"Meanwhile the stupid old hippo, who usually wanted nothing more than his grub and his bath, lumbered around looking for further trouble. He found it; he interfered between the wild asses and the zebras, and soon the whole bunch, both sides, were bombarding him with their hind feet. He squealed and groaned and growled, but to no end.

"They backed up to him and thumped him with their hoofs, as many as could get near him. It was a beautiful exhibition of the law of the brotherhood of man and the brotherhood of beast. Those equine propagandists of the law of the survival of the fittest kicked that poor, peaceful old hippo into a condition of coma.

"At last he lay down, with his head between his paws, and gave it up; then the kickers ceased kicking him and resumed their kicking of each other.

"By this time the python and the boa had gathered in about three feet of each other; the wolves and hyenas—two against one, understand—had reduced their number by half, and the lion was still pretending to fight the rhino.

"He still found it best to dodge that upright tusk, while his claws and teeth couldn't even scratch the rhino's impervious hide.

"Then he got it from another quarter. The porcupines had climbed up, and one was nosing round the deck, attending to his own affairs—which seemed to be nothing more than an intention to find out where he was—when he got between these two. He suddenly balled himself up, turned round a couple of times, and then fired a volley of his quills.

"They went, straight and true, right into that open hole between the lion's forelegs. He stood on his hindfeet for a moment, bellowing and roaring, while he tried to brush them out; then he slunk forward again and hid behind the house. But we heard his occasional snarls of pain.

"Meanwhile the porcupine had opened fire on the rhino, but did him no harm; and rhino was too big-minded to notice him. He lumbered round, looking for a match with something, but not finding it; even the kickers got out of his way, and the poor old hippo wandered forward to commune with the lion.

"Not finding an antagonist worthy of his horn, the rhino began nosing the two mutual-minded snakes. He tossed them 'round, and they were helpless to resist—only the rough handling seemed to induce increased swallowing power. We could see their jaws working convulsively; and inch by inch, foot by foot, they rapidly disappeared from sight.

"The rhino soon got tired and tackled the wolves and hyenas—what was left of them. They had reduced their number to two of each kind; but this was too small to admit of two against one, so they were now dodging each other, snarling bravely enough, but not fighting.

"The rhino caught a hyena on his tusk, tossed him in air, caught him as he fell, sent him flying again, and then stamped his life out. This seemed to settle the fate of the other hyena, for immediately the two remaining wolves got at him. But rhino's next victim was a wolf, which he disposed of as quickly.

"This left two cowards to fight for the supremacy; but the fight was taken out of them. They slunk apart and did not meet again.

"Now, here was the condition of things when a new factor intruded upon the problem: the lion was nursing his hurts, forward of the house, out of sight; the hippo had gone to sleep from sheer weariness and disgust; the last wolf and hyena were prowling round, avoiding each other; the python and the boa had swallowed two-thirds of each other's length; the rhino was wandering round, looking for a scrap; the kicking zebras and wild asses had grown tired and called it a draw, and the porcupines, three or four of them, had finished their inspection of their environment and had snuggled down in various places to await developments.

"The new factor was a green sea that lifted aboard amidships and flooded the waist of the ship. Of course, the quick movers of the lot got forward or aft, out of the way of the water surging back and forth across the deck; but the poor porcupines were drowned before the water ran out the scuppers. And when it had gone out, we saw what we had not seen before—the small, poisonous cobras.

"They had come up, but had kept out of sight until that sea washed them round; then, as the water shallowed on the deck, they made for the masts or the rigging and began to climb. It's hard to drown a snake, you know.

"There were at least two dozen of the reptiles, and it looked bad for us fellows aloft. Did you ever see a snake climb a rope? He goes up in a sort of wriggling spiral, wrapped loosely round it, but shifting his different sections up for a fresh grip. The other fellows climbed to the topmast-crosstrees and looked down; but the snakes stopped at the eyes of the rigging, or the tops, and rested.

"Then came a second new factor in our problem: a sea came aboard from the other side and washed about; another with the next roll, and still another. The rolls were long and heavy, and I, who had once been on a sinking ship, sensed the reason.

"'We're sinking, captain,' I said. 'That main-topgallantmast going down that hatch has punched a hole or started a butt.'

"'Maybe you're right,' he exclaimed. 'What can we do?'

"That was too hard a question at the time for a skipper to ask of a foremast-hand, so I said nothing, but did a lot of thinking. The flywheel-pump was amidships at the main fife-rail. We could not go down to it without danger from the wounded lion, the rhino, and possibly the wolf, though, with these out of the way, we might dodge or kill the cobras and fight off the hyena.

"As it was, we were caught. I suggested to the skipper that he go down the mizzentopmast-backstay, dart into his cabin, and get his rifle. Then he could pot the brutes from the forward windows. But he declined and forbade me going. I had no business in his cabin.

"I saw that he had lost his nerve. Now, when a skipper loses his nerve, he loses his rights; so I didn't hesitate to sing out to the mate in the main-topmast-crosstrees to clear away downhaul-blocks, quarter-blocks, or anything handy and heavy, and try and drop them on the lion and the rhino, the two most dangerous of the bunch. He seemed to be much in the same condition as the skipper, for he answered and passed the word forward to the fellows on the fore.

"In a few minutes things began raining down onto the deck—blocks, bulls'-eyes, and sea-boots. The bombardment raised a commotion, though none of the brutes was hit.

"Yet the sick and sore lion responded to the extent of bounding aft and mounting the poop. Here he came within range of us fellows up the mizzen, and I had the disconnected mizzen-staysail halyard-block in my hand ready for him. He gained the space abaft the house near the wheel and stood still, lashing his tail and nosing the air as though he smelled us up aloft.

"He was only about forty feet down; and when young I had been a good ball-player. I leaned over and let that block go with all my strength. It wasn't the ordinary shell-block, but a solid carving of lignum-vitae; and it fetched that lion a smash on the head that must have cracked his skull, for he sank down, then got up and wabbled, rather than walked, forward along the alley to the poop-steps.

"There he blindly fell off the poop; and the rhino, whom he had dodged on the run aft, was ready for him. It wasn't a fight. The lion was dying, and the rhino simply hastened the job, goring him relentlessly until the bleeding carcass lay still.

"Then the rhino, flushed with victory, went for the nearest brute, a wild ass, and soon he had the whole of them—asses and zebras—kicking the stomach out of him, or into him, perhaps, by the way he bellowed.

"It was funny, in a way, for they were all too quick for him; they could dodge that plunging beast with his murderous horn, and turn for a kick before he got by.

"But there was nothing funny about that water in the hold, nor in the prospective job of stopping the leak, pumping her out, and bending new canvas, in case we could get that rhinoceros out of the way. He was the only thing we feared now, for the rest were not really dangerous unless you got too close.

"We knew the wolf and the hyena would run from a man with a handspike, and the zebras and asses would run from a man without one. To make matters worse, darkness closed down. So, lashing ourselves to the crosstrees, we slept more or less sweetly until daylight.

"When we took stock of things, we knew that all was up with that bark. Her plank-sheer amidships was awash, and the water rolling in a green body from starboard to port and back again.

"The crazy elephant stood under the hatch, squealing and trumpeting in fright. He must have smashed the monkeys' cages during the night, for the rigging was dotted with chimpanzees, orangs, and the small fellows. The hyena and the wolf had gained the forecastle-deck, and stood, side by side, looking aft, with no thought of quarreling in this emergency.

"The sleepy old hippo was lumbering round in the flooded waist as though he enjoyed his salt-water bath; and the rhino was forward on the main deck, looking at the water as it washed up to him and receded. Amidships was a thick, black ring of about two feet diameter, sliding round in the wash.

"It was the two big snakes, each a sheath for the other, but each dead as a door-nail; either they had died from the strain, or the water had drowned them. The zebras and wild asses were also forward, but mostly out of sight behind the house. Not a cobra could be seen, however, and the skipper displayed sudden energy.

"'Something must be done,' he said vehemently. 'You men stay here while I make the attempt to get to the top of the forward house. If I can make it without trouble, the rest of you can follow. We must clear away the boats, for there is no saving this ship.'

"So saying, he gripped the mizzen-stay and slid down it to where it ended at a band on the main-mast just above the fife-rail. From there he dropped to the deck and made a bee-line for the starboard side of the house to avoid the rhino, who was forward on the port side.

"But the rhino saw him coming down the stay and lumbered aft into the washing-water to investigate, rounding the port corner of the house just as the skipper reached the starboard. From there he charged; and you cannot imagine the velocity of a rhino's charge. It is like that of a locomotive. The skipper scrambled on top of a water-tank alongside the house just in time to escape that tusk, and from there he got to the top, where he sat down to recover himself.

"He was a badly scared man. The rhino grunted and snorted at him and tried to climb the tank, but failed to get a grip on the smooth-painted staves. So he stood guard abaft the house, looking up.

"There were two other roads to the deck—the port and starboard mizzen rigging, I still had in mind that rifle of the skipper's, and as the second mate, a young fellow just out of the forecastle, made no objections, I slid down the after-swifter of the port rigging and got into the cabin before the skipper or the rhino noticed me.

"I found the cabin flooded, and waded waist-deep to the skipper's room, where I found his Winchester hanging to the bulkhead. Making sure that the magazine was full, I scrambled to the forward companion, where there was a window that gave me a good view of the deck. The skipper was calling the men on the main to come down by the maintopmast stay to the top of the house, and to those on the fore to come down by the backstays to the rail, and then to jump to the water-tanks; and the men were coming down, one by one, even though the rigging swarmed with big monkeys and the corners and hollow spots possibly held poisonous snakes.

"A yell from the mizzen called my attention to one of these, a big fellow of four feet in length whom the skipper had frightened out of his hiding-place on the fife-rail, and he was climbing the mizzen-stay. He rested about six feet up, but completely blocked this path to the deck for the men in the mizzen. However, when I had cleared the deck of the rhino, they could come down my way. I cocked the gun, took careful aim at the big brute's left eye, and let go.

