Ocean echoes; an autobiography

OCEAN ECHOES

THE FLYING BOSUN

A MYSTERY OF THE SEA
BY

ARTHUR MASON

New York Post's Literary Review: "It is
no imaginary picture. ... As a story of the
sea it ranks with the best of Jack London or
Morgan Robertson, and as a story of the
uncanny it is comparable with 'Dracula' and
'The Master of Ballantrae.' "

New York Tribune: "A true-blue deep-
water story ... a thing of horror, death
and mystery."

New York Times: "Both in theme and
handling it betrays a close cousinship to the
vivid romances of Morgan Robertson."

Boston Herald: "No lack of exciting action
— much of it the sort that is built around the
sailor's superstitions."

The Bookman: "The feeling persists that,
with the exception of the spiritual phe-
nomena, the whole dramatic voyage actually
occurred."

$1.75

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

NEW YORK

THE CALL OF THE SEA HAD ME AGAIN.

OCEAN ECHOES

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BY

ARTHUR MASON

WITH A3* INTRODUCTION BY
WILLIAM McFEE

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1922

COPYRIGHT, igaa,

BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

First printing, Atigust, 1922

PSINTIB IN" THE TT. S. A.

TO

G. W. M.

WHOSE MIDSHIP SPOKE IS EVER
READY TO TACK OR WEAR TO ANY
BIT OF BREEZE FROM NOWHERE

497579

PKEFACE

I have been asked to write my biography.
Other people have written of their lives, lives
of greater value to the world than mine ; though
possibly mine, too, has not been without value
in some little ways. Lives have been written
so interesting in the telling, that skeptical
readers have condemned them as adorned.

My story is, I believe, not lacking in excite-
ment, but it shall be told simply, and as swiftly
and truly as though the years were crossing the
paper — crowding, as they have crowded my
youth away, and the desire for adventure.

There may be glued leaves in the volume of
my life, but I shall steam them apart, trying
to piece out a pattern that is not as much
smudged as the background would lead one to
believe.

There will be in the pattern success and
failure; heart-cheer and heart-break, as in all
our lives — such philosophy, too, as would result
from the thinking my life has led me to do. But

vi PREFACE

that there is love to the very end, and will be,
as long as I live, speaks not so well for me (for
if ever anyone knows the rough-and-tumble of
life I should know it) as it does for human
nature.

Surely I may claim to know people, the good
of them and the bad ; yet I think loving thoughts,
and incline to loving deeds, and I do believe
that good is uppermost, and will remain upper-
most to the last.

ARTHUR MASON.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface ....*•>,.... v

Introduction by William McFee .... ix
I. Concerning Who's Who and Why — Things

My Motner Taught Me 3

II. An Event Which Makes My Hand Shake as

I Write—Hounded ....... 10

III. I Conquer My Enemy — Irish Anne — The

Bandmaster 16

IV. I Leave My Mother— The Sea Claims Me—-

My Little Dogs Must' Hunt Alone ... 23
V. My First Voyage With the Swede— Ex-
perience 28

VI. Back to Glasgow — A Livelier Chapter — The

Gingerbread Battle 34

VII. The Real Thing at Last—The Ginger . . 42
VIII. Jack Proves His Mettle— The Pierhead Jump

—The Sunken Canoe 51

IX. Buttermilk, Bunkhouse and Bugaboo . . 57
X. Liverpool Jack Goes Off on His Own — Steel

Bridges and a Water-Logged Ship for Me 63
XL The Lime-Juicer, Always Something New . 75
XII. The Hens, the Cook, the Storm, and the

Fight 82

XIII. Better Weather, Liverpool Jack Again, J

Go Ashore . . 89

XIV. Benefit of Clergy— New Style 101

XV. More Trouble— The Hog Business ... 113

XVI. The Loyal Legion Button, Baled Hay, and

Jackass Brandy 126

XVII. The Fates Grind the Captain, and Smile and

Mock at Me 135

XVIII. Tops and Bottoms— The Gambler and the

Gambler's Prey 146

vii

Vlll

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XIX.
XX.

PAGE

A Short Chapter, Healed Wounds, and a

Queer Sea Captain 155

The Hare-Lipped Captain — Worcestershire

Sauce and Gruel 163

XXI. Salmon Fishing, Citizen and Mate . . . 173
XXII. Chapter One on the Psychology of Cap-
tains 184

XXIII. More Psychology— And Some Action . . 192
XXIV! Some Facts About Women, Red-Haired
and Otherwise, With a Word About
Wives and a Peaceful Conclusion in the

Pick and the Gold-Pan 199

XXV. The Story of the Return of Lida and of

Two Strange Men 206

XXVI. Concerning the Last of the New and the
Old-New Town of Lida; of Dutchy and
the Woman and the Stranger and Leav-
ing Things Almost as They Were in the

Sixties—A Shake-Down 215

XXVII. Ways and Means— The Noble Art of Sales-
manship, With Some House-to-House

Philosophy ...-'. 227

XXVIII. Farewell to an Old Friend of the Early
Days — And Au Revoir to the First, and
Only Friend of All the Years — Rather a
Sad Chapter Take It All in All . . 231
XXIX. The Old Man and the Violet Rock, the
Guardians and the Story of the Old

Man's Love 237

XXX. Treats of Fair Play, in Which I Lose One
Horse, and of Justice, in Which I Lose
Another; and of Pity, and My Acquisi-
tion of a Third 257

XXXI. Killing Mexican Bandits 262

XXXII. One Who Sang 266

XXXIII. Old Austen Sees Daylight, I Do, Too, and

She Does, Too 270

'XXXIV. Far-Reaching Consequences 279

XXXV. Ocean Echoes . 283

INTRODUCTION

In this autobiography the reader is confronted
with a situation sufficiently novel to invite more
than a moment's consideration. Here is a man
who may be described as a true romantic. At
the end of a life devoted to wanderings which
took him nowhere and adventures which have
gotten him neither fame nor wealth, he sits down
to write, convinced that nothing like this had
ever happened to a man before.

"And so I yarn along," he says, "and think of
past things, and write them down, partly as a
Bailor who knew all that was hard and rough, and
partly as a man recently come to writing who is
intoxicated with the new-found use of words to
evoke old scenes."

Here is the secret source of his magic. Like
the gentleman in the play who finds he has been
speaking prose all his life, our author has sud-
denly perceived that he has been doing the
romantic things men write of in books, and
the exquisite emotions attendant upon the dis-

ix

x INTRODUCTION

covery have had a distinct influence upon his
diction. There is an elvish irresponsibility in his
narrative that only an Irish sailor could accom-
plish without foundering. In the early part of
the book, indeed, he is continually bewildered
by the sharp differences between himself and the
conventional Irishman of whom he has heard and
read. Yet he perseveres courageously, and soon
the stage Irishman is forgotten in the contempla-
tion of his own matchless personality. He is one
of those picturesque beings who erupt from the
calm surface of literature at long intervals,
articulate romantics, like Trelawney with his
"Memoirs of a Younger Son," Broome whose
"Log of a Boiling Stone" is already forgotten,
and even Adam Lindsay Gordon, the Byronic
rebel who found solace for his indignant spirit in
galloping about the Australian bush. For it
should be borne in mind that these romantics are
sharply contrasted in mentality with men of
the type of Vambery, passionately wandering
through Central Asia slaking his thirst for lan-
guages and the ultimate roots of human speech ;
of Burton, the trained traveler who held in con-
tempt the people of his own time and race; of

INTRODUCTION xi

Speke. the authentic explorer, consumed with a

•-

hard, practical rage for annexation, standing
with cool insolence before kings, and berating
savage despots like children. All these men, in
their various ways, were equipped to do their
work, as were those more essential builders of
empires, Rhodes, Olive and Gordon. They were
the masters of their fates in so far as determining
their direction could achieve this. They were
leaders, and perhaps the most distinctive charac-
teristic of such men in their intercourse with
others is their utter inability to permit anyone
else to take the lead, no matter how trivial the
enterprise.

But the true romantic has no such urge to
assume the purple buskins of leadership. There
is nothing in him of the old conquistador breed,
those men who landed upon terrifying coasts,
and seem to have had a demon within them, so
astounding are the feats of endurance recorded
of them. The true romantic wanders as does the
gypsy, as did Borrow, but not always with Bor-
row's command of observed incident and knowl-
edge of the human heart. The true romantic is
a Peer Gynt, Emperor of Himself, lord of the

xii INTRODUCTION

illimitable lost empire of Egomania, condemned
to wander in a world of astute swindlers, shrewd
executives and a sentimental proletariat. He
sees himself always the clear-eyed victim of ras-
cally circumstances, and broods upon the bizarre
destiny which condemns him to be forever on the
move. Yet of all things he dreads stagnation.
The gently shining placidity of bourgeois exist-
ence lures him while he struggles desperately to
ship once more. He grows pensive as the years
pass and find him without hearth and home, out-
ward bound to distant ports where dwell the
girls enshrined in the glamour of youthful
voyages. He runs away from his ship, and
crosses deserts and inland plains in eager hurry
to reach a ship. In the streets of heartless cities
he sees with luminous clarity the tufted palms
waving in the night wind while the riding lights
in the harbour twinkle and the guitars twang to
soft voices. And you will discover him on any
South American water-front, planning a return
to some country from which he will immediately
depart.

The valuable feature of this book of Adven-

INTRODUCTION xiii

tures is the expression of this mood of the true
romantic. Listen to him as he recounts his
vicissitudes ashore :

"It was time to commence to build castles, for
six months more would give us substantial
money. My castle took the form of a cozy little
farm, and included a cozy little wife, too, for
I was becoming enamoured of a red-haired lassie
whose father raised strawberries. She liked me
in spite of my clothes and the way I had of
talking to my pigs. . . .

"Nevertheless, I kissed her one day through
the fence — a barbed wire fence at that — and a
thrill went through me; the like of which I had
never known before. I began to long for the
complementary companionship of her, and I
thought of her sharing my days, and bringing
my lunch to me at the plow.

"How full of nothingness are dreams! They
are but fading specters on a wasteless sea — the
closer you sail to them the farther they are away.
Two days after my kiss, the hog farm was in
mourning. Every last one of the hogs died from
hog cholera."

xiv INTRODUCTION

Here, then, you have the essential value of
this extraordinary narrative. It is the work of a
true romantic, oblivious of the tremendous issues
of civilization and race. And yarning along, as
he says, a man "recently come to writing, who is
intoxicated with the new-found use of words to
evoke old scenes." This is a valuable confession.
It is the key to a small yet inimitable department
of literature. It is the peep-hole through which
we see something very astonishing indeed — an
authentic character out of some fabulous novel
shouldering the ghostly author aside, and writing
the tale himself.

WILLIAM MOFBB.
S. 8. Carrillo

OCEAN ECHOES

CHAPTER I

CONCERNING WHO^S WHO AND WHY — THINGS
MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME

O;NE often wonders whether the desire to
wander is not something more than
the fidgeting of a restless soul. I
shall not even try to analyse this thing — better
leave it to the mystery -writers who are sure of
their occult settings, and to the theorists who
have never smelled the salt. Nevertheless, there
is within me something which says that to halt
is to decay.

Although my hair is graying and my stride
shortening, my sympathy with adventure is as
fresh within me as was the spirit to dare the
day I capsized a sail-boat in a squall, and the
doctor was called to give aid to my mother.
She had fainted at the sight of me sitting on
the bottom of the overturned boat. When I was
finally rescued my father whipped me, the
schoolmaster whipped me, and the good Padre
gave much wise counsel to a bitter little boy.

3

4 OCEAN ECHOES

I was their, in' 'tfce year 1885, ten years old. and
that is close on forty years ago.

That day was a never-to-be-forgotten one.
Then, for the first time, I experienced the joys of
isolation and the dangers that make adventure
romantic. The sea and I have been friends;
we have understood each other's thoughts. The
sullen moods, the tranquil, and the boisterous,
each in its own tone, have blended together in
harmony, so that the Soul of the Sea is forever
en rapport with the heart of its lover. I love
the sea, and shall continue to, as long as I have
eyes to see its indigo and emerald coloring, and
ears to hear its rumbling echoes on crest and
crag.

My life, until I was eighteen years old, was
spent on my father's large farm on the shores
of Strangford Lough, in the northeastern part
of Ireland. The last of the eighteen years were
happy for me, but sad enough for family and
friends. I was wild, if that conveys anything
to the reader — I mean wild in the sense of seek-
ing danger. My mother was constantly praying
for me, while my father laid heavy the lash.

There was another to be reckoned with — the

CONCERNING WHO'S WHO 5

village schoolmaster. Short and stubby fte was,
with a black beard and a pug nose, and eyes
that were always searching for the bad that
might be in a boy. I branded him one time
with a glass ink-bottle over his heathery eye-
brows. He's dead now, and I suppose I've for-
given him for the welts he made on my young
hide.

There were four in our family, two boys and
two girls. My brother was older than I by two
years. He was a quiet and unassuming boy,
always with his head deep in some book. He
was never much of an adventurer. I mean that
when the hounds and huntsmen went scurrying
after a fox or a deer, he would be self-contained
with his lessons, while I would jump through
the school-room window and run all day with
the horses and dogs.

The family, I thought, loved him far better
than they did me. They were always holding
him up to me as the model of behavior; and
surely he was to be admired, for he took adven-
ture like a gentleman, as he did everything ; and
was a midshipman in Her Majesty's navy when
I was a wildling on the high seas. He died while

6 OCEAN ECHOES

still in his youth, in South America, and his
death has ever remained a grief to me, for I
loved him quite as much as the others did.

What I regret infinitely in my life is the worry
I caused my mother. I feel that I was respon-
sible for the gray in her hair, that for many
years longer should have been black as an
eclipsed thunder-cloud. She was the one, when
I had been out hunting ducks in the bogs all
night, to open the door at three or four o'clock
in the morning, whispering softly: "Don't
wake your father. He thinks that you went
to bed early." That was the mother who stayed
by me then, as her memory ever has, kind, lov-
ing, and most long-suffering. The principles of
forbearance which she taught me are cruel
enough when one has to tackle, as I did, a world
of selfish and intolerant people, who laugh when
you laugh, and when the bumper is empty, yawn,
and long for another day when the sea may
break a prize more worthy. Nevertheless, they
have stayed in my heart from her example, and
I do not think that I am unkind, unloving, or
impatient, beyond my Celtic nature and the
training of the sea.

CONCERNING WHO'S WHO 7

Mother didn't know that a world existed out-
side the County Down. She's dead, now, these
many years, and I wonder if her souPs imagina-
tion has not, from its infinite viewpoint, seen
the world somewhat as I see it. If I am at
fault she'll forgive, yes, she'll forgive as she
did when I turned the boat over, and carried
the gun without a license. Mothers always for-
give, on, I think, into the Beyond. As I drift
with the current of tide and time, I can see
in every man the generative forces for good left
there by his mother. Without them the world's
highways would crowd with wrecks of debauch-
ery, and hulks of men would pile high the ocean
shores where kelp once grew.

Our home overlooked the sea, and, within easy
view, ships passed on their way to lands beyond
the horizon. To a boy of ten with a romantic
soul, those strange visitors with white sails and
dark hulls spoke their message as they glided
by on into haze and adventure. Left on the
beach, I gazed with desire into a nothingness
of lonesomeness, and longed to be a man that
I might wrestle with the Devil or the Deep,
and defy each. But I had to await the passing

8 OCEAN ECHOES

of slowly rolling years, which brought me a good
that I did not appreciate — a well-nourished,
strongly-proportioned young frame, fit for fight-
ing and endurance, an eye more than usually
steady, and an unusual knowledge of that most
difficult seamanship, navigation of small boats
along a rocky coast.

I often long for a glimpse of my old home.
I mean some day to go back there when Ireland
is more as I remember it; and yet my memories
seem but as those of yesterday, fleeting like scud
across my story, leaving pictures of startling
brightness here and there. Land glimpses,
often, of horses and cows, of flax and grist-mills,
hawthorn hedges blooming, hogs and wild ducks.
Particularly of two dogs whose instincts were
super-animal, who shared my joys and sorrows,
and were whipped when I was whipped, drag-
ging in with me late at night, after I had worn
out their poor little legs trailing me through
the bogs hour after hour without food.

There are pictures, too, of a loving little boy
combing his mother's hair, making her tea for
her when she was sick, and waiting on her like
a woman; then the wheatfield, when the wheat

CONCERNING WHO'S WHO 9

was in flower and the hawthorn blossoms open
to the bumble-bee, and the thrush and the
meadow lark alternated their song for the day;
then "Paddy," the Irish hunter, whose soft,
nimble lips could fumble any gate until it
opened, and whose horse-conscience allowed
much gleaning in forbidden pastures, in defiance
of our stupidity.

Paddy died from old age, and not from lack
of care. My father may not have had all the
fatherly instincts, but his animals were royally
entertained, and woe betide the groom who neg-
lected the many variations of their diet, or
failed to give them a light clean bed of the
proper depth!

While I remained at home my father's main
worry was to keep me out of sail-boats. In this
he was never successful. He was afraid of the
sea, and had a horror that he would be drowned
some day while trying to rescue me.

Father, too, is resting in a little crowded
graveyard, beside those of his own, and the many
who played together when he and they were
boys.

CHAPTER II

AN EVENT WHICH MAKES MY HAND STILL
SHAKE As I WRITE. — HOUNDED

I WAS fourteen when I cut the schoolmaster
over the eye. There was a hunt on. The
red-coated huntsmen came in swarms, the
beagle hounds yelped viciously as they passed
the country school. The schoolmaster must
have known of the hunt in advance. The win-
dows were down and locked with a trigger-catch.
The front door was locked.

The back door opened into a yard that had
a high wall around it, and the iron gate that
gave on the country road was hasped fast with
an iron padlock. To get in or out of the school
a boy must have a quick mind and a ladder.
I had the presence of mind, and a step-ladder
leaned against the wall to the right of a large
blackboard.

The pupils were excited as they worked. The
master knitted his brows as he gazed at the

10

HOUNDED 11

beautifully garbed ladies who rode in the hunt.
I raised my hand and spoke pleadingly:

"Please, sir, may I go out?"

Turning to me he said, in his most conquering
brogue : "There'll be no leave till the hunt goes
by."

The better-disciplined boys looked at me and
grinned.

I have often thought, in reading of the various
mystical cults, that sometime in the back ages
I may have been a dog. The dog instinct was
certainly strong in me that day. When the
hunting horn sounded I was as instantly respon-
sive as the swiftest beagle that led the hounds.
I jumped for the step-ladder, and rushed for
the back door. In my haste I knocked down a
few of the boys. There was a general uproar, and
I, heedless of everything and the consequences,
slammed the ladder against the back wall,
mounted the steps, and emerged into freedom.

The village school was soon in the distance.
I could run then, through stubble-fields and
thorn hedges, over pillared gates and stepping-
stiles. I overtook the hunt, passed the fat,
stubby, gouty riders, and, knowing the cutoffs,

12 OCEAN ECHOES

was soon in the midst of the baying beagles.
I ran with them till the sun went down.

The stag that made merry the chase took to
the ocean for safety. He was later rescued by
boatmen, only to lead the hunt another day.
The disappointed hounds and I, weary and
empty, turned homeward; they to be caressed
and fed, and I to be beaten and humiliated. So
the hunt broke up on the beach. Red-coated
huntsmen and beagles went each to his own
home, and each with his own thoughts of the
day and the morrow. My visions of what
awaited me from an angry father that night and
from a heavy-handed schoolmaster the next day
made light of my empty stomach and tired body.

I didn't skulk about. I went home to take
my medicine. What was a whipping compared
with a day with the hounds? My two dogs met
me about a mile from the house. I knew by
their big melancholy eyes that they were sorry
for me. After jumping and frisking around and
licking my hands they dropped behind at a
respectful distance. It was never safe for them
while I was getting punished, for we shared each
other's crimes. So I got my whipping, and one

HOUNDED 13

that I have never forgotten. Even supper, saved
for me, could not heal my sense of aching
injuries, in spite of all the plenty of the Irish
way of living in those years. But I was con-
soled by the thought that I should soon be a
man. In fact, not long after, when my father
attempted to beat me one day, I warned him that
I was unwilling to be punished again, and that
if he tried to, he would do it at his own risk.
That was the last.

As I went to school next day, I could hear
the boys whisper :

"He's going to get it to-day."

They were right. I did get it. I entered the
school as innocently as the kindergarten chil-
dren. I noticed that the master, as he looked
at me, grew venomous, and buttoned his frock-
tailed coat. But everything went well till roll-
call, and I had hopes that he had given me up
as a bad job. I was sadly mistaken. Wheii he
called my name :

"Present, sir," I shouted.

"Come up here to the desk," he roared.

Then I knew that the price of the hunt had
to be paid. He called the school to atten-

14 OCEAN ECHOES

tion, and, fixing his fiery eyes on me, said:

"I'm going to make an example of you. I'm
going to teach you that I am the master here
and have to be obeyed." As he slung his epi-
thets his voice grew fierce, and his frame shook
with anger.

"You'll never amount to anything," he roared,
"you, — you,— "

I had a bitter enemy in school — Thomas
Coulter by name. I could hear him snicker
behind his hands. The master stepped down
from his desk with the cane in his hands.

"Hold out your hand!" he shouted. "Twelve
slaps with the cane for you."

Four were considered a serious punishment,
but twelve were out of the question. I held out
my hands and took six, three on each. The
welts were too painful for any more. When I
refused and said that I had had enough, he
sprang at me like a tiger, knocked me down,
put his knee on my breast, and almost drove
the wind out of me. Then he lost control of
his temper and beat me unmercifully. As I lay
there on the school-room floor groaning with pain,
he stood over me like a madman. Then, realizing

HOUNDED 15

that he had done his job, he took a glass of
water, and resumed the work of the school.

