85.

Now, Monson was a man of great size and long yellowish hair and beard, and shy, innocent-looking eyes. It always gave me a start to look up six feet of legs and chest, and end in an expression of face which seemed about to remark that the world was a strange place, and might be wicked. The other white man and the negroes were a bad lot, and given to viciousness, but Monson ruled them with a heavy fist. He hadn't been three hours away from the river before he was banging a negro with a board, the others looking on and grinning. He was spanking him, in a way. He ran to me with tears in his eyes. "I'll throw that nigger overboard!" he shouted, dancing about, and shortly after he appeared to have forgotten the matter. I thought I should get along with him, but I thought I'd have to keep cool and calm in dealing with him. He was such a man as it seemed better to be acquainted with in a big open space where there was room for him to explode. He was apt to be either gay or outrageous, and that about any little thing. He was simple and furious and very hearty, and that all made him good company. The negroes looked murderous, and the other white man shifty and dirty, but he was a competent seaman.

Three weeks later we passed Tobago and were looking for Clyde's little island. We dropped anchor there one evening about eight o'clock. The moon was high and the sea bright. It was sixteen years since I'd seen that shore last, the night I rowed old Clyde up the inlet, and we buried his canvas bags. It was hard won enough by the old man, that money, with twenty years' dodging South American customs. We'd buried it in the middle of a triangle of three trees. I remembered how black the sea had been, and rough off shore. I remembered the black cruiser with its pennon of smoke. The inlet had been reedy, and the water there quiet, and the soil we dug in punky and wet.

I sat in the stern of the dingey now and let Monson row, which he did powerfully. His forearm was like a log of wood, the muscles coming out of it in knots. I was glad enough there was no danger to seaward, and wished I could carry Clyde's money away in a check, instead of the meal bags we had in the dingey.

We rowed along and came to the inlet. There was a lot of marsh grass and deep-growing reeds, and clear water between that stretched away inland. It made a straight line between the water reeds leading up to a triangle of three trees. There was a little white house in the middle of the triangle, with two lit windows.

I says: "Monson! Somebody's squatted on it!"

"What!" he says.

Somebody was singing in the house. Monson looked around from his rowing, and found it very funny to his mind, for he laughed with a roar, and the singing stopped short.

"Turn into the reeds!" I says, and we crouched there in the boat.

"It's just where the house is," I says, "or it was. There wasn't any house then."

Monson shook with laughter though he kept it quiet, and I don't know what pleased him. It would have pleased me then to see him dead, I was that savage for the people in the house. One spot on a mean little island, and they'd squatted on it! Yet it was plain enough, for the inlet led up to the three trees, which seemed to invite a man to do there whatever he had planned to do.

"Stuff 'em up their chimney," says Monson. "Tip the hut into the creek. That joke's on them, ain't it?"

I didn't see how the joke was on them.

"Why, I never knew an Injy islander to dig a cellar," he says: "They lie on the ground and get ague. Course, they might dig a hole."

The door of the little house was closed, when we came soft along the muddy shore and crept up to the window. There were five men inside, around a table, leaning forward, whispering together and drinking aguardiente. That's what Kid Sadler on the Hebe Maitland used to call "affectionate water." They were small men, but fierce-looking and black-eyed, and they appeared as if they were talking state secrets, or each explaining his special brand of crime. Monson roared out and struck the door with his fist, and they disappeared. Three of them went under the table.

Monson had to bend his head to enter, and his shaggy hair pressed along the ceiling. He pulled some by their legs from under the table, and one from a bench in a dark corner by the hair, whom he left suddenly, for it was a woman, and the two others he hauled from a closet.

"Bring us some more!" he shouted in Spanish, laughing uproariously. "Aguardiente! Hoorah!"

I don't know, or forget, how he quieted them, but pretty soon we were seven men about the table, and the woman was serving us with "affectionate water." One of them, with the woman, was owner of the house, and the others, it seemed, lived across the island. They had heard Monson's laugh, and afterward, hearing and seeing nothing more, they'd taken it to be ghosts and were afraid. They were fierce-looking little men, but pleasant enough and simple-minded. "Doubtless," they said, "the senores were distinguished persons, who had come on a ship and would buy tobacco." We arranged that the four, who lived across the island, should come back in the morning with their tobacco. So the four went away affectionate with aguardiente, and we were left alone with the fifth. His name was Pedronez and his wife's Lucina. Then I asked how long they'd lived there.

"One year, six months," he says, counting on his fingers.

"Build the house?"

"Si, senor. A noble house! A miracle!"

"Ever dig a hole here?"

"A hole! But why a hole? In the ground of the noble house! Ah, no! By no means!"

Monson roared again, to the fright of Pedronez and Lucina, who flattened herself against the wall. He went out and brought in the spade, and the bags. I guarded the door, and Monson dug where I pointed in the hard trodden earth of the floor. Pedronez and Lucina backed into corners and chattered crazy. They seemed to think the hole was for them, and Monson meant to bury them in it, which had as reasonable a look as anything.

Clyde's money was there still, lying no more than two feet from where Pedronez and Lucina had walked over it eighteen months, grubbing out a poor living. The brown bags were all rotted away and the coin was sticky with clay. I laid a handful on the table, and told Pedronez to buy the tobacco of the others in the morning, but I didn't suppose he would. It seemed a hard sort of joke played by luck on the little Windward Islander, Clyde's money lying there so long, twenty-four inches from the soles of his feet. I remember how Pedronez clutched his throat and shrieked after us into the night. He had shiny black eyes and skin wrinkled about the mouth, and Lucina was draggled-looking. When we were out of the inlet we could hear him yelling, and I had an idea he and Lucina took to fighting to ease up their minds.

We came under the dark of the ship's side. One of the negroes leaned over above us, and Monson told him to turn in, so short that he scuttled away with a grunt. We heaved the stuff aboard, and took it below, and stowed the whole four meal bags under my bunk. We got up sail before daybreak and slipped away while the stars were still shining.

Now, I took Monson to be a simple man, though sudden in action, and a man with an open mind, and sure to blow up with anything it was charged with, and in that way safe, as not having the gifts to deceive. I don't say the estimate was all gone wrong, but I'd say a man may act so simple as to take in a cleverer man than me. He came to me the next day and took me down below, acting mysterious, and he put on an expression that was like a full moon trying to look like a horse trader, which wasn't a success. Then he jerked his beard, and looked embarrassed.

"Why," he says, "it's this way. I think I'll have half that pile, don't you see?"

I says: "What?"

I felt like an empty meal bag with surprise. Then I says, "Of course I was meaning to make you a present, Captain,"

"No," he says. "That's not it. It's this way. The niggers is so tricky, they'd drop you overboard, tied to a chunk of iron, if I told 'em they might, don't you see? And if I don't tell them they might, seems as if I ought to have half. Because," he says, "they'd love to do it, because they're that way, those niggers, and it seems that way, as if I'd ought to have half, don't it?"

"Why don't you take it all?" I says, sarcastic and mad.

"Why?" he says, looking like a full moon that was shocked. "No! That wouldn't be fair, don't you see?"

I kept still a while, and then I thought maybe there'd be a way or two out, and I spoke mild.

"There's some reason in it, when you put it that way."

"That's right," he says, and acted joyful and free. "It's that way;" and he went above, and I heard him banging the negroes, likely for the wickedness they were capable of. I sat on my bunk and wondered why a man like me was always having trouble.

Then I took a lantern and went exploring down in the hold of the ship, which was pretty much empty of cargo, and foul, and smelt as if things had rotted there a hundred years. There were barrels and boxes and old canvas, and heaps of scrap iron, and some lead pipe, and coils of bad rope. Afterward I came on deck, and had supper and talked with Monson. He kept nudging me now and then, and saying, "It's that way;" and me answering, "There's reason in it, when it's put that way."

About nine o'clock I went below. By ten Monson and all the negroes were asleep, except two with the other white man on watch. I waited an hour, and then took a saw and a lantern, and crept from the cabin down the ladder to the hold. The sea was easy, though moving some, and slapping the ship's sides and the hold was full of loud echoes, smelling bad, and very black beyond the space of lantern light, a slimy cold place, and full of sudden noises. I worked till far in the morning, sawing lead pipe into thin sections of maybe an eighth of an inch thick, and thinking about Monson and whether he was deep or not. I thought he was right about the negroes, but I thought Monson wasn't deep, but simple by nature. It was the same as when one small boy says to another, "You give me your jackknife and I won't tell anybody to lick you." That gives him a sense of good morals that's comfortable inside him.