"I missed the eye, but attracted his attention, and he came charging aft through the water. I ducked, knowing that he couldn't climb the flimsy steps to the short length of poop forward of the house without breaking them down with his weight, and, after a moment, peeped out.

"He was just turning to go forward, and, as I knew that a Winchester bullet wouldn't puncture his hide, I saved my shots.

"Meanwhile, all hands but the boys in the mizzen-crosstrees had gained the forward house and were clearing away the two boats, lashed in their chocks, right side up—one to starboard, the other to port. I could see the work going on—saw them smash the skylight over the galley for a man to go down to pass up grub, and saw a man dive down.

"Then I saw another fellow take a beaker from the starboard boat, and, watching his chance when the rhino wasn't looking, drop over and into the starboard forecastle, to fill it from the water-barrel. He passed it up and also the bread-barge. There was some of the cabin stores in the galley, and these they secured easily through the skylight; but I noticed they packed it all in the starboard-boat, though they had cleared away the other.

"I knew I had just fifteen shots in that rifle; but I hadn't looked for further ammunition, and I thought that fifteen would finish the rhino, somehow; so, when the boys above shinned down and joined me, I neglected to ask them to hunt for more, but just peppered away when I thought I saw a good chance, but never hit the one vulnerable spot.

"The second mate wanted to try it, but I wouldn't resign the gun to him. In extreme emergencies, you know, an officer loses his superiority; he becomes a mere man, like the rest. Every time I tickled the brute with a bullet he would come charging aft, but never stopped still when within easy range. Not seeing anyone, he would wheel and go back to his duty at the forward house. To tell the truth, I was a little nervous lest he should be able to mount the poop and get at us.

"The old hippo was happy, swimming and snorting round in the water; and the rhino seemed to have forgotten his grudge, busying himself with his real enemies, human beings. There were about sixteen of these on the forward house, and I noticed that they had ceased the work of stocking the boat, and judged that there was no more grub forward.

"'I say, cap'n,' I called out, 'put some grub and water in the other boat. One boat won't hold us all.'

"'You go to the dickens!' he answered. 'What are you doing in my cabin? Didn't I tell you to keep out of it?'

"'Go yourself!' I yelled. Then I said to the men with me: 'Raid the steward's storeroom and fill your pockets with what you can find. Pack the inside of your shirts.'

"They could find nothing eatable except soda biscuits, and they cleaned out the locker. But there was no water aft.

"Meanwhile the bark was getting lower and lower, and the rhino, to escape the wash, had drifted farther forward. I had wasted twelve bullets by this time, and had but three left. It was best, of course, to kill him before the bark foundered, so that we could get into that port boat and induce the rest to pass over some grub and water. But this was not to be.

"I killed him, all right, but only after we had rushed out at the death flurry of the old craft, floundered forward, seizing handspikes from the racks on the way, and gained the vicinity of the house. Here that murder-minded rhino met us, and I jammed the muzzle into one eye.

"The bullet touched some part of his brain, for he sagged down and grew quiet. And while we mounted the house, the asses and zebras were hee-hawing, the wolf was barking, and the mad elephant, waving his trunk up through the hatch, was trumpeting like a high-pressure exhaust.

"We were just in time. The others had got into the starboard boat, and we bundled into the port. There was no time for a decent launching over the rail, but there was time to sing out for grub and water. The skipper and mate consigned us to the infernal regions.

"'There's not enough to go round,' he declared. 'Take your chance. It's better that part should starve than all.'

"I still had the gun, and had there been time I could have coerced them; but there was no time. In a minute the water had reached the top of the house.

"Then, as the boats floated in the creamy turmoil, we pushed with the oars, and, though half swamped, managed to clear the fore-braces as they went under. There was a mighty roaring of water, and a mighty suction, but the two boats floated, though half full.

"Then we saw that blooming old hippo rise out of the depths and head for us. We shipped the oars and pulled like mad, but we'd gone a quarter of a mile through that heavy sea before we dropped him.

"We couldn't have helped him; he'd have swamped us in a jiffy if he'd got his nose and forepaws over the gunwale. We chewed dry soda biscuits for three days, and were then picked up."

"But the others, Sam?" I asked. "Were they picked up?"

"No," answered Sam with a perceptible quaver in his voice. "They were not. The wolf, the zebras, and the asses could swim, and so could the monkeys, and snakes, after a fashion.

"I don't know what trouble they may or may not have had with these. What I did see, though, as I pulled stroke oar in the race with the hippo, was the big head of the elephant showing occasionally as we rode over the crest of a wave.

"He was waving his trunk in the air, and making for the other boat. They were pulling as hard as we were, but to less avail. They were overladen with men and grub. Each lift of a sea showed them nearer together.

"Then we sank into a hollow.

"When we came up I saw nothing but that waving trunk."



THE FINISHING TOUCH

He was born with a nature as simple and primitive as the physical conditions surrounding him, and endowed with a body so frail and delicate that he barely survived these conditions—which were of frost, and snow, and ice, with winter hurricanes straight from Greenland and summer fogs fed by the Gulf Stream to breed pneumonia and kindred diseases into stronger lungs than his.

But he survived to reach the age of eighteen, a tall, flat-chested, weak-witted butt of the local school, who, while able to struggle along with the ordinary studies at the foot of the class, was yet so poorly endowed with the mathematical sense that he could only master the first four rules of arithmetic. Fractions and decimals were unsolvable mysteries to him. His name was Quinbey—first name John, later Jack.

He was of American birth, the only son of a fisherman, who had taken his smack to an isolated village on the Nova Scotian coast. Here the fisherman did well, and before the boy was half grown owned the finest cottage in the village—which he bought cheap because it was perched on the crest of the hill, exposed to every storm that blew, a nest that none but a sailor could live in. With increasing prosperity he installed a big base-burner, good for the anaemic boy, but bad for himself.

The boy rid himself of coughs and colds; but the father, changing from the chill and the wet of fishing to the warmth and ease of home life, contracted pneumonia and died, leaving the boy in possession of the house and the smack, but not enough ready money to last for a month.

Young Quinbey closed up the house, took in a partner with money, and went fishing for a season, at the end of which the partner—a shrewd business man—owned the smack.

The boy acquired a wonderful increase of health and strength, and a consuming love for a pretty girl of the village, a trader's daughter named Minnie, who repulsed him firmly and emphatically because of his poverty—for the house and base-burner were not desirable assets—and because of his weak mental and physical equipment.

But there is a school for weak mentality and physique—the Seven Seas. And to this school went John Quinbey, first, however, putting in one season on the Georges Bank, where, in a lucky craft, he made money. Richer than ever before in his life, he returned home, to try again for the heart and hand of Minnie, but found her married to the minister, a man as weak, flat-chested, and anaemic as he himself had been.

He reasoned crudely. He did not meet Minnie, but took stock and measure of the minister, a gentleman named Simpson; then, feeling his own expanding chest and enlarging muscles, decided that Minnie would soon be a widow, and he a strong man with money; for he could work, and, having no vices, could save. So, for love of Minnie, he went back to sea, resolved to become a captain, resolved to save every cent he earned, and resolved to balk at no hardship that would lead him to success.

At Boston, he shipped before the mast as able seaman in a big deep-water ship. He was not an able seaman, nor did he become one on this voyage; it required several; but each one marked a steady advance in muscular strength, mental activity, and bank account; and, at the end of the fifth, he signed as boatswain—an able man who knew his work.

He was strong, broad-shouldered, and active; the slightly vacant look in his face that had come from his boyhood incapacity had changed to a frank stare that demanded consideration and respect. He seldom asked a question twice now—once was usually enough. He had a fist that could smash the panels of a door, a voice that he could not modulate to conversational tones—so used was he to sending it against the wind. He did not use tobacco, nor did he drink, for these things cost money, and he was thinking of Minnie, most precious of all things in the world.

At the end of each voyage he visited home, deposited the money he had brought, and waited in the street just long enough for a sight of Minnie, sweet and matronly, and for a sight of the minister, who was holding on to life with a remarkable tenacity. Then he would work his way to Boston, and sign again.

Soon he became a second mate, but never a first, nor a captain. His limitations in arithmetic prevented him from mastering navigation, a necessary acquirement in a first mate or a skipper, and he remained in the position he had reached, close to the sailors, but not of them; sharing their hardships and hard work—for with every reefing or furling match a second mate must go aloft with the men—standing watch with them, washing down decks with them, getting drenched to the skin as often as they, and differing from them only in increase of pay, cabin food, and a dryer bed to sleep in.

But the dryer bed preserved him from the rheumatism and pulmonary troubles that kill all sailors who do not drown, the better food preserved his now iron physique, and the increased pay went into the bank at home.

And so it continued until he was forty years old, when he went home to find Minnie a widow with a grown-up son—a fat, weak-chinned, pale-faced parody on manhood, who never had done a day's work in his life—a "mamma's boy," who was destined for the ministry.

The dark, seamy-faced man of storm and strength, of stress and strain, asked her again to be his wife. He asked her as he would have asked a sailor to sign articles; and the frightened little woman accepted in about the same spirit that would have influenced the sailor; but she made one condition—that he would educate her son for the ministry.

He agreed. Her husband had left her almost nothing, while Quinbey had about ten thousand dollars in the bank. From this he drew the expense of a four years' course at Andover; and, taking the youth to this famous theological college, arranged for his stay there in such a manner as would insure his completing the course—that is, he paid to the president for everything in advance, including, beside tuition and board, a moderate amount of spending money, and traveling expense home and back in vacation.

Then, with Sammy Simpson off his mind for four years at least, Quinbey returned, and married the woman he loved, feeling that he had now earned happiness and the right to remain on land—and smoke.

But he was not born for happiness, and did not recognize it when it came to him. He opened up his house on the hill, fired up the base-burner, and the two sat around it for a month trying to assimilate each other; but they could not. He knew nothing of women; she nothing of such men as him. He never smiled; and, when he joked, the joke was lost in the rumble and grumble of his voice. He caressed her with the gentleness of a grizzly fondling the hunter, and was nonplussed and set back when she cried out in pain.