I crawled to my seat, but not like a whipped
cur by any means; rather with the determina-
tion to get even with that black-eyed brute.
Half an hour later my chance came. I grabbed
a glass ink-bottle, and being good at throwing
cobble-stones, I struck him over the eye, laying
bare the bone.

With blood dripping down his shirt he tum-
bled down from his high-topped desk to the plat-
form. I, weak and bruised, feeling that my job
was done, but sick at the sight of it, crawled
out of the school and staggered home.

I was not sent to that school again.

The parish people were terribly upset over
my crime, but never a word did they say against
the schoolmaster for what he had done to me.
Strange to say, my father openly took my side.
He was willing to abuse me himself, but when
it came to public punishment I at once became
a son of his, and as such was entitled to consid-
eration. My mother, being the village diplomat,
had to smooth the troubled waters, which she
was well qualified to do.

CHAPTER III

I CONQUER MY ENEMY — IRISH ANNE. — THE
BANDMASTER

I WAS sent to another school in another
village, but my time there was short also;
for the hounds and the huntsmen passed
that way, too, and I had learned nothing from
my former experience. I rode a donkey to and
from that school. The distance was far,
although you could count the Irish miles on
three fingers of the left hand.

One afternoon I was coming home feeling
happy. I had been promoted to a higher grade
and was beginning to like the school. My young
enemy of the other school, Thomas Coulter, who
had laughed when the master whipped me, was
also riding a donkey that afternoon. The two
animals met in the road, head on. They stopped
and exchanged sniffs of greeting. Thomas and
I growled at each other like two strange bull-
dogs, and, without a word, dismounted, pulled

16

I CONQUER MY ENEMY 17

off our coats, and flew at each other's throats.

Thomas was older and heavier, and, as usual,
he blackened both my eyes and made my nose
bleed. I rode home, horrible to look at. My
mother bathed my face and washed the blood
off, saying, in her gallant way:

"Oh, how I wish that sometime you could
whip that boy."

She cooked me two eggs, and had me drink
a pitcher of fresh buttermilk. Then she asked
me where Thomas was. I told her up by the
Four Roads. I knew that she wanted me to go
back and see if I couldn't get even with him.
Mother was prudent, but her actions carried
meaning.

"Go out to the bog," said she, "and bring me
four leeches. I must have your eyes fixed up
before school to-morrow."

I didn't go near the bogs. Up to the Four
Eoads I strode, and met Thomas, the boss of
the village boys.

"Come on," I said, "Fm going to whip you
this time."

He was whipped, and well whipped. I have
often wondered since whether my success was

18 OCEAN ECHOES

due to the eggs and buttermilk, or to my
mother's daring words : "I wish that sometime
you could whip that boy."

When I was twelve years old I had a childish
fondness for girls of my age. I liked to be with
them, to play with them, caress them, and —
which often happened — to fight with them.

One girl in particular, Anne Bailey, interested
me. Dressed in starched aprons and polished
shoes, she would meet me at the stile and swing
with me on the gate. I would carry her books
from school, and fight her fights, which were
many. Anne, for a child of thirteen years, had
a terrible temper. Few boys in the village had
any use for her. I liked her because she fought
for what she thought was right. The smaller
children always had a square deal where Anne
was concerned, even if she had to trim a boy
to get it.

My fondness for her, I suppose, grew out of
the fact that she never lost a fight. If she got
into a tight place where she couldn't win with
her fists, she would resort to cobble-stones, and
Anne could throw those gray granite, ragged
stones, so common on the country roads in

I CONQUER MY ENEMY 19

Ireland, with unerring accuracy. Her enemies
would run before her for the cover of the haw-
thorn hedges. Yet she had characteristics that
belong to her sex. She admired well-dressed
boys. On Sunday mornings she would give me
her most coquettish smile, for then I was togged
in my best.

When I was fifteen, mother had me join a
band, and while I remained at home I learned
to play the cornet, clarionet, and flute. Music
develops imagination in the imaginative. In
me, perhaps because I was over-imaginative,
music wrought agonies of adventurousness and
rainbow-tinted, velvet harmonies of the sights
and sounds that lay beyond my ken — over there,
north, south, east, and west; over there beyond
the sea. Only a few rolling green waves to
cross, in that winged ship, flitting through the
gauzy haze, and strange lands would emerge
from the horizon, lands of color and music. So
different, so much more beautiful than my world.
Surely I was a strange boy — at once bad and
harmless, and full, as I have always been, of the
spirit of poetry. Others I have known like
myself, fighters of wave and man, also full of

20 OCEAN ECHOES

the essence of poetry — many of them, unbeliev-
ably many.

I was soon to test the beauties of that other
world of my yearning. By the time I reached
it, hardship had relegated the poetry of my
nature to the safest confines of my heart, and
my surface sentiment was not easily hurt, as
sometimes is the case with others. I loved every
phase of the sea-going life, and longed for more.
Now it lives on in my thoughts.

I often think of the bandmaster, and how
different he was from my first schoolmaster.
What a sense of humor he had, and what pains
he took to teach me! What long rides he took
on his old white mule! He came on Thursday
evenings. His breath was always strong with
whiskey, but he seemed none the worse on that
account in his teaching.

Our maids, at home, were with us so long that
they were part of the household. Only the
dairymaid was changed from time to time, for
her position seemed to be one that inevitably
led to matrimony. There would be a great dis-
cussion as to the next one to fill the place, on
these occasions. But Maggie, the cook, never

I CONQUER MY ENEMY 21

changed. She had been with us for years and
years. She ruled our goings-out and our com-
ings-in, and woe betide us if we did not do justice
to the good things that were set before us; no
mean task when one considers the three hearty
meals and the three between-meals that punc-
tuated the Irish farmer's day.

Maggie thought a great deal of the music-
master, perhaps because he was good to me, who
was her prime favorite, perhaps because he ate
most unsparingly of everything that she placed
before him on those hungry Thursday nights,
perhaps because her soul was also full of music,
surcharged with the ceaseless din of pots and
pans.

The bandmaster was always kind and smiling,
and made light of our mistakes, sticking his
fingers into his ears most comically to listen for
discords. For the life of me I could not see
how that process could facilitate his perception,
but he seemed to locate discords with unerring
accuracy.

Surely he had a difficult task teaching us
county boys to play together, but he did, and
rode his mule over twenty miles of cobble-stones

22 OCEAN ECHOES

once a week to do it. How excited and happy
the old fellow was, when, at last, after four
months of practice and effort, we played "The
Minstrel Boy" without a hitch. That was his
favorite piece, and he felt that if a band could
play that, it could master anything in music.

Many years ago he and the old mule have gone
up the Long Trail to return no more. Only in
an occasional thought, like the memory of
springtime, can they return — the mule and the
Music Master.

CHAPTER IV

I LEAVE MY MOTHER, AND THE SEA CLAIMS ME.
MY LITTLE DOGS MUST HUNT ALONE

LONG before I was seventeen I had some
knowledge of the sea. Often I had
sailed away in an open boat out of sight
of land, and again many coastwise schooners
put in to the Lough. I had learned to run aloft
and knew many of the sails and ropes — in fact
I was about ready to leave home and sail away.
But my mother held me for another year, hoping
vainly to keep me to a course at the university.
How miserable I made it for those at home!

School I detested, and, judging from my
changes, school detested me. Father thought
that he might be able to make a farmer of me.
Mother, in spite of her intellectual yearnings,
knew differently. She knew that the wild waves
and the flapping canvas called me, and that my
harvest waited for me in the deep sea.

Winter was over that year, and I was nearing

23

24 OCEAN ECHOES

my eighteenth birthday, which was near Saint
Patrick's Day (the one day in the year when
my father permitted himself to celebrate until
he could celebrate no more). The farmers were
plowing the fields, and the hawthorn buds were
bursting with coming spring. The wild birds
were mating and starting to build their nests,
and the lark, never forgetful of his praise of the
spring, sang his song way up in the sky.

My two dogs were old now. Prince seldom
hunted with me in the bogs, and when one stayed
behind the other did too. I loved them and
hated to leave them. We had a great deal in
common, especially Prince and I; our joys and
sorrows together had been many. But he was
so old and stiff that I felt that if he should go
with me it would be only for a little while. He
was soon to rove with the dogs who had gone
on before him, in the valleys where deer and
duck and rabbit and hare are plentiful, and
dogs' barks are but memories of their yester-
days.

Mother saw to my going away. She packed
my clothes, socks and pulse-heaters. These last
were a large part of her creed. One would be

THE SEA CLAIMS ME 25

immune to any epidemic if he wore them on his
wrists. I took them to please her, although
my vocation, above all others, called not for
pulse-warming. Then she tucked some money
in my pocket. I kissed her good-bye, and waved
from the hill.

I can see her now, gathering up her white
apron to wipe the tears away, a beautiful picture
for a boy to remember; one of love and self-
sacrifice that only mothers are destined to give.
My father, I am now ashamed to say, I did not
see. What he said to my mother I can readily
guess, for I never saw nor heard from him again.

When I said good-bye to Irish Anne, tears
like dew-drops — the kind that cluster on a
spider's web in the early morning — shone in her
big blue Irish eyes. She was nearly a woman
then, and religiously inclined. Her days of
curving, cobble-stone throwing were over. We
parted with friendship's kiss. I learned years
afterwards that she was married, and had a
large family of boys and girls. Perhaps I may
have met some of her children in the highways
of my rambles, but how was I to know them?

The night boat for Glasgow used to make the

26 OCEAN ECHOES

trip in about twelve hours. I took it, and
landed in Glasgow the following morning, going
straight with a sailor's instinct to a sailor's
boarding-house. It was on the Broomielaw.

A Swede ran it. He was married to a High-
land woman, and together they made the Scandi-
navian sailor's boarding-house hum. He was a
drunkard who had formerly been bosun on a
Black Ball liner. She was endowed with Scotch
thrift and business sense, and had always an eye
open for a "homeward bounder" with his pocket
full of money. Such a one could always sit at
the head of her table, and welcome.

The Swede had my pay for one month's board,
and assured me a ship by that time. Seeing
that I had still some money left, he begged me
to put it into his care. Like the young fool that
I was, I did this, and of course that was the last
of the money. He went out promptly, and got
drunk, spending it all.

The boarding-house catered to all creeds and
colors ; everyone was on an equal footing. When
one sang, they all sang. In a fight everybody
joined in, and, after the fight, when the broken
pieces were swept away, and the scalp-wounds

THE SEA CLAIMS ME 27

had been plastered, they would all drink
together and be friends again.

The second week that I was there the Swede
wanted to know if I would go with him down
the Clyde on a sloop he had to a place called
Broderick. He wanted to load her with sand
to haul back to Glasgow to sell. Then he would
give me back the money he had taken from me.
Once more I "fell" for him, and went along, on
a short but perilous trip that was to bring me
within plain sight of Davy Jones's Locker.

CHAPTER V

MY FIRST VOYAGE WITH THE SWEDE —
EXPERIENCE

THE sloop was about thirty tons. She
had one mast that was stuck forward
on her. The main boom was about
thirty-five feet long. The sails were old, and
had many patches. The small cabin aft in her
was filthy and full of rats. The deck was so
old that you could see through the seams, and
young as I was, I was fully aware of the risk
I was taking sailing in her. But the Clyde
never got very rough, and knowing that, and
believing that I should get back my five pounds,
I felt like taking the chance.

So one morning we set sail — myself, another
penniless sailor, and the proprietor of the Scan-
dinavian .sailor's boarding-house, late bosun of
a Black Ball liner.

The Swede wasn't much of a sloop sailor. I
could see that by the way he handled her.

28

MY FIRST VOYAGE 29

Between drifting and sailing we made Greenock,
eighteen miles below Glasgow. Here he put in,
saying that he needed water. But it was
whiskey he wanted. He sold practically every-
thing that was movable on the deck to a junk
man. He did leave an anchor on board. Then
for two more days he drank, and spent the junk
money, while the "broke" sailor and I stayed
on board and waited.

On the morning of the third day he came on
board broke and sick, and we set sail again for
Broderick. We made it in twenty-four hours;
that is, we made the beach where the sand was,
and dropped the anchor about a quarter of a
mile from the surf. We put the boat over, and
commenced loading sand by the simple process
of loading the small boat, rowing off, and shovel-
ing the sand into the sloop.

The sloop was better than half loaded, when
one morning the Swede rushed out to tell us that
we were caught in a storm.

"Hurry boys," he shouted, "and get the main-
sail on her."

It was a storm, all right, but not a bad one
just then. There was a good breeze coming

30 OCEAN ECHOES

from the southwest, and with it a long ground-
swell. The Swede was pale with fear. The
sloop was on a lee shore, and he didn't know
how to beat her off. We set the mainsail and
started to heave up on the anchor.

I told him that was not the way to get off
a lee shore. The old Irish fishermen had taught
me in their fishing-smacks how it was done.
Shoot up the jib, slip the cable, give her the
mainsail, and away, close-hauled, to fight for
sea-room till you get a good lead off shore. But
the Swedish bosun would not listen to a boy.

She started to drag her anchor, and was
headed straight for a spit of rocks. As she
dragged he prayed, then started to swear, and
said that he wouldn't give a damn if the sloop
belonged to him.

"Who does she belong to?" I shouted, as we
were nearing the rocks.

"My wife and brother-in-law," he cried, and
with death staring us in the face went on to tell
me how she happened to be theirs. I forget
the intricacies of the ownership at this distance,
but I can still hear the shrill tones of his high-
pitched voice rising in trivialities above the

MY FIRST VOYAGE 31

solemn tones of nature. Before he got through,
however, I felt that the grave would be prefer-
able to an interview with his wife once the sloop
was lost.

She struck the rocks. The mast went over-
board, the sea lashed over her. The undertow
would pull away from the rocks, only to get a
good start with the next sea, and slam her up
against them. We clung to her like leeches, the
Swede crying in bitter anguish:

"I wouldn't give a damn if she belonged to
me— I wouldn't give a "

Young and fearless as I was, I had but little
hope that any of us would get off with our lives.

The sloop gave a hard thump, and the stern-
post was sprung from its rusty fastenings and
floated alongside. Another sea like the last one
and she would smash into firewood, and the
bosun of the Black Ball liner and his crew would
be found bloated and bruised on the high-water
line.

But the God of the Deep was not ready as
yet to destroy my dream of the sea. I was to
find worse than this before he was through with
me. The sloop, what was left of her, by some

32 OCEAN ECHOES

strange freak of the waves, swung through
head on, with the jibboom reaching over the
rocks. The sailor was quick to seize this
heaven-sent opportunity. He crawled out on
the jibboom end, and when the sea lurched back
dropped to the sloppy rock and to safety.

I wasn't so fortunate. When I let go the
jibboom the undertow caught me and I got
pretty badly mauled — a cut head, skinned shins,
a few sore ribs; and I was gorged with salt
water.

The Swede was doomed; that seemed a fore-
gone conclusion. We were powerless to help
him, and the thought made me cold with horror.
Years afterwards, hundreds of miles from land,
I saw men drown in sight of the ship, and felt
the same overpowering misery.

A short distance to the right of where the
sloop was pounding against the rocks lay a small
sand patch between two reefs. It wasn't over
twenty feet wide, and here the waves swept high
on the sandy beach. The Swede was destined
to live. He was yet to drink ale out of pewter
mugs, and watch where the homeward-bounder
hung his trousers.

MY FIRST VOYAGE 33

While I looked, with my thoughts going
heavenwards, a sea struck the sloop and she
broke in two. I turned my head away. I
couldn't watch a human being drown. Then a
curious thing happened. The Swede still clung
to the cabin hatch, and that part of the sloop
was carried out and away from the rocks, and
washed high and dry upon the patch of sandy
strand. He was none the worse, aside from
being soaked, while I was bruised and bleeding.
Who shall know the ways of Fate!

Some time later the life-savers came, and with
them a dignified and portly-looking man, the
wreckmaster. Very important he was. As we
stood there shivering, wet and cold, with not
a shilling among us, the world looked dark to
me. Then I remembered what my father had
once said :

"If he goes to sea, he'll soon come home
again."

CHAPTER VI

BACK TO GLASGOW. A LIVELIER CHAPTER, ON
GIRLS. THE GINGERBREAD BATTLE.

THERE is always some silvery lining to
most everyone's dark clouds. Coming
down the beach and heading for the
wreck strolled an Englishman. He looked cosy
and comfortable in his Scotch tweeds and long
homespun stockings.

The Swede and the wreckmaster were busy
over the salvage question, and I told the English-
man all about our experience getting ashore.
He felt deeply for us, or rather for me, and
putting his hand into his trousers pocket handed
me a gold sovereign. My, but that coin looked
good to me !

The Swede's ear, ever attuned, caught the
jingle, and he wanted me to share it with him.

"Oh, no," said I, "every dog for himself now.
I'm through with you."

34

BACK TO GLASGOW 35

Someone paid the sailor's fare and mine back
to Glasgow, maybe the wreckmaster, in lieu of
paying for the wreck. The Swede stayed
behind either to attend to business, as he said,
or because he was afraid to face his wife.

Why the sailor and I should have gone back
to the boarding-house on the Broomielaw is a
question for psychologists to answer. It is
something I never have understood, any more
than I can understand why other sailors con-
stantly did the same thing, returning persist-
ently to places where they were sure to be robbed
and abused.

But we did, and the reception that we received
from the Swede's wife and her brother is one
to be remembered. The news of the wreck had
reached Glasgow ahead of us, and when I walked
into the boarding-house she knocked me down.
When I got up she knocked me down again, and
it seemed that I was the cause of the disaster
in that I had given her husband my money.

Then it was the turn of the sailors who were
stopping there. They voiced their opinion of
the kind of sailor I was. The great trouble, it
seemed, was that the sloop was not insured —

38 OCEAN ECHOES

as if I had anything to do with that. The blame
was on me, fully.

I made up my mind that night that if I were
to become a sailor I should have also to become
a fighter, because I could see that without this
qualification one could never be a success on the
high seas.

The trail of my next venture of Love led into
the Swede sailor's boarding-house in Glasgow.
Jessie, the waitress who served the meals,
seemed to admire me, or perhaps it was the suits
that I wore. She was the type of a seaport girl.
She admired new faces and dressy young men.
While she led me to believe I was her first choice,
she was madly in love with a fireman on a
steamer. He was to arrive home shortly from
a Mediterranean port, and I was to find out
where I stood with the giddy Scotch lassie.

He did arrive, and came to the boarding-house
in his go-ashore clothes. Tall and lanky he was,
and baked white from the heat of the stoke-hole.
The coal-dust was yet in his ears, his eye-lashes
were cemented black from the slack of the slag.
His eyes were small and glassy, and he looked
rather vicious as he rolled into the boarding-

BACK TO GLASGOW 37

house and demanded to know where his Jessie
was. She not being there, he bought a pitcher of
beer and sat down to drink and talk with the
other sailors. They, being creative gossips and
ready to humor and cater to the homeward-
bounder, told him of the faithlessness of his
Jessie, how she seemed to be very much in love
with another man, and they doubted by this time
if she had any regard for him at all.

"Who is he?" he cried, and I trembled where
I sat, at the sight of his gnarly fists.

But I need not have been afraid No danger
that they would betray me. Agreeable as a fight
always was to them, beer was more agreeable
still, and a homeward-bounder silenced is a
homeward-bounder lost forever. They dodged
the question.

He got very angry and swore that women
were all alike, and not to be trusted. He bought
more beer all round, to the satisfaction of the
sailors, and gulped down his with oaths of
revenge.

"I'll show her she can't trifle with my bloody
?eart!" he shouted.

Just then the door to the dining-room opened

38 OCEAN ECHOES

and Jessie walked in. She exclaimed as she ran
toward him, "Ah, me bright laddie's home at
last!"

"Keep away from me, Jessie," he stuttered,
"I've been hearing about you since I've been
away. Now I'm going to get me another girl."

Jessie appeared crushed, crying : "Oh, Harry !
Don't leave me like this! I have been true to
you."

"Well, by God ! It's off between you and me,"
said Harry, waving her aside as he got up from
the table.

At the top of her voice Jessie screamed that
if he did this she should drown herself in the
Clyde.

"Go to it," cried Harry, as he staggered out of
the boarding-house.

True to her word, she went shrieking out of
the house, and ran across the street with her hair
flying in the breeze, to the Clyde's rim. The
sailors came shouting after her from the board-
ing house, urging the bystanders with their
shouts not to "let ?er drown >er bloomin' self."
I ran with them, and Harry ran too.

Barefooted women, with children in arms,

BACK TO GLASGOW 39

joined in the chase. Jew pedlers dropped their
packs and wrung their hands as they ran to the
Clyde. A longshoreman was coiling down rope
on the wharf. He stopped flaking it long
enough to speak to Jessie.

"Well, lass; you're at it again. Who is it
this time?"

Jessie stopped when she came to the stringer
at the bottom of the wharf.

"I'm going over this time," she shouted venge-
fully to the longshoreman, "and no mistake."

"Over ye go, then, I'll no stop ye," and he
smiled to himself.

"Stop, Jessie, don't jump over." And the
bold, ale-laden fireman thrust his way up to her,
and took her in his arms.

The longshoreman, grinning openly, went on
coiling down his rope. The sentimental board-
ing-house sailors swallowed hard as if they were
eating sea-biscuit, and bashfully stalled an ap-
proaching tear. The pedlers walked back to
their packs with their hands behind their backs
this time; the mothers gave their babies the
breast and wondered what it was all about ;
and I slunk away to where the broken shadows

40 OCEAN ECHOES

from the tall ships lay humped over the hydraulic
capstans.

This was the city of Glasgow in those days,
and a fitting place for a jilt from a boarding-
house waitress to a green, gawky, country boy.
My romance of that period ended there. There
were many more ; and, doubtless, if I can remem-
ber them all I shall touch on them as I rove
along, and I'll not spare myself.

For that matter I am not ashamed of my deal-
ings with women ; and I may say of the average
sailor of the old school as well as of myself, that
his dealings with women are based on a light-
hearted attitude but a thorough respect for the
sex.