I carried up maybe thirty pounds of lead pipe in eighth-inch sections, and emptied out two of the bags, and shovelled in the lead pipe. I put in enough sticky coin on top to cover it well, and the rest I put some in the other two bags, but most in a leather satchel under some clothes. Then I tied up the bags and shoved them under the bunk, with the lead pipe ones in front. Eighth inch sections of lead pipe aren't so different from gold coin, so long as they're in a meal bag with the proper deceptiveness on top. Then I turned in and went to sleep.

In the morning I went to Monson and said, as glum as I could, that I guessed he'd do as he liked, and as to the negroes dropping me overboard he was probably right. Then he acted shy and timid. He followed me back to my cabin, and stood around like he was part ashamed and part confused, kicking his heels together nervous, and smoothing his hair.

"Why," he said, "you see, it's this way. I think I'll take 'em now."

Then he fished out the two front bags, opened them, squinted in, tied them up, and walked off. I sort of gaped after him, and sat down on my bunk, and wondered why a man like me should have that kind of trouble, and how soon Monson would take to fooling with his bags, and find out he owned so much lead pipe. But I heard him banging one of the negroes, and judged he was cheerful yet. I went up on deck and lay down on some cordage. Monson left the deck soon after.

I'd calculated on the bags staying under my bunk till we came to New Orleans, thinking to pass off the two that were doctored on Monson in a hurry, and then to get out of reach hot-footed. I calculated now that, as soon as he found his bags had been doctored, he'd mention it candid and loud, and meanwhile I might as well get my gun in working shape for trouble. Maybe I might make a bargain with the shifty-looking white man, and organize an argument as to which should be dropped overboard, Monson or me. But I hadn't got to the point, when Monson came lounging up the gangway, still acting apologetic. I judged maybe he'd stowed away his bags without digging into them. I says:

"Let bygones be, Captain," and he says, "That's right! It's that way."

It was a remarkable thing how friendly and kind we got, hoping there was no hard feeling.

That day the wind rose to a gale and the sea went wild. It kept Monson on deck night and day for four days. It kept us in a boiling pot, and on the fifth we entered the mouth of the Mississippi. Then Monson went down to sleep, and he hadn't waked when we anchored off the levee at New Orleans, which was six o'clock in the evening. By eight I was on a train going north, with a new trunk in the baggage car.

I've never happened to see Monson since. I guess he was contented. When I opened the bags, one of them was mainly full of eighth-inch sections of lead pipe.

Maybe he'd heard me go down to the hold in the first place, but probably he found first his lead pipe at the time he left me on the deck, and then he'd changed things a bit more to his ideas of what was right, bearing in mind the natural wickedness of the negroes. He didn't appear to have noticed that some of the stuff was stowed in my leather satchel, but he got nearly a third of Clyde's savings.

I came to New York and I walked along South Street, thinking of the day, twenty years back, when I first walked along South Street, cocky and green. Then I came toward the slip where the Hebe Maitland had lain that day, and where I'd looked at her and said, "Now, there's a ship." I thought of Clyde and that odd talk in the cabin of the Hebe Maitland, where all my deep-sea goings began. And I looked up and I says, "Now, there's a ship!"

The prow of her came up to the sidewalk, and the bowsprit stretched over the street, pointing at a house on the other side that was a restaurant by its sign. The Annalee was the ship's name in gilt lettering, and the clean lines of her and her way of lying in the water would give you joy. I walked alongside her on the dock, and I went across the street to look at her that way, and stood in front of the restaurant. And there I sniffed around a bit, and there I smelt hot waffles. "It's a tasty smell," I says. "Smells like Stevey Todd," and I went into the restaurant, and there was Stevey Todd. "Stevey," I says, "if you'll give me some hot waffles and honey, I'll buy that ship out there if she's buyable." And Stevey Todd gave me hot waffles and honey, and I bought the Annalee.

It might be thought, and some would say so, that the trouble I had with Monson came of Clyde's money being unclean, as not got honestly, but through dodging South American customs, and I'm free to admit it was sticky when I dug it up. But it's never acted other than respectable since that time. I never agreed with Clyde in argument, more than did Stevey Todd. A man falls in with various folks by sea and land, and he finds many that are made up of ill-fitting parts. Clyde was an odd man and a bold one, though old and dry. Monson I took for a loud and joyful one, simple and open in his mind, and violent in his habits and free of language, and yet he acted to me both secret and moderate, and I guess I mistook him.

Stevey Todd and I went to sea again in the coasting trade, and mainly to the south, and saw the coasts and parts we knew in the Hebe Maitland days. So I passed several years more.



CHAPTER XII.

THE FLANNAGAN AND IMPERIAL—CONTINUING THE NARRATIVE.

I was taking a cargo of machinery and carts one time to the city of Tampico in Mexico, and from there I was to go for return cargo to a little republic to the south that we'll call Guadaloupe, whose capital city we'll call Rosalia. The real names of them sounded that way, soft and sleepy, and warm and sweet, like hot waffles and honey. According to reputation it was a place where revolutions were billed for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the other days left for siestas and argument. They were fixed that way in respect to entertainment.

But there came to me in Tampico a man named Flannagan, who said he was manager of "The Flannagan and Imperial Itinerant Exhibition," a company composed of three Japanese performers, a tin-type man from New England, and a trick dog who was thoughtful and spotted. Flannagan said he wanted to go far, far from Tampico, because, he says, "Thim Tampican peons ain't seen tin cints apiece since they sold their souls," he says, "at that price," he says, "to the divil that presides over loafers." I told him I was going to Rosalia in Guadaloupe which had a local system of entertainment already, and he says, "Guadaloupe!" he says, "Rosalia! D'ye moind thim names! It's like sthrokin' a cat"; and the company came aboard at five dollars a head, three polite Japanese tumblers and rope-walkers, the thoughtful dog, whose name was David, and the tin-type man, who was cynical He'd gone into tin-typing, Flannagan said, so as to express contempt and satire for his fellow-men.

"But," says Flannagan, "it do be curious how thim Dagoes in this distimpered climate rejoice to see thimsilves wid a villyanous exprission an' pathriotic attichude in a two be four photygraph."

We sailed away down the Gulf, through the Strait of Honduras and into the Caribbean Sea, with quiet weather, so that the Japanese could rope-walk in the rigging and tumble peaceable about the deck. The only trouble was the feeling created by the vicious photographs the tin-typer took of the crew. David used to sit quiet mostly, and look over the sea, and scratch his spots, for some of them were put on.

Flannagan was a fiery-eyed and easy-spoken man, who had picked up the tumblers in California and the tin-type man somewhere on the plains. But David was a friend of his of years' standing, and he was a dog I should call naturally gifted, and with that of a friendly nature, sober, decent, middle-aged, comfortable, and one who took things as they came. But Flannagan had hair that was wild and red, and his complexion was similar. He was large and bony. His voice was windy, his manner oratorical, and his nature sudden. The Japanese spoke little English and couldn't be told apart, but as to that there was no need of it. They were skilful, small, and dark, with rubber bones and extra joints, and they could smile from a hundred and thirteen classified and labelled attitudes. We came one afternoon into the harbour of Rosalia.

Speaking of Rosalia, it's a green and pink and white town, in a valley that opens on the sea, with mountains behind it. It's a prettier town than Portate. In the centre is the little square or plaza, filled with palms and roses and bushes. There's a lamp-post near the middle and the ruins of a stone fountain. Around three sides of the plaza are shops, where you can buy your hands' full of bread and fruit for a cent or two; and casinos or saloons where they play monte and fight gamecocks; and a hotel, with men asleep on the steps of it. On the fourth side is the Palazio del Libertad, which they commonly call it La Libertad. It contains the government and the families of most of it. There are the offices and residences of the President and the departmental ministers, the legislative chambers, courtrooms, soldiers' barracks, and other things. It's the pride of Guadaloupe and the record of its revolutions. It's been sixty years in building, and each new government adds something to remember it by. It has white stucco fronts, and towers, doors, inner courts, and roofs. If you are looking for a department, you walk along the fronts till you see a likely-looking sign that seems to refer in figures of speech to that department. Then you go in. But when the government changes by revolution—or by election, which sometimes happens, when no one is looking—why, then the departments shift around in La Libertad to suit themselves better, and they're apt to leave their signs behind them. Besides that, each new minister will decorate himself and his department with names to fit his ideas of beauty and usefulness, and he'll proclaim these in the official gazette for the intention of his department. The Guadaloupeans argue the competence of a minister according as he has a department with titles that sweep the horizon and claim kin with the Antipodes and the Resurrection. Only it seemed to me that these things tended in time to make the figures of speech on the signs sort of far-fetched.

It was that way that Flannagan and I, with David, the tin-type man and the tumblers, fell on the "Department of Military and Internal Peace," when we were looking for permits to ship cargoes and deliver Japanese performances, under the sign "Office of Discretionary Regulations." That may have been all right enough, for most of the departments were that accommodating they would do any agreeable business that came their way; but it appeared to me, the revolutions left the government too full of idioms.

