Front matter (continued 2)

All the way out from London until the third day past the Horn the weather had been as dirty as it knew how to be; and it knows how to be very dirty indeed aboard a windjammer on the fifty-sixth degree of latitude in the month of December, which is not the worst time of the year. But it suddenly took quite a miraculous turn for the better. The wind allowed Mr. Thompson to shift the course of the Margaret Carey a couple of points in two hours, so that before that day was out the old tub, which could not have been so crazy as she seemed to Henry Harper, was running before it in gala order with all her canvas spread.

During the following morning the sun was seen for the first time for some weeks, and the port watch gave it a cheer of encouragement. By nightfall the wind and the sea were behaving very well, all things considered, and they shared the credit with Mr. Thompson of having saved the life of Henry Harper.

The Old Man's temper began to mend with the weather. He was not all bad—very few men are—it was merely as Mr. Thompson had said, that when drink was in him he was a devil. The dirtier the weather the more drink there was in him, as a rule. When the sun shone again and things began to look more hopeful, the Old Man's temper improved out of all knowledge.

The Old Man set such store by seamanship that it was the one quality he respected in others. His world was divided into those who were good seamen and those who were not good seamen. If you were a good seaman he would never forget it in his dealings with you; if you were not a good seaman, whatever else you might be, you could go to hell for all that he cared. And of all the seamen he had shipped in the course of a pretty long experience as a master mariner, he had never, in his own judgment, come across the equal of Mr. Thompson. This was his fifth time round the Horn with that gentleman as mate, and each voyage increased the Old Man's respect for his remarkable ability. He had never seen anything better than the style in which the mate got the old ship before the wind; nothing could be more perfect than the way she was moving now under all her canvas; and that evening in the cabin, after supper, the Old Man broached a bottle of his "pertickler" and decided upon some little amende to the mate for having threatened to put him in irons.

"That bye is no use on deck," he said. "He had better come here and make himself useful until he gets stronger."

The Old Man meant this for a great concession, and Mr. Thompson accepted it in the spirit in which it was offered. The Old Man now regarded the boy as part and parcel of Mr. Thompson's property, and it was by no means certain, such is the subtle psychology of active benevolence, that Mr. Thompson did not regard the boy in that light also. At any rate the boy looked on the mate as his natural protector. Henry Harper craved for someone to whom he could render homage and obedience. He would have reverenced the Old Man had he been worthy of such an emotion; as it was he had to fall back on the mate, a rough man to look at, and a very bad one to cross, but one to whom he owed his life, and the only friend he had.

It took Henry Harper a fortnight to get fairly on his legs again. Then he was able to come on deck as far as the break of the poop. Much seemed to have happened to the world since he had been below. He found the sun shining gloriously; there was hardly a puff of wind; the crew in high good humor were cheerfully mending sails. It was not the same ship, it was not the same sea, it was not the same world he had left a long fortnight ago. He was amazed and thrilled. The slum-bred waif had no idea that any world could be like this. Moreover, the convalescent stage of a dangerous illness was cleansing and renewing him. For the first time since he had been born he forgot the burden of his inheritance. He was suddenly intoxicated by the extraordinary majesty and beauty of the universe.

The sea, what an indescribably glorious thing! The sky without a cloud in it! He had never seen any sky at Blackhampton to compare with this. The air, how clean and bright it was! The mollymawks with their beautiful white breasts were skimming the green water. It was a glorious world. He heard a dago singing at his work. He almost wanted to sing as well.

He got a needle and some packthread and sat down on the afterhatch and suddenly made up his mind to do his best. He could make nothing of his life, or of his circumstances. His wretched body was all sore and bruised and broken; his head was still going round and round; he didn't know what he was, or why he was, or where he was; but a very glorious earth had been made by Somebody, just as a very miserable thing had been made by Somebody. However, let him keep on keeping on.

He had gone too far, thus early in life, for self-pity. Besides there was too much happening around him, too much to look at, too much to do to think very deeply about himself. Yes, it was a very wonderful world. The sun began to warm his veins as he sat plying his needle, such a sun as he had never known. The colors all around were simply marvelous; blues and yellows, greens and purples! There was nothing at Blackhampton to compare with them. The dago seated near had set down his needle, had dabbled his hand in the water, had begun to sing louder than ever. Yes, Blackhampton was not to be compared with such a world as this.

For the next three weeks things began to go a bit kinder for Henry Harper. Each day grew warmer, more gorgeous; there was no wind to speak of; the sea became so smooth that it might have been the West Norton and Bagsworth canal. And as it was clearly realized by the rest of the crew that for some mysterious reason Sailor was now under the extremely powerful protection of Mr. Thompson, they were careful to keep their hands off him, and also their boots. This made life a little duller for them, but a bit easier for Henry Harper.

XIV

Three weeks or so this good life went on. Horror unspeakable was at the back of the boy's mind. There were things he could never forget as long as life lasted. At any moment they might return upon him; but during those days of sun and calm Henry Harper was in an enchanted world. It was so warm and fair that he retrieved Johnny's overcoat and Mother's bundle from his bunk where they had been a long time soaking, spread them on the deck to dry, and had them for a pillow when he slept that night underneath the stars.

But the good days were soon at an end. Each one after the twenty-second got hotter and hotter; the twenty-fourth was quite unpleasant; the heat on the twenty-seventh became almost unbearable. They were now in the doldrums in a dead calm.

"Shouldn't wonder if we find trouble before we get to the China seas." Thus Mr. MacFarlane, the second mate, a prophetic Scotsman, in Henry Harper's hearing.

Mr. MacFarlane was right, as he generally was in these matters—more so perhaps than he had reckoned, for they managed to find a good deal of trouble before they got to the China seas.

For several days there was no stir in the air. The heat grew worse; and then one afternoon it suddenly became very dark, without any apparent reason. Mr. Thompson went about with a face uglier than usual, and Mr. MacFarlane said they were cutting straight into the tail of a typhoon; and then there was an anxious consultation with the Old Man on deck.

Mr. Thompson's face got uglier as the sky got darker, and the sea became like a mixture of oil and lead. It was almost impossible to breathe even on deck; there wasn't a capful of air in the sails or out of them; all the crew had their tongues out; and instead of eating his supper that evening the Old Man opened a bottle of his "pertickler."

The boy turned in that night, in the new berth that had been found for him by Mr. Thompson's orders, with a feeling that something was going to happen. For one thing the Old Man looked like having the devil in him again before the morning. Moreover, the heat was so intense that sleep seemed out of the question.

However, the boy fell asleep unexpectedly, and was presently awakened in a stifling darkness by a sudden awful and incredible sound of rushing and tearing. He sat up gasping for air and wondering what it was that had happened.

Afraid to stay where he was, for it was certain that something terrible had occurred, he got out of his bunk and groped his way as well as he could through the darkness, and at last made his way on deck. Here it was as black as it was below; all the lights were out; the sky was like pitch; the sea could not be seen; but he knew at once the cause of the tearing and rushing. It was the wind.

The wind was blowing in a manner he would not have thought to be possible. Its fury was stupendous. It was impossible to stand up in it, therefore he did the only thing that he could: he lay down.

Some time he lay on the deck, unable to move forward a yard, or even to return whence he came, such was the pressure that held him down. Then it was he felt a new kind of terror. This was more than physical, it seemed beyond the mind of man. They had had high winds and fierce storms at Blackhampton, but never had he known or guessed that there could be a thing of this kind. Such a wind was outside nature altogether. It seemed to be tearing the ship into little bits.

Several times he tried to rise to his feet in the darkness and find his way below, but it was no use. Flesh and blood could not stand an instant against such a rage as that. And then as he lay down again full length, clutching the hot deck itself for safety, he began to wonder why no one else was about. Slowly the truth came to him, but not at first in a form in which he could recognize or understand it. It seemed to creep upon him like a nightmare. All the crew and Mr. Thompson and the Old Man had been blown overboard, and he was drifting about the world, a strange unbelievable world, alone on the ship.

He began to shriek with terror. Yet he didn't know that. It was not possible to hear the sound of his own voice. He lay writhing on the deck in a state of dementia. A caveman caught and soused by his first thunderstorm could not have been more pitiable. He was alone, in this unknown sea, in this endless night, with all eternity around him.

Again he tried to rise from the deck, but he was still held down, gasping and choking, by a crushing weight of wind. It would be a merciful thing if the ship went to the bottom. But even if it did his case might be no better. Then came the thought that this was what had happened. The ship had foundered, and this tempest and this appalling darkness were what he had heard the Reverend Rogers speak of, at a very nice tea party at the Brookfield Street Mission Hall to which he had once been invited, as "the life to come."

Henry Harper remembered that "the life to come" was to be a very terrifying business for "those who had done evil," and according to the Reverend Rogers all men had done evil; moreover, he had dwelt at great length on the Wrath of the Supreme Being who was called God.