When they are married, and their wives get
the drift of them, they dominate them like the
gales that squeeze them to the rigging. Their
wish is to be bossed by someone who is feminine
and has their interests at heart; and also it is
rarely that a sailor's wife is jealous of her hus-
band, for she realizes that in all conscience he is
only human. Long months of idleness and hard-
ship end in landing on shores where a smile or
a wink from a woman awakes in his lonesome

BACK TO GLASGOW 41

heart a new fondness for the wife he left behind.
If he seeks pleasure in foreign lands, it is not
disrespectful to the wife he loves. The craving
for home and dear ones comes first with the old-
time sailor.

Where my sea trails have led me to cities, I
have often wondered how men I have known
could kiss their wives good-bye, knowing full
well that their wives were only a blind for so-
ciety, and then after reveling all night with the
bird in the gilded cage, go home with the black-
est of lies on their lips. To daughters, too.
How about the other man's daughter? The bird
in the gilded cage?

I once refused command of a yacht, for no
other reason than this.

CHAPTER VII
THE KEAL, THING AT LAST — THE GINGER

IT happened that there would be a Blue-nose
ship to sail on in a few days, and the
Swede's wife thought that this was a good
chance to ship me away; so I got a bed in the
boarding-house after my licking that night, in
preparation for the final fleecing which is admin-
istered to all sailors on departure from such
boarding-houses, and is made as palatable as pos-
sible on account of their inevitable transforma-
tion into homeward-bounders.

Two days later I was shipped aboard a barque
bound for Sidney, Cape Breton. I wrote to my
mother, and told her that at last I was off to
sea. There was a Jew outfitting store next to
the boarding-house, and here I was outfitted
from my month's advance. They took it all;
and gave me a blanket, a straw tick, a few cigars
that I couldn't smoke, a clammy handshake, and
this Godspeed: "Be sure and visit us again."
That is part of their stock in trade.

42

THE REAL THING AT LAST 43

Hell will never close its gates as long as one
of those outfitting stores for sailors exists.

We towed down the Clyde, on the Blue-nose
barque. The crew was a conglomeration of
everything, Greeks, negroes, Scandinavians, Eng-
lish, Irish, Scotch and Germans. The mate was
over six feet tall, stout and wiry, with a hand on
him that had the spread of the wing of a mallard
duck, and a mustache that obscured his mouth.
His voice would chill you to the marrow, but
he was proud of it.

The captain was broad, chubby, and porky
looking. He carried his wife and child along.
She was quite the reverse of him in looks, tall
and slender as a bean-pole. The child, a boy,
was three years old, and able to run all around
the poop-deck.

When we got well out to sea, we set all sail
and let go the tugboat. I was of very little use
at first aboard that ship. I knew nothing about
square-riggers. But I was soon to learn.

About the second day out everyone commenced
to scratch himself. Even the child would lean
against the binnacle and scratch its little back
and shoulders. The Blue-nose barque was lousy

44 OCEAN ECHOES

fore and aft, and we even found vermin crawling
in the upper topsails. One old sailor who had
many years behind him on the sea, remarked that
as nearly as he could remember, the flying jib-
boom was the highest he had ever found them
on a ship.

Sailors as a rule in those days were clean.
They took baths, and scrubbed their clothes.
The crew of our barque got busy, but while we
drove the vermin from the decks and forecastle,
we were never sure about the sails. They were
never changed while I was aboard of her.

The food was new to me. Stirabout, stewed
apples and gingerbread, salt-horse, which was
scarce, and pork once a week — on pea-soup day.
The hardtack, the boss of the fo'c'sle said, was
good. He was a Liverpool sailor, and the bis-
cuits were supposed to have come from there.

Far be it from anyone in the forecastle to ques-
tion him. He was a fighter, and we had a world
of respect for him. His word was law to the
shell-backs. Four days out from Glasgow, a
thick, heavy-set Dane thought that he would be-
come the boss of the forecastle. The quarrel
arose over the equal distribution of the ginger-

THE REAL THING AT LAST 45

bread. The Dane was a big eater, and a greedy
one.

Liverpool Jack, that was his name, had his
code of ethics, that all were to share with the food.
The Dane was the more powerful man of the two,
and he tried to put his bluff across and "con"
the Irishman. What a mistake he made!

They stripped to the waist for action. He
cleared the benches away to give them room.
The forecastle was large, which favored Jack.
In all the years afterwards that I spent on the
sea, that fight on the Blue-nose barque beat them
all. Jack trimmed the Dane, and beat him until
he cried "enough." The fight was clean but it
was speedy. There was no hitting nor kicking
when one of them was down. The Dane's head
was large before the fight — but who could de-
scribe how large it was afterwards? After we
had led him around for a couple of days he
became quite a good Dane, satisfied with his
equal share of the gingerbread.

While I was always doing the wrong thing
from a sailor's point of view, I got along very
well in the forecastle. But not with the mate,
who, I believe, despised me. I told him that I

46 OCEAN ECHOES

was a sailor, and he had found out that I wasn't
— only a green country boy.

When we were nearing the eastern edge of
the Newfoundland Banks it commenced to blow
one evening, and the mate ordered the main-
royals clewed up. The barque carried no fore-
royal. The breeze was too strong for this light
sail. Usually it took two men to furl it. But
this evening he shouted to me to shin up, and
make it fast alone.

I did get a gasket around it, but I was unable
to pull the sail up on the yard the way it should
have been, snugly furled. When I came down
on deck again it was growing dark. The mate
greeted me with an oath, and a kick from his
Wellington boots.

"Get up there," he said, "and get that sail up
on the yard, or I'll break every bone in your
body."

I have often thought of that kick. That night
was the first in my life that I felt I was alone
with the stars. The barque below me looked
like a helpless bug being borne away by the
whim of the sea. The light from the binnacle
lamp shone on the figure of the helmsman.

THE REAL THING AT LAST 47

What an insignificant creature he looked! The
very wheel looked like spider's web, spun for
the moths of frail humanity.

The mate had made me angry, and I was in
no hurry to obey him, but as I looked at the stars
above me, and the restless sea below, I felt that
it was worth more than one kick to be allowed
the privilege of being alone with one's self on
the main royal of a Blue-nose barque in the fine
thrill of such a night as this. Feeling so, the
strength of youth aided me to the difficult task,
and I rolled the sail up on the yard. The mate
might abuse me, but he could never destroy the
spirit of the sea that was born in my soul.

We had an accident that brought gloom to the
forecastle. A Greek sailor fell through the
'tween decks down into the lower hold. We car-
ried him up to the deck. He was unconscious
from a blow on the head. He had the bunk over
me, and we put him into it. The mate came for-
ward with liniment, and orders to rub it on his
head.

"And," said he, "give him these pills when he
comes to."

Beecham's Pills for a fractured skull! Such

48 OCEAN ECHOES

was the practice of medicine aboard the average
sailing ship of those days.

The Greek sailor didn't come to for forty-eight
hours, and in the meantime our Scotch cook, out
of kindness of heart, prepared a flax-seed poul-
tice for the head, and claimed the honor of restor-
ing the Greek to his senses again.

Sailors were hard to kill thirty years ago, bar-
ring an accident, such as drowning, or falling
from aloft. They were a good deal like the
jackass — they would grow so old that they'd just
naturally wander away and die from old age.
I know one master of a ship, who is over eighty
years old, and just as full of fight as ever, and
still on the job. The sailors of to-day are better
fed and clothed, they have rooms to sleep in, and
waiters to serve their food. "Sissies," the cal-
loused old-timers call them. They say that they
belong in Snug Harbor, and the sooner they go
the better. I do not feel that they are so much
to blame, for many of them were heroes in the
war, but it would not hurt if they had more
training at the hands of two-fisted men, and at
sea the working day should be more than eight
hours.

THE KEAL THING AT LAST 49

Twenty-three days out from Glasgow we sailed
into Cape Breton Harbor, and dropped the
anchor. I may mention here that the barque
was in ballast from Scotland. We got orders at
Cape Breton to take on more ballast, and to pro-
ceed to the St. Lawrence Biver, and as far up it
as the mouth of the Saguenay. There, I believe,
she was to load lumber for a South American
port.

Yellow fever was raging in South America
then. Liverpool Jack made up his mind that he
wasn't going to any yellow fever port, and so
announced to the forecastle.

We sailed up the St. Lawrence to the saw-
mill town, and anchored about two miles from
the beach. The lumber came off in barges. We
took it aboard through the 'tween deck ports,
and stowed it down in the hold.

There was no possible chance that I could see
to get ashore, and I was as anxious as Jack to
leave the barque. The stories the crew told in
the forecastle had me badly scared. One old
man was saying : "I'll tell you men how it is down
there. You come to anchor in Eio harbor to-
night, and if the wind should haul off the land

50 OCEAN ECHOES

and blow from the city you're dead in the morn-
ing. Mind you," with warning hand upraised,
"that isn't all, men. You turn as black as Hell !"
he whispered

That story was enough for me. There
wouldn't be any escape from Kio. Out of Hell
there was no redemption.

CHAPTER VIII

JACK PROVES His METTLE — THE PIER-HEAD
JUMP — THE SUNKEN CANOE

THE captain and mate were seeing to it
that the crew should not get away. It
always mystified me how swiftly and
unerringly the most secret and darkly-guarded
news reached the "Old Man/7 When the time
came that I myself occupied that envied post, it
seemed more mysterious still when anything
escaped my watchfulness and perception. So
far does one advance in intelligence and the
sense of responsibility as he earns the stages of
promotion from the f o'c'sle to the poop-deck.

The captain's boat was hoisted on board every
evening, and the oars put away. There was also
a night-watchman, who had two guns strapped
around him, but did not look fierce to correspond.
Being a Frenchman, and rather religious, I
doubted if the necessity could arise to make him
shoot to kill.

51

52 OCEAN ECHOES

Liverpool Jack and I held a conference, and
decided that the time was near to make a dash
for freedom. The barque would be loaded in a
few days, and then it would be too late. The
watchman did not speak English. Jack was ter-
ribly upset, for he couldn't speak French, and so
was deprived of all diplomatic maneuvering.

The watchman had a birch-bark canoe in which
he paddled off to the ship evenings, leaving it
tied at the stern of a lighter of lumber. We
saw it, and kept it secret from the crew, who were
also trying to devise some means of getting
ashore.

Liverpool Jack was as crafty as a sea-otter.
One night he called me about twelve o'clock. I
had been working late, whittling a toy for the
captain's boy, of whom I was fond (as I have
always been of children, finding them good com-
pany at the worst of times), and was sleeping
soundly.

"Koll a suit of clothes up in your oilskin coat,"
said he. "We're going to-night. I have had
my eye on the watchman."

"You're not going to kill?" I asked, in a great
fright, while I scrawled the child's name on a

JACK PROVES HIS METTLE 53

scrap of old paper, and left the toy in my bunk.

"Oh, no," said Jack, reassuringly, and a little
flattered. "We haven't time for that."

"Here's my plan," he continued hurriedly, in
a low voice. "Tie the bundle on your back, and
strip naked — we may have to swim for it. When
the watchman walks over to the port side we'll
slide down the rope hanging from the starboard
bow, swim to the lighter, board her, creep over
the lumber to the stern, and then if all goes well
all that is left to do is simple enough. Drop into
the canoe and paddle ashore. Then we can hide
in the woods."

It all seemed simple enough to him, but I felt
as if the last of my time on earth had come.
"Suppose they kill us," I objected.

He looked me over quickly, as if he had half
a mind to leave me there and then. But his
eye softened, and I knew that he had in a way
grown fond of me, as he answered, roughly
enough :

"How about Eio? It's pretty damned brave
you'll have to learn to be, my boy, if you mean
to .stay away from your mother."

All ready, naked, and with our bundles

54 OCEAN ECHOES

strapped on our backs, we stood forward of the
galley, watching the watchman. It was in the
month of June when daylight comes in early in
these latitudes. It was after one o'clock.
Surely the devil possessed the Frenchman. He
was not making a move to cross to the port side.
Where he stood now, at the starboard side, he
commanded a full view of lighter and canoe. I
could see him toying with his revolver, and peer-
ing suspiciously from time to time into the
fo'c'sle. How we ever had come up without his
seeing us was a mystery.

It was past two. We were still nervously
watching for the Frenchman to move. Mars
hung low in the eastern sky, blinking in the
dawn. This was my first big adventure. Al-
though thoroughly scared, I had to admire the
coolness of Liverpool Jack.

"Let's go," he whispered, with fascinating
determination. "We won't wait another minute.
The damned Frenchman's either frozen to the
deck, or he's asleep."

We lowered ourselves cautiously over the bow
into the water. Oh, but it was cold, and there
were two miles to swim to the beach. He took

JACK PROVES HIS METTLE 55

the lead, and headed for the lighter, which we
boarded. Just as we started to crawl over the
lumber the Frenchman spied us. His voice was
nothing to him. Just a roar in torrents of
French, until he seemed to be about to choke.
He fired his revolver, and the echoes awoke the
cranes on the strand.

Jack didn't stop for this, but with me follow-
ing him closely, kept on for the stern of the
lighter. He got into the canoe all right. I had
never been in one. It was birch-bark, and in my
haste I jumped onto it and turned it over, spill-
ing us both into the water. The current was
strong under the stern of the barque, and when
we got our bearings we were well away from the
ship. But as we rose they saw us.

Bullets began to splash around us, and I could
hear the mate's voice heading the outcry.
"Dive," panted Jack, and suited the action to
the word. I tried to, but could not on account
of the oilskin pack. But the current soon took
us out of range, and they began to lower a boat.

Our feet soon struck the bottom of the sandy
beach, and we saw, in the morning's rays, the
captain's boat heading for the shore. Naked we

56 OCEAN ECHOES

landed, and naked we ran for at least five miles,
into the woods. When we stopped the sun was
up, and mosquitoes were there by the million,
ready to feast upon two runaway sailors.

We got into our clothes wet as they were, and
lay down to go to sleep. The mosquitoes saw to
it that we did not sleep long. When we awoke
we were hungry and stiff. Not a penny did
either of us have to buy something to eat. This
thought didn't worry Liverpool Jack.

"I'll go and get something to eat," he said.
"I know enough French to ask for it."

He took a trail that led to the saw-mill town,
and when he came back he had news, and food —
two loaves of bread, a pail of buttermilk, and a
chunk of butter.

"I heard that the watchman got fired," he
mumbled between bites, "and that the mate is
still looking for us."

CHAPTER IX
BUTTERMILK,, BUNKHOUSE AND BUGABOO

HAVE you any more news?" said I,
after a while, for Jack was looking
back persistently over his shoulder,
and it seemed to me that danger lurked in the
trees, and that the burly mate must by now be
hot after us. Yet I enjoyed this independence
that I had never known before — f reedom to roam
regardless of God or Man. I wonder if such a
taste of freedom from the laws of society is
really good for a boy, or whether he is more
unfit to face the world with such a background.
Jack answered my question :

"Yes, I have more news," he said. "We follow
a trail that leads to the right, and forty miles
from here we come to a river. There we can take
a boat and go up the Saguenay to Chicoutimi."

"But," I objected, "how are we going to take
a passenger boat? We have no money."

57

58 OCEAN ECHOES

"Leave that to me/' he said. "I've been in
tighter places than this before, and got out of
them."

What a wonderful philosopher Jack was
always! Optimistic, and never without a smile
or an encouraging word, and yet ready for a fight
at the drop of the hat. We filled ourselves full
of bread and buttermilk, for we had no knowl-
edge of when we should eat again. Then we
stuffed what was left of the bread into our
pockets, and started out, heading as directed
through the Canadian woods, without guide or
milepost or sidelight.

We walked until it grew dark. I didn't know
if we were on the right trail, and Jack didn't
care. We came to an old log bunkhouse, and
crawled into pine-needle bunks. But not for
long, thanks to my foolishness.

When we lay down to sleep Jack cautioned
against mosquitoes. We wrapped our coats
around our heads in the hope of keeping our
faces and necks clear. Jack could adapt himself
to anything, and in less than five minutes he was
fast asleep. But I would have smothered with
a coat around my head, and being sleepless, I

BUNKHOUSE 59

stood, looking out of the window Presently I
thought that I saw lights moving about in the
forest.

"The mate ! the mate !" I cried, tugging at Jack
in a frenzy of fear.

"Where?" he asked, sleepily, yet alert, and
not at all disturbed.

"See the lights?" And truly by now there
were a dozen of them, it seemed to me.

"Come on," said he. "This is not the place
for us." He grabbed his coat and ran out of
the bunkhouse door with me after him. We
didn't know what direction we took, but we ran
until we could run no farther.

"I guess they'll have a job overhauling us
now," said Jack, panting.

"Yes," I agreed, "we've gone a long way,
if we've only gone straight."

Many a laugh I've had over that chase. While
we were sitting there, exhausted from the run,
I saw the lights again.

"Heavens, there they are again, there they
come!" said I, jumping up. Jack, being some-
what infected with my state of mind, jumped
also.

60 OCEAN ECHOES

"Whore in Hell do you see the lights?"

"There, there I"

"Great God," roared Jack, "they aren't lights,
they're fireflies!" I didn't know what fireflies
were, but they carried their lights with them,
and they looked like masthead lights to me.

We fought mosquitoes until daylight broke.
Then, damp, cold, and hungry, we continued
along the trail. There were many trails ; which
one led to the steamboat landing only God knew.
We walked on. Noon came and went, and our
trouble was now, not in the distance to the river,
but in our stomachs. Hunger, the great dis-
ciplinarian, wished us back to the Blue-nose
barque. Ah! we mourned gingerbread and
stewed apples; yes, and almost Eio and yellow
fever. Only for the sake of filling our wrinkled
floppy tummies.

Jack grew silent, and I, who had never known
hunger, staggered on behind him. It was late
in the afternoon when we came to an opening,
and saw a house in the distance.

"Come on, we're all right now," said Jack.

They gave us plenty to eat at that house, and

BUNKHOUSE 61

showed us to the boat-landing. How kind some
people are in the world! The old French lady
met us at the door. She could not understand
our English but she could read our faces, and
that was enough for that dear old soul. She
welcomed us with the heart of a mother. Her
house was our house, and Jack, who should have
been calloused by his years of beach-combing,
bowed his head and dropped big tears on the
plate before him.

It was one o'clock in the morning when the
boat made the landing. How we were to get
aboard without paying a fare I did not know,
and Jack would not say. He did suggest that I
follow him.

"Haul in the gangplank !" the mate shouted.

I stood trembling behind a pile, afraid to be
seen. The gangplank was in, the boat moving.
Then, like a flash, Jack cried : "Take a run, and
a jump, and board her."

The spirit of adventure fears no danger. We
boarded the moving steamer, and hid away in
the lee shadows of the smoke-stack. We were
unseen, because the crew, when they took in the

62 OCEAN ECHOES

gangway, moved forward, and night hid us from
the eyes on the bridge.

I had learned more in two days, than I had
in all the eighteen years I had lived.

CHAPTER X

LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF ON His OWN — STEEL
BRIDGES AND A WATERLOGGED SHIP FOR ME

A the boat rounded the bends in that
beautiful river, and the chug-chug of
the engines echoed back from the
granite walls that guarded the water in its peace-
ful flow to the sea, I cuddled by the warm smoke-
stack and, unheeding the morrow, fell asleep.

When I awoke the sun was high, the boat was
moored to a wharf, and the sound of winches
greeted my ears.

"Come on, Jack," I said, "this must be Chi-
coutimi." We walked ashore. No one on board
noticed us.

There was a railroad being built from there
to Montreal. Chicoutimi, as we saw it, was a
good-sized town. I hunted for work, and got a
job painting steel bridges. Jack said that he'd
go on to Montreal and find another ship. He
claimed that he was a sailor and not a land-

63

64 OCEAN ECHOES

lubber. No railroad work for him, climbing over
steel bridges.

Whether there is in a sailor's makeup a cer-
tain amount of fatalism, or whether it is mere
childish trust in the future, or whether sailors
take their friendships so for granted that sepa-
ration is not a matter of moment, certain it is
that partings with them are over in a minute;
and equally certain it is that given the usual
course of events, they, will sometime meet again.
Of the shipmates I have had there are few that
I quitted forever at the end of the voyage.

Jack said good-by to me as he would to a
comparative stranger, and started up the rail-
road track singing in his hearty voice the old-
time chantey: "Going a-roving with my fair
Maid." He disappeared in the distance with
never a backward look. It seemed that the pros-
pect of the two hundred and forty mile walk to
Montreal meant nothing to him.

I was too young not to feel heart-broken at
being left by the only real friend I had had since
I left home. Evidently, I thought, I didn't
mean much to him, and it seemed that he might
understand the weariness which bound me to

LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 65

take work now instead of following him, and
might concede something. But I was mistaken
in all this, for Jack's heart was of the warmest,
and that would be clear when we met again.

For two months I painted bridges, at one dol-
lar and seventy-five cents a day, for as many
hours as twice the eight-hour day. Neck-break-
ing work. Seventy -five cents went for board and
room, the rest for clothes, and when I had paid
my car fare to Quebec I had little left over.

The call of the sea had me again, and I took
the boat down the Saguenay, as passenger this
time, and found a sailor's boarding-house at
Quebec. An Irishwoman, three daughters and a
son ran it. The food and treatment were better
than in the Glasgow boarding-house, but every-
body in it seemed to be either drunk or fighting.
I have always been, as the drunkard says, "able
to drink a drop of beer now and then." But I
have always had a horror of degenerating
through drinking into this low type. Where I
got this feeling I do not know, for, with the pur-
est of thoughts, my actions as a young man were,
in all conscience, wild enough. My captains
later on, when I sailed first mate with some of

66 OCEAN ECHOES

them on many voyages, as my story will show,
chose me to drink and play with ashore, then
wrung their hands over the wildness of me, and
assured their friends that on shore I could cer-
tainly bear watching, although when they had
me on their ships they could sleep in peace when
it was my watch on deck.