There we waited till Flannagan became fierce with the heat and the impatience of him.

"Discretionary!" he says, striding around with his nostrils full of wrath, and banging at doors. "Would they be boilin' us the night wid the discreetness of 'em?"

With that there was an opening of a door, and there waddled in a little fat mestizo, both shorter and fatter than seemed right or natural. He wore red and yellow livery and shining buttons, and we thought he was likely the official butler or door boy. He seemed to have eaten too much, as a rule, and looked sleepy and in a bad temper.

"Boy" says Flannagan, striding up to him, "where's the misbegotten and corrupt official of Disthressionary Regularities? Do we wait here till the explosion of doom? Spheak, ye lump of butther!" he says. "Or do we not?"

"Carambos!" says the extraordinary clothes, backing off and speaking snappish. "If you don't like it, get out!"

"Carambos, is it?" says Flannagan, enraged and grabbing him by the collar. "Impidence!" he says, "an' ye talk so to the Manager of the Flannagan and Imparial!"

With that he gets him also by his new trousers and heaves him into the corridor, where was a handsome half-caste Spanish woman, more Spanish than Indian, who looked dignified and happy in a purple dress. She fell against the wall to avoid him, and appeared surprised. He scrambled up. Then he clutched his hair, and waddled down the corridor, shrieking, and the purple dress began to gobble with her laughter.

"Why," she says, in a mellow voice—"Ho! ho! haw! haw! Why does the distinguished senor cast the Minister of Military and Internal Peace thus upon his digesting, immediately his too great meal thereafter?"

"Hivins!" says Flannagan.

"Now he will say the internal peace is disturbed, meaning his digestion, and bring the military, to the end that the distinguished senors shall be placed in the dungeons of La Libertad, which," she says kindly, "beyond expectation are wet, and the senors will probably decay. He is my husband—Ho, ho! haw, haw!" she says. "He is a pig"

Flannagan was speechless for a moment. The tin-type man pointed his camera at the purple dress, and was going to take a misanthropic photograph, and David went and stood on his head before her, so that she laughed harder: "Ho! ho! haw! haw!" and spread out her hands, which had two rings to a finger, and the mixed stones of her necklace clicked together with her laughter.

"Put up yer camery, typist" says Flannagan, getting hold of his diplomacy. "None of your contimptimous photographs of the lady. Sure," he says, "it's wid great discomposure I'm taken to be treatin' so the iligint buttons an' canned-tomato clothes enclosin'," he says, "the milithary an' internal digestion of the husband of yourself," he says, "as foine a lady, an' that educated, as me eyes iver beheld. 'Tis me impulses," he says, "'tis me warm an' hearty nature. But your ladyship won't be allowin' a triflin' incident to interfere wid enjoyin' the exhibition by me Japanese frinds of the mystherious art of ancient Asia, an' me that proud of your ladyship's approvin'!"

"What can they do?" she says, looking interested, while the three Japanese bowed in a limber manner, and smiled thin and mystical Asiatic smiles.

"Oh, hivins!" said Flannagan. "Oh, that I might see thim again for the first time, in the bloom of me innocence of marvels! For a thousand years by the imerald seas of the Orient," he says,—and then one of them bent backward, and brought his head up between his legs, and smiled; and the purple dress fell against the wall with pleasure and surprise.

"Come after me," she says, opening a door in the corridor, "heretofore the arrival of my pig husband."

We went up twisting staircases that appeared unaccountable and weren't counted. We saw furnished rooms through open doors, and at last we came to a large room, high up under a tower, and looking out over the Plaza, and in another direction over the roofs of La Libertad. It seemed to be unused, and was darkened with shutters, and littered with the miscellaneous and upset furniture of past administrations.

The Minister of Military and Internal Peace was named "Georgio Bill," from which a man might argue the origins of his family. The purple dress was called "Madame Bill," because French titles were popular with the official ladies. She left us there in a stately manner, and then fell down the stairs through mixing her feet. She was dignified and cheerful, but she had large feet.

Through the shutters we saw the Plaza beginning to stir with the evening crowds. A few blocks over the flat roofs of houses, we saw the harbour, and the Annalee floating at anchor.

When Madame Bill came back she brought with her two negresses with baskets, who straightened the furniture and laid the table. The shutters were closed, and a lamp or two lit, and we dined sumptuous to the elegant dialogue of Flannagan and Madame Bill. "For a thousand years," says Flannagan, "by the imerald seas of the Orient"; and the Japanese did moderate after-dinner tumbling, with mild but curious bow-knots. David marched and saluted, and after that he climbed into his chair, and got his pipe, which Flannagan lit for him; he got it fixed between his teeth, laid his head on his paws, pulled a few puffs, and went to sleep. He was a calm one, David, as I said, and ingenious, and experienced. Madame Bill lit her cheroot thoughtful, and there was conversation.

"The Senor Bill," she says, "is at the present pursuing the foreigners throughout Rosalia and La Libertad with a portion of the Guadaloupean army. It was not wise to cast the Minister of Military and Internal Peace so upon his digestion, which is to him important. But without doubt you are distinguished and experienced, especially the Senor David. They will not look for you perhaps here, which is over my apartments, but will attack, it may be, the ship of your coming here, and in that way be imbecile and foolish."

"Hivins!" says Flannagan. "But I'm thinkin', wid great admiration for yourself, ma'am, I'm thinkin' this country wid its interestin' people in pajamies, its scenery resemblin'a lobster salad, an' government illuminated by figures of spache an' inspired wid seltzer-wather—I'm thinkin' it would make its fortune, sure, by exhibition of itself in the capitals of the worrld, ma'am. Not Barnum's, nor the Flannagan an' Imparial, would compare with it. An' 'tis thrue, ma'am, as a showman in the profession, I couldn't be exprissin' betther me wondher an' admiration."

Then the tin-type man put in, and he sneered some: "I ain't much on admiration and wonder."

"You're not, typist," says Flannagan. "'Tis curdled like he is, ma'am, wid inveterate scorn, the poor man!"

"The human bein' is vicious from original sin," says the tin-type man. "It comes out in the camery," he says. "You can't fool the camery. It tells ye the Bible truth," he says. "Nor I ain't expectin' anything from a broiled and frizzled country like this, where the continent's shaved down so narrow you could take a photograph of two oceans. And yet it's as good as anywhere else. I takes tin-types and says nothing."

"Santa Maria!" says Madame Bill.

And Flannagan says proudly: "'Tis as I told ye, ma'am. There's not such an other to be seen for extinsive scornful-fulness."

"Speaking of the ship, ma'am," I says, "I guess it's all right. Ain't you afraid your husband will get internationally complicated?"

She gestured and grinned.

"Afraid! I! My Georgio! Neither for him nor of him. Moreover, I think,"—pausing with her cheroot in the air—"that he has heard from below, and is now outside the door. He pants. He has climbed the stairs in haste, the little pig. Ho, ho! haw, haw!"

At that the Minister of Military and Internal Peace burst in, with the sweat of his fatness on his face, his teeth sticking out, and his features expressing intentions.

"You do, you Madame," he says, "you woman! You hide them, my enemies, insulters!"

"You would do best," she says to Flannagan, "without doubt, now to enclose and suppress him, my Georgio."

"I go! I return!" he says, stamping his feet.

"Nayther," says Flannagan, enclosing his collar with one hand, and suppressing his features with the other. "Ye sits in the chair, me little man. Ye smokes a cigar in genteel conviviality afther coolin' down to be recognised by a thermometer—an' ye listens to the advice of your beaucheous an' accomplished lady," he says, "that has in moind a bit of domestic discipline."

He dropped him in a chair facing Madame Bill. David, in the next chair, woke up, and appeared to say to himself, "They're doing something else," and went to sleep again. The tin-type man sat by the window and looked through the shutters at the Plaza. They were making a noise on the Plaza. Now and then a military let off his gun, and the people shouted as if they wanted him to do it again. The Japanese bowed to Bill across the table, and smiled mystical.

"By the tomb of my mother, you shall pay!" gurgled Bill.

"Come off!" says Flannagan kindly. "She hadn't any tomb, an' ye disremember who she was."

"Why," says Madame Bill, "the Senor Flannagan on that point speaks nearly the truth."

"A-r-r-r! I'll have your blood!" says the Minister.

"An' me givin' ye the soft word," says Flannagan, "an' apologies for takin' ye for a decorated rubber ball, an' bouncin' ye on the floor! 'Twas wrong of me. Sure, now, Misther Bill, an' is there more needed between gentlemen?" He looked for help to Madame Bill, who gazed at the smoke of her cheroot and seemed absent-minded.