Henry Harper was in the presence of God. This terrific wind in which it was impossible for any created thing to exist was the Wrath of the Supreme Being. Such a thought went beyond reason. It was a key which unlocked secret chambers in the inherited memory of Henry Harper. Many were the half remembered things of which he had had experience through former eons of time. The idea of God was the chief of these.

Half mad with subconscious recollection, he began to crawl like a snake on his belly along the deck. The key was unlocking one chamber after another in his soul. Now he was a fire worshiper in a primeval forest; now he was cleansing his spirit in the blood of sacrifice; now he was kneeling and praying; now he was dancing round a pile of stones. He was flooded with a subconscious memory of world-old worship of the Unseen, a propitiation of the thing called God.

He was a caveman in the presence of deity. Shuddering in every pulse of his being he pressed his face to the hot boards of the deck. The secret chambers of his mind were assailing him with things unspeakable. Even the Reverend Rogers could not have imagined them.

All at once he rolled up against something soft in the darkness. With a thrill of hope he knew it was a living thing. It was a dago bereft like himself. Lying with his sweating face pressed to the deck, he also was in the presence of deity.

The noise was too great for their voices to be heard, but each knew that the other was alive, and they lay side by side for two hours, contriving to save their reason by the sense of each other's nearness.

After that time had passed they were able to crawl into shelter. Here they found others of the crew in varying states of terror and stupefaction. But it was now getting lighter, and the wind was blowing less. The worst was over. It seemed very remarkable that the Margaret Carey was still afloat.

In two hours more the wind had died. An hour after that they saw the sun again and the ship kept her course as if nothing had occurred. Indeed, nothing had occurred to speak of, in Mr. Thompson's opinion, except that two members of the crew had fetched away and gone overboard, and they could ill afford to lose them, being undermanned already.

It was now the boy's duty to wait on the Old Man in the cabin. This was more to his taste than having to lend a hand in the port watch. He was not the least use on deck, and was assured by everybody that he never would be, but in the cabin he was very alert and diligent, and less inefficient than might have been expected. He was really very quick in some ways, and he laid himself out to please the Old Man with his cheerful willingness, not that he felt particularly willing or cheerful either, but he knew that was the only way to save his skin. At any rate, Sailor was not going back into the port watch if he could possibly help it.

For such a boy as he, with an eager, imaginative brain always asking questions of its profoundly ignorant owner, the cabin was a far more interesting place than the half-deck or the forecastle. There was a measure of society in the cabin; Mr. Thompson and Mr. MacFarlane sometimes fraternized with the Old Man, after supper, and their discourse when they turned to and smoked their pipes and discussed a noggin of the Old Man's "pertickler," of which they were great connoisseurs, was very well worth hearing.

Henry Harper found that when the Old Man was not upset by the weather—which generally brought on a drinking attack—he was human more or less. Although prone to outbursts of fury, in which anything might occur, he was by no means all bad. In fact, he was rather by way of being religious when the elements were in his favor. When at a loose end he would read a chapter of the Bible, which was of the large family order, adorned the cabin sideboard, and had apparently been handed down from father to son. If the weather was good there was often an instructive theological discussion with Mr. MacFarlane after supper. The second mate was very full of Biblical lore. His interpretation of Holy Writ was not always identical with that of his superior officer, and being a Scotsman and a man of great parts and character, he never temporized or waived a point. Sometimes he flatly contradicted the Old Man who, to Henry Harper's intense surprise, would take it lying down, being an earnest seeker after light in these high matters. For all that, some of the Old Man's Biblical theories were quite unshakable, as, for instance, that Jonah could not have been a first-rate seaman.

In spite of being short-handed, things began to go a bit better. There was very little wind, the sea was like glass, the sun was beautifully warm all day, and at night a warm and glowing sky was sown thickly with stars. Rather late one afternoon, while the Old Man was drinking his tea, Mr. MacFarlane appeared in the cabin with a look of importance, and reported land to starboard.

"Nonsense, Mr. MacFarlane," said the Old Man. "We are a good nine days from anywhere."

Mr. MacFarlane, however, maintained with polite firmness—land to starboard not being a theological matter—that land there was on the starboard bow, N. by NE. as well as he could reckon.

"Nonsense, Mr. MacFarlane," said the Old Man.

But he rose from his tea at once, took his binoculars and clambered on deck. A little while afterwards he returned in a state of odd excitement, accompanied by Mr. Thompson, and they spread out a chart on the cabin table.

"By God," said the Old Man, "it's the Island of San Pedro." And he suddenly brought his fist down on the chart. Moreover, he pronounced the name with a curious intensity. "By God," he said, "I haven't seen that island for four and twenty years. We tried to dodge a typhoon, but was caught in her, and went aground on the Island of San Pedro. There was only me and the ship's bye as lived to tell the tale."

The voice of the Old Man had grown hoarse, and in his eyes was a glow of dark excitement. Suddenly they met full and square the startled eyes of the boy who was listening eagerly.

"Only me and the ship's bye," said the Old Man, his voice falling lower. "We lived six weeks on shellfish and the boots and clothes of the dead."

The voice of the Old Man sank to a thrilling whisper. He then said sharply: "Bye, a bottle o' brandy."

When Henry Harper brought the brandy his face was like a piece of white chalk.

"Only me and the ship's bye," repeated the Old Man in a hoarse whisper. "The others went ravin' mad. We knifed 'em one by one; it was the kindest thing to do. The bye didn't go ravin' mad till afterwards. And there weren't no Board of Trade Inquiry."

"No, sir," said Mr. Thompson, nodding his ugly head and speaking in a slow, inhuman voice.

"No Board o' Trade inquiry," said the Old Man. "Nine men and the ship's bye on the Island o' San Pedro, latitude eighteen degrees, longitude one hundred and twenty-four degrees." He placed his finger on the chart on the cabin table. "There y'are, Mr. Thompson. And on'y me to tell the tale. The bye was gibbering like a baboon by the time he was fetched aboard the Para Wanka, Chinese barque out o' Honolulu. I was a bit touched meself. Thirteen weeks in 'orspital. Remarkable recovery. That's the knife on the sideboard in the leather case."

Mr. Thompson took the knife in his hand reverently.

"No Board o' Trade inquiry, sir," he said.

"No Board o' Trade inquiry," said the Old Man, taking a good drink of neat brandy. "Come on deck and let us have another look at the Island of San Pedro."

Overcome by a sense of uncanny fascination the boy followed the Old Man and the mate up the companion and to the deck. Long the Old Man gazed at the island through his glass, but made no further remark. Then, having seen enough of it, he handed the glass to Mr. Thompson, who made no remark either, but gazed with a mask of steel at the Island of San Pedro.

Mr. MacFarlane, who stood by, pointed with his finger suddenly.

"Sharks," he said.

"Aye," said the Old Man with queer eyes, "these roads is full of 'em. Aye, there they are, the pretties!"

The boy followed Mr. MacFarlane's finger over the deck rail, and sure enough, quite near to the ship was a number of creatures whose upturned bellies shone a strange dead white.

"Come every morning to look at us, the pretties, on the Island of San Pedro." The Old Man laughed in a queer way. "The tide brought 'em more than one nice breakfast, but they never had no luck with me and that bye. He! he! he!"

The Old Man went down to the cabin rather unsteadily, but laughing all the way.

XV

"Shouldn't wonder if it's a wet night," said Mr. MacFarlane to the mate in the hearing of the boy.

This was a technicality that Henry Harper didn't understand, but it held no mystery for Mr. Thompson, who smiled as he alone could and growled, "Yep."

After supper, the Old Man sat late and drank deep. He pressed both his officers to share with him. He was always passing the bottle, but though Mr. Thompson and Mr. MacFarlane were able to keep a stout course, they were simply not in it with the Old Man. For one thing both were men of principle who preferred rum to brandy, and very luckily for the Margaret Carey, Mr. Thompson in certain aspects of his nature preferred his ship to either.

The Old Man talked much that night of the Island of San Pedro, overmuch perhaps for the refined mind of the second mate. The boy stood listening behind the Old Man's chair, ready to go about as soon as the Old Man should be at the end of the bottle.

"No, we didn't touch human flesh," said the Old Man. "I give you my word of honor as a Christian man. But we caught one o' the Chinamen at it—two of us was Chinamen—an' we drew lots as to who should do him in. There was three white men left at that time, including myself and excluding the bye. Andrews it was, our bosun, who drawed the ticket, and as soon as he drawed it I thought he looked young for the work. He wanted to pass it to me, but I said no—he'd drawed the ticket an' he must do the will o' God."

"'Scuse my interrupting, sir," said Mr. MacFarlane, "but how did ye know it was the will o' God?"

"Because he'd drawed the ticket, you fool," snapped the Old Man. "Didn't I say he'd drawed the ticket?"