By the end of a week I had shipped aboard a
square-rigger bound for Liverpool and loaded
with lumber. Here I was to learn another
phase of the sea, the psychology of the men who
command deepwater ships — and in a way I was
to find myself.

The captain, an Irishman from the County
Wexford, was in the last throes of consumption.
The mate was a big, burly Scotchman, and a
drunkard. The second mate was old, wizened,
and rheumatic. The crew was mostly English.
We had one negro sailor in the forecastle, born
of an Irish father and a black mother in the
West Indies, who, curiously enough, could speak
only Gaelic. I was much excited and mystified
by all this, for he was very black himself ; but the
mate could understand him, and I soon found
that I could, too.

LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 67

There were good men in the crew, and some
excellent chantey-men among them. They ac-
cepted me as a man, for now I stood as one,
fire feet ten, sinewy, quifck of eye and hand,
nimble upon my feet, and deep-chested. Neither
was I ill-looking, nor ill-natured, being always
quick to smile, and quick to sympathize, though
I was something of a fighter. I have never had
trouble handling gangs of men — a proud boast
indeed for a vagabond ! Not an unusual one for
an Irishman, either; for it seems to go with the
black hair and clean-shavenness and roving gray
eye of some of us, that we are often good at
taking orders, and often good at giving them.

We towed down the St. Lawrence to the point
where the river widened out, then made sail, and
with a slanting breeze started for the Newfound-
land Banks. The captain was constantly cough-
ing and spitting and in danger of dying before
we reached Liverpool.

The mate ran out of whiskey when we were
two or three days out. He was in danger also.
He began to act like a crazy man. The cook
considered himself very good-looking, and was
always anxious to fascinate the pretty bar-maids

68 OCEAN ECHOES

ashore. He carried lotions and tonics about
with him to improve his appearance. The
thirsty mate got next to this, and stole the cook's
Florida water, three bottles of it. This he drank
as a substitute for whiskey.

After he had had a little of this he seemed to
improve, and gave his orders to the crew more
sensibly, which relieved the strain in the fo'c'sle.
They were already superstitious, and with the
two chiefs afflicted they figured that the ship was
cursed, and that something would happen, for
the scent of Florida was abroad in the air, wher-
ever the mate moved. Something did happen as
we were reaching away for the southern edge
of the Banks.

One morning the captain staggered forward
over the deckload of lumber and asked where
the mate was. His voice was so weak he couldn't
speak above a whisper, his eyes were sunken in
his head, and he looked little better than a
skeleton.

No one on board could find the mate, but there
was a sailor who had been aloft overhauling the
fore upper topsail buntlines, who said that he
hadn't seen the mate, but that he had heard

LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 69

a splash in the middle watch alongside. This
settled the mystery. The mate had jumped over-
board, Florida water and all.

The next night w? had a change of weather.
The wind hauled to the southeast, and the sky
turned black and stormy. The captain ordered
all hands to take in sail, although there was not
much wind to speak of. Not being familiar with
storms at sea, I reveled in this new adventure.
I got to know the ropes, yards and sails, and my
way about the ship. I could steer as well as any-
one on board. Neither was I afraid of abuse nor
punishment. It was an altogether different
atmosphere from that on the Blue-nose barque.

All the sails were furled to the lower topsails
and main upper topsail, so that the wooden
square-rigger lay wallowing in the trough of the
sea, waiting, and apparently helpless, without
sails to drive her on. Later in the night, away to
the southeast, the black clouds opened like the
eye of some unearthly monster, and twittering
stars glimmered through.

"There comes the blasted gale!" shouted an
English sailor, and sure enough a North Atlan-
tic storm, such as I had never seen, nor ever want

70 OCEAN ECHOES

to see again under the same conditions, closed in
upon the ,ship with such squeezing, breathless
rage, that it reeled her upon her beam-ends, and
held her there in the storm god's vice.

The captain, although gasping for the life that
was soon to desert him, felt, like the true sailor
he was, that he was good for one more fight with
the elements, and lashed himself to the weather-
rail of the poop-deck, taking charge of the ship,
the crew, and the night. Oh, how I longed to
have the power to defy the wind and waves as he
did! How unselfish he looked there, writh the
seas, green seas, roaring over him, his sunken
eyes bright with courage, shouting out his orders
fore and aft the ship between spasms of cough-
ing, with never a thought of his poor old dis-
eased body.

"Put your helm down," he cried to me at the
wheel.

When the gale struck the ship it caught her on
the beam. The yards were braced sharp on the
port tack, and it seemed as though she'd never
come up to the wind. The main upper topsail,
bellied and stiff from the force of the gale, was
pressing her down till the lee bulwark rail was

LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 71

under water. The captain's voice sounded
again :

"Let the main upper topsail go by the run."

As the yard came crashing down, the moaning
and hissing wind in the rigging lent an uncanny
feeling to the night. I trembled as I stood with
my hands on the spokes of the wheel. My mind
was busy, for unfortunately I had time to think.
I Avondered if my mother were praying for me;
and I missed her so that had I known, as I believe
now, that her not seeing me for so long a time
cut short her days on earth, I would have prayed
then, to the noise of the storm, to be forgiven.

Still the wind raged, and still the old captain,
lashed over there to windward of me, fought for
his ship.

As the buntlines closed in on the topsail, the
ship slowly came up into the wind. We were
saved for the time being, but the seas kept com-
ing higher. They washed the deck-load of lum-
ber away. One of the life-boats was carried
away, the other was in danger. We'd only two
boats left. A sailor commenced to swear, and I
thought he'd never stop. He told us that the
"bloody old hooker's" back was "broke," and

72 OCEAN ECHOES

demanded of Heaven and Hell to know what was
to happen next. Towards daylight the sea was
a mass of swirling foam, the storm was growing
worse.

Then we took in the fore and mizzen lower
topsails, and hove her to under the main lower
topsail. The captain stayed at his post, caution-
Ing the man at the wheel from time to time.
It was now nearly eight hours since he had taken
his post, and he continued there without relief
for hours more, while I, young and hardy as I
was, was grateful for relief and a cup of hot
coffee at the end of two hours of that awful strain
at the wheel.

The carpenter's report, when he sounded the
ship, was gloomy.

"Four feet of water in the hold, sir," I heard
him tell the captain.

"Keep the pumps going, the storm will break
shortly. It is just a little equinoctial disturb-
ance." And he told the steward to serve the men
a glass of grog.

My opinion of the men who command ships
was formed then and there. I realized, as I do
now, how little the world knows of these men,

LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 73

or of what they have given to Progress.

We weathered the storm, and sunshine and
blue skies were soon ours again. The thought
of a pay-day in Liverpool, and a trip home to see
my mother filled me with joy. Like all good
sailors, I forgot the agonies we had passed
through. The ship was water-logged. Four
hundred miles from Liverpool, a Western Ocean
steamer took us in tow, and docked the ship for
us without further trouble.

Strange to relate, the old captain lived until
he had delivered the ship to her owners, and not
much longer. He had to be taken off her in an
ambulance to the hospital, where he died that
day. Strange also to relate, the ship died too, for
that very night the Queen's Dock caught fire,
and she was destroyed.

There is a vague superstition among masters
that it is not the best of luck to take out a ship
whose previous master had her many years and
died on the last voyage. However this may be,
some years later I was offered the command of an
old barkentine — the Tam-O'-Shanter, I think she
was — whose master had just died. I accepted,
got my things aboard, and then backed out, for no

74 OCEAN ECHOES

reason except that I had such a feeling as many
of us have experienced, that I should not go.
Captain Donnelly took her, and his wife and two
daughters went with him. They were never
heard from again.

Although my pay for the voyage did not
amount to much (three pounds I think it was)
I was in high glee, and about to take the night
boat for Ireland, when I discovered that someone
had stolen my money. I learned that it was one
of my own shipmates. I was in a strange city
without a penny. The men of the crew, lost in
the city crowd, were of no help to me now. Oh,
how I damned, and still damn, the sailor who
steals from a shipmate! I couldn't go home,
nor could I write for money, or say that I was
in Liverpool and wouldn't come home. I did
what I thought best — not write at all, so that
mother would never know that I was so close
to her.

Once again I hunted up a sailor's boarding-
house.

CHAPTER XI
THE LIME- JUICER, ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW

THE pierhead sailor's boarding-house,
known as Kelley's, on Pike Street, was
always open for hard-up sailors. There
I went, and they took me to board with the stipu-
lation that I would ship on anything that carried
sail, at a moment's notice. Like all the others,
it was a starvation house ; but should Mrs. Kelley
like you she would always give you a cup of tea
in the afternoon. With meals it was first come
first served, as long as the spuds held out.

The sailors who stopped there were a miser-
able-looking bunch of men, starved-looking, with
their clothes in tatters. It was only by the
merest chance that the master or mate of a ship
would take any of them. Consequently, being a
place of last resort, Kelley's came to be known
as the "Pierhead Jump House." When a ship
sailed that was, or was likely to be, short-handed,
Kelley had his men lined up ready on the wharf,

75

76 OCEAN ECHOES

and the mate, not daring to sail short-handed,
would hastily pick and take what he was short
of.

I was one week at the boarding-house when my
turn came for the pierhead jump. I had been
hoping to get away, for I did not have the cour-
age to write to my mother on account of my
father's taunt; yet it was hard to stay on so
near home. The sea held no terrors for me now,
and I loved it more than ever.

A Dundee ship, one of the Lock Line, was
sailing that morning for San Francisco. Kelley,
as usual, had his bunch lined up. The mate, a
wiry, cunning Scotchman, jumped ashore and
looked them over. He was short one man.
There were fifteen of us.

"Are you a sailor?" he asked me.

"Yes, sir," I answered, eagerly.

"Have you any discharges?"

"I have one, sir."

"This is from Quebec to Liverpool. That
doesn't show that you are a sailor."

My heart sank. Nevertheless he finally chose
me, probably because I was the youngest and
would be the easier to train. Kelley waved me

THE LIME-JUICER 77

good-by. He had two months in wages in ad-
vance, and I had three shillings.

We warped the ship out of the dock. Then
the tugboat took us down the Mersey, and we
were out and away to sea on one of the longest
voyages I ever made. The ship was three-masted
and square-rigged, with a steel hull. She car-
ried twenty-two men before the mast — the car-
penter, sailinaker, three mates, a darkey steward,
and an English cook.

She was a real lime-juicer. Everything we
had to eat was weighed out, and our water was
measured. The captain was fat and religious.
He sang hymns and played on the small organ
in his cabin most of the time. The crew repre-
sented practically every nation on earth.

I learned to fight on board that ship, for there
were some tough men in the forecastle — a Dago,
whose chief desire when he got mad was to throw
a knife at you; a whale of a Hollander who
thought he could whip anyone; a Dane who
claimed that he had made John L. Sullivan take
water. I must not forget the Greek, who be-
lieved in being forearmed, and carried a sharp-
pointed marlin-spike slung around his neck.

78 OCEAN ECHOES

After the tug-boat and pilot had left us we
struck a blow. It was fair wind out of the Eng-
lish Channel. Although under upper topsails
she soon cleared the land, and ripped away
southard into fine weather, where I felt my first
breath of the trade winds. If there is one place
in the world for Romance, it is under tropical
skies in a sailing-ship. That's the sailor's Para-
dise. There he builds his castles, and echoes
from the past mingle with his thoughts of some
pretty girl in a faraway seaport. Sailors get
sentimental when the trade winds blow. They
are more cleanly in their habits there than in
the northern and southern latitudes. It is in
the night watches, when the moon shines full and
balmy winds fan the sails, that they spin their
best yarns of shipwrecks, and sweethearts and
hard-shelled mates. They are Neptune's chil-
dren, as harmless as their boasts, and as flighty
as the flying-fish that skim the dark waters.

The Channel winds blew us into the northeast
trades ; then, with every sail set that could catch
the breeze, we sailed on south, and away for
Cape Horn. The sea-biscuits weren't bad, but
we always looked forward to Thursday and Sun-

THE LIME-JUICER 79

when we got a pound loaf of flour bread.
The salt horse and lime-juice were sparingly
served, but we were all forced to drink the juice
to avoid getting scurvy.

The big Hollander bossed the fo'e'sle. How
I longed for Liverpool Jack to trim him, and how
often I wondered whether I should ever see my
friend again ! I had been away from home now
six months, and in that time I had learned more
about human nature than I could have had I
lived twenty years in Ireland. I felt responsi-
bility, and had confidence in what I knew about
a ship ; but I had much yet to learn of the waves
and the winds, and of the minds of deep-water
sailors.

One night as we were nearing the Equator the
middle watch from twelve to two was my wheel.
The Dutchman claimed that I ate one of his sea-
biscuits before going to relieve the helmsman.
This particular piece of hardtack he was saving
to make cracker hash on the following morning.
I stoutly denied it, and just to show his brutal
authority, he knocked me down with a swing of
his powerful fist. I got up hurt and revengeful.
On my way aft to the wheel the third mate no-

80 OCEAN ECHOES

ticed the blood dripping from my mouth, and
wanted to know who had caused it.

"I don't like that brute/7 he whispered, "and
I'll show you how you can whip him. I'll train
you, and by the time we're off Cape Horn you'll
be ready."

I hurried off to the wheel, happy in the thought
that I had found another champion. The third
mate had boxing gloves, which he knew how to
handle. He taught me how to box, how to swing
for the Dutchman with a knockout, as well as
uppercuts, right and left hooks, and a powerful
swing from the hip, which he thought necessary
to bring the Dutchman to the deck.

In the meantime the Dane and the Dutchman
came together. That was one Sunday afternoon
when we were sailing south of the Equator. The
fight started over the Dane's washing his clothes
in the Dutchman's whack of fresh water. Fresh
water was a luxury to drink, let alone washing
dirty clothes in it. The fat and religious cap-
tain was as usual .singing, and playing his Sun-
day hymns; the sailors were lying around the
deck, and the southeast trades were cooing in the
rigging. The gentle roll of the ship was ideal

THE LIME-JUICER 81

for the occasion. I was particularly interested
in this fight, and was hoping that the Dane woiild
give the Dutchman the licking of his life — the
Dutchman for some reason, perhapse because he
had injured me, hated me, and made my life in
the forecastle as miserable as he could.

They stripped to the waist. What hairy
creatures they were! More like animals than
men. They fought like two massive bears, hug-
ging and trying to squeeze the life out of each
other. They knew nothing about boxing or real
fighting. I could see as the fight went on that
the Dane was beginning to show yellow. He
missed a few of his awkward swings, then fell
to the deck, exhausted. The Hollander came out
victorious, but neither was hurt very badly. The
third mate was not supposed to see the fight —
his duty should have been to stop it — but he
managed to be near, and took it all in, carefully
noting, for my future benefit, the Dutchman's
weaknesses, and assuring me that when I had
learned the pivot-wallop I should be able to con-
quer my enemy. This was good news indeed,
and I set about my further training with zest.

CHAPTER XII

THE HENS, THE COOK, THE STORM
AND THE FIGHT

THE captain had for his own private use
a dozen hens on board. Occasionally
one would lay an egg. These were royal
eggs, and could only be eater by the master. To
find an egg when one cleaned the coop was to
bring cheer to the commander's heart. The
weather was cold now, and the hens were timid
about laying eggs. Here is where my story of
the fight with the Dutchman begins.

We were to the "southard" and "westard" of
the Falkland Islands and almost in the latitude
of Cape Horn, but far from being around it.
It was then the beginning of summer. The days
were long, the winds were becoming threatening
and cold. The sea looked boisterous and defiant,
with its long deep rolling swell from the south-
west.

One morning the bosun ordered me to clean

82

THE FIGHT 83

out the hen-coop, and to gather in the eggs,
should there be any. The captain, complaining
about the eggs, said he wondered if someone had
not been stealing them.

The chicken-coop was in a spare room in the
midships house. While I was scrubbing in there,
the big Dutchman stuck his head into the door
and shouted : "You're the damned thief that has
been stealing the eggs!" The mate heard him,
and came running to the chicken-coop. The cap-
tain was walking the poop, and seeing his first
mate take on more speed than usual, and won-
dering what all the noise around the chicken-
house might be, hurried off the poop and joined
the mate.

"This is the man who has been stealing the
eggs," cried the Dutchman. "I saw him just now
sucking one."

The mate raved and swore, and the captain
took it very much to heart. How dare anyone
eat his hen's eggs? I pleaded, declaring that
the Hollander was a liar and a cur, and that I
didn't steal the eggs. The Dutchman foamed
with rage, and said he'd beat me to a jelly.

The captain believed the Dutchman, and as

84 OCEAN ECHOES

punishment he fined me one month's pay. I
cleaned the coop. The captain and mate walked
off. I could hear the captain say : "I knew those
hens were laying all the time." I, who knew
more about hens than I did about the Lord's
Prayer, was well aware of the effect of cold
weather upon laying hens, and felt that the cap-
tain would find out sometime that hens either
cannot or will not lay eggs in iceberg weather.

The Dutchman was waiting for me around the
fore part of the forecastle.

"Now," said he, "I am going to give you a
whipping that you will never forget."

In spite of the third mate's instructions not to
lose my temper, in view of my recent trouble I
found it hard to remain cool. I faced him, grin-
ning with rage, and said : "Come on, you Dutch
hound! It is you who will get the whipping."

He rushed for me as if he would swallow me
up. I sidestepped and caught him on the eye.
My greatest difficulty was in not allowing him
to get hold of me. If this should happen it was
all off with me. Back he came at me like an
uncaged lion, with his fists flying in front of him.
The crew gathered around approvingly, to see a

THE FIGHT 85

boy not yet nineteen holding his own with a man
BO much more experienced, and at least fifty
pounds heavier.

I caught him again, this time on the mouth,
knocking a tooth out, and injuring my hand,
which had a sickening effect on me. But I had
him groggy, and all that was needed was to give
him a swing from my hip to bring him to the
deck. He rushed me, like all cowards, with his
head down, and his black eyes closed. I heard a
voice, the third mate's:

"Put it to him now."

I upper-cut him first, then when he lifted his
head swung for him and the big lying Dutchman
lay crumpled on the deck.

"Now you can take care of yourself on any
ship," said the third mate, as he bandaged my
hand. I have done it, on more than one occasion.
I only wish that social liars and evil-doers
were as easily handled as are bullies and liars
in the stratum of society in which sailors
move!

The Dutchman made many threats as to what
he would do to me some dark night, but I had
him cowed and he knew it. I was respected in

86 OCEAN ECHOES

the forecastle, and could grab the first chunk of
salt-horse and get away with it.

About a wreek later we struck a Cape Horn
blizzard, and, while I had thought it blew hard
off the Newfoundland Banks, that was a mild
storm compared to this one. Gale, hail, snow
and sleet we had. Hours we spent reefing the
icy topsails, clumsy in our clothes, and cold, and
sure that if our stiffened fingers slipped there
was a quick grave awaiting us. The seas looked
larger to me than the mountains in Ireland. The
ship had no buoyancy. Her cargo was Scotch
whiskey, ale, and porter, and it lay heavy in her
bowels. Seas flooded her fore and aft, and life-
lines were rigged on the deck for the crew to
work ship.

It was hard to get any response from the cook
these days. He refused to bake our cracker-
hash, which any cook should do, since it repre-
sents to a sailor the final good derived from faith-
ful saving of crumbs. The bean-soup was be-
yond assimilation, and only a sailor with a
shark's stomach could get away with it. There
was hardly a spot on the cook's face that was
not covered with red blotches.

THE FIGHT 87

The God of the Sea chooses well for the sailor.
The cook was removed from the ship the follow-
ing day.

It was Sunday, and five o'clock in the morning.
The gale had not abated, nor had the sea de-
creased in mountain volume. Storm trysails
and lower topsails were the sails she carried.
The wind and waves were a point abaft the star-
board beam. The seas had a raking sweep at the
decks fore and aft the ship. The cook's galley
acted as a sea-wall for the Cape Horn combers.

Two bells, five o'clock, rang the man at the
fo'c'sle-head, and as the rolling tones died away
in the crisp morning air we shipped a sea, a
rolling green, white-capped comber; and when
the decks were clear again we missed the cook,
the galley, and the captain's hens. That was the
end of the red-spotted cook!

Six long weeks we fought the weather off Cape
Horn. Hungry and cold, we struggled with the
ship, never giving an inch. Icebergs and gales
we met and fought, and when the wind did blow
fair for the Pacific Ocean I realized the truth of
the sailor's saying, that Cape Horn is the place
where Iron Seamen are made.

88 OCEAN ECHOES

As the years drift by I can see that a Cape
Horn training for our sailors to-day, nay, even
for our business and society men, would make
better men of the men, and men of the sissies,
and perhaps help to perpetuate the strength of
the human race.

CHAPTER XIII

BETTER WEATHER. LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN.
I Go ASHORE

SAILORS are simple, light-hearted souls, on
whom the load of yesterday is as light as
possible to-day. With a favoring breeze
we set all sail, and the sailors chatted and
laughed like children. We sang chanteys as the
yards went up, and our sufferings vanished with
the cold. Soon we should be in the tropics again,
and then hurrah for the Golden Gate and the
Sacramento Eiver!

The cook wasn't missed much, nor his cooking
either. He would have died before we made
port. We rigged up a temporary galley and
found an old sailor who could cook pea-soup.
The darkey steward made bread, anyone could
boil salt-horse. And the old sailor's cooking was
never questioned.

The captain grieved over his laying hens, but
he still continued singing his favorite hymn :

80

90 OCEAN ECHOES

"Come to thy Father, 0 wanderer, come!
Some one is praying for you.
Turn from the sin path, no longer to roam;
Some one is praying for you.
Some one loves you wherever you stray,
Bears you in faith to God, day after day,
Prayerfully follows you all the dark way.
Some one is praying for you."