"Listen, my Georgio," she began at last, "I have considered, and I say you have done foolishly to scatter the soldiers about the city to hurry and to inquire, so that the people become excited. Hear in the Plaza already how they cry out like children, and each one is angry at a different thing."

The Minister started, and listened, and wiped his wet forehead with his sleeve. The roar in the Plaza was increasing. He sprang to his feet, and puffed, and he says:

"The military is scattered! It is a mob! I must go! Attend me, my wife!"

But Flannagan enclosed his collar. "Respict for me own intherests," he says, "is me proudest virtue. Would ye have me missin' the sight of a rivolution from a private box, an' the shpectacle of explodin' liberty? An' ye'll be havin' me blood to-morry by the tomb of your mother? Ah, now!"

"Let me go!" he says, shrieking and struggling. "I accept your apology! Say no more!"

Flannagan looked at Madame Bill. The crowd was shouting more in unison now. They says, "Vivo Alvarez!" and "Bill al fuego!" which the latter means, as you or I might say, "To hell with Bill!" The Minister shivered and struggled, but more moderate.

"The military will be confused, will do nothing without order!" he pleaded to Madame Bill.

"The military," says the tin-type man, from the shutters, speaking through his nose, soft and scornful, "they appear to feel tolerable good. There's a batch of 'em on the steps under here, a-sittin' in their sins, and shoutin' 'Down with Bill!' very hearty like."

"Mutiny!" howled the Minister. "Alas!" and he sat down, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and panted, and appeared more composed.

Flannagan sat down, too. "I do be feelin' warm the same," he says. "Shall we have a drink?"

Madame Bill was still turning things over in her mind. "Doubtless they so shout," she says. "They are not without sense. Listen again, my Georgio. I have considered. It is perhaps not bad. Moreover, it is done. But the Department of the Military is not good for you. It worries you, therefore you disturb it, therefore it does not like you. Also, we have lost popularity in Rosalia. But in the interior, as yet, no. Therefore, consider. Senor Alvarez is perhaps generous. If he overthrow the government, he will desire there come an election, and who knows? We may for him go to the interior, and in reward be Minister of Agriculture, which is cooler. But if he overthrow not the government, but by compromise become Minister of Military and Internal Peace, then my Georgio will be in innocence a victim, and perhaps will have to hide, which is hot and dull, or go to the dungeons of La Libertad, which is dull and wet; or we would escape from the country in the distinguished ship of the Senor Buckingham, or in the Imperial Company of Senor Flannagan, which would be better."

"An' it's proud I'd be to have ye," says Flannagan, "as I said, ma'am, in the capitals of the world. Hivins!" he says, "the tropical advertisements! By the mimory of Ireland, 'tis a filibuster expedition I foresee! Me genius is long suppressed."

Madame Bill shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows? Therefore be calm, little one. We will see what they do in the Plaza."

The fallen or falling Minister emptied a glass of iced wine, and looked more contented than before. He was a pleasant enough man as a rule, except when not digesting well, and generally submissive to Madame Bill. We put out the lights and opened the shutters, and all looked out on the Plaza except David, who woke up, and taking things in, appeared to say to himself, "They're doing something else," and went to sleep again.

The Plaza was a boiling mess, but the military were enjoying themselves in good order. They were collected on the steps of La Libertad below, about five hundred of them. They seemed to be leading the cheering. The hotel across the Plaza was lit up and the windows full of heads.

Then a hush fell everywhere, and the faces were turned toward the portico, with the six great pillars and lamps on each, that formed the centre of the Plaza front of La Libertad. Two men stood on the top step, one in a sombrero, and the other in black coat and tall hat. The tall hat, by his gestures, was addressing the crowd, but we couldn't hear him.

"The President and Alvarez," says Madame Bill, very calm. "They compromise. My Georgio will be hot and dull."

The crowd cried "Vivo" everything except Bill. They wanted him "al fuego" just the same, which, as you might say, means something like: "Oh, take him away. Put him somewhere and boil him!" They seemed distressed with him that way, and I took it Madame Bill was right that he'd been too lively with his military, and it was up with him. A band began to play by the hotel.

"My wife is ever right," says Bill, and began feeling toward the table for the iced wine. "Carambos! It is not with Madame Bill to be discouraged. No! Bueno! All right, my wife. What did you say?"

Madame Bill said we'd leave him there, which we did, after closing the shutters. We left him drinking iced wine, eating mangoes, blowing smoke, and looking like a porpoise in respect to complexion, but shorter and fatter than a porpoise, and remarkable youthful.

It came on the Monday following and my cargo was shipped. There was a platform put up on the Plaza, and I heard Flannagan making a speech there, in which the feeling was eloquent, and the languages as they came along. The tin-type man, under the platform, was taking tin-types to make a man remember how he was depraved. David's spots were running with the heat, but he scratched them and made no trouble. The Japanese sat on their heels and smiled.

"For a thousand years," says Flannagan, "by the imerald seas of the Orient, have the ancesthors of me frinds on me right developed the soopleness of limb an' the art that is becalled by the Mahatmas an' thim Boodhists 'the art of the symbolical attichude,' as discovered and practised in the Injian Ocean's coral isles, which by the same they do expriss their feelin's till ye get a mysthical pain in your stomick wid lookin' at 'em. 'Twas so done," he says, "by the imerald seas of the Orient."

That evening they came secretly aboard, Flannagan and the Company, and with them Bill and Madame Bill. We weighed anchor the next morning, and got away. The Bill family became an addition and a credit to the Flannagan and Imperial, as it turned out.



CHAPTER XIII.

FLANNAGAN AND STEVEY TODD—CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM RETURNS TO GREENOUGH— THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED.

The Flannagan and Imperial was the last cargo I carried, but I carried it near five years. It was what you might call a continuous cargo; the Annalee was in partnership with it; that is, Flannagan and I went into partnership together. Madame Bill's influence appeared to act expansive on Flannagan's ideas, and they expanded the Company. She was an uncommon woman, with a pushing mind, and exhibited as "The Princess Popocatapetl, Lineal Descendant of Montezuma and Queen of the Caribbeans." Flannagan engaged Bill to exhibit as "The Fat Boy," and he was very successful in this way, weighing two hundred, and in height four feet eight inches, though thirty to forty years old. His face was round and smooth as an apple, and he wore a little jacket and sailor hat, and carried a piece of gingerbread in general, when on exhibition; and in that way he looked as young as might be needed, and satisfactory to every one. Flannagan used to rent the advertising space on Bill's legs, for "Infants' Foods" and "Patent Medicines for Dyspepsia," which was popular and profitable. But I was saying Madame Bill was a handsome woman, and valuable, and Flannagan himself hadn't a better eye for giving the public sensations. She expanded his ideas. Yet Flannagan had a knack. He was grand at speech-making, and sudden and spectacular by nature.

He shipped with me then from Rosalia to the different ports I was billed for that voyage, picking up more additions to the Company, till it was a large company. I was free to admit he made good profits out of the seaport cities between South America and Charleston; so at Charleston, when he offered me a partnership, I felt agreeable, and took it, on this agreement; I to put in the use and management of the Annalee, and he to put in "The Flannagan and Imperial;" I to run the ship and he to run the show. The profits should be divided half-yearly, after paying expenses of ship and show.

We ran under this agreement several years, and exhibited all the way from Boston to Rio, according to the season, and sometimes went inland up navigable rivers, such as to Albany and Philadelphia. We summered northward and wintered southward, and did better than most shows on transportation expenses, besides having an open season through the year. Prosperity kept us together until after Bill died, which came from his being too ambitious, and proud of his line in the profession, and having his heart set on two hundred and fifty pounds. Stevey Todd, here, he got too interested in helping Bill along in his career, and fattening him up to a high standard. But Bill's digestion was never good. He died rather young.

Stevey Todd has cooked for me so long, that it's got to the point that other victuals than Stevey Todd's seem unfriendly strangers, likely to be hostile. I claim that, as a cook, Stevey's a bold and skilful one, and enterprising. But outside the galley he's a backward man and caution's his motto, and in argument he's, as you might say, a gradual man. His nature, as differing there from Flannagan's, might be seen in this way. For when Bill was dead, Flannagan and Stevey Todd each wanted to marry Madame Bill, and their notions of it were as different as sharks are different from mud-turtles, Flannagan's notion mainly resembling a shark's, as follows. He says:

"Popo," he says, pretty quick, "Bill's off. Here's to him, an' may his ghost weigh two hundred and fifty. I'm on," he says. "Whin shall it be?"

Then a madder woman than Madame Bill was seldom seen, for she threw Montezuma's crown at Flannagan, and chased him under the tent ropes with the gilt-headed and feather-tufted spear of the Queen of the Caribbeans, which ruined an eighteen-dollar crown and stuck Flannagan vicious in the shoulder-blade with the spear.