Afraid of him at first, she soon realized that he knew no better, and responded with the weapons of woman. The man, inured to cold and pain and fatigue, yet was sensitive as a child when it came to his feelings. When she learned this, she kept his nerves quivering with quiet smiles, soft and sarcastic little speeches, and deadening silences, the meaning of which did not strike him at the time because of his transparent frankness and honesty.

He became afraid of her; and she, following up her advantage, wheedled him out of money for clothes, which, though he could not see the need of them, he cheerfully gave her. He loved her devotedly; and, though he never smiled, yet he never frowned, nor spoke a harsh word to her.

But she thought him harsh, and, justified by the thought, continued the marital loot until she grew brave enough to demand a gold watch for Sammy's birthday.

This was not in his program, and he told her so. Then followed a lecture on the duties and shortcomings of fathers, which lasted an hour, and left him shaking like a sick man, sprawled out in the big chair by the fire, and smoking like a high-pressure tug. But she had brought him around, and he had arisen to go out to the town's one jeweler, when she lost all she had won.

"Where are you going?" she asked sharply, as he put on his hat.

"Going out, Minnie," he said, in his jokeless voice, "to get some catnip for you."

He meant it good-humoredly; but it was taken otherwise. The jeweler had no gold watches; but, after a two hours' search, he dug up a wholesaler's catalogue, and, with this in his pocket, Quinbey returned to have Minnie select a watch from it; but she, her trunks, and her belongings were gone, while a note on the table apprised him that she would live with no man who called her a cat.

Troubled in mind, he followed her to the home of her parents, but he was not admitted—nor given a chance to show her the catalogue.

He slept on the problem, and in the morning resolved that a little absence would be good for her; so, as the season had opened, he packed his bag and went out on a fishing trip with friends of his, expecting to be back in a month. It was eight years later when he returned.

His adventures during those eight years can only be summarized. The fishing schooner was cut down by a big ship out of Halifax bound around the Horn; and Quinbey alone of her crew succeeded in springing to her martingale-stay as the smaller craft went under. No one else was saved, though the ship hove to and put out boats to search. Then the ship went on, and, as she met no inbound craft, Quinbey was forced to go with her.

But she did not round Cape Horn. A strong current threw her onto the Patagonian coast near Cape Virgins in a dead calm, and a sudden gale of wind and heavy sea ground her to pieces.

Only John Quinbey was a swimmer of sufficient strength to reach the beach, and here he lay, half dead, for a day, when he arose and struck inland, knowing that Punta Arenas was about a hundred and fifty miles along the coast of the Magellan Strait, and hoping to reach it.

He did not at once. The giant savages of this region caught him and made him one of them, preventing his escape. He was accustomed to hardship, and lived their life, tormented only by the thought that the money at home was deposited in his name, and that he had made no provision whereby the foolish little wife could draw from the bank.

But he still hoped to escape; and, as the tribe drifted inland, he was allowed more liberty. He never abused it, waiting for a final dash, always returning from a jaunt in reasonable time, and earning the confidence of his captors.

When over seven years had passed, he found, in the foothills of the Latorre Mountains, a large, heavy lump of dark metal, which he scraped with his knife and recognized as gold. It was fully the size of a draw bucket, but of what value he could not determine, except that it represented a fortune.

Strong man though he was, he could not carry it a hundred yards without resting, yet he carried it, not back to the tribe, but in a southwesterly direction, toward Punta Arenas. When forced to return, he hid it, taking careful bearings, and rejoined his masters. He waited a few days before the next trip, then moved it a few miles farther on.

In this way, exciting no suspicion, he shifted his find, step by step, until he had it on a well-defined trail that could lead nowhere but to the lonely port he was making for. Then, after a few days' rest, he packed a bundle of dried meat, took with him a native-made rope by which to drag the heavy nugget, and left the camp in the dark of night.

He reached his treasure by daylight, and started along the trail. He was not pursued, and ten days later, half starved, half mad, his shoulders bleeding from the chafe of the rope, and every bone in his body aching with the pain of fatigue, he dragged his burden onto a rickety wharf at Punta Arenas where an eastbound steamer was coaling. Her captain was an honest man. He took Quinbey on board, took him to Boston, and helped him turn the nugget into cash—fifty thousand dollars. Then Quinbey went home.

II

Quinbey had been right about the money in the bank. It was a tidy sum to retain on deposit, and the bank officials had heartlessly refused to pay any of it out to Mrs. Quinbey. She did not attempt to draw until her sulks left her, which occurred after the jeweler, intent upon the sale of a watch, had called upon her, and when the villagers had informed her that Quinbey had gone fishing. Then, disappointed, and somewhat worried over the future, she returned to the house on the hill, and, as it was still cold, lit up the big base-burner from the scanty stock of coal.

As the weeks grew into months and the fishing schooner did not return, she did not, like the rest of the villagers, give her husband up as lost—rather, she believed him alive, hoped for his return, and revised her opinion of him.

Soon—yet long before the grocer, the butcher, and the coal man had refused further credit—she realized that she loved the crude man she had known but a month, but who had loved her for twenty years; and, with tears streaming down her face, she prayed for his safety and return with more fervency than for the beloved son at Andover. This person wrote filial letters home, assuring her of protection and support when he returned; but they brought her small comfort, for the time was at hand when she must pay cash or go without the necessities of life.

Then Sammy came home on his first vacation, and, learning of the money in the bank, used his prestige and address to such advantage that he persuaded the local authorities to declare Quinbey legally dead—an easy matter on that coast of many wrecks.

Righteously indignant at the selfishness of the bank officials, he induced his mother to withdraw the money—shrunk to eight thousand dollars—from the bank, and allow him to take it to Boston, where, in a larger and safer bank, it would draw interest, and on which she could write checks in payment of her bills.

She consented, and Sammy departed with the money. But at Boston, before reaching the bank, he traversed the highways and the byways of the big city, imbibed certain and sundry liquids known to him only by name, loved his fellow men, and met fellow men of like state of mind, who, seeing a stranger, took him in.

He was stripped to empty pockets, spent a night in a cell, and only by the help of another clergyman was he shipped back to Andover with a letter to the president.

From here he wrote to his mother a garbled account of his adventures; and, as the president of the college mercifully forbore writing her the truth, the poor woman merely wept a little, prayed a little, and took up her burden.

Her parents were old and indigent, unable to more than house her for a few days at a time. As minister's wife, she had made no friends that would help her now in a way befitting her position. As for herself, with only a village education, she could not even teach, even though able to found a school.

But every mother and daughter, sister and grand-ma'am in the village was willing to give her work by the day for the mere pleasure of gloating; and at this work she went bravely.

The sneers and insults she received soon limited her journeyings from home, and she finally became the village wash-woman. The kitchen of the house was turned into a laundry, and the big base-burner allowed to grow cold; for she could not afford two fires.

In her laundry she worked, and in wintertime slept, and only on Saturdays was she seen on the street, when, with deepening lines in her face and a growing gray tinge to her hair, she struggled back and forth with her basket of clothes. But she earned her living, and looked forward hopefully to the return of her husband and assuredly to the return of her son, who would care for her.

Sammy only came home on the first vacation; the next three he spent at the homes of classmates. But at last the four years' course was ended, and, with nowhere else to go, he appeared, an ordained minister of the Gospel, but unattached.

The Reverend Samuel Simpson, as we must know him now, was twenty-four years old, as pale as ever, fatter than ever, with a chin that, because of the fat, seemed to recede still farther into his neck. His mother rejoiced over him, was proud of him, and believed that her troubles were now ended.

The villagers welcomed him, and the gray old pastor of the church once presided over by his father invited him to preach. He did so, delivering his one sermon; but the delivery and the sermon were not of a character that would inspire the congregation to empty the pulpit for him, so the young preacher went home to wait, as Quinbey had waited, for that pulpit to become vacant by death.

But he deplored the coldness of the house, and ordered coal on credit for the base-burner; also he deplored the hard labor of his mother, assured her that the necessity for it would soon end, but did nothing himself toward this end; for, in truth, there was nothing he could do but preach; and the gray old pastor seemed as tenacious of life as his own father had been.

The mother was content, however, except for the always present, but lessening, hope that her husband would return, and happy in the company of her educated and accomplished son. And so, as bravely as ever, she carried her burden through the streets, not only on Saturdays now, but on Wednesdays, because, with another mouth to feed, she must of needs wash more clothes.

And so the time went on, the Reverend Samuel Simpson growing seedier of raiment and fatter of body, enduring patiently the sneers and sarcasms of the indignant men of the village, while the mother's face grew thinner, her body weaker, and her once blond hair so gray that she looked ten years beyond her age. Then, four years after the son's return, the breaking point came. With the front of her garments dripping wet, she stood erect from her tub, looked at him where he sat near the kitchen fire—the base-burner had long been cold—and said:

"Sammy, you must go to work. I can do no more. It is killing me."

"But what can I do, mother dear?" he answered kindly.

"I do not know," she said weariedly. "Something, maybe, that will help. You are educated. You might write for the Boston papers, or the magazines. Or you might find a pulpit somewhere else, and send me some money once in a while."

"What, and leave you alone, mother? Not for the world would I desert you. You are my mother, and have cared for me. But I have thought of writing. I have been thinking for years of a literary career, only I have not been able to decide which branch of literature I am best fitted for."

"Well, Sammy," said the mother, as she bent over her tub, "I cannot decide for you; but something must be done."

"And I will do it, mother," he shouted loudly—so loudly that neither heard the opening of the front door, nor the sound of heavy footsteps coming toward the kitchen.

Then a big, dark-faced man, with hair as gray as her own, seized her around the waist, lifted her into his arms, and rained kisses on her face and lips while she screamed, then, as she recognized him, fainted away. Still holding her, he lifted his foot, exerted a slight effort of strength, and pushed the tubful of suds and clothes off its base, upsetting it squarely over the head of the Reverend Samuel Simpson, who nearly choked before getting himself clear.