As we sailed northward into clearer skies, the
winds from the palms of the South Sea Isles
wove Beauty's dream of stars and moon

Just as surely as the Indian finds the wild
violet amidst the cactus-roots, so the sea never
fails to communicate with the soul that loves it
through some form of its ever-changing emotion,
whether in its destructive combers or its golden
ripples. Its magnetism sounds lullaby in the
heart of its lover, and makes bold the spirit of
adventure. I must beg the reader's pardon for so
often dwelling upon this, but I seem perpetually
to struggle with only partially effective words to
explain what I know is the rock foundation of
the nature of the so-called "rolling-stone," whose
temperament oftentimes is far more reasonable
and stable than the world in its casualness takes
it to be.

So the days passed on, through glittering stars,

LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 91

cooing winds, and Capricorn sunsets, and after
four months and twenty-six days we dropped
anchor off Goat Island in San Francisco Bay. I
was a man and a sailor now, but shifty for new
adventures in a country that offered every oppor-
tunity.

While we were lying at anchor, even before the
ship went to the wharf to unload, crimps came on
board, unhindered, by some ancient custom, and
insisted upon many of the crew leaving, offering
them higher wages if they would sail aboard
the American ships. We had signed articles for
the round trip in England, and any money a
sailor got ashore at San Francisco was optional
with the captain. If the sailor were dissatisfied
and left the ship at that port, he sacrificed his
pay for the entire voyage.

I refused to go with any of the crimps, but
remained by the ship until she docked, which
pleased the third mate very much. He had
taught me all he knew about navigation, and was
proud of my battling qualities as well. (By the
way, the Dutchman had left the ship with the
first of the boarding-house crimps. )

When the ship docked, I went aft to the cap-

92 OCEAN ECHOES

tain and asked him for some money to spend.
He grudgingly gave me fifty cents, told me not
to spend it all in one night, and promised me
another fifty cents the following Saturday.
After five months in a lime-juice ship fifty cents
to spend ashore in one week! Surely one's
morals were safe. Steam beer was selling two
mugs for five cents on Pacific Street, and whiskey
five cents a drink on the Barbary Coast. That
may sound wonderful indeed to our prohibition-
ized ears, but the stuff was almost as dangerous
then as it would be now at that price.

The captain's injustice so hurt me that I left
the ship, and now for a time my tale must follow
me ashore. A crimp soon had me in tow and
took me to a sailor's boarding-house, where, after
a few days, I shipped aboard a whaler, to be gone
for three years. They pictured to me the beau-
ties of the Arctic Ocean, the icebergs, the musk-
ox, the gorgeous Aurora Borealis, and particu-
larly the grand pay I should get from my share
in the whale, pay which was supposed to run
well up into the thousands by the end of the voy-
age. The same old story has lured thousands of
good men into an industry where Greed makes

LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 93

fortunes for a few, and keeps thousands of men
cold, cheerless and overworked for years, only to
release them penniless in the end. I was ignor-
ant, or I never should have signed on.

My bag was already aboard the whaler when
someone behind me spoke: "Get your bag, and
come back on the wharf ."

Somewhere I had heard that voice before.

"Come on, now, get aboard that ship ; none of
your lallygagging," cried the crimp, fearing for
his money.

I turned around in answer to the voice. It
was Liverpool Jack. In all my seventeen years
on and off the sea, he was the only sailor I ever
met who knew how to trim a crimp. I dropped
my bag and ran to him, shaking him warmly
by the hand.

"Get aboard that ship," roared the crimp.

"Put your bag in the f o'c'sle," whispered Jack.
"Then get back onto the wharf."

I was so happy to see him that I ignored his
instructions. The result was that I was knocked
down, and thrown aboard the whaler.

"There, damn you," bellowed the crimp.
"Stay there, now."

94 OCEAN ECHOES

I picked myself up, and jumped back onto the
wharf, full of fight. Three of the boarding-house
thugs rushed at me. The first I knocked down ;
the other two grabbed me, and were in the act of
pitching me over the rail onto the hard deck when
Liverpool Jack ran to my rescue. Oh, how he
could fight! He knocked them right and left,
and I, being free now, the three crimps were no
match for us. We fought, and fought hard on
that slivery wharf. The crimps wouldn't hesi-
tate to kill you. They had police protection, and
a sailor's life wasn't worth much in the old days
in San Francisco.

They shouted to the mates aboard the whaler
for help. Two burly men jumped onto the bul-
wark rail, but before they landed on the wharf
I hit one and Jack the other, and they fell in-
board. A crowd of longshoremen and sailors
were gathering around. The crimps were
groggy. They had no endurance for further
fight. Jack shouted :

"Let's run for it before it is too late I"

He headed up the wharf on a dead run, I after
him ; and we were soon lost in the crowded street,
but dangerously close to the water-front. "We'll

LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 95

have to get out of the city," panted Jack. "Our
lives aren't safe now."

We boarded a Mission Street car, and rode
well out into the country to the end of the line.
We hunted a quiet place, and yarned till the sun
set and the misty dampness of 'Frisco Bay sent
a chill through us. Then we got up and walked
on into the night.

It was fifty miles from San Francisco to San
Jose. Our course along the country road pointed
to that city. The December weather was snappy
and a white frost made its appearance on the
housetops and glittered like fool's gold in the
rays of the half moon.

As we plodded on we talked of our experiences
since we had separated at Chicoutimi. Jack ar-
rived in Montreal a few days after he left me,
and finding shipping quiet there, beat it down
to Quebec and shipped on a vessel bound for Val-
paraiso. As usual he didn't like the ship and
left her there. After living there for a month or
more doing odd jobs at longshoring, he found a
barque bound for San Francisco, and had been
there for seven weeks when I met him. There
were many opportunities to ship aboard a whaler,

96 OCEAN ECHOES

but Jack had a horror of whalers. It seemed to
me that sometime in his younger life he prob-
ably had been shanghaied on one of them.

We were in a country now which I had been
told was God's Country, where nature abounded
in everything for the needy, and wages were high.
Little I dreamed, as I walked along that night,
that I was living in the panic of 1893, and that
Hunger's skeleton grinned at me as I passed the
milestones. Wages of fifteen dollars a month
were not for such men as I, that year, when even
sturdy, steady, domestic laborers found it hard
to get work.

Jack and I, heedless of the currents and reefs
that we were steering into, hiked on, and at two
o'clock in the morning walked into Eedwood
City, tired and hungry. The town was small in
those days. A few lights glimmered through the
trees. A dog or two barked at our approach,
and steeled the night policeman to action. To
be sure he was well armed, having his night stick,
and a gun strapped at his side. He headed
straight for us. his club in his hand.

"Where are you hoboes going?" he shouted.

"We're bound for San Diego," answered Jack.

LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 97

"Well, keep a-moving," he said. "You ain't
a-goin- to find San Diego in these parts."

We walked along a little farther, when Jack
suddenly stopped short. "Listen/5 he whispered.
Then I could hear the chug, chug of a locomotive
down in the freight yard.

"Coine on/' said he, "we'll walk no more, we'll
ride in a freight car to San Diego."

I believe that Jack knew that San Diego was
in California, but in what part of California I
am sure he did not know. I myself am not good
at directions except at sea, and in its nearest
parallel, the desert, and I have often noticed how
free and easy other sailors are with distance on
land. Jack knew, however, that wherever San
Diego might be it was a seaport, and assured me
with happy confidence that only the best ships
left there !

An old nightwatchman in the freight yards
told us that a freight was leaving for Fresno
shortly, and that there were many empty box-
cars in it. We crawled into one, and hid away
in a dark, smelly corner, and were off — unfared
passengers, cold and hungry.

We must have slept for a long time, when the

98 OCEAN ECHOES

door opened letting in the sun and an unwelcome
brakeman.

"Where in Hell are you ?boes going ?" he
roared.

"San Diego," answered Jack, rubbing his eyes.

"Have you any money ?"

"Not a damned cent."

"Well, get off the train before I throw you off."

"I have a dollar," said I; but Jack shook my
shoulder, and announced his intention of getting
off, saying airily that he needed to stretch his legs
anyway. As we alighted among the vineyards —
for we had ridden far on that freight train — the
brakeman swore in disappointment that we, and
not he, still had our last dollar.

There was a little town amid the vineyards, a
cozy little town, with its church and blacksmith
shop, looking all new and shiny in the sun ; and,
better for us, a Chinese restaurant. There half
the dollar fed us heartily, and turned our outlook
upon life into gold also. We were not far from
Fresno, we were told, and there was no work
to be had. The Democrats, under Cleveland, the
local gossips said, had bankrupted the country,
and the farmers were facing starvation. The

LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 99

only salvation for the country lay with the Popu-
list Party. What a pity that the very men who
need to hear reasonable discussion are the far-
thest removed from any opportunity to listen
to it!

I began to long for the roll of a ship and the
spray from the deep. I seemed to be going from
bad to worse, with fifty cents in my pocket and
gloom ahead. When I suggested going back,
even if it involved shipping on a whaler, Jack
only laughed. Going without a few meals was
nothing to him, and beating his way on trains, I
discovered, was actually a source of joy. Ships
to him were only a means of conveyance to leave
lands where adventure had become monotonous.

We learned that there would be a freight train
that afternoon for the south. I left Jack, who
never walked for pleasure, to take a country
stroll. I walked through the vineyards and saw
white men and Japanese pruning the vines. The
work looked nice, and I felt that I could do it if
only I had a job.

When I got back I saw that Jack had been
drinking, although it was hard to tell how he
could have got it; and when the train came in,

100 OCEAN ECHOES

and the brakeman warned us off it unless we had
money to give him, Jack, more courageous after
drinking than I was sober, shouted to me as the
train swung past, to "catch the gunnels"; and
himself suited the action to the word by swing-
ing under and up to rest on the "gunwales" —
the longitudinal rods which are placed close to
the ground under the cars.

While I stood passively by, unable to compass
this process sufficiently quickly to follow suit,
the train gathered speed, Jack waved his hand to
me, and was gone. Into space for another span
of years !

CHAPTER XIV
BENEFIT OF CLERGY — NEW STYLE

"Where Duty Whispers Low, ' Thou Must '—The

Youth Replies, 'I Can' "—But That Does

Not Apply To Vines.

FEELING now more alone than I had felt
in Canada, I turned aimlessly and headed
off into the country. Presently I came to
a lane, and to a farm house, and to a man milking
cows, chewing tobacco as he milked. His hairy
head was buried in the cow's flank, and his boots
were crusted with manure. As I approached him,
asking if he were the farmer, a girl called from
the back porch :

"Father, mother says that you are to be sure
to leave enough milk for the calf."

He grunted. "Yes, Ellen." Then, looking at
me out of the corners of his eyes : "Well, suppose
I be the farmer here, what do you want?"
"A job," said I, brazenly.
"Young feller, I ain't got work enough for my-
self to do, let alone hiring a man."

101

:W OCEAN ECHOES

"I must have work," said I, desperately. "I'm
broke and I've got to earn some money. I know
you have work for me to do as long as you have
grapes to prune. I can milk cows, too, and I'll
work cheap."

He looked me over from my shoes up. While I
wasn't clean, I was respectable-looking. He
handed me a tin bucket.

"Milk old Muley, there by the gate/' he said,
and I milked old Muley in a hurry. I stripped
her clean, for having been raised on a f arm, milk-
ing was second nature to me.

"Have you another one?" I asked eagerly,
handing him the bucket.

"No," he growled, picking up the buckets and
starting for the house, "but stay here till I come
back, I may have some work for you to do. I'll
talk to Ma."

I waited, and hoped, and prayed, for a job.

Then the farmer's voice sounded from the
house: "Come on here, stranger."

His wife, a short fat woman, but rather neat
in her gingham dress, greeted me with, "How did
you come to be broke?" I told her the whole
thing, as a boy would. It seemed ages since I

BENEFIT OF CLERGY 103

had been in a home. The girl, about seventeen
years old, and good-looking, was listening in the
pantry.

Evidently the mother approved of me. At
any rate she was the boss of that farm, as was
plain to see. "I can give you a week's work,"
she said, "but mind you, I can't pay much.
Fifty cents a day and board."

"I'll take it," I said, cheerfully.

We had supper together, I leading in the con-
versation. The food wasn't bad, considering the
time. Potatoes and bread and tea there were,
plenty, and a slice of fried bacon for each one.
Then there were stewed pears for dessert.

The farmer made a bed for me in the barn
with the cows and horses, and I went to sleep,
but fitfully, for however pleasant the noises and
stampings and barkings of farm animals may be
to a farm-lad, they are very different from the
voices of the sea, and the cobwebbed rafters of
a barn, loomy and spaceful as they are, release
one too suddenly from the oppression of the
ship's forecastle ceiling.

At four o'clock he called to me : "Get up and
milk the cows."

104 OCEAN ECHOES

"Where's the pump?" I inquired, turning out.

"What do you want the pump for, this time of
the morning?"

"I want to wash my head and face."

"You'll find it on the porch," he mumbled.
"I don't wash till breakfast time."

I doubted that he did then, as he was never
etiher washing or washed when I saw him, and
I'm quite sure that he couldn't have combed his
hair even if he had tried.

One week I spent working around the barn and
stables cleaning them out. It seemed that it had
been many months since they had been touched
by the hand of man. I afterwards found that
some farmers prefer to move their barns, rather
than cart the manure away. Then they buy
fertilizer for the land.

The girl and I became fast friends, which I
could see did not please the mother, who grew
colder and colder at meals.

"Can you prune grapes?" asked the farmer one
evening, after I had earned three dollars in the
Land of the Golden Gate.

"Oh, yes," said I. "I can do anything."

This utterance proved my downfall. I had

BENEFIT OF CLERGY 105

never pruned grape vines, but I had seen the Japs
and others do it, and it seemed to me that all that
was necessary was to clip off the long trailing
vines.

Next morning he gave me the pruning shears,
and with a wave of the hand started me in on
the thirty or more acres he had to prune. I
started in with a will, hoping to show my ap-
preciation of his giving me work, and slashed
right and left, pruning close to the vines without
regard for bud or balance. Towards noon my
master came to see how I was doing, and, to my
dismay, swore he'd have me shot. So violent
was his rage, and the anguish of his wife, who
mourned the day that ever she had befriended
me, that I was grateful for the three dollars I
had earned and a drink from the pump.

This much better off than I had been a week
ago, and with some knowledge of how not to
prune, I waved my hat to the girl, and started
up the main road, reflecting upon my fortune.
To this day I laugh when I think of that adven-
ture, and my utter meekness about it. Many
years later I was invited to do pruning in the
vineyard of a lady who ran her own ranch, and

106 OCEAN ECHOES

refused to allow me to stay there unless I would
work for her. Tempted as I was, I ran no risks.

"Madam," I said, "ask me to dig for you, or
carry wheat for you, or milk your cows — or even
die for you if necessary, but do not ask me to
prune grape-vines."

"You are very firm," said she.

"I am," said I ; "at any sacrifice."

My wife, reading over my shoulder, laughs
aloud at this. "Why didn't you tell me then?"
she asks. "You don't know how foolish I
thought you were."

"There's pruning and pruning," I answer, "and
I feared the worse evil." There is an answer
from her, but not worth while to mention !

How to get to a seaport was my next problem,
for I had made up my mind that the sea was the
place for me. I was about as close to San Fran-
cisco as I was to San Diego. I walked to the
village, and sat down upon a pile of railroad ties
to ponder the past and speculate upon the future.
For Youth, out of a job, pondering the past has
prickles and thorns of thought; the future is
refuge. For Age, doing the same thing, bygones
are apt to be bygones, but the thought of the

BENEFIT OF CLERGY 107

future in the light of history is a curse to failing
muscles.

I was beginning to believe that I had made a
fatal mistake. I should never have left home.
My mother was the truest friend that I'd ever
know. I couldn't have her here, and I doubted
if in this .strange country of barking dogs and
selfish people, I could ever make a go of it. I
resolved then and there to follow Liverpool Jack
to San Diego, and there to try to ship for Eng-
land. A comforting thought, but by no means
to be borne out in the event.

Suddenly there was a shout from behind me.
Turning quickly, I saw five men coming towards
me.

"Where are you going, Bo?" one of them cried.

They were unshaven, dirty, and ragged, and
their shoes were worn soleless..

"I am bound for San Diego," I said, glad of
their cheerfulness.

"Keep away from there," said the tallest of
the men. "We've just come from there. I'm
here to tell you it's the hungriest part of the
state." Then he told me their story, while the
others pulled themselves up to the pile of ties, or

108 OCEAN ECHOES

stood around commenting. They couldn't find
work anywhere, and little of anything to eat.
One had a wife and children back east. For the
sake of a sick little one he had come west to find
a home for them all, and he hadn't the nerve to
write how dismally he had failed. Had names
meant anything to me then, I should have been
interested in that man's name, for it was well
known. So it is in the west, one cannot judge
from appearances at all. A longshoreman I
knew afterwards became one of the most influ-
ential of United States senators, and a woman
who took in washing in my day became one of
what used to be called New York's Four Hun-
dred.

The narrow waists and long cheek-bones of
these five men lent corroboration to their state-
ment that they were half -starved, and I could not
sit there with money in my pocket and see men
hungry to vagueness. I invited them to go to
the China Restaurant, and then and there got the
worth of my three dollars. If I were never to
eat a meal again the smile of soul-appreciation
that came into their emaciated faces was reward
enough. Besides, to-morrow was another day,

BENEFIT OF CLERGY 109

and it was well to approach it in good condition.

They declined to accept the invitation to the
China Restaurant as being an imposition, but
took two of my three dollars to buy food to cook.
The tall one ran to the village store. The others
rustled cans in which to cook, and started a fire.
In less than an hour they were eating, and what
a meal they had! Potatoes, bread, steak, and
coffee. They invited me to eat with them. I
watched them eat, for I wasn't hungry. My
stomach wasn't empty, and I got pleasure out of
watching them fill theirs — a pleasure that more
thrifty people cannot feel, for they have no last
dollar.

With their waist-lines filled, the talk of my
guests became more optimistic. The tall one
spoke :

"Do you see that church over there?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Men like ourselves are always sure of a dol-
lar from the priest who lives there. But here's
the trouble," and he licked his lips,, "you've got
to put on the gloves and box with him or you
don't get anything. He's mighty handy with
the mitts."

110 OCEAN ECHOES

"Did you try him out?" I asked, with interest.

"Nothing doing. I met a man down the road
a piece who said he took the beating of his life
for a silver dollar, and he sure looked it."

Towards evening a north-bound freight pulled
in, and stopped. The five men said good-by? and
as she started to move, like the professionals they
were, grabbed hold of the gunwales and slid
under the train as if they were going to bed.
They were off, and I was alone again — alone with
one silver dollar.

I thought of the priest and the possibility of
getting another dollar. I certainly could use
one. I walked over to the church, and there,
sitting on the steps, was the priest, a very burly
priest indeed. He could see, I suppose, what I
was after, for he jumped to his feet, stretched,
and felt his muscles. I took this for a warning
destined to inspire anyone with terror, auto-
matically sorting out the sheep from the goats,
so to speak.

I wished him a good evening, and he asked
me what I wanted.

"I want to earn a dollar."

BENEFIT OF CLERGY 111

"Come right in here, my boy/' and he led me
into a small house that adjoined the church.

In a room that was not much larger than eight
by ten, he stopped. I pulled off my coat without
a word, while he ostentatiously juggled some
dumb-bells.

Then : "You are sure that you want to tackle
me?" he inquired.

I should have liked to say no, but I wanted
his dollar so badly that it was worth a beating
to me. I assured him that I was ready.

He handed me the gloves, and put his on with-
out comment or question. We squared away.
He caught me a wallop on the ear and I went
down. When I got upon my feet again I forgot
all about the dollar I was earning and the man
who wore the broadcloth. I felt that I was back
on a ship, and I wasn't going to lose a fight.

I caught him on the jaw and staggered him,
following it up with an uppercut that knocked
him down. When he got up he was bleeding
freely, and science lost its art. He started slug-
ging. Here was where I shone. I whipped him,
and whipped him well, and until he cried enough.

112 OCEAN ECHOES

As if nothing had happened, he took me to a
sink where I washed my blood and his blood off
me. Then he wished me good-by and Godspeed
with apostolic dignity, and my reward was not
one dollar — but five !

CHAPTER XV
MORE TROUBLE — THE HOG BUSINESS

IT was dark now, and the air cold. I crawled
into an empty box car that stood on a side
track. I must have slept, for I awoke with
a start as another car struck the one in which
I was. Then the whole thing started to move.
I was off on a train, I didn't know where.
Through the night I looked out of the side door,
but couldn't tell whether we were headed north
or south. No one bothered about me. I doubt
if the brakeman knew I was there. It was noon
the next day when I crawled out of the car. I
discovered that I was headed north, and guessed
that I was near Sacramento, and about seven
hundred miles north of San Diego, which proved
to be true.

"Well," thought I, "I'll have to make the best
of it. I am ninety miles from San Francisco,
and that is some satisfaction." Poor Jack's
horror of whaling ships and his language about

113

114 OCEAN ECHOES

them and all that belonged to them arose within
me, and the thought of the fighting crimps made
me wish I were anywhere else.

But hunger often rules our destinies, and I
was hungry. The train had stopped at a siding,
and there was no town in sight. I walked off,
and followed a country road, where I saw a man
ahead of me driving a sorrel horse hitched to a
wagon with milk-cans in the back. I overtook
him and spoke to him, asking if he knew of any
chance to work in the neighborhood.

He pulled up the reins, and shouted in clear
Irish brogue :

"Whoa, there, Jerry !"

"Can ye milk cows?" he asked, looking down
on me, and there was something about him that
took me back to Ireland, almost breathlessly.

"Yes, I can," I said.

"Jump up on the wagon thin," he commanded.
"The job I'll be givin' yez won't be much," he
went on, "but if you're broke you ought to be
glad of anything."