"Yep," nodded Mr. Thompson.

"Very well, then," said the Old Man with acerbity. "It was up to Andrews to do the will o' God. He said he'd not do it then, but he'd wait until the morning. I said, 'There's no time like the present,' but he was Scotch, and he was obstinate, an' the mornin' never come for Andrews. He began to rave in the night, as we all lay together on the sand, with the Chinaman in the middle, and at the screech o' dawn when I give him the knife, I see at once he was off his rocker."

"Up the pole, sir?" asked Mr. MacFarlane, politely.

"Yes, blast you," said the Old Man. "Don't you understand plain English? Bye, another bottle."

As the boy's livid face was caught by the lamp on the table while he bent over it with the new bottle, the Old Man suddenly laughed. There was something in the boy's eyes that went straight to his heart.

"By God!" he said, refilling his glass. "That's a good idea. We'll put Sailor here ashore on the Island o' San Pedro first thing in the morning. We will, so help me!" And the Old Man winked solemnly at Mr. Thompson and the second mate.

Mr. Thompson smiled and the second mate laughed. The idea itself was humorous, and the Old Man's method of expressing it seemed to lend it point.

"That's a good idea," said the Old Man, bringing his fist down so sharply that the brandy out of his glass slopped over on the tablecloth. "Sailor here shall be put ashore at sunrise on the Island of San Pedro. We'll never be able to make a man of him aboard the Margaret Carey. We'll see what the tigers and the lions and the wolves and hyenas 'll do with him on the Island o' San Pedro."

"Sirpints, Cap'n?" inquired Mr. Thompson innocently, as he returned the look of his superior officer.

"God bless me, yes, Mr. Thompson!" said the Old Man in a thrilling voice. "That's why you've got to keep out o' the trees. My advice to Sailor is—are ye attendin', young feller?—always sleep on sand. Sirpints won't face sand, and it's something to know that, Mr. Thompson, when you are all on your lonesome on the Island of San Pedro."

"I've heard that afore, sir," said Mr. Thompson, impressively. "Never knowed the truth o' it, though."

"True enough, Mr. Thompson," said the Old Man. "Sirpints has no use for sand. Worries 'em, as you might say."

"I've always understood, sir," said Mr. MacFarlane, whose humor was apt to take a pragmatical turn, "that it's only one sort o' sirpint what's shy o' sand."

The Old Man eyed the second mate sullenly.

"O' course it is," he said, "and that's the on'y sort they've got on the Island o' San Pedro. The long, round-bellied sort, as don't bite but squeeges."

"And swallers yer?" said Mr. Thompson.

"And swallers yer. Pythons, I think they're called, or am I thinkin' o' boar constrictors?"

"Pythons, sir," said Mr. MacFarlane. "What swallows a bullock as easy as it swallows a baby."

"Yes, that's right." The Old Man turned to grin at the boy, but there was pathos in his voice. "Sailor, my bye, you must keep out o' the trees. Promise me, Sailor, you'll keep out o' the trees."

The boy had to hold on by the table. The laughter that rang in his ears could only have one meaning. He knew that the Old Man with the drink in him would be as good as his word. Suddenly, by a queer trick of the mind, Henry Harper was again a newsboy crying, "'Orrible Crime on the 'Igh Seas," along the streets of Blackhampton.

XVI

Sailor didn't sleep that night in his bunk in the half-deck but lay in the lee of the chart-house looking up at the stars. Now and again, he could hear little plop-plops in the water, and these he knew were sharks. It was a night like heaven itself—not that Sailor had had much experience of heaven so far—wonderfully calm, with the stars so bright that even as he lay he could see the outline of the Island of San Pedro. It was so clear in the starlight that he could see little dark patches here and there rising to the skyline. These were trees he was sure.

He didn't try to sleep, but lay waiting for the dawn, not thinking of what he should do, or what he ought to do. What was the use? He was alone and quite helpless, and he was now in a state altogether beyond mere terror; he was face to face with that which his mind could not meet. But he was as sure as those stars were in the sky, that as soon as it was light the Old Man would put him ashore on the Island of San Pedro, and that even Mr. Thompson would raise no protest.

Once or twice he tried to think, but it was no use. His brain was going. He must lie there and wait. How long he lay he didn't know, but it seemed hours before he heard the morning watch come on deck, and even then it was some while from daylight. For a long, long time he lay stupefied, unable to do anything but listen for the stealthy plop-plop of the sharks in the water. And when the daylight came, at first it was so imperceptible that he did not notice it.

At last the sun got up, and then he saw that right away to starboard the sky was truly wonderful, a mass of delicate color which the eye could not grasp. For a moment, the soul of Henry Harper was entranced. Heaven itself was opening before him. His mind went back to the Reverend Rogers and the Brookfield Street Mission. With a stab of shame for having so long forgotten them, he suddenly recalled the words of the Reverend Rogers upon the subject of the Golden Gates. Flooded by an intolerable rush of memories, he imagined he could see and hear the Choir Invisible. The fowls of the air were heralding a marvelous sunrise in the Pacific.

For a moment he forgot the Island of San Pedro. Another door of memory had been unlocked. He was in a flood of golden light. There straight before him were the gates of paradise. He was looking at the home of God. Suddenly Henry Harper thought he could hear the voices of the angels. He strained his eyes to starboard. Real angels with wings would be a wonderful sight. The fowls of the air were in chorus, the sharks were plopping in the water, the gates of heaven were truly marvelous—orange, crimson, gold, purple, every color he had ever seen or imagined, and he had seen and imagined many, was now filling his eyes with ecstasy. At every pore of being he was sensing light and sound. He was like a harp strung up. And then in the midst of it all, there came the voice of the Old Man as he climbed on deck, with Mr. Thompson at his heels. And then ... and then ... the heavens opened ... and Henry Harper saw ... and Henry Harper saw....

There was a great plop in the water, much nearer than that of the sharks. There followed heartrending screams and cries, enough to appall the soul of man. All hands rushed to the side of the ship.

"It's on'y Sailor," said the Old Man, with a drunken growl. "Let him drown."

In the next instant there came another great plop in the water.

"What the hell!" roared the Old Man.

"Please, sir, Mr. Thompson's gone for him."

"Mr. who? ... blast you!"

"Mr. Thompson, sir."

"Then lower the gig." The Old Man began to stamp up and down the deck, roaring like a maniac. "Lower the gig, I tell ye." His fingers were the first on the davits. "And all hands pipe up a chantey ... louder ... louder ... blast you! ... to keep off those sharks."

The Old Man's voice was hoarse and terrible, as he worked like a demon to launch the boat.

"Louder, louder, blast you!" he kept roaring. The smooth, dead-white bellies lay all around, shining in the sunrise. The Old Man was in a frenzy; it seemed as if the boat would never be got into the water.

At last it was launched and the Old Man was the first to jump into it, still roaring like one possessed. He beat the water furiously with a piece of spar. But Mr. Thompson with the boy in tow seemed to be holding his own very well. Either the sharks had not seen them, or they dare not approach in the midst of that terrific outcry.

They were soon in the boat, Mr. Thompson being a powerful swimmer; and when at last they were back on the deck of the Margaret Carey, the boy lay gasping and the mate stood by like some large and savage dog, shaking the water out of his eyes.

"Whatever made you do that, Mr. Thompson?" expostulated the Old Man. He was a good deal sobered by the incident, and his manner showed it.

Mr. Thompson did not answer. He stood glowering at a number of the hands who had gathered round.

"Don't none o' you gennelmen touch that bye," he said with a slow snarl, and he pointed to the heap on the deck.

They took Mr. Thompson's advice. Most people did aboard the Margaret Carey. Even the Old Man respected it in the last resort, that was if he was sober enough to respect anything. But with him it was the seamanship rather than the personal force of his chief officer that turned the scale. It was the man himself to whom less exalted people bowed the knee.

It took the boy the best part of two days to recover the use of his wits. And even then he was not quite as he had been. Something seemed to have happened to him; a very subtle, almost imperceptible change had taken place. He had touched bottom. In a dim way he seemed to realize that he had been made free of some high and awful mystery.

The knowledge was reflected in the thin brown face, haunted now with all manner of unimaginable things. But the feeling of defeat and hopelessness had passed; a new Henry Harper had come out of the sea; never again was he quite so feckless after that experience.

For one thing, he was no longer afraid to go aloft. During the warm calm delightful days in the Indian Ocean when things went well with the ship, and there happened to be nothing doing in the cabin, Sailor began to make himself familiar with the yards. All through the good weather he practiced climbing assiduously, so that one day the Old Man remarked upon it to the mate, demanding of that gentleman, "What has happened to Sailor? He goes aloft like a monkey and sleeps in the cross-trees."

Mr. Thompson made no reply, but a look came into his grim face which might be said to express approval.