"I've been hearing things about you down at the store," said Quinbey, "and I'll 'tend to your case directly."

Then he carried the limp little woman into the bedroom, stripped off her wet garments, and covered her warmly, while he kissed her back to consciousness.

"Oh, John," she said, when she could speak, "I knew you'd come back, but, oh, the long waiting! I've been punished, John, punished bitterly."

"There'll be no more of it, Minnie," he said. "I've come home rich—that is, rich for this town. Your work is ended. They told me at the store about your son loafing on you all these years while you took in washing. But how about the money in the bank? Couldn't you get it?"

"Oh, yes, John," she answered simply. "But Sammy took it to Boston to deposit, and was robbed of it."

"Um-hum-m-m," grunted Quinbey. "The savings of twenty years at sea!" Briefly she recounted Sammy's story of the wrong done him; but he made no comment beyond saying that he would look into it.

"He's got to go to work," he added grimly. "I don't know what he can do except preach, and perhaps he can't do that. I'll write to Andover and get his record. But how about the house? It's cold. Out of coal?"

"We've got very little, John. We couldn't afford two fires."

Quinbey left her, and found his stepson in his room, changing his wet clothing for dry.

"Take this money," he said, handing him a bill, "and go down to the coal dock. Order a ton up here at once."

"I will, sir," answered Sammy, with dignity, "when I've recovered somewhat from your extremely brutal treatment of me. I must be dry before I go out on this cold day."

But he went out, shirtless and coatless, at the end of Quinbey's arm; and, as it really was cold, he hurried on his errand, and returned. Before long the base-burner was roaring, and Quinbey was recounting his adventures to his happy-faced wife; while Sammy, in the kitchen, finished up the wash. Later on he delivered it; but no more washing of other folks' clothing was ever done in that house.

Quinbey wrote to Andover, and in a few days received a reply, which he read to his wife. It was a true account of Sammy's mishap in Boston; and, while Quinbey grinned—he could not smile—the mother wept silently, but asked no forgiveness for her wayward son. And when he rummaged a bureau, and brought forth an old jeweler's catalogue, asking her to choose a watch for Sammy, she felt that it was granted; but she did not yet know Quinbey.

Sammy wore the watch proudly; and for the rest of the cold weather the three sat about the base-burner, while the color came back to the little woman's face, and self-confidence to the shaken mind of Sammy. He actually began to like his rough stepfather; and only an outsider might have guessed, by the somber light in Quinbey's dark eyes when they rested upon him, that he did not like his stepson.

In the spring, as soon as the frost and snow were gone, Quinbey employed laborers to flatten the ground near his house to the extent of a hundred feet by ten; then, with stakes, he laid out the plan of a ship's deck. Next he contracted with spar makers, ship carpenters, and ship chandlers for material and labor; and before June three masts were erected, each with topmast, top-gallant, and royal mast, the standing rigging of which was set up to strong posts driven into the ground; then followed yards, canvas, and running gear, and soon a complete ship of small dimensions, but without a hull, adorned the crest of the hill.

As Quinbey explained to the questioning villagers, he would go to sea no more, but, having spent his life at sea, wanted a reminder—something to look at—a plaything.

Sammy was an interested spectator of the work, and Quinbey was kind to him, answering his questions, and even betraying some solicitude that he should understand the rig of a ship, the names of the ropes and sails, and the manner of handling them. He even went so far as to hire a couple of sailors to climb aloft, to loose and furl canvas, again and again, until Sammy understood.

Then the cold weather came on, and the base-burner was lit; and with the cold weather came the snow, and the icy sleet, and the hurricane gales from Greenland, striking the crest of that hill with a force that threatened to tear the dummy ship from the ground. And on particularly stormy nights, the villagers, snug in their warm beds, would waken for a moment at a sound louder than the gale—the sound of Quinbey's voice, which, in a calm, would carry a mile. And the voice would cry:

"All hands on deck to make sail. Out wi' you, you blasted lubber, and lay aloft. Up wi' you, and loose that mainsail, and, when you've got it loose, furl it. I'll show you how I earned that money. Up wi' you, 'fore I give you a rope's end."

And sometimes, in the lulls, they could hear Sammy's shrieks of pain, and the thwack of the rope's end.



THE ROCK

"I tell ye I saw it—wi' these eyes I saw it!"

"You think you seen it."

"Now I quit. Ye talk like every mate or skipper or Consul I've told this to. Just the same, I never git to the end o' the third day out, either way,—I'm in a six-day boat, ye know—but what the nervousness gits me, an' I'm no good for twelve hours, until I know we're past the spot."

"A rock, you say, in the middle o' the Atlantic? Why isn't it known and charted?"

"Because it's awash an' visible only at the fall o' the spring tides."

"How is it that no one else saw it but you?"

"I was the only man aloft. She was a hemp-rigged old ballyhoo out o' Quebec, an' gear was chafin' through all the time. I was passin' a new seizin' on the collar o' the foretopmast stay, when I squinted ahead through the fog, and there it was black an' shiny, an' murderous, about forty feet long, I should judge, and five feet or so out o' water, right dead under the bow. I could see the lift o' the water where the current pushed ag'in' it, and the swirl on t'other side, showin' it was no derelict, bottom up. No, it was a rock. 'Starboard!' I yells to the felly at the wheel. 'Starboard! Hard up!' Well, the skipper was below, an' the second mate, who had the deck, was mixin' paint under the fo'c'sle; so the wheel went up an' the old wagon payed off 'fore the wind. Then I lost it myself in the fog, an', as I couldn't point out anything to the skipper when he come up, I was called down an' damned for a fool. But I saw it, just the same, a big rock halfway across, and squarely between the lane routes!"

"How do you know that?"

"The skipper wasn't above givin' me the ship's position—forty-seven north; thirty-seven twenty west. That's between the lanes, an' I'll bet the Narconic is at the base o' that rock, to say nothin' o' the Pacific, the President, and t'others."

The wabbly little West Street horse car had reached the White Star dock by this and the two men stepped off. Steamship sailors, I knew. I had never seen them before, and have never seen them since; but their conversation produced a marked impression upon me, and I could not shake off a feeling—not of itself a remembrance, however—that I had heard something of the kind before. A submerged rock in mid-Atlantic. But it was incredible, and at last I put it from my mind as a "galley yarn."

But next morning it was back, in company with another galley yarn, one I barely remembered as having heard ten years before from an old Confederate man-o'-war'sman who had sailed with Semmes in the Alabama. The yarn pertained to the pursuit of a Northern merchant ship, and I give only the conclusion.

"We were gaining fast," he had said, "and hoped to bring her to before breakfast; for at daylight she was but three miles or so ahead, every sail drawing and every detail of spar, canvas, and hull showing clear in the morning light. And then, while we looked at her, she quickly settled under, not head first or stern first, as is usual, but on an even keel. They had no time to start a brace or a halyard; there was not time for her to answer to her wheel, if it had been shifted. She just went down as though something had hooked onto her keel and dragged her under. I never learned her name; but she must have been bound out of New York or Boston, for some French port in the Channel. We picked up one of her men, a Dago who couldn't tell her name, and only this much as to what happened. A ripping, crashing sound began forward and worked its way aft, ending at the stern, and we could only surmise that something—a submerged derelict, perhaps—had scraped the bottom out of her."

Memory is treacherous. In a few days I had forgotten this yarn with the other, and might never have recalled it had I not ascended to an upper floor in the lofty Flatiron Building, and looked out of a window at the loftier, but unfinished, tower of the Metropolitan Building across the park. It was a damp, dismal day of fog; but at my elevation I could see clear of it. I was above it, looking over an undulating sea of cloud bank from which the tower rose, massive and mighty, apparently floating on end, like an immense spar buoy at the turn of the tide. The rest of New York lay hidden beneath that silent gray ocean of fog.

Interesting as it was of itself, it was not the spectacle before me that gripped and held me, but an associated idea. As it was the first time I had ever seen a skyscraper lift itself above the clouds, so it naturally reminded me of the first time I had seen a mountaintop above the clouds. This was Krakatoa Island, a conical mountain rising from the sea in the Straits of Sunda, but since submerged in the Java earthquake.

With this mental picture before me, my thoughts touched upon other happenings of that boyhood voyage—the long, tedious beat through the straits against light head winds and a continuous head tide; the man-killing log windlass, round which we hove, and lightened, chain of an eight-inch link; the natives, with their welcome fruit in exchange for trinkets; and, lastly, the white-haired old pilot, who came forward to visit me one evening on anchor watch.

And then, like an inspired flash, there surged into my mind, not only the two galley yarns, but the story told by the pilot—a story of such burning power and horror that, though forgotten for a generation, it spelled itself out, word for word, as I stared into the fog from the window, exactly as the old man had told it.

He had heard from the skipper that I was from the same part of New York State as himself, and he had come forward for news of home. I could give him little. I knew no one that he knew; the small town that give him birth was not far from my own, but was only a name to me. Still he remained to talk. My up-State accent pleased him, he said, and reminded him of home, which he had not seen for forty years, and which he hardly hoped to see. He was sixty-five; two shocks had come, and the third would finish him.

"But I'm an old, experienced man, my boy," he said, "and I can give you my life's wisdom in three short rules, easy to remember and easy to follow. Stick to your skipper; leave liquor alone; and never, under any provocation, engage in mutiny. I broke every one of these, and here I've been, for half a lifetime, an exile, afraid to go home."

Not realizing how sorely I needed this wisdom, but keenly interested in mutiny, piracy, and such fancies of boyhood, I asked for light, and he gave it to me.

"I won't tell you the name of the ship," he said; "for you'll be a boy for some time to come, and you might talk about it. Nor will I give you the real names of the men engaged in that mutiny; for it is only forty years back, and there may be men alive yet who will be interested in the fate of the ship; though none, I expect, who would care much about her crew. But I'll tell you that her crew was the toughest gang I ever saw in a forecastle, and her skipper and mate the most inhuman brutes I ever saw aft. I was second mate, and, having won my berth in deep water, thought I was something of a bucko; but I found my masters there. The ship, I may as well say, was one of the packets that traded between New York and Liverpool, sometimes carrying passengers, but not always. We had none this trip.