He jerked on the reins, gave Jerry a cut with
the whip, and we were off to O'Donnell's farm,
this being the land of my new master. He was

MORE TROUBLE 115

past sixty, white-haired, wrinkled-faced, his
hands showing the toil of years, his upper lip
long, broad, and sadly humorous, frequently lift-
ing to show a mouth almost destitute of teeth.

We pulled up at his farm, if a farm you would
call it. A small barn and the house where he
lived comprised the buildings on the place. Ten
acres of land were the farm, and a few hungry
cows the visible stock. We unhitched Jerry,
putting him away in a dirty stall, with a forkful
of hay for his dinner, for which he thanked me
gratefully with a nicker.

Then I went into the shack where O'Donnell
was cooking. It was a large bare dirty room,
without partitions. On the table he was carv-
ing a large boiled beef -heart that had not been
recently cooked. "A foine meal for a healthy
man," he said. Boiled heart, bread, and
skimmed milk. He informed me that he always
said grace before meals, and proceeded to do so.
Although there was not much on the table to be
grateful for, I echoed his "amen" loudly and
thankfully. I was hungry, and the bread and
heart disappeared like snow before a summer
sun,

116 OCEAN ECHOES

"Now," said O'Donnell, wiping his mouth on
the oil-cloth cover, "I'll tell ye what I'll be
wantin' ye to do. There's fifteen cows to milk,
and I'll help you some. You get up in the morn-
ing about three o'clock and start to milk. By
four o'clock, we'll have it in the cans, then I
drive to town and deliver to my customers. I'm
back here by nine o'clock. The reason that I'm
late to-day is that I've been dickering with a
man about buying hogs."

- "Oh, you're going into the hog business?" said
I, pushing back from the table.

"Yes I'm thinking about it. There's money in
hogs these days, and I have a fine place for them.
But to get back to your work. As I said, I get
home about nine o'clock. While I'm gone you'll
do the chores, clean out the cow barn, and turn
the cows out to pasture. It isn't much grass
that's in the field, but shure they get the
exercise."

"Now, me bye," he concluded, getting up from
the table, "after you have finished, water the
little roan horse, he's in the stall in the north
end of the barn. I'll be home be the time you
have the work done."

MORE TROUBLE 117

I was just congratulating myself upon not be-
ing asked to do what I didn't know how to do,
when he turned around, saying:

"Howld on, me boy, do you know how to drive
a team?"

This was no time for unmanly weakness. I
gulped hard, as I assured him that I did, for it
was not the fact. However I found afterwards
that I could do it very well. He went on to tell
me that he had bought a lot of hop-poles from a
man who had a yard down by the Sacramento
River, and that he was hauling them to sell to
a Chinese laundry. This would be part of my
work, and I should be paid twenty dollars a
month for it.

How easily some human beings are satisfied,
and how little it takes of the sunshine of life to
make them happy ! I felt that now I had found
a friend in this strange old man. He told me a
great deal about his business, and rather hinted
that I go into partnership with him in the hog
business. It seemed that there was money in
these dirty creatures. Anyway, it would be a
start in this new country, and I wrote home and
told my mother how well I was getting along,

118 OCEAN ECHOES

and how prosperous I should be some day, think-
ing how delighted she would be over my fine
prospects, quite regardless of the present truth
of it.

We did become partners in the hog business,
and in the three months that I worked for O'Don-
nell my wages went with his money to increase
the stock over the sixty hogs we already had;
and as things looked brighter I even neglected
my clothes to save money. I wasn't presentable,
but that didn't matter, for was I not going to
make a lot of money right away? Then I
planned, I should branch out for myself on a
large scale.

My work these days seemed never to be done,
what with milking, feeding the stock, hauling
wood to the China Laundry, and taking O'Don-
nell evenings to the small neighboring towns,
where he made impassioned stump speeches for
the Populist Party.

He was very particular about his speeches, and
Sundays were devoted to rehearsing them in the
barn, the acoustics in the shack being considered
inadequate. At least in the barn we had an
appreciative audience, for every strophe was

MORE TROUBLE 119

punctuated by a chorus of moos, brays, whinnies
and cackles.

"I shtand here to-night before yez, Min," he
would commence, "a praycher in the cause av
the People's Parrty. From the tops av th' moun-
tains to th? broad expanse av th? Pacific, let me
words ring home th? missage !"

Our luck on these excursions varied. We were
always sure of an audience, but not always sure
of a flattering one. One night while O'Donnell
was warming up to his subject, someone put a
whistle under Jerry's tail. He ran away, and
spilled us both out of the wagon. We had to
walk eight miles home. O'Donnell seemed to
think nothing of this. The cause was just, he
said, there had to be martyrs, and that was the
end of it.

Well I remember the last load of hop-poles
that I hauled to the Chinaman's Laundry. I had
gotten to know some of the Portuguese living in
the bottom-lands of the Sacramento Eiver, along
which my road lay. Since it was the last load,
Manuel Da Costa insisted that I take a drink
with him of home-brewed Portuguese brandy,
known in those parts as "jackass brandy."

120 OCEAN ECHOES

He had been kind to me, helping me often to
free the wagon wheels when they sank too deep
into the soft river mud. To please him I took a
drink, and then another, for it tasted good, and
did not seem to have a kick to it. Then, bidding
him good-by, I jumped into the wagon and drove
off.

There was a freshet in the Sacramento Eiver,
and it ran foaming. After about a mile the jack-
ass brandy took complete possession of me.
Quickly and quietly it did its deadly work ! Re-
gardless of danger or icy chill, I decided that the
river looked good to me, and without a moment's
hesitation I climbed down, tied the horse, jumped
fully clothed into the mad roaring river, and
swam across it and then back again.

The icy water had no influence whatever on
me, nor did I feel ashamed of myself until long
after I had untied the horse, and headed, wet as
I was, for the town. However, I never told
O'Donnell, knowing full well his feelings on the
subject of temperance. As time went on, and I
realized how narrow had been my escape from
drowning, I decided that never again would I
be beguiled by jackass brandy.

MORE TROUBLE 121

It was a little over a year that I had been away
from home, and my three months was drawing
to a close, when it seemed that the time had come
for expansion in the hog business. O'Donnell
bought garbage and hauled it every morning
from the city to feed the stock. They throve on
the feed, and in the muddy coolness of the ditch
where they buried themselves. We were to kill
ten of the heaviest in a few days to sell, and with
the money buy shoats five weeks old to raise and
fatten for the market.

It was time to commence to build castles, for
six months more would give us substantial money.
My castle took the form of a cozy little farm,
and included a cozy little wife, too; for I was
becoming much enamored of a red-haired lassie
whose father raised strawberries. She liked me
in spite of my clothes, and the way I had of
talking to my pigs; and in spite, also, of her
father, who informed her that I was nothing but
seaweed that the storm blew in.

Nevertheless, I kissed her one day through the
fence — a barbed-wire fence at that — and a thrill
went through me, the like of which I had never
known before. I began to long for the comple-

122 OCEAN ECHOES

mentary companionship of her, and I thought of
her sharing my days, and bringing my lunch to
me at the plow.

How full of nothingness are dreams! They
are but fading specters on a wasteless sea — the
closer you sail to them the farther they are away.
Two days after my kiss, the hog farm was in
mourning. Every last one of the hogs died from
hog cholera.

I dug holes for them, and covered them up
where they lay, and as I buried them I felt em-
bittered with the laws of human averages. Why
should I be sacrificed when the sun was shining
on Youth and Obedience. What had I done to
merit this curse from Fate? Years afterwards,
while sailing mate on a ship to the South Seas, I
read in a magazine how to guard against hog
cholera. Poor old O'Donnell and I knew noth-
ing about vaccinating hogs, and I doubt if more
than a few people in that neighborhood knew
about it at that time.

The hogs were buried, and the sun had set on
Youth and Old Age huddled together in the
shack, each complaining after his fashion. We

MORE TROUBLE 123

supped together on beef heart and boiled pota-
toes, and when the candle burned low I blew it
out and each went to his own bed, a shakedown
of straw on the shack floor : O'Donnell to dream,
perhaps, of the long ago when life was not a
question of potatoes with or without beef heart,
and held some hope for failing years; I to turn
toward the morrow's dawn, when I should make
a new start — not with hogs this time, but under
flapping sails on windy seas, where the squeal
from a swivel clock would soothe the squeal that
echoed from lost hopes.

O'Dormell said good-by to me with some grief,
and from out of his old soppy overalls fished nine
dollars.

"Here, take this/' he said. "If I had more I
would gladly give it to you. You are not the
bad sort of a lad."

I thanked him, and, with a heavy heart, left
him to bid another good-by at the next farm.
Walking across a field that I had recently plowed,
the new soil had a longing-to-remain smell for
me, an odor that took me back home to the spring-
time of the year, when the plowing was being

124 OCEAN ECHOES

done, and the beveled furrows crumbled under
the sun heat of the day. They were crushing
memories, and I felt them keenly.

As I squeezed through the barbed -wire fence
and onto the farm of my sweetheart's father,
O'Donnell called to me :

"I say, if you ever happen around here again
I'll be glad to see you, but wherever you go spread
the gospel of the People's Party."

I assured him that I would, whether on land
or sea.

Mr. Curran, the girl's father, was hoeing
strawberries.

"I hear that your hogs died," he snapped, as I
approached him.

"Yes, every one of them."

"Well, I expected as much. It takes men to
raise hogs."

He continued hoeing his strawberries. "What
are you going to do now?" he asked presently.

"Oh," said I, pitifully, "I am going back to
sea."

"I'm thinking that's the place for ye."

"I'm going to say good-by to your daughter,
Ellen," said I, walking off towards the house.

MORE TROUBLE 125

He grunted assent like one of my dying sows.
Ellen was there. She knew that I was leaving.
Whatever her father had said about me, I knew
that it was nothing good, but still she was fond
of me.

"Ellen, I have come to say good-by. I had
hopes of being able to stay, but you have heard
about the hogs."

"Yes," she said, "I've heard nothing else
around this house. Father said you'd sure have
to go now."

I kissed her good-by, and there were tears in
the eyes of both of us. We were too young to
pledge ourselves to each other, and I never saw
her again, but I am sure that Ellen made some
lonely man happy. In reviewing the girls that
I have known since then, I find that my wayward
fancies leaned strongly toward red hair. Ex-
cepting, of course, wives — but let Time tell that
tale!

CHAPTER XVI

THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON, BALED HAY, AND
JACKASS BRANDY AGAIN

THE railroad fare from Sacramento to San
Francisco was two dollars and fifty cents.
I bought a ticket and rode there, to the
City of Crimps. I knew what to expect once I
fell into their hands, but beggars can't be
choosers, six dollars wouldn't last long, and
sooner or later it would be a sailor's boarding-
house for me, and then away to the ends of the
earth on anything that carried sail.

When I got off the train in San Francisco I
walked around like a stray dog smelling for sym-
pathy. The street lights flickered in the evening
shadows; the smell from Fourth Creek, where
the city sewage emptied into Mission Flats, was
thick and nauseating; coastwise schooners were
discharging lumber in the creek, and that part of
the city was as tough as the Barbary Coast.

There was a saloon at the corner of Fourth
and Berry Streets which was owned by a Dane

126

THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 127

whose Irish wife was bartender. It seemed odd
to me that I chose this saloon to go into, and cer-
tainly Fate awaited me there, in the person of a
man about sixty years old. As I entered he was
in the act of raising a glass of whiskey to his
lips, and immediately asked me to join him. I
thanked him, and ordered a glass of steam beer.

He introduced himself as Captain Glass, now
master of a bay scow. He was entering into a
discussion of his merits in the most interested
possible way, when a man in a Seymour coat
tightly buttoned to the chin and a cap pulled
down over his left eye, swaggered into the saloon,
picked up the Captain's whiskey deliberately
from the bar, and drank it. The Captain made a
lunge at him with both fists, and missed him.

Then the crook, as deliberately as he had drunk
the whiskey, knocked the old captain down onto
the sawdust floor. As he lay there I could see
a little copper button shining in the lapel of his
pilot-cloth coat. I didn't know then what the
little copper button meant, but a few minutes
later I found out that he belonged to the Grand
Army of the Republic, and had fought in the
Civil War.

128 OCEAN ECHOES

I wasn't going to let the crook get away with
his rough stuff. One of mother's cardinal prin-
ciples, in which she had thoroughly trained me,
was respect for old age. The Irishwoman bar-
tender dropped my beer, wailing, "Shure, an'
where's policemen now? Oh you'll niver foind
thim whin you want thim!"

I threw off my ragged coat and cap and flung
them on the bar, then flew at the crook. I was so
mad with rage that I forgot the training the third
mate on the lime-juice ship had given me. I was
knocked down twice before I realized that my
present style of fighting favored the crook.
Then I got into position, got my head, and gave
him the whipping of his crooked life. To finish
it right I picked him up, and carried him to the
street and threw him in the gutter. Both my
eyes were black, my nose was bleeding and my
lip was cut.

The old Captain was on his feet again when I
backed into the saloon, and helped me on with
my coat. Three teeth were missing from his
false set — he didn't know whether he had swal-
lowed them or not ; an egg-shaped bump was also
developing on his right jaw. Willing as he was

THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 129

to talk, he found difficulty in moving his jaws.

We had our drink in peace this time He
praised me for my good fighting, and the Irish-
woman, not to be outdone, said :

"Shure and it is as pretty a piece of fighting
as iver I see in this bar-room. Drink up, me
boys, and have another wan on me."

"What do you do for a living?" asked the Cap-
tain, steadying his jaw with his hand so that he
could enunciate.

"Fm a sailor, looking for a ship."

"I'll give you a job. Two dollars a day with
board."

"All right, I'm your man. But what's the
work to be?"

"Sailing with me up the Sacramento River.
As I said, I'm the Captain of a little schooner, or
a bay scow, as they call them here. I sail up the
river, and carry cargo back to the city. N6w
we'll take another drink and go on board."

We went out, and down to the Mission wharf,
where the Captain had a small boat moored to
the slip. We got into her, and I rowed off under
his direction, out into the bay, where anchor
lights and side lights were as thick as stars in the

130 OCEAN ECHOES

heavens above. They seemed to be welcoming
me home.

I rowed past screeching tugs and warning
ferry-boats and square-rigged ships with raking
masts that loomed out of the darkness like gigan-
tic creatures of the deep come out to breathe of
the night air.

"That's her over there, pull to your right a
little."

I saw the outline of a small two topmast
schooner riding gracefully in the ripples of an
ebb-tide. We boarded her, and tied the dinkey
astern. The Captain invited me into the cabin
to have a bite to eat before we set sail. The cabin
was small, and reminded me of the Swede's sloop
in Glasgow. It was clean, and there was a place
for everything. The old man had a decided sense
of order.

The small stove that was lashed to the bulk-
head smoked while he was lighting the fire.
While he was cooking the supper I went up on
deck to look around my new ship. She was
about seventy tons, round bottom and center-
board. The lower masts and topmasts had been
scraped and a coat of oil rubbed into them.

THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 131

Their pine brightness gave them a lofty appear-
ance against the starry horizon. The main boom
looked large for so small a craft. It projected
about fifteen feet over the stern. The sails were
furled in gaskets, and neatly stowed between
the gaffs and the booms, the decks were clean,
and all ropes coiled neatly in sailor-fashion.

"Come on," roared the Captain, with difficulty
through his aching jaw, "have something to eat.
It's ready now."

We munched in silence, I guarding my cut lip
from the hot Wienerwurst, the Captain nibbling
at his delicacies with a groan. We washed the
food down with hot coffee, that seemed to me
delicious in spite of its leathery taste, and when
the dishes had been put away went out on deck
to set the mainsail, heave up the anchor, and
give her the jib and foresail. So we were off
with the night breeze, for Clarksburg on the
Sacramento Kiver, for a cargo of baled hay.

The Captain was a thorough sailor and knew
every move of his little craft. He pointed out
channel lights with one hand while he steered
with the other. I could hardly see them, for my
eyes were very sore and swollen. I wondered

132 OCEAN ECHOES

how the crook was feeling by that time, and
whether I should ever see him again.

There were stretches in the river where the
wind would be fair, and again we would round a
bend where it was dead ahead. Here he would
haul the little schooner sharp onto the wind and
beat to where the breeze was fair again. In this
way we made Clarksburg in two days against the
current, and sailed right up to the bank, drop-
ping the sails and making her fast to the cotton-
wood trees, for there was no wharf to tie her to.

The baled hay we were going to load was piled
high upon the river bank, and loading it was
hard work for me, since strength was what I
used instead of the handy jerk and heave that old
hands acquire. So that, with working in the hot
sun all day, fighting mosquitoes at night, and
drinking muddy river water, I was pretty well
used up by the time we were loaded. The Cap-
tain seemed to thrive. He knew the trick of
loading, and old as he was he could work rings
around me.

In three days we had filled the hold and stowed
most of the deck cargo, which was the greater
part of the whole. To-morrow we should start

THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 133

for San Francisco, and that evening the Captain
asked me to finish loading \vhile he went for a
walk.

About nine o'clock he came back, roaring
drunk. He carried a jug which he handed to
me.

"Drink some of that, young fellow," he said,
with great pride.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It don't make a damned bit of difference
what it is. Drink it any way. I'll tell you this
much," he growled, as he fell over the cabin stool,
"it's the world's greatest cure for chills ?n>
fever."

What chills and fever were I did not know
then (although I was to find out soon enough),
nor what the "world's greatest remedy" might
be. So I said: "Captain, I'll not touch it till
you tell me what it is."

He tumbled into his bunk with a groan. Then
he tried to get out of the bunk and couldn't.
He murmured softly as his head fell back upon
the dirty pillow : "Jackass brandy."

Jackass brandy again! The Devil in our
midst! None of that for me! I put the jug

134 OCEAN ECHOES

away, and taking a blanket and a piece of mos-
quito netting went up on deck to sleep.

At four o'clock in the morning the Captain
came up with a tin dipper to take a drink out
of the river. Seeing me asleep between the tiller
ropes he shouted: "What did you do with that
jug?"

In vain I urged him not to drink any more.
He would have it, so I finally told him where it
was, and he went down to the cabin after it.

I rolled out of the blanket, took off my clothes,
jumped overboard, and had a refreshing swim.
Better than that other time when I had the
jackass's kick to thank for an icy plunge!

When I came aboard again, the Captain, ap-
parently perfectly sober, was elevating the deck-
platform in line with the load of hay, in order
to see where to steer. He told me to make the
coffee while he reefed the fore and mainsail,
which was necessary with so high a deckload.

The Captain drank my coffee, but refused to
eat anything, saying that his stomach was out of
order, which was not, I thought, to be wondered
at. At nine o'clock that morning we let go from
the cottonwoods, set the sails, and drifted away
with the current.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FATES GRIND THE CAPTAIN, AND SMILE AND
MOCK AT ME

THE wind was light until we got down to
where the river grew wider. There the
breeze and current favored us. The
Captain refused to let me steer, thinking that I
knew very little about that kind of sailorizing;
and I, seeing that the jug of brandy was beside
him on the platform, knew that it was I who had
reason to be alarmed, with the whole day before
us, and him drinking from nine o'clock in the
morning.

So the whole day passed, silently, with him
ever standing at the wheel wavering about the
jug that went to his lips so often ; with me some-
times pleading with his unresponsiveness, some-
times standing alone cursing the kind of man he
was, and biting back the fears that came crowd-
ing to my mind. But his power to steer seemed
independent of his condition, which amazed me.

135

136 OCEAN ECHOES

Since then I have lived to see many men like
that — surely a token of immortality.

At about eleven o'clock that night the breeze
was strong, and as we rounded the curve in the
river where the wind changed the booms flew over
on the other tack with a lightning bang. I
would shout to him to duck his head, which he
did automatically. If the main boom should
catch him — well I should hate to think! What
would become of the schooner, and how should I
explain?

"All right, young fellow," he would stutter, as
he dodged a boom. "I'm a'ri' fashtes' trip ever
made. So-o-ome fash' schooner !"

Then he'd take another drink, and the schooner
would lie over till the baled hay on the lee side
would drag in the water.

I went down into the cabin to make coffee.
I thought it might neutralize the brandy, and
sober him up a bit. Before I even had the fire
going in the stove I heard the booms swing over,
and a deep thud in the cockpit. My heart almost
stopped beating. I felt as if I were paralyzed.

There was no doubt in my mind as to what had
happened. I knew that everything was waiting

THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 137

for me there above: the schooner, in danger of
being beached, the Captain at least badly hurt.
There was no fear now, and I jumped to the deck
like a man with years of wisdom behind him. I
was in possession of faculties that I knew I had
never had before. That is a feeling that only
comes once, and it never forsakes one in emer-
gency after that.

I ran to where I thought the Captain lay. He
was there, with blood oozing from his ears and
nose, stricken down at last by the mighty swing
of the main boom. The boom was whistling
through the rigging. The schooner wasn't away
from the river bank two hundred feet.

Jumping for the wheel platform and climbing
it, I clutched the wheel, putting it hard down and
bringing the schooner up into the wind, heading
upstream. Then, by dropping the peak of the
mainsail and hauling the jib well to windward,
I put her out of sailing commission. She would
drift with the current down the middle of the
river without danger to herself. Then I ran aft
again to the Captain.

When I had carried him down into the cabin,
I could see by the light of the candle that he was

138 OCEAN ECHOES

still breathing. How badly he was hurt I could
not see. He could not answer when I asked.

Gently I lifted him into the bunk, and in
straightening out his legs I discovered that the
left one was broken below the knee. His face
was covered with blood, and there was a deep
scalp wound at the back of his head. His eyes
were partly open, the pupils turned upwards, and
the lips a pale blue.

I made him as comfortable as I knew how,
bandaged his head, and washed the blood away.
It seemed that if he died I should be held to
blame. I knew nothing of his affairs, nor
even who it was who owned the schooner. What
if she should be wrecked? The Captain, the
vessel, and the river were all strangers to me,
and I was alone with these lifeless forces.