The Old Man and the mate were the first to recognize that a change had taken place in Sailor, but the knowledge was not confined exclusively to them. It was soon shared by others. One evening, as Sailor sat sunning himself with the ship's cat on his knee, gazing with intensity now at the sky, now at the sea, one of the hands, a rough nigger named Brutus, threw a boot at him in order to amuse the company. There was a roar of laughter when it was seen that the aim was so true that the boy had been hit in the face.

Sailor laid the cat on the deck, got up quietly, and with the blood running down his cheek came over to Brutus.

"Was that you, you ——?" To the astonishment of all he addressed in terms of the sea the biggest bully aboard the ship.

"Yep," said the nigger, showing his fine teeth in a grin at the others.

"There, then, you ugly swine," said Sailor.

In an instant he had whipped out one of the cabin table knives, which he had hidden against the next attack, and struck at the nigger with all his strength. If the point of the knife had not been blunt the nigger would never have thrown another boot at anybody.

There was a fine to-do. The nigger, a thorough coward, began to howl and declared he was done. The second mate was fetched, and he reported the matter at once to the Old Man.

In a great fury the Old Man came in person to investigate. But he very soon had the rights of the matter; the boy's cheek was bleeding freely, and the nigger was more frightened than hurt.

"Get below you," said the Old Man savagely to the nigger. "I'll have you in irons. I'll larn you to throw boots."

That was all the satisfaction the nigger got out of the affair, but from then boots were not thrown lightheartedly at Sailor.

XVII

After many days of ocean tramping with an occasional discharge of cargo at an out of the way port, the ship put in at Frisco. Here, after a clean up, a new cargo was taken aboard, also a new crew. This was a pretty scratch lot; the usual complement of Yankees, Dutchmen, dagoes, and an occasional Britisher.

For a long and trying fifteen months, Sailor continued on the seas, about all the oceans of the world. At the end of that time he was quite a different boy from the one who had left his native city of Blackhampton. Dagoes and niggers no longer did as they liked with him. He still had a strong dislike, it was true, to going aloft in a gale, but he invariably did as he was told to the best of his ability; he no longer skulked or showed the white feather in the presence of his mates. Nevertheless, he was always miserably unhappy. There was something in his nature that could not accept the hateful discomforts of a life before the mast, although from the day of his birth he had never known what it was to lie soft. He was in hell all the time. Moreover, he knew it and felt it to the inmost fiber of his being; the soul of Henry Harper was no longer derelict.

The sense of the miracle which had happened off the Island of San Pedro abided with him through gale and typhoon, through sunshine and darkness, through winter and summer. It didn't matter what the sea was doing, or the wind was saying, or the Old Man was threatening, a miracle had happened to Henry Harper. He had touched bed rock. He had seen things and he had learned things; man and nature, all the terrible and mysterious forces around him could do their worst, but he no longer feared them in the old craven way. Sailor had suffered a sea change. The things in earth and heaven he had looked upon none could share with him, not even Mr. Thompson, that strange and sinister man of the sea, to whom he owed what was called "his life"; nay, not even the Old Man himself who had lived six weeks on shellfish on the Island of San Pedro.

When the Margaret Carey had been to Australia and round the larger half of the world, she put in at Frisco again. Here she took another cargo and signed on fresh hands for a voyage round the Pacific Coast. Among the latter was a man called Klondyke. At least, that was the name he went by aboard the Margaret Carey, and was never called by any other. At first this individual puzzled Henry Harper considerably. He shared a berth with him in the half-deck, and the boy—now a grown man rising sixteen—armed with a curiosity that was perfectly insatiable, and a faculty of taking lively and particular notice, found a great deal to interest him in this new chum.

He was about twenty-four and a Britisher, although Sailor in common with most of his shipmates thought at first that he was a Yankee. For one thing, he was a new type aboard the Margaret Carey. Very obviously he knew little of the sea, but that didn't seem to trouble him. From the moment he set foot aboard, he showed that he could take good care of himself. It was not obtrusive but quietly efficient care that he took of himself, yet it seemed to bear upon the attitude of all with whom he had to do.

Klondyke knew nothing about a windjammer, but soon started in to learn. And it didn't seem to matter what ticklish or unpleasant jobs he was put to—jobs for which Sailor could never overcome a great dislike—he had always a remarkable air of being in this hard and perilous business merely for the good of his health.

Klondyke said he had never been aloft before in his life, and the first time he went up it was blowing hard from the northeast, yet his chief concern before he started was to lay a bet of five dollars with anybody in the starboard watch that he didn't fall out of the rigging. But there were no takers, for there was not a man aboard who would believe that this was the first time he had gone up on a yard.

It was not many weeks before Klondyke was the most efficient ordinary seaman aboard the Margaret Carey. And by that time he had become a power among the after gang. As one of the Yankees, who was about as tough as they made them but with just a streak of the right color in him, expressed it, "Klondyke was a white man from way back."

The fact was, Klondyke was a white man all through, the only one aboard the ship. It was not a rarefied or aggressively shining sort of whiteness. His language on occasion could be quite as salt as that of anybody else, even more so, perhaps, as he had a greater range of tongues, both living and dead, from which to choose. He was very partial to his meals, and growled terribly if the grub went short as it often did; he also set no store by dagoes and "sich," for he was very far from believing that all men were equal. They were, no doubt, in the sight of God, but Klondyke maintained that the English were first, Yankees and Dutchmen divided second place, and the rest of sea-going humanity were not on the chart at all. He was always extremely clear about this.

From the first day of Klondyke's coming aboard, Sailor, who was very sharp in some things, became mightily interested in the new hand in the wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears, who went about the ship as if he owned it; while after a time the new hand returned the compliment by taking a friendly interest in Sailor. But that was not at first. Klondyke, for all his go-as-you-please air, was not the kind of man who entered easily upon personal relations. Moreover, there was something about him which puzzled Henry Harper. He spoke a kind of lingo the boy had never heard before. It was that as much as anything which had made Sailor think he was a Yank. He had not been used to that sort of talk at Blackhampton, nor was it the kind in vogue on the Margaret Carey. If not exactly la-di-da, had it been in the mouth of some people it would have been considered a trifle thick.

Sailor's intimacy with Klondyke, which was to have an important bearing upon his life, began in quite a casual way. One afternoon, with the sea like glass, and not a puff of wind in the sails, they sat together on the deck picking oakum to keep them from idleness, when Klondyke suddenly remarked: "Sailor, don't think me inquisitive, but I'm wondering what brought you to sea."

"Inquisitive" was a word Sailor had not heard before, and he could only guess at its meaning. But he thought Klondyke so little inquisitive that he said at once quite simply and frankly, "Dunno." He then added by way of an afterthought, although Klondyke was a new chum and rated the same as himself, "Mister."

"No, I expect not," said Klondyke, "but I've been wondering a bit lately"—there was something very pleasant in Klondyke's tone—"how you come to be aboard this hell ship. One would have thought you'd have done better ashore."

Sailor was not able to offer an opinion upon that.

"In some kind of a store or an office?"

"Can't read, can't write."

"No?" Klondyke's eyebrows went up for a fraction of an instant, then they came down as if a bit ashamed of themselves for having gone up at all. "But it's quite easy to learn, you know."

Sailor gasped in astonishment. He had always been led to believe that to learn to read and write was a task of superhuman difficulty. Some of his friends at Blackhampton had attended a night school now and again, but none of them had been able to make much of the racket of reading and writing, except one, Nick Price, who had a gift that way and was good for nothing else. Besides, as soon as he really took to the game a change came over him. Finally, he left the town.

"I'd never be able to read an' write," said Sailor.

"Why not?" said Klondyke. "Why not, like anybody else ... if you stuck it? Of course, you'd have to stick it, you know. It mightn't come very kind at first."

This idea was so entirely new that Sailor rose with quite a feeling of excitement from the upturned bucket on which he sat.

"Honest, mister," he said, gazing wistfully into the face of Klondyke, "do you fink I could?"

"Sure," said Klondyke. "Sure as God made little apples."

Sailor decided that he would think it over. It was a very important step to take.

XVIII

Klondyke's library consisted of two volumes: the Bible and "Don Quixote." Sailor knew a bit about the former work. The Reverend Rogers had read it aloud on a famous occasion when Henry Harper had had the luck to be invited to a real blowout of tea and buns at the Brookfield Street Mission. That was a priceless memory, and Henry Harper always thought that to hear the Reverend Rogers read the Bible was a treat. Klondyke, who was not at all like the Reverend Rogers in word or deed, said it was "a damned good book," and would sometimes read in it when he was at a bit of a loose end.

It was by means of this volume that Sailor learned his alphabet. Presently he got to spelling words of two and three letters, then he got as far as remembering them, and then came the proud day when he could write his name with a stump of pencil on a stray piece of the Brooklyn Eagle, in which Klondyke had packed his tooth brush, the only one aboard the Margaret Carey.