Whereas Stevey Todd bided a while, as a cautious man would do, until some decent time had gone by; and then he gets me, as a friend, in ambush inside the cabin window for precaution and testimony, and plants the scornful typist at a distance to take photographs that might be useful, and then he brings Madame Bill to the window.

"Now," he says to her, "supposing there was a man that we'll call middle-aged, and that might be a cook maybe by profession, for it wouldn't do no harm if we took it he had leanings that way, and if you said he was as good a one as ever stepped into a galley, I wouldn't go so far as to say so myself, nor yet deny it, for Bill had that opinion himself, and he was a man of good judgment on things that had to do with his line, though when his feelings moved him he was apt to put it warm, nor I ain't denying that when his digestion was otherwise, his remarks was sometimes contrary. Now, supposing there was a lady, whose merits I wouldn't nowise try to state, but if you was to say her talents was good, and her weight a hundred and forty, I wouldn't say you was wrong, which I've heard it put that as a Lineal Descendant she was worth climbing the volcano to see, which supposing she complimented it by borrowing that name, it's no harm if she did. Now, supposing those parties was talking of this thing and that, as anybody might do, and, say, they got to talking of the show business maybe, or, say, they happened to mention such a thing as matrimony, now," says Stevey Todd, "what would be your idea of that last as a subject of conversation between those parties?"

Madame Bill didn't answer the question, though it seemed to me put delicate, but she burst into melodious laughter, and ran away, and the tin-type man, whose natural expression was dislike of his fellow man, he looked disgusted more'n you'd believe, and went away too. Then Stevey Todd put his head through the window, and he says:

"Now, supposing a party acted in such or such a way to one party, which acted another way to another party, what would you say might happen to be her meaning?"

I gave my opinion candid, and truthful. I said, as to Madame Bill, I judged something or other pleased her, and by her behaviour to Flannagan it looked as if there was something then which she hadn't liked, though what it might be in either case was more than I could say, but speaking generally it looked hopeful for Stevey Todd, and I stated that same opinion. Stevey Todd went back to the galley, and it seemed to me the difference between his nature and Flannagan's was something to wonder at and admire, and when I saw Flannagan he seemed to have the same opinion with me, for he says:

"Powers an' fryin' pans! Thot cook!" he says. "Thot galley shlave! Thot boiled pertaty widout salt! Shall a barrel of flour put me in the soup? Tell me thot!"

At the time we were exhibiting in the larger towns about Long Island Sound, where it happened we'd never exhibited before, dropping into harbours and setting up the big tent on any bit of land convenient to the pier. We stayed a long or short time, according to patronage.

Whether it was that Flannagan was too busy, or angry at Madame Bill for her actions, and didn't know if he wanted a wife with a spear, or one that was reckless with her headgear, I couldn't have said at that time; but he surely said no more to Madame Bill that I knew of, whereas Stevey Todd kept arguing with her all over the ship, and mainly under the cabin window. Sometimes he'd trim his sails close in to the subject of matrimony, and sometimes he'd be sailing so far off the quarter that I couldn't but call out to him through the window and tell him, "Hard a lee there, Stevey! You'll never fetch it that tack;" when he'd shift his helm, feeling the edge of the breeze with as neat a piece of seamanship as a man could ask, and come up dead into the wind, his sails dropping back stiff on his yardarms, and the subject of matrimony speared on the end of his bowsprit; then Madame Bill would get up, and run away laughing. She seemed to enjoy those arguments, and I judged Stevey Todd would fetch port maybe in course of time. Meanwhile I sat smoking peaceful at my cabin window, and watched the shore slipping by, that I knew so well of old. By-and-by I saw Telford Point, and then the Musquoit River mouth by Adrian. Stevey Todd sat under the window putting fine edges on his arguments. And I says:

"Stevey," I says, "I was born and bred on this coast," but Stevey Todd was that taken up with his points of argument to Madame Bill that he didn't have any interest in my beginnings, and I went off to find Flannagan.

"Flannagan," I says, "I got a sentiment."

"Sintimint, is it!" he says. "Come off! Ye salted codfish! If I ain't got tin to your one, I'm another," he says.

It made me mad to hear him talk that way, and I set him down on the starboard anchor and I argued it. I told him of the little town of Greenough, and then I told him of Madge Pemberton, that afterwards was Madge McCulloch, and how the old shore village lay, its street and white houses and its church with the gilded cupola, till Flannagan got interested. And there we talked a long time.

"Why, ye are salted, Tom," he says, "but I'm not just sayin' ye're canned. We ain't due in New London till Thursday, an' it's on me moind we'll exhibit a bit in this town of Greenough."

That afternoon, then, we hauled into the harbour, by where the fishing boats lay, and moored the Annalee to the old stone pier. Flannagan saw the tent, platform, and benches put up, and in the early evening he went inland to the village and didn't come back for some hours.

It was a moonlight night, and the show people were still getting ready for the next day. I was at the deck-cabin window, smoking an evening pipe, looking at the tent that stood on the sandy piece of land beyond the pier. I could see the trees of the village, and the church spire against the sky, and I thought of the way I'd meant to come back to Greenough, when I left it to go "romping and roaming," as Sadler had said, and how now I was come home with grey hairs.

There was the hill between Newport Street and the harbour, and far along to the west I could see where Pemberton's stood, and see what might be its lights.

Pretty soon I heard David, the trick dog, barking, and I looked out, and saw Stevey Todd and Madame Bill coming along in the wake of David, and I judged that Stevey Todd was meaning to put in an odd moment or two arguing, and that Madame Bill was going to be joyous about it. David appeared to be feeling tolerable cheerful, as if saying to himself, "They're going to do something now, sure." They sat down by the window, and Madame Bill was speaking:

"Stevey Todd," she says, "I think it would not be such advantage, not at all. Because it is not good to my looks that I become two hundred pounds like my Bill, and if now I have a husband who cook so delicious, so perfect, as you, and who make me laugh between meals without rest and without pity, as you, which gives the appetite enormous, so that I have gained five pounds since I weigh before, and by this am alarmed, disconsolate, helas! what do I do? Am I elephants in this show? But how? I observe you do not ask that I marry you, but you say, 'It is a good time to talk here or there, about this or that —eh? Well, perhaps about matrimony." Haw! haw! ho! ho! But how so? If you do not say, 'Will you?' how can I say 'No'?"

"Taking that argument so stated," says Stevey Todd, "it might be called a tidy argument and no harm done, or you might say there was two arguments in it. Now, taking the first one, a man might make this point as bearing on it: for you take the tin-typist, who's a good eater and a well-fleshed man, and yet he's a gloomy man, as you might say, not putting it too strong; and on the other hand here's David, who's what you'd call a joking dog, and as an eater without an equal of his size, though an elderly dog, and yet he's a thin dog, as his business in the show makes needful for him. Which, I says, might be put up as an argument by such as wanted to use it, if any one was speaking contrary to cooks as being dangerous to parties in the show business, on account of interests not being along the line of weight, nor yet advertising space on legs which they're able to furnish. Now, taking the second argument, I wouldn't deny you might be right, and there's the point. For not to speak of giving no cause for crowns throwed around expensive, or spears stuck into parties disrespectful to memory of deceased, I says, here's the point. For if you can't say 'No,' till I say 'Will you?' it follows you can't do it till I say those words."

"I can too!" says Madame Bill.

"No, ye can't! No, ye can't!" says Stevey Todd.

Madame Bill began to laugh, and Flannagan, who was coming over the ship's side, he stopped at hearing her, and slid across the deck behind the companion. Then Madame Bill went below, ha-ha-ing melodious, and Flannagan called in a loud whisper over the roof:

"Hoi! Stevey Todd! Are ye done wid it?"

"She ain't said no," says Stevey Todd. "She ain't said no."

It came afternoon of the next day, and the show was opened, and the people came flocking in. Near by the tent door was Stevey Todd's "Cocoanut Cake, Hot Waffle and Fizz Table." On the platform the company sat in a half-circle, ready for Flannagan's opening speech to explain the qualities and talents of each. It was a show to be proud of, and in point of colour resembling solar spectrums, or peacocks' tails. Madame Bill had charge of costumes, and her tastes were what you might call exhilarated. Flannagan began:

"Ladies and gintlemen," he says. "The pleasure I take in inthroducin' 'The Flannagan an' Imparial Itinerant Exhibition,' to this intelligent aujunce, has niver been equalled in me mimory.

"I see before me," he says, "a ripresentative array of this grreat counthry's agricultural pursuits, to say nothin' of thim that fish. I see before me numerous handsome an' imposin' mathrons, to say nothin' of foine washed babies. I see before me many a rosy girrl a-chewin' cocoanut candy that ain't so swate as herself, an' many a boy wid his pockets full of paynuts an' his head full of divelthries.