The flapping of the main peak stirred me to
action. I jumped to the deck and surveyed the
vessel and the night. I could barely trace the
outline of the river banks, but beyond them I
knew lay uninhabited tule-lands. If there was
a doctor this side of San Francisco I did not
know it, nor at the moment did I seem to know
much of anything at all, since my initiative of a

THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 139

few minutes ago had now given place to a mind
as variable as the weather-vane upon my father's
barn. I actually took the time to wish that I
were at home and asleep in the Irish linen sheets,
to awake in the morning to find this only a
dream.

The wind now increased and drops of rain fell.
The fresh-water waves lapped in uncanny sound
along the sides of the schooner, so differently
from the wash of the great salt ocean, I turned
and ran back to the cabin, to the semblance of
human companionship.

This time the Captain showed signs of con-
sciousness. His eyes were wide open, and he
groaned as if in great pain. He might live, I
thought, and a new hope sprang up within me.
I would try to sail the schooner to 'Frisco Bay.
It was a daring thing to do, but. . . .

I poured some of the muddy river water into
the Captain's mouth. It gurgled down his
throat, and noised as though it rippled over a
shallow fall.

"How are you now, sir?"

He looked up at me, and said in a sort of a
strangling whisper:

140 OCEAN ECHOES

"Look out for the schooner, don't bother about
me."

"Shall I take her in?"

He didn't answer, and his head waved to and
fro. The candle in the bottle candlestick had
burned low, the dripping wax had formed a tape-
like ribbon down the side of the bottle. I blew
the light out and jumped to the deck, Bet the
main peak, ran forward and slacked over the
main jib, and back again to the wheel, when she
filled away and gathered speed. I put her about,
and pointed her down the river.

The wind was strong now, but it favored me,
and we were off, with God for a pilot, and in me
the instinct of a sailor.

It seemed ages till daylight. We had no time,
and the old nickel-plated watch was in the Cap-
tain's pocket. I wondered if he were dead, but
could not leave the wheel to find out. Gusts of
wind came at times so powerful that it was with
difficulty that I kept the schooner from turning
over. When this happened I had to luff so close
to the river bank that there was danger of run-
ning into it.

In the loneliness and darkness I began to pray,

THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 141

and I prayed that night as I have never prayed
before nor since. I knew my prayers then,
prayers that my mother had taught me, and
which to this day I have never forgotten. I can't
say that I use them much of late years, but I
would if occasion demanded it. A courage and
confidence seems to come to me from prayer
which is not to be produced by all the will power
in the world.

Wet from the rain and shivering with cold I
stood at the wheel and watched the antics of
the wind and the schooner, until, with the first
faint streaks of dawn, I saw outlined against a
hazy hill the outline of San Quentin State Prison.
I knew it from the Captain's having pointed it
out to me on our way up the river.

It was a beacon of hope to me. Across the
bay ten or twelve miles lay Mission Flats. There
was plenty of sea-room now. I was tempted to
let go the wheel and take a look at the Captain,
but feared that if I should find him dead I should
be too much alarmed to continue on the schooner.
Nor could I help him much if he were alive, so
I concluded to make the best time I could to port.

About ten o'clock that Monday morning I low-

142 OCEAN ECHOES

ered the sails and dropped anchor at Mission
Flats, and hesitatingly entered the cabin, fearing
the worst. But there was yet some life in him.
He was breathing hard, with a hollow, rattling
sound in his throat.

I left him, and pulled ashore in the little boat
that had been towing astern all night. At the
Dane's saloon in Berry Street, which occurred to
me as the nearest place to go for help, I found
Kitty behind the bar. I told her what had hap-
pened, and that I wanted someone who could
help me get the Captain to the hospital at once.
She put her hands on her fat hips, and looking
out of the window said reflectively: "Shure an'
I knew that something would happen to poor
auld Captain Glass."

Then she spun into action. "Hans, you durty
loafer, come here," she cried. "There's work for
you to do."

Her husband appeared as if by magic. A short
thickset man he was, coatless, and wearing green
silk elastic bands with pink bows around his
sleeves. He called an ambulance and a police-
man, and I rowed him and the doctor to the
schooner, where we found the Captain still alive.

THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 143

We moved him to the boat, but he died before
we had reached the wharf. Who knows but that
he too, had only clung to life while his responsi-
bility lasted? One cannot say so with fullest
confidence, however, for surely he did not have
the finest idea of duty as far as the jackass
brandy was concerned.

The jug, by the way, I took ashore with me,
and fortunately too, as I had much to explain
to the police; so for the first time the jug proved
to be my friend.

The agent for the schooner, to whose office I
presently found my way, listened to my story
without emotion or comment. When I had fin-
ished he merely nodded, and said, quite casually :

"Well, do you think you can run her?"

"Yes, sir,'7 and my voice broke with eagerness.
"I think I can."

"All right then, unload the hay up the bay" ( I
forget the name of the place he told me ) . "And
from there go up to Porta Costa and get a load
of salt."

That was the last of Captain Glass. Unwept
and unsung, he passed as many a worthier man
has done, and his little bronze button went with

144 OCEAN ECHOES

him into the humble grave, whose whereabouts I
do not even know.

I felt proud of my new position. This was
sure and good money, upwards of four hundred
dollars a*month ; and, being not yet twenty years
old, and the year one of panic and scarcity of
work, I thought that it was the sea for a sailor
and hogs for the landlubber.

So I went about my business, hiring a man to
help me, and running the schooner without mis-
chance for four months. Then fortune, perhaps
fearing that she had spoiled me, deserted me
entirely. I got malaria fever. Nothing that I
could do was of any help, and with the patent
medicines I bought and the whiskey and quinine,
the doctor's bills I had to pay, and my despair
at growing continually weaker, it began to look
as if I was to leave the venture in worse condi-
tion than I w^as when I fought for the Captain
in the saloon on Berry Street.

I left the schooner after four months, when
it became apparent that I must do so to live.
When I left her I had twelve hundred dollars
in my pockets. After two months ashore the
amount had dwindled sadly. I kept writing

THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 145

home how well, and how well fixed I was, for my
mother's joy at my good fortune was not to be
lightly destroyed. Her letters were my only
consolation in those awful weeks. Little did she
know then what was to pay for being the captain
of a San Francisco bay schooner !

Chills and fever usually hit me in the fore-
noons, and would last for about three hours on
alternate days. Between times I was limp,
dizzy and listless, longing to be quit of life.

CHAPTER XVIII

TOPS AND BOTTOMS — THE GAMBLER AND THE
GAMBLER'S PREY

ONE afternoon as I was walking along
the water-front, looking at the ships of
many nations and wondering if a
sea-voyage wouldn't help me, a round and red-
faced man about forty, wearing a straw hat and
tweed suit, walked up to me and asked me for
a light for his cigar. Then he began to talk to
me, and seemed kind and sympathetic. Little
did I know that I was talking to one of the worst
crooks in San Francisco.

He became communicative, as we stood there,
and told me how his poor wife was sick up in
Vancouver, turning from me as he spoke, with
his handkerchief to his eyes.

"If I can only get there before she dies!" he
said. "Every minute is precious, and I am a
stranger here."

"I am a stranger, too," I said, "but I ought to
be able to find a ship for you." I felt very sorry

146

THE GAMBLER'S PREY 147

for this tender-hearted man whose wife was
dying hundreds of miles away. My own trou-
bles sank into nothing compared to his.

He was grateful, and assured me that money
was nothing to him. He even pulled out a roll
of bills and asked me to help myself. I, of
course, refused, for it was a pleasure to help him.
It never occurred to me to think that the bills
might be phoney.

At the Pacific Mail dock I learned that a
steamer was leaving the following day for Vic-
toria, B. C., on which he would be able to get
passage. He said that he would go back later
for his ticket, and, urging me at least to let him
treat me to a glass of beer, skilfully guided me
into the saloon of his choice.

"Now," said he, on the way, "you must let me
help you to some money. I doubt if you have
much."

"Oh yes, I have a little," I answered, bashfully.

Quick as a flash he asked me how much I had,
and I, taken unawares, answered like a fool, and
told him that I had two hundred and forty dol-
lars. His eyes sparkled, and his stride length-
ened. We entered the saloon.

148 OCEAN ECHOES

The barroom was small. Its only occupant
was the bartender, who was long and lanky, with
a face that might have been chiseled out of Car-
rara marble, so pale and expressionless it was.
He was an opium fiend, I discovered later, and
well known, and sometimes protected by the
police.

"What will you have?" he asked, as my seem-
ing friend and I approached the bar.

"I will take steam-beer," I said.

"Ditto for me!" cried the crook, as he flung
a gold eagle on the bar.

The beer being served, the bar-tender excused
himself, to go and get change, he said. I offered
to pay, but he said that he needed the change
anyway. I didn't know that this was all a part
of the piece — that the stage was set for me, and
that now another character was about to make
his appearance for my sole benefit.

As we drank our beer, a door opened from a
back room into the bar, letting in an elderly man
whose hair and beard were graying. He wore a
long linen duster and slouch hat.

"Have a drink with us, old fellow," said my
friend.

THE GAMBLER'S PREY 149

"No, sir," answered the old man, with a strong
Western twang, "I buy my own drinks, and pay
for 'em."

"Oh, very well, if that's the way you feel about
it. I'll just shake the dice with you and see who
pays for the three of us."

Enter Mr. Hophead, Bartender.

"Give us the dice," roared the old man. "How
will we shake?"

"Tops and bottoms, three dice."

"Never heard of such a thing," whined the old
Westerner, "but I'll try anything once, to be
sociable. Now how does that game o' your'n
go?"

I was bristling with interest. This was some-
thing I had not run across before, and the three
crooks knew that I was about ready to nibble
at the bait. I might have been saved, if that
was all I did, but instead I insisted on swallow-
ing hook, line, and pole.

My mother told us children that you can catch
the small-pox only once, and should you recover,
you will be forever immune. I know that I have
helped many young men to steer clear of the
crooks who infest our cities, because I have my-

150 OCEAN ECHOES

self been through the mill of ignorance. For
this reason, if for no other, I am glad that the
saloons no longer exist as a legitimate meeting
and operating ground for crooked men.

"The game is simple," said my genial friend,
whose wife was dying in Vancouver. "Take
these three dice, put them in the box, rattle and
roll. Guess the numbers on top and bottom, add
them up, and the one who guesses closest is the
one who drinks free beer."

"Gosh a'mighty! I'll take a whack at ye any-
way," and the old man unbuttoned the long
duster. I stood by, feeling sorry for myself, that
I wasn't asked to join in this wonderful game of
dice.

The old fellow rattled the bones.

"Before you throw them on the bar," said my
companion, with his most wrinsome smile, "we
must both make a guess."

"All right, I'll guess twenty-seven, and, damn
my old wild skin! I'll bet ye ten dollars and
beer."

"You are certainly on," chimed the other, dig-
ging into his pocket for money. "My guess will
be twenty-one."

THE GAMBLER'S PREY 151

The money was up, and the game was on.
The hop-head bartender and I looked on wist-
fully as the dice rolled.

"Count the numbers/' roared old Linen-Duster.
"And gol-darn ye, count them right !"

My companion won, and tossing the ten dol-
lars to me said :

"Here, take my old hayseed's money. I have
more than I need."

"No, no !" I cried, "I wasn't in on your game,
the money is yours." And I tossed it back again.
Had I been a little more intelligent I would have
noticed that the hop-headed bartender sighed
and the old man retreated through the door by
which he had entered in a sort of routine way.
This fact passed me by at the moment, but the
memory of it certainly taught me something.

The trap was now ready to spring, and I was
to be my own hangman. I deserved hanging.
We hang ourselves many times in our lives with
the hemp rope of our selfish greed. And that
day I was no exception.

My friend turned to me, and smilingly whis-
pered : "You see how this game works, don't
you?" He picked up the three dice in his fingers.

152 OCEAN ECHOES

"No matter which way you count them, top and
bottom, there's always twenty-one, seven on each
dice."

Surely I was green and dense.

"I can't understand it yet/' said I, getting ter-
ribly excited. I was afraid that old Linen-
Duster might come back and spoil my chance of
ever knowing. Then he explained as if he were
talking to a child, that if there was a six on
top, one was always on the bottom ; if four, then
three on the bottom — always seven, top and
bottom.

The old man walked into the bar again, hold-
ing a fat-looking purse in his hand. "The loss
of that money doesn't hurt me very much,
stranger," he said, striding over to the bar. He
opened the purse. It was full of what appeared
to be twenty-dollar gold-pieces. It wasn't gold
at all, I learned afterwards, but mid-winter
souvenirs of San Francisco.

"I'll shake with anyone here for three hundred
dollars, but don't think that if I lose it will break
me."

My companion nudged me. "Here's your
chance," he whispered. "Go after him. Put up

THE GAMBLER'S PREY 153

your two hundred and forty, and I'll lend you
sixty more. It's easy money."

There was no chance to lose, that I could see.
I put up my money, all that I had in the world,
and sixty more.

"Now you shake the dice/' said my opponent.
"You certainly look honest to me. Eattle them,
roll them, throw them on the bar."

"I'm a-guessing twenty," he continued.

"I guess twenty-one," I cried ; and I wouldn't
have given one dollar for all of his three hundred,
so sure was I of winning. Well, I rattled and
rolled the bones, being sorry for the old man all
the time. Then I counted them. I counted
them again. The numbers top and bottom
amounted to only twenty!

I was aware of the cynical bartender looking
at himself in the mirror, smiling at the sucker,
who like the dreamer, pervades society from high-
est to lowest strata. I was aware that the old
man had quietly pocketed my earnings, leaving
me only a few coppers to my name. I saw the
other crook deliberately slide out of a side door.
I felt myself to be alone, with possibility of ven-
geance gone from me. Still I stood in the bare

154 OCEAN ECHOES

and silent room, staring, staring at the dice on
the mahogany bar, knowing at last the trick of
substitution that had taken from me all I had.

The psychology of being a good loser is the
feeling that the hurts of yesterday may be the
cause of winning to-morrow's fight. I went out
of that saloon as if I were bent on urgent busi-
ness, and I was. By now it was plain enough
to me that my time would be wasted in seeking
redress. The matter of the moment was food,
shelter, and occupation. I had not even time
to think of malaria and the chills that were sure
to get me soon. The past was obscure with the
dawn of the morrow.

CHAPTER XIX

A SHORT CHAPTER, HEALED WOUNDS, AND
A QUEER SEA-CAPTAIN

THE cream-colored November sun had only
a little way to go before night swept in
his wake. I walked along the water-
front and watched the ships swinging limply to
the undertow. That same evening I found a
ship, the barque Ferris 8. Thompson, bound for
Seattle for coal, and back again for San Fran-
cisco.

This good luck was due to a sailor, unknown
to me, whom I had befriended when I was master
of the bay schooner. I was unloading coal one
afternoon in San Francisco. He came on board
and asked me if I could give him some work
to do.

"I'm sorry," said I ; "I can't give you work."

He turned away, and without a murmur

walked ashore. I stopped shoveling coal and

gazed after him. Then I thought that it wasn't

so long ago that I had been just like him — with

155

156 OCEAN ECHOES

no money, no friends, no home, and the cruel
feeling that nobody cared. I knew that I had
gold in my pocket, and I wondered how long I
should have it. Then I called after him:
"Hello ! I want to see you."

"You're broke," said I.

"Yes, and hungry into the bargain."

"Here's ten dollars for you."

He thanked me with his Norwegian accent and
walked away, and I went on shoveling coal.

That was five months before, and this evening,
from where he stood on the forecastle-head of
the barque, he recognized me on the wharf. He
was the second mate, and the barque needed one
man. I got the job. I was richly paid for the
small service I had rendered him.

One usually is richly paid. Kindness to
others is not only a pleasure that rich and poor
alike can have, but frequently it is more than
its own reward. I could cite many instances.

Years later, at a time when I had plenty of
money, I was walking one afternoon in Stanley
Park, Vancouver. A young man was sitting on
a bench looking pale and hungry, and there were
lines of sadness in his face.

A QUEER SEA-CAPTAIN 157

"What's your trouble?" I asked. "Tell me.
I have noticed you sitting here for two hours.
Perhaps I can help."

He cleared his throat, and a delicate smile
came into his face.

"I'm broke/' said he, "and hungry. I've been
sleeping in the park for the last three nights, and
Tm just about .sick."

"How did you get in for this?"

"I put what money I had into a little mine up
the country here," waving his hand toward
the north. "I thought there was more to it than
there was. There was nothing there."

I paid his room and board for a week, and gave
him twenty dollars.

Years later I met him again. This time it was
I who was down and out, and sick with rheuma-
tism, left from the typhoid fever which had me
in its grip when the Goldfield smash stripped me
of a fortune.

In the little town of Manhattan, Nevada, I
met him. I had been riding on a lumber wagon
most of the day trying to get there. Five miles
out of town the wagon broke down, and crippled
as I was, I had to walk that distance. I didn't

158 OCEAN ECHOES

know a soul there. Imagine my surprise when I
walked into town, sick, broke, and hungry, to
find the man I had helped in Stanley Park.

He recognized me at once, and my condition
also.

"Now," he said, "taking me kindly by the arm,
"it's my turn to help you." Bfe led me to his
tent, got a doctor for me, and kept me there until
I got well.

Then there was the Chinaman on the Frazer
River who ran the fan-tan house at Stevestown.
Grateful for my rescue of him from the three
fishermen who were beating him up one night as
I passed his door, he never forgot me. Later I
met him in Vancouver when I was at a street
corner wondering what to do next. Luck had
been very bad. I saw him walking along on the
other side of the street. He did not seem to see
me. He walked by, crossed the street, came up
by my side, walked up to me with outstretched
hand. "How you do?" said he.

He gave me the usual limp oriental handshake,
passed along as if he had never seen me, without
waiting for a word, and left in my hand three
twenty-dollar gold-pieces*

A QUEER SEA-CAPTAIN 159

After such experiences one finds that there is
indeed truth in "bread upon the waters." And
one is both inspired and made reckless by this
sure knowledge of the subconscious rescue work
which seems invariably to save us from disaster,
through some other person. The crumbs we scat-
ter come back to us in well-baked loaves.

As to the barque Ferris 8. Thompson, from
which I have strayed so far: the voyage was a
very long one for so short a distance. The
reason for this delay lay with the captain.
He was a State of Maine man, and old at that.
I believe the only worry he had in his life at sea
was due to an inborn fear of steamships. He
felt that he was always in danger of being run
down by one of them.

He held high regard for sailing-ship masters,
but none for the captains of steamers. Even in
daylight if he saw a steamer he would alter his
course and steer away from the distant smoke.
When night shut in there was misery for every-
one on board. If he saw a masthead light, re-
gardless of its position, he would roar :

"Tack ship, stand by headsails, weather fore
and main braces. Har-r-r-d a le-e-eee I"

160 OCEAN ECHOES

Around we'd go on another tack. He'd stand
trembling on the poop until the steamer's light
faded into the distance. Three months vanished
on that voyage, although the distance round-trip
was a thousand miles.

Finally, after dodging, it seemed, every
steamer that plied the coast-line of the North
Pacific, we reached San Francisco. What a wel-
come met us! When the tug-boat breasted the
barque alongside the wharf, the managing owner
was there.

When we were within hailing distance of the
owner his voice reached out to us, and it seemed
to me to have about the same effect on all on
board — as though we were caught aback in a
squall.

"Get off that ship, everyone of you. I don't
even want you to make her fast to the wharf !"
Then, his eyes wandering aft to where the old
State of Maine captain stood : "Where have you
been, to China? Gone three months instead of
six weeks ! ! ! " The language that followed was
of that rare order known only to masters, mates
and owners.

He paid us all off then and there. There were

A QUEER SEA-CAPTAIN 161

no good wishes for our future, for to him each
and all of us were equally guilty The old cap-
tain took his medicine like the rest of us. What
did he care for the abuse of an owner, compared
to the sharp stem of a steamer?

But just by changing ships he couldn't get
away from the steamers. Five years later I was
mate on a ship bound north for Seattle, and we
passed the barque Oakland. This same old cap-
tain commanded her — but not that day. He,
with the crew, had taken to the boats twenty-four
hours before. The barque, manless, was left to
the mercy of wind and wave.

I pleaded with my captain to let me take her,
and sail her into Puget Sound, for she was
loaded with lumber, and I felt sure that I could
salvage her, although she was water-logged. My
captain would not hear of it, and the salvage fell
to an ocean-going tug which chanced upon her,
towed her to port, and received one hundred and
twenty thousand dollars for her. I have often
regretted that I did not defy the captain, and
sail her to port or die in the attempt.

The Captain and crew were picked up off
Cape Disappointment, the story being that the

162 OCEAN ECHOES

barque Oakland was abandoned because she was
so leaky. But I knew, and the captain knew
that other reason— STEAMERS !

CHAPTER XX

THE HARE-LIPPED CAPTAIN — WORCESTERSHIRE
SAUCE AND GRUEL

I'M going to take a liberty, and bunch to-
gether seven years of sea experience from
the time of my discharge from the F. S.
Thompson, putting these memories, as it were,
into a ground-swell from the deep, and letting
them wash ashore, and, from amongst the kelp in
the nooky inlet where the driftwood lies, gather-
ing together the pieces that are worth salvaging,
carrying them to the high-water mark, and drop-
ping them there.

These seven years had crowded out the over-
serious thoughts of youth, and developed in me
the more harmonious side of the man. I could
laugh at life and its drawbacks now. If I hap-
pened to be without a ship, or without money in
my pocket, I felt that it was all in the day's work,
and so lost nothing through worry. The smiling
seas were mine to-day — lee shores belonged to
yesterday,

163

164 OCEAN ECHOES

I had a great ambition to become a master of
ships, as well as a master of men ; but I had to
wait, first to become a citizen of the country, and
then to get the necessary sea experience to
qualify. Nautical astronomy and the rules of
sailing I was thoroughly familiar with. Long
before I became an officer aboard ship, I
once with this knowledge saved a ship from
going on the rocks. I was still a sailor in the
forecastle.