"What is your name, old friend?" Klondyke asked.

"Enry Arper."

"H-e-n with a Hen, ry—Henry. H-a-r with a Har, p-e-r—Harper."

"There ain't no aitch in Arper," said Sailor.

"Why not?"

Enry Arper was Sailor's own private name, which he had been given at his birth, which he had used all his life. He had always felt that as it was the only thing he owned, it was his to do with as he liked. Therefore he was determined to spell it according to his fancy. He wouldn't admit that there could possibly be an aitch in Arper; and for some little time his faith in Klondyke's competence was a bit shaken, for his mentor was at pains to make out that there could be and was.

Henry Harper stuck to his ground, however.

"It's me own name," he said, "an' I oughter know."

Klondyke was amused. He seemed rather to admire Sailor's attitude. No doubt he felt that no Englishman is worth his salt who doesn't spell his name just as the fancy takes him.

Klondyke's own name was Jack Pridmore, and it was set out with other particulars on the flyleaf of his Bible. In a large and rather crude copperplate was inscribed:

The arms of Eton College with the motto "Floreat Etona" were inscribed on the opposite page, also in tattoo on the left arm of the owner. In Sailor's opinion, Eton College did flourish undoubtedly in the person of Jack Pridmore. He was a white man all through, and long before Sailor could make out that inscription on the flyleaf of Klondyke's Bible, he was convinced that such was the case.

In Sailor's opinion, he was a good one to follow anywhere. Everything in Klondyke seemed in just the right proportion and there was nothing in excess. He was new to the sea, but he was not in the least green or raw in anything. You would have to stay up all night if you meant to get ahead of him. So much had he knocked about the world that he knew men and cities like the back of his hand, and he had the art of shaking down at once in any company.

All the same, in Sailor's opinion, he had odd ideas. For one thing, he set his face against the habit of carrying a knife in your shirt in case the dagoes got above themselves.

"It's not quite white, you know, old friend," said Klondyke.

"Dagoes ain't white," said Sailor.

"No; and that's why we've got to show 'em how white we are if we are going to keep top dog."

This reasoning was too deep for Sailor.

"Don't see it meself. Them dagoes is bigger'n me. If I could lick 'em, I'd lick 'em till they hollered when they started in to fool around. But they are real yaller; none on 'em will face a bit o' sheffle."

"No," said Klondyke, "and they'll not face a straight left with a punch in it either."

Klondyke then made a modest suggestion that Sailor should acquire this part of a white man's equipment. He was firmly convinced that with the rudiments of reading and writing and a straight left with a punch in it, you could go all over the world.

At first Sailor took by no means as kindly to the punching as he did to the other branches of knowledge. He wanted a bit of persuading to face Klondyke in "a little friendly scrapping practice" in the lee of the chart house when no one was by. Klondyke was as hard as a nail; his left was like a horse's kick; and when he stood in his birthday suit, which he did once a day to receive the bucket of water he got Sailor to dash over him—another of his odd ideas—he looked as fine a picture of make and muscle as you could wish to see. Sailor thought "the little friendly scrapping practice" was a very one-sided arrangement. His nose seemed to bleed very easily, his eyes began to swell so that he could hardly see out of them, and his lips and ears thickened with barely any provocation at all, whereas he never seemed to get within a yard of Klondyke's physiognomy unless that warrior put down his hands and allowed him to hit it.

By this time, however, Klondyke had laid such a hold on Henry Harper that he didn't like to turn it up. He'd never make a Slavin or a Corbett—it simply wasn't in him—but all that was "white" in Sailor mustered at this chap's call. The fact was, he had begun to worship Klondyke, and when with the "sand" of a true hero he was able to get over an intense dislike of being knocked about, he began to feel a sort of pride in the process. If he had to take gruel from anybody, it had better be from him. Besides, Sailor was such a queer fish that there seemed something in his nature which almost craved for a licking from the finest chap he had ever known. His affection for this "whitest" of men seemed to grow with the punishment he took from him.

One night, after an easy watch, as they lay talking and smoking in their bunks in the dark, Klondyke remarked:

"Sailor, there's a lot o' guts in you."

Henry Harper, who was very far off that particular discovery, didn't know what Klondyke was getting at.

"You've taken quite a lot of gruel this week. And you've stood up to it well. Mind, I don't think you'll ever make a bruiser, not if you practice until the cows come home. It simply isn't there, old friend. It's almost like hitting a woman, hitting you. It is not your line of country, and it gets me what you are doing aboard this blue-nose outfit. How do you stick it? It must be hell all the time."

Henry Harper made no reply. He was rather out of his depth just now, but he guessed that most of this was true.

"I don't mind taking chances, but it's all the other way with you. Every time you go aloft, you turn white as chalk, and that shows what grit you've got. But your mother ought never to have let you come to sea, my boy."

"Never had no mother," said Sailor.

"No"—Klondyke felt he ought to have known that. "Well, it would have saved mine a deal of disappointment," he said cheerfully, "if she had never had such a son. I'm her great sorrow. But if you had had a mother it would have been another story. You'd have been a regular mother's boy."

Sailor wasn't sure.

XIX

Klondyke was ten months an ordinary seaman aboard the Margaret Carey. In that time the old tub, which could not have been so crazy as she seemed to the experts of the forecastle, went around the Pacific as far as Brisbane, thence to Durban, thence again to California. Meanwhile, friendship ripened. It was a great thing for Sailor to have the countenance of such a man as Klondyke. He knew so much more about the world than Sailor did, also he was a real friend and protector; and, when they went ashore together in strange places, as they often did, he had a wonderful knack of making himself respected.

It was not that Klondyke wore frills. In most of the places in which they found themselves a knife in the ribs would have done his business out of hand had that been the case. It was simply that he knew his way and could talk to every man in his own language, and every woman, too, if it came to that. Whether it was a Frisco hash-slinger or a refined bar-lady along the seaboard made no difference to Klondyke. It was true that he always looked as if he had bought the earth at five per cent. discount for cash and carried the title deeds in his pocket, but he had such a way with him that from Vancouver to Sydney and back again nobody seemed to think the worse of him for it.

However, the day came all too soon when a tragic blow fell on Sailor. The ship put in at Honolulu one fine morning, and as soon as Klondyke went ashore he picked up a substitute for himself on the waterfront, whom the Old Man was willing to accept for the rest of his term. Klondyke then broke the news to Sailor that he had just taken a fancy to walk across Asia.

It was a heavy blow. Sailor was very near tears, although he was growing in manhood every week.

"It's no use asking you to come with me," said Klondyke. "We shouldn't have enough brass to go round. Besides, now the wanderlust is on me there is no saying where I'll get to. I'm very likely to be sawed up for firewood in the middle of Tibet."

Sailor knew that Klondyke wanted to make the journey alone. Partly to soften the blow and partly as an impulse of friendship, he gave the boy his Bible and also his wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears.

"Stick to the reading and writing, old friend," were the final words of this immortal. "That's your line of country. It'll pay you in the end. You'll get no good out of the sea. If you are wise, whenever you touch the port of London, you'll give a miss to this old tub. A life on the ocean wave is never going to be the least use to you."

Sailor knew that Klondyke was right. But among the many things he lacked was all power of initiative. As soon as he had lost his prop and stay, he was once more a derelict. For him life before the mast must always be a hell, but he had no power of acting for himself. After Klondyke left the ship there didn't seem anything else to do beyond a mere keeping of body and soul together aboard the Margaret Carey. There was nothing else he could do if it came to that. He had only learned to sell papers on land, and he had given the best years of his life to the sea. Besides, every voyage he became a better sailor and was paid a bit more; he even had visions of one day being rated able seaman. Moreover, being saving and careful, his slender store of dollars grew. But his heart was never really in his work, never in the making of money nor in the sailing of the ship.

He was a square peg in a round hole. He didn't know enough about himself or the world or the life he was trying to live to realize fully that this was the case. And for all his weakness of will and complete lack of training, which made his life a burden to him, he had a curious sort of tenacity that enabled him to keep on keeping on long after natures with more balance would have turned the thing up. All the years he was at sea, he never quite overcame the sense of fear the sea aroused in him; he seldom went aloft, even in a dead calm, without changing color, and he never dared look down; he must have lost his hold in many a thrashing northeaster and been broken on the deck like an egg but for an increasing desire to live that was simple torment. There was a kind of demon in his soul which made him fight for a thing that mocked it.