"Before we were two days out from Sandy Hook I got a taste of the skipper's caliber. A man aloft—a big, red-headed fellow, gave me an insolent answer from the cro'-jack yard, and I called him down. When he reached the deck I was ready, and sent him reeling over the break of the poop with one smash on the jaw. He was satisfied to go aloft again and answer civilly when spoken to; but the skipper, who had watched the performance, was not. He called me over to the lee alley and faced me, his face fairly alive with rage and contempt.

"'Say, you—you—you Sunday school teacher! Is that the way you expect to handle men in these packets? Hey?'

"'I didn't hit him hard, sir,' I answered. 'I didn't hurt him. He's aloft now, at work.'

"'You didn't hurt him? No, I'll warrant you didn't! Why didn't you follow him up, watch for his knife, and take it away from him? 'Fraid of him? Hey? How do you expect to get along wi' this kind of a crew if you're content with one smash? Follow it up, man! Follow up your first blow with another, and another, till you're sure of him.'

"'Oh, I understand, Captain,' I said. 'Well, sir, I'm not worrying over any further trouble with that fellow. He's had enough.'

"'Make sure of it. You'll get no sympathy from me if he wins out.'

"It seems that the way of deep water was not the way of the packets. Somewhat impressed by this, I waited until eight bells, when the red-head came down—his job was merely the passing of new ribbons in place of old—and tackled him amidships, as he went forward.

"'Well,' I said. 'What do you think? The skipper says I didn't give you enough. Have you had enough, or do you want more?'

"He looked me squarely in the eyes, and his hand wandered toward his sheath knife in his belt. Mine wandered toward a pistol in my hip pocket.

"'I'm 'fore the mast, sir,' he said; 'and as a man 'fore the mast—yes, of course I've had enough. But I've been aft, and I may be aft again. Then, too, you may be 'fore the mast. Well, sir, I know the law.'

"'Forecastle lawyer, are you?' I asked derisively.

"'Yes, and more,' he exploded. 'Your superior in seamanship, you blanked whitewashed son of a ship owner!'

"My fist shot out; but he dodged it, and ran forward. I sent a belaying pin after him, and it hit him on the shoulder; but I doubt that it hurt him.

"In the next twenty-four hours four men came aft to the skipper for medical treatment from the medicine chest. Red-head had disabled them, in one way or another. One had a broken rib, the result of a punch; the skipper set it. Another had lost some teeth, and showed a few more that were loose. The skipper called upon the carpenter and his pliers to remove these, and sent the man forward. Another was carried aft, unconscious from a fist blow under the ear; and the skipper could only lay him out on a cabin transom to wait until he came to. The last was a case of asthma. Red-head had planted his fist plumb upon his throat, and the resultant inflammation threatened to strangle the man. But the skipper gave him a porous plaster for his chest, and a big cathartic pill by means of which the man came around. You know the Yankee skipper's formula: break your leg or lose your mother—take a pill.

"Well, the outcome of this was that the skipper held a conference of himself, the first mate, and myself. He stated the situation: a man forward was a menace to the tranquillity and the safety of the ship. Who would take him down?

"The first mate, with a look of patronizing pity at me, said to the captain, 'I'll do this, if nobody else can,' again the look of pity. 'I'll show him who's who, and what, and which.'

"'Well,' said the skipper, 'do so, or I'll be afraid of my officers.'

"I looked on while the mate called that troublesome malcontent down from aloft, where he had reported the paral seizing of the fore royal yard adrift without saying sir to Mr. Parker. I watched tranquilly, while the big, whiskered first mate, meeting the man as he dropped from the fore-rigging to the deck, received a threshing of fists and kicks that laid him out. We carried him aft, while Red-head retired to the forecastle. And, as we nursed the mate back to self-respect, we heard the profane vows of Red-head to clean us up, all of us.

"The skipper was furious. 'Have I got to go forrard and lick that fellow?' he said. 'Haven't I got a mate aft able to do his duty?'

"'Why not put him in irons, captain?' I asked. 'I knocked him off the poop once, and made him run next time. That seems to be enough as far as I'm concerned.'

"The skipper glared at me. 'And do you think,' he said sneeringly, 'that he ran because he was afraid of you? He's afraid of the irons and of the law. But that's just why we don't appeal to the irons and the law in these packets. It's a point of honor with us; and—yes, a matter of policy. We couldn't get crews after a time if we ironed and jailed 'em for each offense. No, that man must be properly licked, and if you can't do it, I'll have to do it myself.'

"'I can do it,' I answered quietly, and went forward.

"Mike—for that was the name he gave—was in my watch, and should have remained on deck. I found him in the empty starboard forecastle and called him out. He came, with a bad look in his eyes.

"'Put your knife on the water tank alongside my gun,' I said, 'and come aft where there's a clear space. We'll find out who runs this ship, you or the afterguard.'

"'That sounds fair,' he said; 'but how about the after clap? This is not my proposition.'

"'You mean darbies? There'll be none. The skipper wants you licked into shape, so you'll be useful. Come on.'

"We laid our weapons on the tank as we passed it, and faced each other abreast of the main hatch. The skipper looked on from the poop; the carpenter and cook came out of their shops to witness; and of course the watch, working aloft, stopped work to look down on us. The sea was smooth, the wind mild and fair, and the ship slid along with very little pitching or rolling; so it was a fair fight.

"Mike was a game fighter; but I was just a little heavier, just a little more skilled, and had just a little longer reach; so I soon had him going. I backed him completely round the hatch, and when I had him up to windward again, both his eyes were half closed and his nose broken and bleeding. So far I had not been struck, and I decided now to finish him. I put all my strength and the whole weight of my body into that smash, aiming for the point of his chin; but he saw it coming and attempted to duck. My closed fist brought up with a crash on the top of his big bullet head; for he was slow and groggy, and didn't duck low enough. However, it didn't hurt him, while the effect upon me was to break every small bone in my hand. It was like slugging a windlass bitt; for he leaned partly forward, and hardly budged under the blow.

"I could not repress a slight grunt of pain, and I simply had to stop, and rub my sore hand with the other. He saw and heard; then he came for me, and the rest of the fight was the other way. I fought as I could, one-handed, for I couldn't even guard with my right; but it was no use. He soon had me going, and the last I remember of the fight was a sickening smash under the ear. I don't remember hitting the deck; but when I came to my senses I was laid out in the weather scuppers, and the skipper was down off the poop, talking to Mike.

"'So,' the skipper was saying, 'you are Red Macklin, are you? I've heard of you.' I also had heard of him; for Red Macklin's fame was international. He was a bullying, murderous scoundrel who had perhaps killed more sailors than any other first mate on the western ocean, and who, about five years previous, had foolishly shot his captain. To kill a sailor is one thing, to shoot a skipper is another.

"'Yes, sir,' answered Mike respectfully. 'I've just finished my time for that gun play on Captain Blaine, and am not likely to repeat it. But my prospects were done for, and I had to ship 'fore the mast.'

"'You're a navigator, of course. Bring your dunnage into the first mate's room and take his place. Put his dunnage into the second mate's room, and make that duffer in the scuppers bundle his traps into the forecastle. I want no weaklings aft with me.'

"I scrambled to my feet at this; but—Well, there's no use detailing the argument that followed. I had to go forward peaceably or lose my prospects, like Red Macklin. And I had chosen the western ocean trade because of what I thought my fitness for it, and because in these short trips a man can the more quickly attract the notice of an owner. And I understood now why Macklin had run from me when he knew I had a gun; why he had licked his shipmates; and the reason of his studied insolence to Mr. Parker and myself. He knew the ways of the packets, and, while avoiding guns and irons, he sought to attract the skipper's attention to his prowess. I thought it somewhat severe that Mr. Parker, who had put up no kind of a fight, should be kept aft instead of me, until I reflected that Mr. Parker, with two whole fists, might still be good for any man on board except Macklin; while I, with only one, couldn't lick anybody. It was merely the survival of the fittest, and I was not fit.

"However, I drew comfort from the thought that when my hand got well I could win back my berth in the same manner, and to this end applied at once to the captain for bandages and splints from the medicine chest. He responded like a brother; but earned none of my gratitude, for I considered the medicine chest as furnished out of the Marine Hospital dues, which I had paid for years.

"I had noticed that my pistol and Macklin's knife had disappeared from the water tank, and supposed that he, as the first act in his new position, had confiscated them. So, as I had no use for a gun while 'fore the mast, I put the matter from my mind. I meant to sing small, until my hand was well.

"But what followed in that ship shows how little we can depend upon our good resolutions. I was still in the starboard watch, having taken Macklin's place forward, while he, as mate, had charge of the port watch, and Mr. Parker as second, became my watch officer. So far there had been no friction between Mr. Parker and myself; but now I found the man dead down on me, as though he blamed me for his licking and his change of office.

"One-handed, I was almost useless around decks, and could not steer except in the finest of weather; but this made no difference. I was hounded, cursed, and struck, not only by Parker, but by the skipper and Macklin. Some kind of armed neutrality must have sprung up between Macklin and Parker with regard to me; but I could only ascribe the skipper's new personal attitude to a distrust of my philosophy, which, while impelling me to make the best of matters, may have seemed to him the calm before the storm. I escaped Macklin's abuse, however, except in the dog watches, when all hands were on deck.

"They damned, deviled, and degraded me, keeping me all night on lookout, and rousing me from sleep at any time of the day watch below to climb aloft and loose a royal stop buntlines, or remove an Irish pennant—a loose rope yarn, you know—from any part of the rigging. My nerves went back on me from loss of sleep and futile anger and brooding; and once, when Macklin stripped off the sling I had rigged to hold my sore fist, and knocked me down for protesting, I saw red for a moment.