"Is it the prisence of such an aujunce which gives me the pleasure unequalled in me mimory? No!

"Ye see before ye 'The Flannagan an' Imparial Itinerant Exhibition,'" he says. "Yonder is the three Japanese tumblers from the private company of the Meekado, trained to expriss by motion an' mysthical attichude, the eternal principles of poethry as understood by Orientals, Hinjoos, an' thim Chinaysers: forninst the same, the beaucheous Princess Popocatapetl, whose royal ancesthors was discovered by Columbus, an' buried by another cilibrated Dago, that ought t'have been ashamed of it; nixt her, the Hairy Man, wid a chin beard on the bridge of his nose an' the hair of his head growin' out of the shmall of his back; nixt, the cilibrated performin' dog, David, that you'll recognise by his shmilin' looks an' polkadot complexion; an' so on, the others in due order, that will soon be increasin' your admiration for the marvels of creation, an' servin' as texts, I doubt not, for the future discoorses of me frind, the venerable clergyman of this parish, that sits in the front row—May Hiven bless him!—all mimbers of the Flannagan an' Imparial, includin', aye, even down to the poor wake-minded man that sells hot waffles at the door, which if ye tell him, afther this performance, that his waffles is the same kind of waffles that a shoemaker pegs on for the sole of a shoe, it's me private opinion he'll be in no timper to arguy the point.

"Is it pride in this grreat show that gives me the pleasure on this occasion unequalled in me mimory? No!

"What is it, ladies and gintlemen? What is it?

"Gintlemen and ladies," he says, "'tis no other than the approach of the public ciremonial of the rite of mathrimony between mesilf, Michael Flannagan, an' a party that has no notion what I'm talkin' about, but is further named in this docyment, which if your riverence will now shtep up on the platform, he will find to be signed and sealed by the honourable town clerk of this pasthoral an' marine community. Ladies an' gintlemen, was ye iver invited before to the weddin' of a man of me impressive looks an' oratorical gifts, that first published his own banns, an' thin proposed, in your intelligent an' sympathetic prisence, to a lady of exalted ancesthry an' pre-eminent fame? Ye was not? Ye have now that unparallelled experience. For, as ye see by this license an' authority, this lady, the Lineal Descendant of Mexican Emperors, is known an' admired in private life as Madame Anatolia Bill.'"

With that he stepped back, and offered his hand, and said something to Madame Bill that was lost in the cheering of the audience. Madame Bill near fell off her chair with surprise, and began ha-ha-ing melodious. What with the roaring and clapping of the crowd, Flannagan and Madame Bill were up in front of the minister before Stevey Todd could be heard from the door, crying, "She ain't said no, Flannagan! She ain't said no! It ain't right!"

"Will somebody near the door," says Flannagan, "kindly take the hot-waffle-man an' dhrop a hot waffle down the back of his neck, to disthract his attintion while the ciremonies proceed?" Stevey Todd ran out of the door. But the people of Greenough was happy in front, and the show was hilarious behind. David turned handsprings till he sweated his spots into streaks.

But I've always had my doubts what may have been previous in Madame Bill's mind as regards intentions to Flannagan and Stevey Todd. Which is not saying but Flannagan's ambush was what you'd call a good ambush, as arranged by one that knew Madame Bill well, and knew her to be a show-woman by nature and gifts, that would never have the heart to spoil a fine act in the middle of it, when it was coming on well. The facts are no more than that she did nothing to spoil the act. She let it go through. Her statement was she hadn't made up her mind before. Stevey Todd's opinion was that she'd have taken himself, barring Flannagan's laying that stratagem, desperate and unrighteous. On the other hand, Flannagan thought it was predestined on account of his natural gifts. As for me, I had my doubts.

But Stevey Todd wouldn't stay with the show after that. We went on east, and left him here, boarding at Pemberton's. He said he liked Pemberton's and would stay there a bit. I says, "There's good points in a quiet life, Stevey;" and Stevey Todd says, showing what was on his mind:

"Aye, but Abe Dalrimple, he argues matrimony ain't quiet, and I don't go so far as to dispute he may be right, and that's a point to be allowed, for she throwed Montezuma's crown, not to speak of spears."

"Didn't neither," says Abe Dalrimple. "It was kettles. It wa'n't none of them things," he says, alluding at Mrs. Dalrimple.

But as to Madame Bill, she was tropical, but not balmy, and matrimony that wasn't balmy wouldn't have been good for Stevey Todd.

"But," says Stevey Todd, "as to her leanings to me and intentions pursuant," he says, "I'd argue it, as shown by actions previous."

It was Pemberton told me Madge McCulloch was dead. She died ten years back, about the time I was leaving the Pacific. He told me she left a daughter grown up since, and that Andrew McCulloch was an irritated man by nature.

I went on with the show, but I kept thinking of a quiet life, and about Greenough and Pemberton's, and about things that were long gone by. And then, eating other victuals than Stevey Todd cooked was come to seem to me like taking liberties with strangers. Then I kept wondering if I hadn't had enough going up and down the seas. I says:

"What's the use of it? A man had best get cured of his restlessness before he comes to lie still for aye, and that's the truth," I says.

At the end of October I sold out the Annalee. Flannagan took his show inland, and I came back, thinking to sit down at Pemberton's and get over being restless.



CHAPTER XIV.

CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM VISITS ADRIAN. ANDREW AND MADGE MCCULLOCH AND BILLY CORLISS. CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM'S NARRATIVE ENDS.

One day I left Pemberton's and took the road to Adrian. It was an afternoon in November. The church in Adrian stands on the edge of the graveyard, in the middle of the village, and there I went about looking for the McCulloch lot, and found it, and there was Madge's stone. It's a flat grey stone. There's many more like it, set along on rows. It seemed a neighbourly sort of place to rest in, if a man chose, after a roaming life. I stood there till the shadow came along across the churchyard from the church steeple. Then it grew dusk, and it seemed like now and then I heard a bell tolling. Aye, it was like a bell tolling. It seemed to me I could hear it. But there was no bell.

Then I came out and went to look for Andrew McCulloch's house. It stands north of the Green, looking across the churchyard. I knocked at the door, then I backed off the step, when it opened, thinking there must be a mistake about the date, and maybe inscriptions on gravestones was exaggerated; there was a girl in the doorway that looked and acted like Madge Pemberton complete. Moreover an old seaman falling off the doorstep didn't seem to upset her balmy calmness. She says:

"What is it?"

"It's Tom Buckingham come home," I says. "But I guess you're the next generation," and I asked for Andrew McCulloch.

He's a red-faced man with short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the likelihood. I sat a while talking with him, and watching Madge McCulloch, his daughter, lay the tea table. I thought how I'd give something to get her to lay the tea table for me as a habit, and I didn't see how that was likely to come about.

Andrew McCulloch appeared to think most people in Adrian would be more to his mind if buried with epitaphs describing them accurate.

It was eight o'clock when I came out and started for Pemberton's. I came past McCulloch's fence, and heard some one speak near by, and there was a man sitting on the top rail near the corner. It was considerable dark.

"Been in to see King Solomon?" he says.

"What's that?" I says.

"Major General McCulloch," he says. "Why, I believe you stayed to tea! Why, I haven't fetched that in three months!"

"Why not?"

"Oh," he says, "why, you see, the venerable ecclesiastic he's afraid I'd want to come to breakfast too. He thinks I am a grasshopper and a burden."

I thought it looked like a promising conversation, and climbed on the fence beside him, and took a look at him in the starlight.

He said his name was "Billy Corliss," and explained why he sat on the fence. He said it was on account of Andrew McCulloch. He said he and Madge McCulloch were agreed, but Andrew McCulloch wasn't agreeable. That was partly because Andrew wanted Madge to stay where she was, partly because Corliss had no assets or prospects, and partly because Andrew had an unreasonable low opinion of him, as a roaming and unsettled sort. He spoke of Andrew by various and soaring names, implying a high opinion of him, and especially in speaking of Andrew's warm temper, his respect got remarkable. He'd call him maybe, "St. Peter," in that connection, or maybe "Sitting Bull." For candour, and opening his mind, and asking the world for sympathy, I took him to be given that way. He said the town of Adrian was divided into two parties on the subject of him, and Madge, and Andrew McCulloch, so I took it Andrew's temper had had some reasonable exercise.

"St. Peter's got a good run of warm language," he says, "but his fence is chilly. He's got a toothache in his shoes, he has, that man."

"Why don't you elope?" I says.

"That's the trouble," he says. "When I ask Madge, 'Why not?' she says, 'Where to?' I'd been thinking I'd take a look around the world and see."

"Don't you do it," I says. "When you get around the other side, it's a long way back. It took me thirty years."

"You don't mean it!" he says. "Why, that wouldn't do."