He had no other friend after Klondyke went. No other was possible; besides, he had a fierce distrust of half his shipmates; he even lost his early reverence for Mr. Thompson, in spite of the fact that he owed him his life, long before the mate left the ship at Liverpool nine months after the departure of Klondyke. Above all, the Old Man in liquor always inspired his terror, a treat to be counted on once a month at least. The years of his seafaring were bitter, yet never once did he change ship. He often thought about it, but unluckily for Henry Harper thought was not action; he "never quite matched up," as Klondyke used to express it. He had a considerable power of reflection; he was a creature of intuitions, with a faculty of observation almost marvelous in an untrained mind, but he never seemed able to act for himself.

Another grave error was that he didn't take Klondyke's advice and stick to reading and writing. No doubt he ought to have done it; but it was such a tough job that he could hardly take it on by himself. The drudgery made him miserable; it brought too vividly to his mind the true friend who had gone out of his life. For the rest of his time aboard the Margaret Carey he never got over the loss of Klondyke. The presence and support of that immortal had meant another world for him. For many months he could hardly bear the sight of the Bible his friend had given him, but cherished it as he had once cherished an apple that had also been given him by one who had crossed his orbit in the night of time and had spoken to him in passing.

It is not unlikely that Henry Harper would have sailed the seas aboard the Margaret Carey until that miraculous ship went to pieces in mid-ocean or turned turtle round the Horn; it is not unlikely that he would have gone down to his grave without a suspicion that any other kingdom awaited him, had it not been that in the last resort the decision was taken out of his hands.

One day, when he had been rather more than six years at sea, the Margaret Carey was within three days of London, whither she was bound with a cargo of wheat, when the Old Man informed him briefly and curtly that she was making her last voyage and that she was going to be broken up. The news was such a blow that at first Sailor could not realize what it meant. He had come to feel that no sort of existence would be possible apart from the Margaret Carey. He had lived six crowded and terrible years of worse than discomfort, but he could envisage no future apart from that leaking, crazy, foul old tub.

All too soon the day came, a misty morning of October, when he stepped ashore. A slender bundle was under one arm, Klondyke's fur cap on his head, a weird outfit on his lathlike body, an assortment of clothes as never was on sea or land before; and he had a store of coins of various realms, no less than eighty-five pieces of all sizes and values, from an English farthing to a Mexican five dollars, very carefully disposed about his person.

BOOK II

TRAVAIL

I

The Sailor, shipless and alone, was about to enter the most amazing city in the world.

He was a handsome boy, lean, eager eyed, and very straight in the body in spite of his gear, which consisted mainly of leggings, a tattered jersey, and a wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears. He was fairly tall, but being as thin as a rail looked much taller than he was. His face and hands were the color of mahogany, his vivid eyes were set with long intercourse with the sea, and in them was a look that was very hard to forget.

He came ashore about ten o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, October the fifth. For a while he stood on the edge of the quay with his bundle under his arm, wondering what he should do. It had not occurred to him to ask advice when he left the ship. Even the bosun had not said, "So long" to him; in spite of six years' service he was a poor seaman with no real heart for his job. He had been a cheap and inefficient hand; aboard a better ship, in the Old Man's opinion, he would have been dear at any price.

His relations with the rest of the crew had never been intimate. Most considered him "soft" or "a bit touched"; from the Old Man to the last joined ship's boy, he was "only Sailor." He never thought of asking what he ought to do; and had he done so his curious intuition told him the answer he would have been likely to receive. They would have told him to go and drown himself.

He had not been ashore a quarter of an hour when he began to feel that it was the best thing he could do. But the queer faculty he had told him at once that it was a thing he would never be able to do now. If he had had any luck it would have been done years ago.

Therefore, instead of jumping over the side of the quay, he suddenly walked through the dock gates into the streets of Wapping. All the morning he drifted aimlessly up one street and down another, his bundle under his arm, but neither plan nor purpose in his mind. At last, he began to feel very hungry, and then he found himself up against the problem of getting something to eat.

Opposite where he stood in the narrow, busy, interminable street was an imposing public house, painted a magnificent yellow. He knew that bread and cheese and a tankard of beer, which he so greatly desired, were there for the asking. But the asking!—that was the rub. He always felt tongue-tied in a public house, and his experience of them in his brief shore-goings in Frisco, Sydney, Liverpool, or Shanghai had never been happy, and had sometimes ended in disaster. But now under the spur of need, he crossed the street and, fixing his will, found his way through the swing doors into the gilded interior of the Admiral Nelson.

Happily, the American bar was at that moment without a customer. This was a great relief to the Sailor. But a truly thrilling bar-lady, replete with earrings, a high bust, and an elaborate false front, gave him an eye of cool disdain as he entered with his bundle, which he laid upon a marble-topped table as far from her as possible; and then, after a long moment's pause, in order to screw his courage to the sticking-point, he came over to the counter.

The sight of the bar-lady brought a surge of previous shore-goings into the Sailor's mind. Quite automatically, he doffed his fur cap as Klondyke would have done in these heroic circumstances, and then all at once she forgot to be magnificent. For one thing, in spite of his grotesque clothes and his thin cheeks and his shock of chestnut hair, he was a decidedly handsome boy. Also he was a genuinely polite and modest one, and the bar-lady, Miss Burton by name, who had the worldly wisdom that owns to thirty-nine and the charm which goes with that period of life, was favorably impressed. "What can I do for you?" Miss Burton inquired. It was clear that her one desire was to help a shy youth over his embarrassment.

The voice of the fair, so charmingly civilized, at once unlocked a door in the Sailor's memory. With a further slow summoning of will-power which made it the more impressive, he answered precisely as Klondyke had at the Bodega in Frisco: "May I have some bread and cheese, please, and half a pint of beer?"

"Certainly you may," she smiled.

The tone of deference had touched a chord in her. Moreover, he really was handsome, although attired as a very ordinary, not to say a very common, seaman, and evidently far more at home on the deck of a windjammer than in the American bar of an up-to-date public-house.

"Fourpence, please." The bar-lady set before him a pewter flagon of foaming fresh-drawn ale, also a liberal piece of bread and cheese, beautifully white to one accustomed to hard tack aboard the Margaret Carey.

In some confusion the Sailor produced a handful of silver coins from his amazing trousers, out of which he solemnly chose a Spanish fourpenny.

"Haven't you got anything English?" she asked, bursting suddenly into a laugh.

Not a little disconcerted, the Sailor began to struggle with a second handful of coins which he took from another pocket. Blushing to the tips of his ears, he finally tendered half a crown.

"Two-and-two change." With an intent smile she marked what he did with it.

Having stowed away the two-and-twopence, he was about to carry his plate of bread and cheese and tankard of beer to the marble-topped table where he had left his bundle, when the lady said, in a royal tone of gracious command, "Why not sit and eat it here?"

The Sailor would have been the last young man in the world to think of disobeying. He felt a little thrill creep down his spine as he climbed up on the high stool exactly opposite her. It was the sort of thrill he had had when under the ægis of Klondyke he had carried out this delicate social maneuver for the benefit of the bar-ladies of Frisco, Liverpool, and Shanghai.

At first, he was too shy to eat.

"Go on. Don't mind me," she encouraged him.

An intensive politeness caused him to cut his bread carefully with his knife. And then before he put it into his mouth he said, in an abrupt, but well modulated Klondyke manner, "'Scuse me, lady, won't yer 'ave a bite yerself?"

The deferential tone belonged to the mentor of his youth, yet the speech itself seemed to owe little to Eton College.

"No, thank you," said Miss Burton. "I'm not hungry." And then, seeing his look of embarrassment, "Now get on with it. Don't mind me."

This was a woman of the world. She was a ripe student of human nature, at least of the trousers-wearing section of human nature. Not for many a day had she been so taken by a specimen of an always remarkable genus as by this boy with the deep eyes, whose clothes and speech and behavior were like nothing on earth.

A true amateur of the male sex, she watched this quaint specimen eating bread and cheese. Presently he raised his tankard aloft, said, "Good 'ealth, lady," in a shy manner, and drank half of it at a gulp.

"When are you going to sea again?" asked Miss Burton, conversationally.

"Never going to sea no more," said the young man, with a strange look in his eyes.

"What—never?" She seemed surprised.

"Never no more. I'll never sail agen afore the mast. I'd sooner starve. It's—it's——"

"It's what?"

"It's hell, lady."

Miss Burton was taken aback by the tone of conviction. After all, this grotesque young sea monster was no true amphibian.

"Well, what are you going to do ashore?" she asked after a pause, while she gazed at him in astonishment.

"Dunno."

"No plans?"

The boy shook his head.

"Like another tankard of mild?"

"Yes, please, lady."

The impact of the bar-lady's easy and familiar style had caused a rather sharp relapse from the Klondyke standard of refinement, but not for a moment did the Sailor forget the dignity of her estate. In spite of the hybrid words he used, the note of subtle deference was never out of his voice; and Miss Burton, unconsciously intrigued by it, became even more interested in this strange product of the high seas.

"How long have you been afloat?" She handed him a second tankard of mild.