"Even so, nothing might have happened—had not the crew been included in the drill they were serving me. As an old hand in deep-water ships, I knew the absolute necessity of preserving discipline, and that this can be done only by occasionally knocking down a malcontent; but no such considerations demanded the wholesale clubbing with heavers and handspikes which the men got from the trio. Belaying pins were not used—they were too small and light for the gentlemen. Macklin had four deadly enemies when he went aft, and soon every man forward had a grievance, and voiced it in muttered profanity that held many a threat of death. I fancy that it was my presence in the forecastle that inspired all this ill treatment; no doubt I was regarded as a bad example, whose influence over the men must be offset by stern, repressive measures, but whom they would not remove because of their dislike of the law. For the law could reach a skipper or mate, as Macklin well knew.

"And the crew? Never was a wild, half-crazy herd of Liverpool Irishmen kept under control as that crowd was by a bad example. While aft I had treated them well, and they liked me for my scrap with Macklin; so, they listened while I counseled submission and avoidance of legal consequences—which last was the only point I made. They feared neither man, God, nor devil; but they did fear the law, and grew quiet when I talked of jail and the gallows. And this fear possibly accounted for my finding my pistol—a newly invented Colt revolver—lying in my bunk, one morning when I came in from a long night's lookout to get my breakfast.

"'Who put this here?' I demanded. 'Who had my gun?'

"No one would acknowledge the gift; but the state of mind behind it was given in the remark of one, 'Now ye've got it again, use it!'

"I tucked it under my mattress, resolved not to use it; but a little later put it into my trousers pocket. Fear of the law, forward and aft, began to yield to fear of death. Men openly sharpened their knives, and the afterguard ostentatiously showed their pistols. Their pistols were not so good as mine—they were double-barreled, muzzle-loading derringers, with only two shots.

"Things culminated on a moonlight night when we were charging along before a quartering whole sail breeze, making, I should judge, about eleven knots. I was on lookout, as usual, and keeping a good one I know, even though my eyes would half close at times from sheer need of sleep. It was about seven bells of the first watch and for some reason or other—perhaps the strong moonlight, which keeps some people awake—both the skipper and the first mate were on deck, and standing aft near the wheel, while Mr. Parker stood his watch on the poop forward of the after house. The men walked up and down between the fore and main rigging.

"A faint light showed up ahead and to leeward. I opened my eyes wide to make sure, and saw the faint shadowy outlines of hull and canvas—a ship close hauled across our bows. Then I sang out:

"'Light ho! Ship on the port tack two points off the starboard bow, sir!'

"'Light ho, is it?' bellowed the skipper. 'Put another man on lookout and send that scow bunker aft here, Mr. Parker!'

"A man came and relieved me. Wondering what was up now, I went aft, and the skipper and two mates met me at the break of the poop.

"'You get up there to the weather maintopsail yard arm, you —— blind-eyed farmer,' snarled the skipper, 'and keep your lookout there! D'ye hear? I saw that light ten minutes before you sang out.'

"'I reported it as soon as I saw it, sir,' I answered civilly.

"'None o' your lip! Get up there! And say—'

"I had answered and turned, in no way bothered by the change. I was to put in the rest of the night on the yard; but I could sit down and rest my bones.

"The skipper modified this. 'You keep your lookout there, and when the bell strikes, you call out, "All's well, weather maintopsail yard arm!" Then you flap your arms like wings, and crow like a rooster, and, you say, "God bless Captain Black, and Mr. Macklin, and Mr. Parker!" D'you hear?'

"'Yes, sir,' I said, and went aloft, boiling over with humiliation and rage. Of what use was life, I thought, and success at sea if it was to be bought at such a price in manhood and self-respect? The more I thought of it the stronger grew my resolve to end it in some way.

"It was the man at the wheel who showed me the way. He was a hot-tempered Irishman, a good seaman; but an indifferent helmsman. He had put the ship off a couple of points at the skipper's order, so as to pass under the stern of the ship ahead, and had some trouble in steadying to the new course. He came in for a round of abuse from the three, and at last was relieved, while the skipper gave him instructions similar to mine. He was to take the lee maintopsail yard, call out the bells when struck on deck, and conclude with the cock-crow and blessing on his lords and masters. I heard his furious curses as he reached the yard and slid out to leeward.

"We passed under the stern of the other ship, and I judged by her rig that she was beating her way west, possibly to New York or Boston. As she dropped out of sight astern, eight bells struck on deck. The lookout on the forecastle called out, 'Eight bells, t'gallant fo'cas'le! All's well!' in the peculiar singsong they have in that trade. I repeated my call from the weather yard arm; but I left out the crow and the prayer for blessings. The skipper and mates were looking up at me, and I saw that the first was about to sing out something; but Casey over to leeward interrupted.

"'Eight bells!' he called. 'See maintopsail yard arm. All's well, an' blankety blank yer black hearts and cowardly sools to damnation, Captain Black, Mister Macklin, an' Mister Parker!'

"'What's that—what?' stuttered the skipper. 'Weather yard arm there! What do you say?'

"'Go to hell!' I answered furiously.

"The skipper was near his cabin window, and I saw him reach within. Casey, over to leeward, filled the night with his imprecations. He called down, not blessings, but the tortures of the damned on his tormentors, and attracted the skipper's attention from me. When he stood up he held a short-barreled rifle, and with this he took careful aim at Casey. Then there was a spat of flame, a report, a puff of smoke floating over the house, and Casey, an oath stopped on his lips, sprawled downward into the sea.

"The watch had been called, and appeared in time to see this. I heard the explosive but muttered comments, and then a concerted snarl of hatred and rage as they rushed aft. But I paid no present attention to it. I had drawn my pistol, and was taking careful aim with my left hand at the captain, not so much determined by fear that I should be next as by a resolve, born of my emotions before the shooting, to bring things to an end.

"The skipper looked up at me and got the bullet, fairly in the face, I think, but I never was sure just where I hit him. He dropped, however, and lay still, while the two mates made a dive for the forward companion.

"Macklin got in; but not so Parker. The enraged men caught him just outside the door, slammed in his face by Macklin, and I had one glimpse of him as I scrambled in along the footrope. He was in the center of a circle of flourishing sheath knives, his voice of command nearly silenced by the vengeful shouts and oaths of the men, and when I looked again, as I dropped into the rigging, he was prone on his back, while the men were surging aft to enter the cabin by the after companion. But Macklin was ahead of them, and had bolted it as he had the other.

"I descended and mounted to the poop.

"'Ye'll have to take command, sir,' said a big, red-eyed fellow, named Finnegan. 'Yer the shipped sicond mate, an' it b'langs to ye.'

"'Is the skipper dead?' I asked.

"'Dead, as he ought to be, the murderer! Ye did well, sir!'

"'And Mr. Parker?' I glanced at the quiet, bleeding form at my feet.

"'He's in small pieces, hild togither be his bones.'

"'Not a pleasant prospect for me,' I said; 'but I'm in for it, same as all of us. We'll have to stand trial; for there's no escape. But there's a rat down in his hole that we'll have to catch. Look out, or he'll pot one of you through his window!'

"I spoke at random, yet none too soon. A pistol exploded in the mate's window, and a man went down, shot through the heart—the last one to join the rush over to starboard. But the rush continued to the capstan bar rack amidships, and, armed with these handy clubs, they came back to batter in the companion. Macklin did not fire again, and I was on the point of asking him out, to surrender on terms of amnesty and deposition, when a crashing, grinding jar shook the ship from bow to stern, and all three topgallant masts went out of her, snapping at the caps and falling forward. We had struck a rock in midocean.

"There was no more thought of Macklin. As we jumped to the main deck and ran forward like sheep, the jars and jolts were resumed, working aft, while the ship reeled far over to leeward. Chips was on deck, and I got him to sound the well. 'Four feet, and coming in fast!' he called, and the men rushed for the boats on the forward house, while I went aft to the wheel. I had never heard of a rock in this part of the Atlantic, and thought for a moment that we might have hit a submerged derelict; but soon put that thought away; nothing but solid and jagged rock could so tear into a ship's bottom.

"'No steerage way, sir,' said the man at the wheel. 'She's fallen off due south.'

"'Drop your wheel,' I said, 'and lend a hand with the boats.'

"I waited a few moments before following him, looking around at the prospect. Since I had gone aloft the wind had hauled to the north and died down to a gentle breeze, which barely ruffled the very slight ground swell. It was not the pressure of this wind that had driven the ship over the rock until she hung, pivoted, at a point near the stern; it was the ship's momentum. The wind, however, had swung her head to the south, and it was bringing down on us a cold, damp fog out of the north, which already had shut out the moon and rendered indistinct the forms of the men at work on the boats. I could see, however, that the bow had settled nearly under, and knew that it was only a question of moments when the ship would slide, head first, down the declivity. I ran forward, and just as I started a report rang out from the after companion and a bullet furrowed my hair. I had forgotten Macklin, but had moved just in time.

"Furious with anger and hatred, I halted in the alley and reached for my revolver; but it was gone from my pocket—jolted out, perhaps, as we jumped off the poop. So, I left Macklin to his own problem, and joined the men.

"There were two whaleboats, which we had carried upside down on the forward house, and when I got there I found that the men, sailors all from head to foot, had turned them over, fitted in the bottom plugs, and bent long painters that led forward outside the rigging. There was no time to rig hoisting tackles aloft, nor was there need, as a gang to each could launch them bodily over, one on either side.

"Sailors all, from head to feet, but wild 'packet rats' whose necks were already in their halters! I considered my chance in an open boat with that crowd, and thought of my gun, lying somewhere aft on the main deck. Resolved to risk another shot from Macklin rather than my chance unarmed among the men, I turned back, watching the cabin windows with one eye and searching the deck with the other; but I saw no gun, and perhaps Macklin did not see me, for there was no more shooting.

"Giving it up at last, I ran forward as both boats went over the side and the men were tumbling into them. As I ran I noticed the steeper incline to the deck, and that the forecastle was submerged; but I was not prepared for the sudden launch of the ship into the sea, nor the sickening crash of riven timbers as her after body was torn away, and which drowned my shouts to the men.