"Assets take time," I says, "but you might get some prospects."

Then I fell to thinking how it could come about that Madge McCulloch might get into the habit of making tea for me, seeing I was too old to marry her, besides her being spoken for. Then I thought she might do it by keeping a hotel, and I says:

"Speaking of keeping hotels—"

"Who's speaking of it?"

"I am. I kept a hotel once."

"Seaside?" he says.

"No. Inland a bit."

"Summer hotel?"

"Aye, summer hotel. Always summer there."

"Why, she must have paid!"

"Aye, she paid. She was put up in New Bedford," I says, "and run in South America."

"You don't mean it!"

"It's a good business if tended to," I says. "But you don't tend to business, you don't. That's the trouble with you. That hotel fell into the river more'n twenty years ago, and it ain't to the point, but here Madge McCulloch's been jerking the window shade up and down like she had something on her mind."

"It's a signal," he says, and with that he dropped off and disappeared toward the back of the house. He left me on the fence.

I thought of the four men that had stood by me most in my time; now one was a miser and smuggler, and got himself hung; and one was a thief, and died of a split wishbone, on what he called "a throne;" and one was a fighter and gambler and poet, and he had a heavy fist, and he turned remorseful into a Burmese monk; and one was Stevey Todd. And Madge Pemberton thought at one time I was all right, but she was wrong there. And I thought how here was Andrew and another Madge, and here was Billy Corliss, and here was the world galloping along lively. I couldn't but admire the way it was so made as to keep going, and me thinking it had come pretty near to a standstill.

By-and-by, Corliss and Madge McCulloch came across the yard from the back of the house, and climbed on the fence, and Madge hooked her feet on the lower rail and talked cheerful. They spread out what was on their minds pretty confident. I never knew a couple so open-minded.

"Billy wants to run away," she says, "but he doesn't know where to yet, unless it's to be a summer hotel in South America that fell into a river. He thinks it was an interesting hotel," she says. "Do you think it would be nice? But how would we get there?"

"It's wrong side up now," I says; and Billy Corliss says, "Why, there's a chance for housekeeping ingenious! Let's be social! 'Sure Mike!' says the dowager duchess, wishing to be democratic. Why, look here!" he says. "What right's a chimney got to be haughty over a cellar?"

"Oh, keep still, Billy!" says Madge McCulloch, and he closed up, sudden but cheerful, as if he'd been hit by a kettle.

I said I wouldn't recommend the Helen Mar now, but I'd recommend hotel keeping as a good and sociable business.

"For," I says, "the seaman travels around the world seeking profit and entertainment, but the hotel keeper sits at home comfortable, and they come to him. I've been a hotel-keeper in South America" I says, "and might have been one in Greenough for the asking. I chose to be a seaman, and take a look around the world, being foolish and curious. Now, that was a mistake, for the man that bides in his place for the main of his life, has the best of it. He knows as much of the world as another; for if a man goes romping and roaming, and knows no neighbours and no family of his own, why, sure there's a deal of the world that he never knows. That's the moral of me," I says, "that's the moral of me. Now, as to hotel keeping," I says, "I liked that business as well as anything I ever did. I liked it well," I says, and I looked around both sides of me, and stopped, for no Madge and no Billy Corliss was sitting on the fence. Nothing there but lonesome sections of fence.

"Why," I says, "here's an open-minded couple. And it's an energetic couple. Where in the nation did it go to?"

Then I saw Andrew McCulloch coming down from the front door to the gate, but he turned to the right at the gate, and went stumping away up the street, and Madge and Billy Corliss got up from crouching beside the fence, and Madge says:

"Let's go in and get warm."

And I says to myself, "It's a couple that's got good sense, too," for Andrew's fence was chilly.

We went in the house and sat down by the stove.

"As to hotel keeping," I says, "I've talked that over with Pemberton, and Stevey Todd, who was the man that run the emigrant hotel with me, and Pemberton's agreeable, and Stevey Todd don't argue against it. I've been thinking of building on to Pemberton's, and making a big summer hotel. It stands in sight of the sea, and it's a likely spot. Now," I says, "hotel keeping is a combination of hospitality and profit. The secret of it is advertising and a peaceable mind to take things as they come. A good hotel keeper is a moderate man. He sees folks coming and going from day to day, and how many does he see as comfortable as himself? Hotel keeping is a good life, you can take my word."

Then there was a noise in the hall outside, but I went on:

"It's a good life," I says, and I looked around on both sides of me, and I saw no Madge McCulloch and no Billy Corliss. Nothing but empty chairs, and two open doors behind me.

I says, "That's a singular coincidence."

By the noise in the hall I judged Andrew McCulloch was come back unexpected, and I judged he might come in ambitious and inquiring, and not easy to take as he came. I started for the open doors, and got through one of them hasty, and shut it behind. It was soon enough to escape Andrew, and too soon to see if it was the right door. It was dark there except for the starlight through a window, showing crockery on shelves. The place was no more than a pantry.

I've been in different circumstances by sea and land, but I didn't recollect at that moment ever being planted in just those, and it seemed to me a couple, that could plant an experienced seaman that way must be ingenious as well as open-minded. I heard Andrew McCulloch talking to himself like the forerunnings of an earthquake, and I says:

"An experienced seaman might get out, but not that way. Experienced seamen don't put off on the windward side. But," I says, "it seems to me experience and ingenuity could keep a hotel."

With that I put up the window softly and climbed out and dropped to the ground. I went round the house looking for ingenious couples, and then across the yard, and there they sat on the same fence, with their feet hooked as previous, and they appeared to feel calm and candid.

"As to hotel keeping," I says, climbing on the fence, "it's a good life,—" and there I stopped.

I looked over at the old churchyard on the Green. It was dark and still over there. The rows of flat tombstones were grey, like planted ghosts. "Hic Jacet" means "here lies," as I'm told. Those folks that once got their "Hic jacets" over them wouldn't ever get up to argue the statement; but those that left good memories behind, I guessed they were glad of it. As for the living, if they were elderly, they'd best go to bed. With that I got down from the fence.

"Madge," I says, "do you know why I'm backing you?"

"Yes," she says, "I know."

How the nation did she know?

"Happen Billy Corliss may want to run away still" I says, "and maybe you'll be asking, 'Where to?' and maybe he'll remark, 'Pemberton's.' Then if you and he should drop into Pemberton's most any time, with a notion of connubiality, I guess likely he'd have prospects to modify Andrew McCulloch with afterward, 'Pemberton's seaside Hotel. Peaceful Patronage Welcome. No Earthquakes nor Revolutions Allowed.'"

Then I left them on the fence and came back to Greenough.



CHAPTER XV.

CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE.

When Captain Buckingham ended, it was late and dark, the afternoon long gone into evening. The storm still roared around Pemberton's, and we five sat anchored close to the chimney. It might have been a quarter of an hour went by, and it was past time when Pemberton or Stevey Todd should be getting the supper ready, when there came a sudden tumult in the hall without, and some one bounced in, the snow flying after him, and he cried, "I've eloped and I want a minister!" That was how he stated it: "I've eloped and I want a minister!"

Then Pemberton said:

"I dare say now you're right there," and Captain Buckingham said nothing, nor looked up.

I knew it must be Billy Corliss, though I didn't know him, nor did Uncle Abimelech, nor Stevey Todd. He might have blown down from Labrador, or eloped out of Nova Scotia.

Pemberton and Corliss went out together. Then Stevey Todd spoke up cautiously:

"When I look at it," he said, "when I asks myself: 'Is he right or is he not?' I don't hear no objections. And further," he said, leaning forward and speaking low, "it's my opinion there's a woman out there."

Uncle Abimelech lifted his eyes from the kettle that hung over the fire, and stared about and seemed to be alarmed.

"Where?" said Uncle Abimelech.

Stevey Todd pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. Uncle Abimelech followed the direction slowly along the dark ceiling, and seeing nothing alarming there, seemed relieved. He turned back to the fire and muttered:

"She throwed kettles, some."

Then Corliss came in again and after him Pemberton, and with them was a tall girl in layers of cloaks and veils, and layers of snow, which being taken off, she came out as balmy and calm as a tropic coast, and enough to make a man forget his old troubles and lay in new ones. Captain Buckingham only looked at her, and said nothing.

Corliss was a slim young man with a candid manner. For two that had run away to look for matrimony in the snow they both seemed remarkably calm. He looked us over, and inquired our names, and appeared to be satisfied with them, and to like the looks of us.

"Why, that's good," he said. "Now, Miss Madge McCulloch is Mr. Pemberton's granddaughter, as you likely know, and she's ambitious to be Mrs. Billy Corliss. That's a good idea, isn't it? But there are parental objections, hot but reasonable. Parent has no sort of an opinion of me, and wants her to run parental establishment. Both reasonable, aren't they?" he said in his candid way. Madge McCulloch was kneeling before the fire and warming her hands. She looked up and laughed.