"Near six year."

"Six years. Gracious goodness! And you didn't like it?"

"No."

For some reason, the look in his eyes caused her to shiver a little.

"Why did you stick it, then?"

"Dunno."

A pause followed. Then he lifted his tankard again, said, "'Ere's lookin', lady," and drank it right off.

"Well, you are a rum one, you are, and no mistake," murmured Miss Burton, not to the Sailor, but to the beer engine at her side.

II

After the young man from the sea had drunk his second tankard of mild, he sat on the high stool silent and embarrassed. He was hoping that the gorgeous creature opposite would continue the conversation, but he didn't seem to know how to encourage her. However, as soon as a powerful feminine intelligence had told her the state of the case, she said abruptly, "Well, and what are you going to do for a living now you've retired from the sea?"

He gave his head a wistful shake.

The gesture, rather pathetic in its hopelessness, touched Miss Burton.

"Well, you can't live on air, you know."

"No, lady."

"Well, what are you going to do?"

Another shake of the head was the only answer, but as he met her sympathetic eyes, an inspiration came to him.

"Lady," he said humbly, "you don't happen to know of a shack?"

"Know of a what!" The touch of acerbity froze him at once. "Shack!" Coming to his assistance, "What on earth's that?"

"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." The phrase was Klondyke's, and it came to him quite oddly at that moment in all its native purity. His mentor had a private collection of such phrases which he used to roll out for his own amusement when he went ashore. This was one. Henry Harper could see him now, pointing to a dingy card in a dingy window in a dingy street, in some miserable seaboard suburb, and he could hear him saying, "There you are, Sailor, lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man."

Miss Burton pondered. And then the slow smile came again.

"Well, if you really want lodgings clean and decent for a single man I suppose I must try and help you," she said graciously. "But I'm afraid I shan't be much use. They are not quite in my line."

"No, lady."

"Still, Fore Street is full of them. That's the second turn to the left and then the first on the right, and then the first on the right again."

"Yes, lady."

"You might try No. 5—or No. 7—or No. 9—but Fore Street's full of them."

Miss Burton was really trying to be helpful, and the young seaman was very grateful to her, but Klondyke would have known at once that "she was talking out of the back of her neck."

Armed with this valuable information, the young man got off his high stool at last, raised his fur cap once more, with a little of the unconscious grace of its original owner, said, "So long, lady," collected his bundle and went out by the side door. And in the meantime, the bar-lady, who had marked every detail of his going, hardly knew whether to laugh or to shed tears. This was the queerest being she had ever seen in her life.

The Sailor managed to find Fore Street after taking several wrong turnings and asking his way three times. And then his difficulties really began.

Fore Street was very narrow, very long, very gloomy, very dirty. In each of these qualities it seemed well able to compare with any street he had seen in Frisco, in Sydney, in Liverpool, or even in Port Said. But it didn't discourage him. After all he had never been used to anything else.

The first house in Fore Street had a grimy card in a grimier window, exactly in the manner to rejoice the heart of Klondyke. Sailor, who had forgotten almost every syllable of "book-learning" he ever possessed—and at no time had he been the possessor of many—leaped at once to the conclusion that the legend on the card was, "Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." Unfortunately it was, "Dressmaking done here."

A very modest knock was answered by a large female of truculent aspect, to whom he took off his cap, while she stood looking at him with surprise, wonder and inveterate distrust of mankind in general and of him in particular spreading over her like a pall.

"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man!"

The door of No. 1, Fore Street, was slammed violently in the face of the applicant.

The Sailor nearly shed tears. He was absurdly sensitive in dealing with the other sex and prone to be affected by its hazards and vicissitudes. However, Auntie of the long ago surged into his mind, and the recollection seemed to soften the rebuff. All, even of that sex, were not bar-ladies, sympathetic, smiling, and magnificent. Therefore he took courage to knock at the door of the next house which also had a card in the window. But, unfortunately, that again was not to proclaim lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man, but merely, "A horse and cart for hire."

Here the blow, again from the quarter which knows how to deal them, was equally decisive. A creature, blowsy and unkempt, told him, after a single glance at his fur cap and his bundle and his deep-sea-going gear, "that if he didn't take hisself off and look sharp about it she'd set the pleece on him."

At this second rebuff the Sailor stood at the edge of the curb for some little time, trying to pluck up spirit to grapple with the problem of the next card-bearing domicile, which happened to be the third house in the street. He felt he had begun to lose his bearings a bit. It had come upon him all at once with great force that he was a stranger in a strange land whose language he didn't know.

He had just made up his mind to tackle the next card in the window, let the consequences be what they might, when he felt his sleeve plucked by a small urchin of nine with a preternaturally sharp and racial countenance.

This promising product of the world's greatest race, one Moses Gerothwohl by name, had had an eye fixed on the fur cap ever since he had heard its owner ask at the first house in the street for lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man. This was undoubtedly one of those foreign sailors, perhaps a Rooshian—a Rooshian was the very highest flight of which the imagination of Moses Gerothwohl was at present capable—who, even if they were apt to get drunk on queer fluids and sometimes went a bit free with their knives, were yet very good-natured, and as a rule were pretty well off for money.

"Did yer sye, mate, yer wanted a shakedown?" said Moses Gerothwohl, plucking at the sleeve of the Sailor.

The Sailor looked down at the urchin and nodded.

"Come with me, then," said Moses, stoutly. "And I'll take yer to my grandma's."

He led the Sailor through a perfect maze of by-streets, and through a nest of foul courts and alleys, until at last he came to the house of his grandmother, to whom he presented the foreign seaman.

She was not very prepossessing to look at, nor was her abode enticing, but she had a small room to offer which, if not over clean and decidedly airless, contained a bed of which he could have the sole use for the reasonable sum of sixpence a night.

The young man accepted the terms at once and laid his bundle on the bed. But the old woman did not accept him with equal alacrity. There was a little formality to be gone through before the transaction could be looked upon as "firm." It was usual for the sixpence to be paid in advance.

Grandma was one-fifth tact, three-fifths determination, one-fifth truculence, and the whole of her was will power of a very concentrated kind. She was as tough as wire, and in the course of several tense and vital minutes, during which her wolf's eyes never left Henry Harper's face, that fact came home to him.

It took nearly five minutes for the Sailor to realize that Grandma was waiting for something, but as soon as he did, the way in which he bowed to fate impressed her right down to the depths of her soul. He took an immense handful of silver out of his pocket, the hoarded savings of six years of bitter toil, chose one modest English "tanner" after a search among many values and nationalities, and handed it over with a polite smile.

The old woman was a very hard nut of the true waterside variety, but the sight of such affluence was almost too much for her. Money was her ruling passion. She went downstairs breathing hard, and with a deep conviction that Rothschild himself was in occupation of her first floor front.

In the meantime, the Sailor had seated himself on the bed at the side of his bundle, and had started to think things out a bit. This was a long and tough job. Hours passed. The small, stuffy, evil-smelling bedroom grew as black as pitch; a heavy October darkness had descended upon the strange land of Wapping, but the Sailor was still thinking very hard; also he was wondering what he should do next.

He hadn't a friend on the wide earth. There was nothing to which he could turn his hand. He could neither read nor write. And in his heart he had a subtle fear of these queer longshore people, although he had sense enough to know that it was a Sailor's duty to trample that feeling under foot. One who six long years had sailed before the mast aboard the Margaret Carey had nothing to fear in human shape.

As Henry Harper sat on that patched counterpane in the growing October darkness, unloosing that strange and terrible thing, the mind of man, he was not merely lonely, he was afraid. Afraid of what? He didn't know. But as the darkness grew there came an uncanny feeling under his jersey. It seemed to stick him in the pit of the stomach like the icy blade of a knife. He had tasted fear in many forms, but this kind of stealing coldness was something new and something different.

It grew darker and darker in the room. The sense of loneliness was upon him now like a living presence. There was not a soul in the world to whom he could turn, to whom he might speak, unless it was the old woman downstairs. Yet lonely and rather terrified as he was, his odd intuition told him it would be better to converse with no one than to converse with her.

At last, shivering and supperless, although his pockets were heavy with silver untold, he made up his mind to turn in. It was a counsel of desperation. He was sick to nausea with the business of thinking about nothing, a process which began in nothing and ended in nothing; and at last with a groan of misery, he pulled off his boots and leggings, but without removing his clothes stretched himself on the bed.

If he could have had his wish he would have gone to sleep, never to awake again. But he could only lie shivering in the darkness without any hope of rest. Presently a clock struck two. And then he thought he heard a creak on the stairs and shortly afterwards a stealthy footfall outside his door.

He had never been anything but broad awake. But these creeping noises of the night seemed to string up every sense he had to a point that was uncanny. He held his breath in order to listen—to listen like a frightened animal in a primeval forest that has begun to sense the approach of a secret and deadly foe.