"In a roaring, yeasty froth of tumultuous water, I went under, and when I at last came to the surface, half drowned, I was alone on the sea, hidden from the boats by the thick envelope of fog. I shouted, and was answered faintly; but not able to determine the direction the sound came from, I could only shout again and tread water, hoping to make sure.

"But I could not make sure; sound is twisted around amazingly in fog, and little by little the calls grew fainter. I was tired out already, and my useless right arm ached with the hard usage it had lately received. In the next few minutes, while my chin sank lower and lower in the water, I thought of about every incident of my life; but just as the first mouthful went down my throat my right foot hit something, and the next moment I was standing on it—a hard, firm substance which could be nothing but the rock.

"At first I found difficulty in holding my footing until I realized that I must breast a current of about half a knot; but when I had mastered the knack I found no trouble. Feeling carefully with my feet, I explored the ground under foot, and following a rise to where it ended found myself waist high out of water. This was better than nothing, and I resumed my shouts to the men in the boats. At times they answered; but very faintly, and after a while they grew silent. And then, from somewhere out of the fog came the faint stroke of a small bell. I shouted again; but was not answered.

"There was very little wind, and but a perceptible heave of the ground swell; so I was bothered at first only by the dense fog and the current. But after a time I had other troubles, of a mental nature. The water was unquestionably rising, and whether or not it would rise above my chin was an unsolvable problem. I did not know the time of low tide in that part of the world on that night. Then, too, that bell sounded again. And again and again I shouted into the silence. It struck twice this time; but it was not until another half-hour had gone by, and it struck three times with an interval between the second and third strokes, that I realized that somewhere at hand was a ship's bell clock. I yelled for help, calling 'Ship ahoy! Give me a hand here! I'm standing on bottom—on a reef! Lower a boat!'

"Nothing answered me, and I suppose I went more or less crazy as the night went on and that infernal ghostly bell struck off the half-hours. It seemed to have the correct time; but it was hard to realize that a ship had gone through a successful mutiny and shipwreck in the half-hour between eight bells and one bell.

"But it ended at last, when, from the cold and the wet and the strain on my voice, I found myself unable to call out any more. And it struck me as rather hard, too; for at daylight the fog lifted a bit, and there, about a mile and a half to the nor'ard, showed the lug sail of one of the boats. The current must have drifted it to the north during the night, and when the fog lifted I suppose they set the lug and sailed 'fore the wind as the easiest and fastest way to sail.

"But another sight met my eyes! Over to the east about fifty yards was the stern of the ship, taffrail and cabin out, and the mizzentop and topmast. She was just hung there, canted to an angle of forty-five, and ready to slide down with the first shift of a sea. And there was where that clock was, high and dry in the cabin! The tide had reached my shoulders by now, and perhaps this was what did the job; for I suppose there was some air in that wreck, and when an extra heavy pulse of the ground swell came along, there was a slight wrenching sound, as though the sternpost had carried away; then, with a very little flurry, the stern and mizzen sank out of sight.

"But up into the froth and the bubbles caused by the plunge came the red head, anxious face, and big shoulders of Macklin. He sighted me, and came on, breasting the water with all the vigor of a strong man in good form, and with a new look in his face that meant trouble for me. I looked for the boat; but the fog had thickened again, blotting her out.

"'What you got there?' he demanded, as he puffed up close to me.

"'Rock bottom,' I answered. 'Keep off! There's room for only one.'

"'And that one is me!'

"I squared myself as I could, with my bad right hand tucked into my shirt out of the way, and my legs as far apart as I could get them. I struck at him, and pushed him under; but the reacting force of the blow sent me backward, and then it was a mad scramble under water to get my foothold again. Macklin came up, saw me, and swam under water until he had reached my legs; then he hove me off and took my place.

"But he wasn't used to the push of the current, and the next moment he was off and swimming again, while I was on, breasting the current, and waiting for him. He came back under water again; but this time I met him with a kick that sent him so far down as to give me hope he would stay there; but he didn't. He came up, swam around to the south, came down with the current, and brushed me off. I did the same; but he met me with his feet, and I drifted by. However, I had him by the leg with my one good hand, and he came with me. We swam, side by side; but he beat me, and scrambled to his feet on the small spur of rock that meant life to each of us, but not to both. I swam weakly around to the south, and then down on him; realizing that my strength was giving out. But the fight went on, and I soon realized that his gun was soaked, or left behind; otherwise he would have used it before this.

"I have often wondered if God and the angels watched that fight in mid-ocean, or only hell and the devils. The nearest land to the west must have been Cape Race, the nearest to the east the Azores, each about five hundred miles away. I did not know the longitude; but I did know that we had sailed due east since I was disrated, and that then we were on the forty-seventh parallel.

"And so, in latitude forty-seven north, longitude unknown, two weakened human brutes unable to strike a heavy and telling blow, yet animated by a fear of death and love of life that twisted their features into frenzied contortions (I judged mine by Macklin's), struggled feebly for the possession of a mountaintop rising from the sea bed, on the diminishing chance that some ship would come along to the rescue before hunger, thirst, or a rising sea overcame them.

"I hardly know how it ended; I only knew that I found myself too weak to breast the current, and then I gave up, and drifted. I went under twice, I remember, and waited calmly for the end; but before the last sinking I heard voices; then I was clutched by the hair, and as I was dragged bodily into a boat I lost my senses. When I came to, the men lifted me up, and I saw big Finnegan at the tiller, standing erect and declaiming to something astern:

"'Stay there an' think it over, ye man-killin' shlave driver! Stay there, ye devil out o' hell, an' may the min ye've killed come back to kape ye company till yer master comes fur ye!'

"I took one look at Macklin. He was standing erect, breasting the current with his arms folded, secure in the possession of the foothold he had won from me. But he sent no call for help, and soon went out of sight in the thinning fog as the boat sailed away.

"There is little more to this yarn. We never saw the other boat again, and did not know the story they told if rescued. But among ourselves we agreed to say nothing about the mutiny or the shooting or the rock—only that we had struck something submerged, that the ship had sunk, and that the captain, first mate, and three sailors had been drowned. We were picked up in a few days, told this lie, and were not questioned closely. Then I realized why the men had stood by me; they wanted a shipped officer to justify the story.

"But I knew the long arm of the law, and I did not know the fate of the other boat, or the tale they might tell. So, I shipped for the East, found and learned this strait, and have been here since, afraid to go home."

* * * * *

This is the yarn I listened to on anchor watch thirty years ago. It pertains to events forty years farther back in the past. If that white-haired, mild-mannered old pilot is still alive, he is over ninety-five years old, and immune from earthly punishment.

But, before deciding to give this story to the world, I visited the United States Hydrographic Office for some corroborative data, and on a pilot chart of 1896 read that one Captain Lloyd, of the British ship Crompton, had lately reported seeing in latitude forty-seven north and longitude thirty-seven degrees twenty minutes west, a rock sixty feet long and eight or ten feet high in the middle. It was at a time of low spring tides, and such a menace to navigation could easily elude observation under ordinary conditions. Captain Lloyd averred that he saw it at twenty minutes to eight on a fine, sunshiny morning, so close and clear to him that he forbore lowering a boat.

Yet, as I learned from further inquiry, he was the subject of much ridicule, and his story was generally disbelieved.

Should it be disbelieved?



THE ARGONAUTS

A few months ago I attended a banquet and left it as I always leave such functions, hungry. Entering an all-night lunch room I took a seat, and gave my order to a waiter, who, when he had filled it, sat down at the table with me. It was very late, and his duties were light.

"You're looking well," he remarked, as his glance traveled over my evening clothes. "You're dead swell, but the last time I saw you, you were covered with mud, carrying a stern line ashore in the Welland Canal."

I took stock of him. He was white-haired, but had the keen, intelligent face of a man of forty-five who had not yet given up the fight; a lively, hopeful face, one that comes to those who win oftener than lose. His skin was brown, as though the sun and wind of all the zones had smitten it. His eyes, gray, steadfast and humorous, had in them when half closed the twinkle of self-confidence, but also, in their wide-open stare, the intensity of a man of initiative and sudden action. In his voice were character, individuality, and the habit of command; yet he wore the short jacket of a waiter, and might have accepted a tip. I could not recall having met him.

"You seem to have the advantage of me," I said. "I know the Welland Canal, however, though I am trying to forget that ditch."

"You can't," he laughed. "No man can who ever went through it. That trip with you in the old Samana was my first and last. I struck for salt water again when the old man paid me off at Port Colborne. Don't you remember going to school with me?" He mentioned his name, and with a little effort I recalled him—a schoolmate a little older than myself, who had gone to sea early in life, and returned a full-fledged salt-water navigator, to ship, on his record, as first mate in the schooner that carried me before the mast, and to meet his Waterloo in the Welland Canal, the navigation of which demands qualities never taught nor acquired in the curriculum of sea-faring. After grounding the schooner several times, parting every line on board, and driving us to open revolt by the extra work coming of his mistakes, he was discharged by the skipper. As I thought of all this the grumbling sailor rose within me, and there at the table, he a waiter, I a writer, we fought out a grudge of twenty years' standing. But it ended amicably; I called him a farmer, he called me a soldier, and we shook hands.

"I've learned," he said, as we settled back, "only in the last month or so, that you're the fellow that writes these rotten sea stories. Why don't you write real sea stories?"

"For the same reason that you don't serve a real Welsh rabbit," I answered, tapping the now cold concoction he had served me. "I couldn't sell a real story. Truth is too strange to pose as fiction."

"That's so," he answered, slowly. "Who'd think that you could have become a writer, and I a hash slinger? Making lots of money, I suppose."

"No, I'm not, or I wouldn't be in your society to-night."

"We're all bluffers, I guess. You are, here in this beanery with your glad rags on. I am, too—no, not now. I'm slinging hash, and glad of the chance. But I was a millionaire for a time. Not long. But while it lasted I had dreams—big dreams."