"You'd better hurry, Billy, or the minister will be snowed in."

"Why, that's reasonable, too," he said, "I was only going to say that those reasons, as stated, were warm;" and he once more went out with Pemberton.

After a time she laughed again.

"If daddy should come here, what do you think would happen?" and she looked at Captain Buckingham, who looked at her and said nothing, his thin brown face as still as an Indian's.

Stevey Todd said cautiously:

"I'd almost think, Miss, in that case, you'd be in hot water."

"It's in the kettle," said Uncle Abimelech, and Madge McCulloch, "So it is! I wonder if there's tea."

Then she and Stevey Todd laid the table, and we sat watching her make tea, and saw no objections.

"Shall I tell you about it?" she said calmly, pouring tea.

"If so be it's agreeable, Miss," said Stevey Todd; and Uncle Abimelech said, "I takes no sugar in mine," but Captain Tom was silent.

She said she had run out of the back door before it was beginning to grow dusk, and climbed the fence and gotten into Corliss' sleigh, but she was afraid they were seen by neighbours; so that it appeared likely Andrew McCulloch would hear about their going. "He might come after by-and-by, and do something that would be very hot,—Wouldn't it?"

Stevey Todd said, "It might be as you say, Miss," and Uncle Abimelech, "It's better when it's hot," looking into his teacup as if disappointed, but Captain Tom said nothing.

"It was snowing and drifting," she went on, "and we kept falling into ditches, but at last we saw the light of the hotel by the roadside and were glad."

So Billy Corliss had come and bounced at the door, and said he wanted a minister, and quite right he was with respect to those circumstances and Madge McCulloch, as Stevey Todd hinted, though cautiously.

When Pemberton and Corliss came back with the minister, it was clear that Pemberton agreed with Stevey Todd on that point. It may be he was not in the habit of agreeing with Andrew McCulloch. Certainly he gave Madge McCulloch away in marriage to Billy Corliss. And she, saying that she wanted a maid-of-honour, chose Uncle Abimelech for that purpose, which seemed scarcely reasonable, but the minister married them and went his way. Then Stevey Todd could not get over thinking he would have been a better maid-of-honour than Uncle Abimelech, more suitable and more according to the talents of each, and he said this, though indirectly and warily; and Uncle Abimelech said that he recollected licking Stevey Todd thirty years back on the Hebe Maitland, "took him across his knee and whaled him good;" and Stevey Todd, though cautiously, seemed to hint that some one who might be Abe Dalrimple, couldn't do it again, and in other respects resembled a dry codfish. Billy Corliss stood up and said:

"Gentlemen, the elements are raging. In the town of Adrian the ear of imagination detects explosions. But Pemberton's is dedicated to peace and connubiality."

Then they retired with their connubiality, and paid us no more attention, and Pemberton, Captain Buckingham, Stevey Todd, Uncle Abimelech, and I sat by the fire.

Uncle Abimelech seemed to have something on his mind that he would like to get off, for his eyes wandered uneasily, and he muttered:

"Kettles."

"Throwed 'em, did she?" said Pemberton to encourage him, and Uncle Abimelech said:

"Some," and cast his eyes and jerked his thumb vaguely upward, toward the ceiling.

"If she throws 'em at him—Aye—" He struggled with the thought, bringing it slowly out of dim recesses to the light. "She ought to pour the bilin' off first. It ain't right."

Silence fell over us again. At last Captain Tom said:

"Supposing a man is loose-jointed in his mind, like Abe, or Billy Corliss a trifle, and gets took back of the ear with something hard, that steadies him, it's no great harm if it's warm."

"She ought to pour off the bilin'," said Uncle Abimelech uneasily.

After that we sat for a while, each taken with his own thoughts, until Pemberton was knocking out his pipe, like one approaching the idea of a night's rest, when there came a noise in the outer hall, and the wind blew snow under the crack below the inner door. Some one bounced into the room like a storm. He was a short, thickset man with white side whiskers, and looked like an infuriated Santa Claus, for he was covered with snow.

"Most miserable, infernal, impossible night ever made, Mr. Pemberton! Forty thousand devils—-Ah! Give me some of that, hot! Detestable night!"

"It is so, Andrew," said Pemberton, soothing and agreeable. "You're near right."

"As referring to weather," said Stevey Todd, "though not putting it so strong, you might—"

But the newcomer broke in, and beat the table with his fist.

"Weather! No! Not weather. Mr. Pemberton, I'll tell you what's the matter. Here's my daughter run away to be married with the coolest, freshest, limber-tongued young codfish that ever escaped salting. Not if I know it! I'll salt him! I'll pickle him! I will, if my name's McCulloch."

He puffed hard, and sat down. Stevey Todd looked at Andrew McCulloch, then he looked at the others and winked cautiously, and Pemberton winked back. But Captain Tom did not look up. Uncle Abimelech too kept his eyes on the fire. He seemed to be following his old train of thought, which Andrew McCulloch's coming had started again in his mind, for he began:

"Before I was married, her mother she used to throw kettles at me. They was kettles," he said bitterly, "with spouts and handles. Aye, afterward she did too, some."

Andrew McCulloch puffed and looked surprised and Pemberton said:

"Ran in the family?"

"Aye. Then she come across the bay in a rowboat, and I was diggin' clams, and she says. 'If you dasn't come to the house, what dast you do?' I see the minister down the beach, diggin' clams, an' he had eleven children, he had, diggin' clams, and she looked at him too, and I says, 'I das' say he'd rather'n dig clams.' We went fishin' afterward, and got eight barrel o' herring."

"You don't say!" says Andrew McCulloch, puffing and looked surprised.

Uncle Abimelech kept his eyes fixed on the kettle and wandered away in his mind. Then Captain Tom roused himself, and spoke thoughtfully.

"It was different with me," he said. "Her parents wanted another one. He was richer, but nowise so good-looking. I says to her, 'Cut and run!' but she wouldn't, as being undutiful. She took him. His name was Jones. He went bankrupt, and got paralysis, and is living still. Her parents died in different poorhouses."

Pemberton looked surprised at this too, and then thoughtful, and then he winked at Stevey Todd, who passed it back.

"I got my wife out of the back window of a boarding school, second story," said Pemberton. "She came down the blinds." And he wiped his face with his coat sleeve.

"Mine came through the cellar," said Stevey Todd. "She brought a pot of jam in her pocket, or else," he added cautiously, "or else it was pickles. It might've been pickles, but it runs in my mind it was jam."

But Pemberton's wife had been a widow first, as he once told me, and Captain Tom's and Stevey Todd's romances didn't run that way, by accounts. But as to Uncle Abimelech, it may be what he said was true.

They all fell silent again, except Andrew McCulloch, who whistled: "Whew, whew, whew!" and pulled his whiskers, now this one and that, and said:

"Bless my soul! You don't mean it!" and fidgeted in his chair. "I didn't suppose it was so usual, I didn't! God bless my soul!"

"It's their nature," said Captain Buckingham at length. "They're made that way."

"You don't mean it!"

"The best thing for 'em is hotel keeping."

"Eh!"

"Nothing like it, you can take my word. 'Pemberton's Hotel. Pemberton and Buckingham, Owners and Proprietors. B. Corliss, Manager. Peace, Propriety, and Patronage.' Aye, that's it. They get restless. If they elopes, let 'em keep a hotel. Nothing like it."

"Whew, whew!" whistled Andrew McCulloch. "But they've gone!" he says. "See here! How you going to catch 'em? How you going to set 'em to hotel keeping when they elope off your hands? Where've they gone? That's the point. Where've they gone?"

"Up," said Uncle Abimelech.

"Eh!"

"Connubilated," said Uncle Abimelech, pointing. "Gone up."

"Prayed over fifteen minutes," said Stevey Todd, "which I wouldn't so state without watching the clock."

"What!" cried Andrew McCulloch. "Do you mean to say, you aided and abetted, Mr. Pemberton—"

"Peace and connubiality was his last words," went on Stevey Todd, following his train of thought. "Peace and connubiality, he says, and he meant the same."

"Ain't the same!" said Uncle Abimelech.

"Do you mean to say," cried Andrew McCulloch—

"Don't throw nothin' till you pour off the bilin'," said Uncle Abimelech uneasily. "It ain't right."

Andrew McCulloch puffed, "Whew! whew! whew!" as if blowing off the steam of his boiling. Then he said:

"Give me some of that, hot!"

And we all fell silent again.

The kettle sang, the chimney coughed in its throat. One heard outside the whistle of the wind, the moan of the surf far off in the night, and the snow snapping against the windows.

The clock struck ten.

THE END