The door of the room came very softly open. It was at the side of the bed, and he could not see it; but he felt an almost imperceptible vibration in the airless stuffiness in which he lay. Moreover, a breathing, catlike thing had entered the room; a thing he could neither hear nor see. It was a presence of which he was made aware by the incandescent forces of a living imagination.

It was too dark to see, there was not a sound to hear, but he knew there was a breathing shape within reach of his left hand.

Suddenly his hand shot out and closed upon it.

He caught something electric, quivering, alive. But whatever it was, a deadly silence contained it. There was not a sound, except a gasp, as of one who has made a sudden plunge into icy water. The Sailor lay inert, but now that live thing was in his hand he was not afraid.

He expected a knife. Realizing that he must defend his face or his ribs or whatever part might be open to attack, he knew he must be ready for the blow.

But a queer thing happened. The attack was not made by a knife. It was made by a human will. As he lay grappling in the darkness with his visitor, slowly but surely he felt himself enfolded by an unknown power. Such a force was beyond his experience. His own will was in a vice; there was a deadly struggle, yet neither moved. Not a sound was uttered, but in the end the Sailor nearly screamed with the overmastering tension which seemed to be pressing out his life. And then he realized that his hand was no longer holding the thing upon which it had closed.

The room was empty again. The darkness was too great for his eyes to tell him, but every sense he had, and at this moment he had more than five, seemed to say that whatever his peril, it had now passed.

He sat up and listened tensely through the still open door. He thought he could hear the creak of a foot on the stairs. Then he began to search his pockets for a box of matches, and suddenly remembered that he hadn't one. But the sense of physical danger had given him a new power over his mind. He was now terribly alert.

His instinct was to get out of that house at once. But a very little reflection showed that such a course was not necessary. It was only an old woman after all.

III

Reinforced with the idea that an old woman with wolf's eyes should have no terrors for a sailor, Henry Harper decided to stay where he was, until daylight at least. In the absence of matches and local knowledge it would not be easy to find a way out of the house in the middle of the night. Moreover if he drew the chest of drawers from under the skylight, which was too thickly plastered with generations of grime to dispense light from the sky or anywhere else, and barricaded the door, he could not be taken by surprise and need have fear of none.

He decided to do this. With arms as tough as steel, he lifted up the chest of drawers bodily and dumped it with a crash against the door. Let Grandma get through that if she could. If she did, God help her.

Yes, God help her. The Sailor suddenly took from his pocket a large, bone-hafted clasp knife. There came the friendly click of the opening blade, he felt the well ground edge lightly with the ball of his thumb. He would lie quietly for Grandma in comfort and in simple faith.

What a fool to let her go! ... the trusty friend in his hand was speaking to him.... Had you forgotten me? I'd have done Grandma's business in a brace of shakes, you know.

The Sailor, aware of that, felt rather sorry.

But in a little while there was another voice in the room. In climbing back on the bed, one hand touched the fur cap which lay at the foot of it. Instantly, a second voice spoke through the darkness.

"No, Sailor, my boy." What a voice it was! "It ain't quite white. Put your knife in your pocket, old friend. And if Grandma calls again and you feel you must set your mark on her, what's wrong with your ten commandments, anyway?"

The tones of Klondyke filled the darkness with their music.

Sailor obeyed instinctively, in the way he had always done. He put the knife back in his pocket with a gentle sigh.

The dirty dawn of a wet October day stole on the young man's eyes as he was attempting a doze on the patched counterpane with his sea-going gear around him. The arrival of an honest Wednesday morning, chill and dismal as it was, dispelled with a magic that seemed ironical any lingering trace he might have of his night fear of Grandma. Was he not a sailor who six long years had sailed the seas? Had he not seen, done and suffered things which held him forever from any human thrall?

But Henry Harper knew better than to ask Grandma what she had got for breakfast.

He chose instead to sling his hook. Gathering his truck back into its bundle, and cramming the magic cap over his eyes, he pulled the chest of drawers away from the bedroom door. Then as soon as there was light enough to see the way he crept down the creaking stairs, unlocked, unbolted and unchained the door below, and slipped out into Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning received him with a chill spatter of rain. He stood a minute on the cobbles of the squalid yard in front of Grandma's abode—wondering where he was, what he should do, which turn he should take. As a fact, there was only one turn he could take, and that lay straight ahead across the yard, through a short arched passageway leading to a maze of courts and alleys which led heaven knew where.

He proceeded to find out. Bundle under arm, fur cap over eyes, a roll in his gait, the Sailor emerged at last upon a main street, at present only half awake. But it contained a thing of vast importance: a policeman.

The Law in its majesty looked at the Sailor. The Sailor in his simplicity looked at the majesty of the Law. There was a time, six long, long years ago, when he would not have ventured such a liberty with the most august of human institutions. But he was through that phase of his career. By comparison with all the stripes that had since been laid upon him even the police were gentle and humane.

There was not a soul in sight except this solemn London bobby, who stood four square in the Sailor's path.

"Mornin', mister." The Sailor lifted his cap, partly from a sense of fraternity, partly from a proud feeling of being no longer afraid to do so.

The bobby surveyed the strange nondescript that had been washed up by the tide of Wapping. He looked gravely at the bundle and at the fur cap, and then decided in quite an impersonal way not to return their owner's salutation.

The Sailor was not hurt by the aloofness of the Law. He had not expected anything else. After all, the police were the police. He knew that a gulf of several hemispheres was fixed between a real three-stripe rozzer of the Metropolitan Force and a thing it had pleased fate to call by the name of Henry Harper.

"A wrong un, I expect," was the reflection of Constable H23, who always expected a wrong un at that hour of the morning. Upon the spur of this thought, the bobby suddenly turned on his heel, and saw the wrong un, bundle, fur cap and all, crossing the road like an early morning fox at the lure of a favorite hencoop. Moreover, he was crossing it for the reason that he was frantically hungry.

Across the road, at a junction it formed with three others as mean and dismal as itself, was a sight supremely blessed in the eyes of the Sailor. It was nothing less than a coffee stall in the panoply of matutinal splendor. Steaming fluids, with flames glowing under them, flanked one half of its counter; rock cakes, ham sandwiches, beef sandwiches, rolls and butter, and pork pies, splendidly honest and genuine pork pies, flanked the other half of it.

The proprietor of the stall, an optimist in white apron and shirt sleeves, being unmistakably of the male sex had no terrors for the Sailor. Besides, he was flushed with the knowledge that he had just said good morning to the police.

"Cup o' coffee, mister, and one o' them."

Nothing less than a pork pie could meet the need of the Sailor. Moreover, he dived in his pocket, took the first coin that came, which happened to be half a crown, and laid it with true Klondyke magnificence on the counter.

The proprietor of the stall, who added a power of clear thinking to his many qualities, appeared to see in the action as well as in the coin itself, a declaration of financial status on the part of the young seaman in the remarkable gear. Also this view was shared by the only one of his early morning customers who happened to be at the stall: to wit, an almost aggressively capable looking and slightly bow-legged young man with flaming red hair and ears set at right angles to his head, who was devouring a pork pie with quiet ferocity.

A single glance passed between Ike, who owned the stall, and the most influential of his patrons, who answered to the name of Ginger; a single glance and that was all.

"Nothing smaller, sonny?" said Ike, smiling and pleasant. "Not used to big money at seven g.m. Penny the corfee and two pence the pie. Three d." The proprietor raised three fingers and beamed like a seraph.

Ginger suspended operations on the pork pie to see what Dr. Nansen would do next.

The Sailor, with memories of Grandma still in his mind, put back the half-crown carefully before he brought out anything else. He was not going to give himself away this time. Thus he went warily in search of the smallest coin he could disentangle from the welter of all shapes and sizes, of all values and countries, which had been disposed in every pocket of his person. At last he produced one and laid it on the oilcloth modestly, as though he merely valued it at threepence. But in that part of the world it was valued at half a sovereign.

"Rich aunt," said the proprietor of the stall, with respectful humor.

The young man with the flaming hair turned half about, pork pie in hand, to get a better view of Dr. Nansen. This close observer proceeded to chew steadily without venturing any remark.

There was nothing left for the Sailor but to give away his wealth in handfuls now. He had to keep diving into his secret hoard, which out of deference to the thought of Grandma he was still determined not to disclose in bulk and sum. Now came up a Spanish fourpenny, now a Yankee nickel, now a Frenchman, now a Dutchman, now a Mexican half-dollar, now a noble British quid. For several crowded and glorious minutes, Ike and the most influential of his patrons had the time of their lives.

"Thank you, Count," said the proprietor of the stall urbanely, when at last the owner of the fur cap had managed to discharge his liability in coin current in the realm of Great Britain. Then, in common with the entranced Ginger, he watched the young man recruit exhausted nature.