I asked him about this, and there followed his story. It was interrupted every few moments by calls for "ham and—," "corn beef and—," "mystery and white wings," and it kept me at the table until daylight. He preluded it by the advice to write it up as a real sea story, but asked that I suppress his name until he had saved enough to get him to Cuba, where he had new plans for advancement. And now, after months of thought, I am following his advice; for no effort of the creative mind, and no flight of conventional fancy, can equal the weird, grim yarn that he reeled off between orders.

"You must have read in the papers a few weeks back," he began, "about that bunch of college men that chartered the old racer Mayflower, filled her up with diving gear and dynamite, and went down after the treasure in the Santa Margherita."

I nodded assent. "Yes, and a hurricane hit them and they barely escaped."

"They're keeping mum," he said, "and mean to try again; but it's no use. That treasure is seven hundred miles to the nor-nor'east now, and I was about the last man to look at it. It's resting in the hold of a small schooner, sunk in four hundred fathoms. I never heard of that treasure ship until about three years ago, when I quit a brigantine at Cedar Keys and mixed in with the boarding-house crowd. There was a fellow out of a job named Gleason, and he had a chart in his pocket that he talked about, but never showed. He told us all about that old Spanish ship that went down with all hands in the sixteenth century, carrying with her about seven millions' worth of gold, silver, and jewels; and he knew the location. He had got it from a drunken diver who had seen her on the sea bottom, spelled her dingy old name on the stern, and saved the news to himself while he wormed out of the skipper the latitude and longitude of the place. And now he wanted to enlist capital, or make up a crew of men that would do the work. Dead easy, he said. Just to get there, drag the bottom with two boats and a length of chain until the wreck was located, then to go down in a diving suit, hook on to the chests and hoist them up.

"Well, in the crowd that he talked to there wasn't a dollar. We were all dead broke, but we were all ambitious. There was Pango Pete, a nigger six foot tall, who couldn't write his name, but he was a seaman from his feet up; and a Dago named Pedro Pasqualai. These two were the kind that will choke you before they ask the time of night. Then there was Sullivan, old man Sullivan, a decrepit old codger who had sailed second mate all his life, and never got a first mate's berth because he couldn't master navigation. And there was Peters, a young fellow filled up with the romance and the glory of the life at sea—rot, as you and I know, but he was enthusiastic, and that was enough. A trio of Dutchmen were taken in—Wagner, Weiss, and Myers, three good fellows down on their luck. A Portuguese named Christo, and two Sou'wegian brothers named Swanson completed the bunch. We talked it over down at the end of the fruit dock, where the oyster boats come in and make fast, and where the downs-and-outs congregate to smoke and boast of the prosperous past.

"But this crowd talked of the prosperous future. Seven millions, said Gleason, lay down there off Turks Island in less than sixty fathoms, and all we needed was some kind of a craft to get us there, a diving suit, and a storage battery to light up a bulb to search for the treasure. These things seemed beyond our reach, until a schooner came in for supplies. We sized her up, and Gleason went wild as her different fittings and appliances showed up. There were the diving dresses we needed; there was the storage battery; there were the extra anchors for mooring a craft over a certain spot, and the air pumps and paraphernalia for diving operations, scattered about the deck. She was a small craft, and was manned by men who did not act and talk like sailors. There seemed to be no skipper, and they smoked on deck while working, and talked back and forth as though all were equal.

"'A company,' said Gleason, 'just like us, only they've got the money, and possibly the secret. Well, the company that gets the loot owns it and such matters as the ownership of the schooner and the outfit can be settled afterwards, possibly out of court. What do you say? Are you game?'

"We were. We laid low, but watched, and when that schooner was filled up with grub, we were ready to raid her and chuck the crew overboard; but it wasn't necessary to do the latter. They filled up too late for the tide and went ashore for the evening, leaving no one aboard but a Japanese cook. We remembered, as we climbed aboard after dark, that we hadn't a man among us who could cook, and so, instead of dropping that Jap over the rail, we simply locked him into a stateroom and made sail.

"Naturally, as Gleason originated the scheme, he was elected captain, but, as I was the only navigator in the crowd, I was made first mate, and the big nigger, Pango Pete, second mate. It looked good for discipline, for even pirates recognize the need of it, and the first man that growled or kicked had to deal with Pete. He whaled a few before we'd got around the Florida Cape, but he also whaled the Jap for bad cooking and insolence—which was a mistake. That Jap was an educated man, a college graduate and a member of the Japanese Samurai, a curious class in that country that never yield, never forgive, and kill themselves when defeated. We didn't know this; we only knew that he was a mighty poor cook.

"After we were around the Cape, Gleason gave me the latitude and longitude of the spot, and I made for it. It took me two or three days of careful observations and calculations before I announced that we were within six seconds of the spot, which is all that navigation will do. Then we dropped anchor and began to drag. We knotted together every line we had, and in the middle we had a length of mooring chain that would stick to the bottom. We kept two small boats, to which this was attached, a quarter of a mile apart and pulled on parallel lines, and at last felt a drag; then we pulled together, gathering in the slack, and when we met, the schooner, under charge of Gleason, came up and anchored, over the spot.

"I was the only man there who had any diving experience, so I went down. Say, have you ever been under water in a diving suit, trusting your life to the fellows above who pump the air into your helmet? No? Well, it's a curious experience. I had the feeling as I went down that I was number thirteen of that bunch, and that they only needed to shut off my air supply to make their number twelve instead of thirteen. But that didn't happen; they pumped, and I breathed and saw the old galleon, the Santa Margherita. She lay there, heeled over to starboard, covered with the ooze and the slime of the sea, with barnacles everywhere.

"I signaled for slack and walked around her, taking note of her rig. She had three masts, and three tops very much like the fighting tops of our modern battleships. There were no royal masts, but she had two sprit-sail yards under the bowsprit and jib boom, and a huge lateen yard on the mizzen that took the place of the cro'-jack. But her poop deck was a wonder; five tiers of windows one above the other, and on top three big lanterns much like the ordinary street lamp. Of course, all canvas and running gear had rotted away, but here and there was a leg of standing rigging, preserved by the tar. She was a big craft in her day, no doubt, but not so big compared with present-day ships; at any rate I could reach up to her channels, and by this means climbed aboard.

"The deck and rail were a foot thick with mud, and the small, spar-deck guns could hardly be distinguished. I saw at once that I would need help, and signaled to be hauled up. On deck I told the news and all hands, even the Jap, went crazy over it. We got out two more diving suits, rigged a bulb for each, and Pango, Peters, and myself went down again.

"Now, this isn't a yarn of the finding of that treasure. Anyone can invent such yarns, and I've read dozens of them. They all wind up successfully, with each man wealthy and happy. This is a yarn of the men who found that treasure, and what happened to them. So, I'll just say that we didn't find a skeleton or a ghost when we got below decks. All hands were up, I suppose, when that ship went down, and the rush of water as she plunged, washed them off. We found seven big chests in the 'tween-decks forward of the cabin, and in them all were coins, and jewelry, and here and there in the mess, what might have been an opal, or some kind of jewel. All the stuff was black from the action of the salt water; but we knew we had the real thing, and hooked on tackles. We had to come up to help each time we lifted a chest, for, after the chest was out of water, it was too heavy for the crowd above; but at last they were all up, and stowed snugly on the floor of the cabin. Then, after final search for other loot worth taking, we picked up our anchor and cleared out, not yet having decided where we were going.

"We were pirates under the law, and didn't know but what all the revenue cutters on the coast were looking for us, for the theft of that schooner. But with seven millions of bullion and jewels, melted down, counted up, and translated into cash in some bank, we didn't care for the charge of piracy. The real trouble was to get that stuff translated, and while we argued we sailed due east, out into the broad Atlantic. Peters, the young enthusiast, had been a jeweler, and he told us that nothing short of a blast of air in conjunction with the heat of a fire would melt gold and silver. Well, where could we set up a blast furnace with not a dollar in the party? My suggestion—and I was backed by Gleason, Peters, and old man Sullivan—was that we count out the loot, separate every salable jewel, and make some big port like New York, Liverpool, or Rio Janeiro, sell the jewels and get ready money with which to plan for the disposal of the rest; but we had to deal with men like Pango, Christo, Pedro, and the three Dutchmen, who didn't know what they were up against. They wanted an immediate count up and division; then, each man to go his way. The nonsense of it did not strike them; thirteen men to divide up seven heavy chests—each one shouldering seven-thirteenths of a load that took the whole thirteen to lift with a four-fold tackle. We asked the Jap cook what he thought, but he had no opinion.

"It's somewhat curious how the different men of that bunch had different ideas of what they wanted. Young Peters wanted to go back to his native town and win the girl that had soured on him because he was poor. Pango, Pedro, and the two Sou'wegians only wanted a big drunk. Old man Sullivan wanted a course in a Nautical School and a first mate's certificate. The three Germans wanted to get to New York and set up in the saloon business. Gleason wanted to study law, and I wanted to study medicine and be a doctor, a gentleman who could enter any society in the world. The Jap didn't give out his aspirations.

"And so, growling like an unhappy family in a menagerie, we sailed east, with the question unsettled. But at last we won over the Dagoes and the Dutchmen, and agreed upon New York as a port, and the selling of the jewels in some Bowery pawnshop, where no questions are asked. Then we shook hands all round, gave the Jap hell about his cooking—for we had been too worried to attend to that matter before—and squared away before the trade wind for Sandy Hook and a market.

"From jealousy and mutual distrust, we all slept in the cabin. There were plenty of staterooms for the crowd, though some of us doubled up. None of us wanted to remain away from the seven chests of treasure, and the Japanese cook, who might have slept in the cook's room next the galley, still showed a preference for his room in the cabin, and we did not contest it. But now we were millionaires and easy—dead easy. We stood watch, steered and trimmed sail with no man for boss, for now the work was done, Gleason and myself and the nigger Pango gave up our false positions. We were a democracy, and loved and trusted one another, only, when we roused out the watch below and found that old man Sullivan did not come, and on investigation found him stone dead in his berth without a sign of violence, we forgot our brotherly love and began to wonder.