I was in a Puget Sound port, and money was
getting low with me when I met the hare-lipped
captain. He was loading lumber for San Fran-
cisco. He held a half -interest in a three topmast
schooner, the other half being held by a Dutch-
man in San Erancisco who ran a coffee-royal
house for the benefit of sailors who liked to mix
brandy with the Dutchman's black coffee.

.When I met the Captain he was coming out of
a saloon on his way to the schooner. He was
making short tacks on the sidewalk, and had
great difficulty in shaping a straight course for
the wharf.

"Do you need any sailors?" I asked him.

"I do," he said, with a hiccough; "but if I

WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 165

stop now to tell you what I want, I'll fall down.
Come on, take me by the arm, and steer me to the
schooner."

The job was not an easy one. He was heavy,
and not easy to keep on an even keel. But I got
him on board, and in his cabin he invited me to
remain for supper. It was unusual for a sailor
to eat with the master of a ship, but I allowed for
his condition, for when a man is drunk he will
take up with anyone who will listen to his
boasting.

The ship's cook, who had one eye and a droop-
ing mustache, brought in the supper, which he
spread noisily, and with a nervous glance at me
bounded forward to the galley. I learned after-
ward that even the mates were afraid to face the
captain that night.

It seemed to me, as I sat opposite to him, that
if things didn't go right he would be a hard man
to handle. But he treated me very well, and
told me to come down in the morning, and he
would ship me as a sailor.

Now it seemed to me, who had so often been
a victim of leaky ships, that I asked a justifiable
question :

166 OCEAN ECHOES

"How is this ship for leaking, Captain?" But
it proved to be my undoing.

"What did you say?" he inquired fiercely.
"Just say that again. Just say that again, if
you dare. My ship leaky!" And without hesi-
tation, with a single gesture, he picked up and
flung at ine a large platter of fried steak, just
missing my face. His language was startling
even to me, and before I could move he was up
and peeling off his coat.

Discretion seemed the thing just then, and I
made a leap for the deck, where the two mates
stood snickering at me as I shot by them to the
wharf. I did manage to call to the mate, "I'll
be with you in the morning, sir," before I ducked
behind a lumber pile. None too soon, for the
Captain's head showed above the companion-
way. He told the poor mates what he thought
of them, and treated them to the language in-
tended for me.

Bright and early next morning I was aboard
the hare-lipped Captain's ship. He didn't re-
member having hired me, but hired me over
again, and I helped load ship for the four days
we were in port. The Captain was drunk all

WORCESTEBSHIKE SAUCE 167

the time, and was very disagreeable, especially to
the mate. The result was that the mate left,
and we sailed without any first officer.

There were six men in the fo'c'sle, big, raw-
boned, Scandinavian sailors, and the second mate
was apparently a good sailor, but not a navi-
gator. Plying in coastwise trade he did not re-
quire a second mate's license. Two days out at
sea, the Captain, who did all his drinking ashore,
and did not carry rum with him, became deliri-
ous for the want of it. He was having domestic
trouble with one of his lady-loves. I thought
whoever she was she could not be as bad as he,
and Heaven help her !

The sailors were uneasy and scented disaster.
When the topsails blew away, they held a con-
sultation, and decided that the Captain must
be locked up if we were ever to reach port. But
the question was, who amongst us had the nerve
to seize him and tie him up.

The cook was called into conference. The
others thought that he, being in close touch with
the raving Captain, could coax him into his cabin
and quickly lock the door. I'll never forget the

368 OCEAN ECHOES

expression on the cook's face when this proposi-
tion was made to him.

As I said before, he had one eye. The loss of
this member had a tendency to protrude the good
one, which seemed to bulge out on his cheek.
He had a three-day growth of sandy beard. The
drooping mustache, which was about three
shades darker, covered his mouth, and when he
spoke, it was self-consciously, with one dough-
spattered finger to his mouth. But there was
nothing hesitating about his words. He could
not, and would not, lock up the Captain.

It was six o'clock in the afternoon of the third
day at sea. The wind was coming stronger, and
the spanker should be reefed. The topsails, what
was left of them, were flying in long strips at
the masthead. The Captain was sitting on a
mooring bitt, alongside the man at the wheel,
counting and counting something on his fingers.
Often he would spring to his feet, clawing at
some imaginary bug crawling on his coat-collar.
No one dared to speak to him, least of all the
second mate. He was doubly scared — of the
Captain, and of what was going to happen to
the ship; for he knew enough to dread many

WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 169

things, and not enough to save the ship from
one of them.

Suddenly, and quietly, the Captain sprang for
the helmsman, and started to beat him up. He
was a stout man, but the attack was too sudden,
and he had no show at all. He began to cry
murder.

Two Swedish sailors and I went on the run
for the poop-deck. We didn't get there a mo-
ment too soon. We pulled the Captain away
from the poor helmsman, just in time to prevent1,
him throwing him overboard. Then he turned
on me with unabated fury. But the three of us
soon mastered him, and buckled him down the
companionway and into his room, where we
locked him in, after first removing anything that
might injure him. He was raving and prancing
like a wild animal.

On deck I asked the second mate if he knew
his position of ship, or where he was on the ocean.
He didn't kn'ow any more about it than did the
sailors in the forecastle.

We called a council again, and I told the
crew that while I held no license I felt sure
that I could make San Francisco, since I

170 OCEAN ECHOES

could navigate the ship. They agreed that
I should command her, and I took the Cap-
tain's sextant. The following day I got our
position, and headed her for the Golden
Gate.

For two days the Captain howled and raged.
He was so vicious that we dared not go into Ms
room, but fortunately his anger was misdirected,
and he did not try to escape. The cook fed him
through the port-hole, with a long-handled dip-
per full of gruel, strongly flavored with Lea and
Perrin's sauce. When I asked why he did this,
he laughed at my ignorance of the sobering-up
properties of this sauce. I discovered later that
longshoremen and mule-skinners have also dis-
covered this valuable secret.

After the second day the Captain grew better
and slept more. On the sixth day we sailed into
San Francisco Bay, and I was just about to come
to anchor, when he demanded to be released, and
to be allowed on the deck of his own schooner.
I refused his demand, thinking that he was weak,
and should have a doctor. Without more argu-
ment he withdrew his head from the porthole,
threw his strength, against the door, smashed it

WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 171

to splinters, and came up on deck as if nothing
had happened.

He surveyed the harbor with a sweep of his
eye, and inquired with a flame of oaths what I
was doing with his ship.

"I'm going to anchor her," I said, frightened.

"Never mind the anchor, I'm going to take her
alongside the wharf. Lower the jibs down and
drop the spanker."

I was about to protest, thinking that if he
tried to sail alongside the wharf he would tear
the sides out of her. But discipline held me in
its iron grip, and I wondered if really he could
possibly do it. He did. He sailed up to Mission
Flats, and abreast the Fourth Street bridge. He
pointed the schooner in towards the wharf as if
she were alone on the water.

There were tug-boats, ferry-boats, bay-scows,
and sailing-craft of all kinds and descriptions
tooting and shouting and screaming for the right-
of-way. Our Captain if he saw them did not
notice them, but took his wheel, and with his
eye on the wharf sailed in. It so happened that
there was a vacant berth at the end of the pier,
ahead of which lay a number of Greek fishing-

172 OCEAN ECHOES

boats. They saw us coming, and got out of the
way like a flock of sheep, for it looked as if there
would be a nasty crash.

"Drop the peak of the fore and mainsail, and
let the jib go by the run !" shouted the Captain.
When this was done the wind fluttered out of
our sails, and the schooner crept lazily in, gliding
alongside, harmlessly squashing the barnacles on
the piles, to the amazement of the crew, and the
crowd gathered on the dock.

"Make her fast, and lower the fore and main-
sail. Then get ashore and get your money,"
ordered the Captain; and that was his acknowl-
edgement to us for our help and our silence.

But in the Dutchman's coffee house where we
were paid off, we were all friends together, and
there the Captain was once more able to get
drunk, as drunk could be. When I left them the
Captain was surrounded by his loving crew, who
chanted his praises in cognac whispers, while the
cook reclined against the hare-lipped one, with
one arm entwined about his neck.

CHAPTER XXI
SALMON FISHING,, CITIZEN AND MATE

IT was now a little over four years that I had
been away from home. I was twenty-two
years old. In less than a year I should be
a citizen of the United States of America, and
with that would come promotion from the fore-
castle.

My letters came regularly from Ireland, always
with my mother's thoughtfulness for her son.
There were many questions to answer. Did I
keep my feet dry, and did I wear red flannels to
keep the rheumatism away? Always her letters
contained the assurance that her prayers were
being said for me, and through them she
felt sure that no harm could befall me. Some-
how I began to feel so, too ; so many adventures
did I have, and narrow escapes. I cannot but
believe that some good force works to preserve
those of us who are innocent, or not too bad,
though what that force is I cannot pretend to
say.

173

174 OCEAN ECHOES

One instance more of this I may mention here.
Some months after I took the hare-lipped Cap-
tain's schooner to port, I found myself on the
Fraser Kiver, British Columbia. It was sum-
mer, the salmon season was on, I got a boat and
a net from a cannery, and went gill-netting for
salmon.

A young married man, who had a wife and
child living in New Westminster, was my boat-
puller. He was a sober, steady, hard-working
man. It was towards the close of the salmon
run, and we were thinking of giving up fishing,
that is, it would hardly pay for the physical
wear and tear with so few salmon in the river.
But he prevailed on me to fish for another week,
and I consented.

That Sunday afternoon before we put out to
fish, I took a nap, and when I awoke I was
somewhat troubled by a dream I had had. I
dreamed that I saw my dead self being lowered
into a grave, and I was amused at the mourners,
as I stood there by the grave, watching them
cover my dead self up. They didn't use earth to
cover the coffin. Each one had a pail, and in the
pail was water, and this they dumped into the

SALMON FISHING 175

open grave. When it was full to the top, the
water-carriers disappeared.

I told this to my boatman. He enjoyed the
story, and we had a good laugh, especially at
the water part of it.

"Come on," said he then, "let us go down and
get the net off the rock and into the boat. When
that is done it will be time to go out to fish."

The law in British Columbia is that there shall
be no nets in the water from sunrise Saturday
until sunset Sunday evening. When we were
ready, we put up the sail and sailed out into
the Gulf. When the sun went down I cast the
net, intending as usual to drift all night, pick
it up in the morning light, and sail home with
the salmon to market.

This night it was different. With the after-
glow of the sun came black clouds, and the night
set in like a monstrous shadow, shutting out all
but the aurorean gleam from the lighthouse.
Unushered, the wind came in stormy gusts, and
lashed the sea to rage. That was the end for
seventy-two fishermen that night. Thirty-six
seaworthy boats went down before its hungry
onslaught like cockle-shells.

176 OCEAN ECHOES

I gathered the net aboard, hoping to make
Stevestown at the mouth of the Fraser Kiver
before the worst of the storm overtook me. Even
before I got the net in it was hard to keep the
boat from turning over. She was a large fishing-
boat, twenty-four feet overall, with a six-foot
beam, a round bottom, and bowed at both ends.
Yet that night she had all the motion of a canoe
adrift in a waterfall.

I put the mast up, and tied two reefs in the
sail. I caught a glimmer from the lighthouse,
and shaped a course for the river. There were
dangers I knew, in crossing the bars, shallow
with the sea running wild. Should I strike one
I knew that nothing could save me.

My dream of the afternoon appeared to me
vividly, and I crowded it away, for it was my
intention to fight the wind and wave for the
injustice of their sudden attack. I ground my
teeth and grabbed the tiller, eased the sheet, and
we were away to safety or death.

I called to my boat-puller to get forward to
the bow, and keep a sharp lookout to avoid run-
ning into another fisherman. The wind and

SALMON FISHING 177

waves fairly lifted the boat out of the water,
we made such speed. One could scarcely see a
finger before one's eyes. The danger of allowing
the boat to broach to the sea was as great as
striking a sandbar, and between the two dangers,
and with my dream pushing into my mind, I
sailed on.

Half an hour later there were screams, dying
screams, screams from drowning men: the call
to Buddha from the sinking Japanese; the wail
for the Happy Hunting-Ground from the Indian,
and the shouted word from the white man to his
Christian God — these louder than the elements
of the night.

To sail on amidst capsized fishing-boats was
playing quoits with fate. Realizing this new
danger, I called out to my boat-puller to look out
for himself. I determined to come up into the
wind and sea. If I could, my best chance lay in
the open sea. If not — well there would be one
more fishing-boat lost.

I hauled in the sheet, and put the tiller over.
Like a race-horse she rounded into the waves,
swamped herself full to the gunwales, but did

178 OCEAN ECHOES

not, as I expected, turn bottom up. I called to
the boat-puller : "Throw the anchor overboard."
I got no response.

Fearing the worst, that he had been pitched
into the sea, I repeated the order. Then I real-
ized that I was alone, and my heart began to
pound. I realized that I, too, was doomed. But
the time had not come yet to pray. If I could
manage to get forward and get the anchor out
she'd swing head on to the storm. This would
help to prolong the end, for we carried a sea-
anchor with seventy-five feet of rope.

The water in the boat was nigh up to my waist.
I wallowed through it, and got out the anchor.
Then I heaved the net overboard, and bailed the
water out, and she swung bow on to the waves
with the strain on the anchor rope. I bailed,
and the storm roared, unceasingly, until day-
break.

With the morning sun came calmer waves.
The wind took flight to some distant sea, and I
gave thanks for another day. Could it be
mother's prayers that saved a son, or just a freak
of fate? The bloated bodies of seventy-two
fishermen beached on the sands. I hunted for

SALMON FISHING 179

my puller and found him, took the body to the
wife who loved him, and to the child who chat-
tered and smiled and wondered why Daddy slept
so long. I had made some money fishing that
I need not use, and the widow thanked me.

A few months later I got my citizenship papers.
I had been in the United States five years, from
1894 to 1899, when I graduated forever from the
fo'c'sle, with the receipt of my naturalization
papers. I took an examination and passed for
mate.

My first ship as an officer was bound for Aus-
tralia. I knew all the tricks of sailors, their
hatreds, their sympathies, their childish joys and
youthful egotisms. The old saying holds good
in every instance : "You've got to camp with a
man to know him."

It is a common saying at sea, especially
among the officers and masters who graduated
from apprentice seamen to their commands, that
few men who start in the forecastle ever reach
the bridge. But I am convinced that those of
the men who work their way up know how to
handle men to get the best work out of them,
if they have the mind to.

180 OCEAN ECHOES

Kindness and appreciation is what they re-
quire. You've got to know them and be one of
them, listen to their petty grievances, praise
them even when they make mistakes. Then
there is nothing they won't do for you.

And I have found out that this rule works as
well on land as on the sea. The man who is not
in close touch with his employees is usually in
trouble with them. Often the master prefers to
remain aloof from his men, issuing his orders
through some prejudiced superintendent or fore-
man, and trusting to welfare-work to stand for
good-will. If he did not do this, there would
be fewer unions in the world to-day.

During the World War I was a superintendent
at the Submarine Boat Corporation's yard — the
second largest shipyard in the United States.
We had as many as twenty-five thousand men
working there. It was astonishing the number
of men who were fired every day, it seemed to
me for no other reason than that their foreman
did not understand or want to know them; and
the men they got in return were worse than those
they had sent away. For more than a year as
Superintendent of Ship Kigging and Outfitting

SALMON PISHING 181

I had no occasion to fire a man, and all that time
my department was above standard in efficiency.
To choose a man you have got to know him, and
he should be treated like a man, once you put
him to work.

The voyage to Australia was a pleasant one,
although it seemed disappointing to the Captain.
He shipped me as mate more on my physical
appearance, than for any other reason, for he
wanted a man who could fight. I understood
from the ship's carpenter, who had sailed many
voyages with him, that there was usually trouble
on board his ship. That voyage there was no
fighting and very little growling, and yet the men
were the average types that are picked up in any
seaport.

"Don't get too friendly with them," the Cap-
tain told me. "I know them. One of these days
they will be kicking you into the lee scuppers.
That's the way they repay kindness."

"We'll see," said I, and dismissed the subject.
I was young, but I knew the sailor's tempera-
ment, and when I spoke to them it was to call
them by their names, and not by some manu-
factured names with an oath.

182 OCEAN ECHOES

The crew was musical. There were a baritone,
trombonist, and cornettist in the forecastle.
One of them made a triangle out of a chain hook,
and the orchestra was complete. During the
dog-watches in the tropics, and on Sundays, we
played new pieces. At times I would spell the
cornet-player off, and play with them.

It was all a bit hard on the Captain, who had
no ear for music, and so made no allowance for
varied harmonies. When the notes reached him
on the poop deck he'd pull at his pipe and pull
his beard, and pace the deck on the double-
quick. One evening while we were sailing south
of the Samoas, we ran into a head wind. It
seemed unusual. The Southeast Trades should
have held for at least another five degrees farther
South.

We were playing that evening when the wind
hauled ahead, and pushed the ship off her course.
The Captain came running from the poop for-
ward. "Now see what you've done," he roared.
"Cut that music out, and cut it out for good.
I knew something would happen with that clab-
bering going on."

He said a whole lot more, words that were

SALMON FISHING 183

jerky and explosive. He blamed the forecastle
orchestra for the head wind, and the instruments
had to be put away,. The sailor who beat time
on the chain-hook triangle hung it up over his
bunk for his socks to dry on. That settled music
for that voyage. They wouldn't even sing a cap-
stan chantey when they were heaving up the
anchor. It took nine months to make the voyage,
and at the end I left the ship and so did the
crew. It would have been cheaper in the end to
have kept us contented with a little innocent
music.

CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER ONE ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CAPTAINS

CAPTAINS of sailing-ships have time to
be superstitious, and sometimes they are
more so than sailors before the mast.
While they are supposed to have a higher degree
of intelligence, they come in contact with more
traditions of the sea, and it seems are very sus-
ceptible to them.

Once I was mate with a Swede captain who
believed that to see whales was a bad omen; he
claimed that gales of wind would follow, and I
have to admit that when I was with him this was
more or less true.

Another, a Dane, believed that when he
dreamed of white horses we were sure to have
a blow, and as he seemed always to be dreaming
of them and predicting disaster in the mildest of
weather, I did not stay long with him. There
was no barometer on board, nor would he allow
any, for some reason known best to himself.

184

CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 185

I made two voyages with another old twisted
warp of a man, before we finally lost the ship.
He was afraid of his shadow. He would never
allow another shadow to cross it. To avoid this
gave him some nifty footwork to do, especially
around noon when we would be taking the sun
together, and I out of devilment would throw
my shadow across his.

"See what you are doing now," he would roar,
"what can you expect with this kind of work
going on?"

I'd excuse myself, and separate the shadows,
but he would be deeply depressed for a long time.

He had queer ideas about booms and ladders,
being afraid to pass under them, and so kept
continually dodging ; and when the sea was afire
with phosphorescent glow, and the spray would
lift up tiny diamond-blue bulbs to the deck, he'd
murmur : "Yes, by Heavens, there's something
back of this !"

The ship he commanded was old, and, by rea-
son of its lack of buoyancy, only fit to carry
lumber, which can stand more water than any
other cargo. We were loading at Garden City,
Oregon, and had just shipped a new crew, when

186 OCEAN ECHOES

the men discovered they were aboard a leaky ship.

They beat it; the next crew also; and before
we had the ship loaded we had had six crews.
The last, you might say, was shanghaied. These
men came from Portland, Oregon, and were lime-
juice sailors. The moment they put their bags
on board the tugboat pulled us out to anchor.
There we could hold them until we were ready
for sea.

When the anchor was down I called on them
to pump her out, saying to encourage them : "She
hasn't been pumped out for several days, and you
may find a little water in her."

This wasn't true, for while we were at the
\vharf I had kept two longshoremen busy pump-
ing at her most of the time, and it was hard
even to get them to do it, so bad was her repu-
tation.

There was a tall slim Irishman in the crew,
who became at once spokesman for the others.

"Ah," said he, with a smile, "and shure, it
won't take us no time at all, at all, to pump
her out for ye."

I smiled too, a different smile, and looked out
at the bar that we were soon to cross on our way

CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 187

to the open sea. The lime-juice crew pumped for
an hour with never a suck from the pump. I
could hear them growling and swearing. Pres-
ently the Irishman stuck his head above the deck-
load and shouted to me :

"Bejasus and has the bottom dropped out of
her? Is it a ship we're on, at all, at all, or is it
just a raft of lumber? The divil himself
wouldn't go to sea on her !"

It wasn't so much what the Irishman said that
made me roar with laughter, it was the expres-
sion on his face — that of an abandoned castaway ;
and I nearly lost all my new-made dignity of
coastwise mate then and there.

Struggling for seriousness, I told him I
thought that the little water that washed in the
bilges was a small matter, and that a few strokes
more of the pump would settle it. He crawled
down to the pump again, but not before he had
said a few words :

"It's perpitool motion ye'd ought to have on
the pumps. As God is me judge, I balave ye
could see the fish in the ocean through th' bottom
av her !"

They were still pumping when the superstiti-

188 OCEAN ECHOES

ous captain came aboard. His expression was
a good deal like the Irishman's, clabby and
dearing.

"Did you hear the news before you left the
wharf ?" he murmured nervously.

"Hear what?" I asked.

He put his hand to his mouth. "Hush, listen ;
the rats left the ship this morning between four
and five o'clock."

"Did you see them leave?" I asked, trying hard
to suppress a giggle.

"I didn't, but there were others that saw them.
Swarming off in droves they were. . . ."

"Oi'll tell yez," came a furious voice as the
Irishman's head appeared again, "Oi'll tell yez
again and once for all, there isn't any bottom in
the bloody auld hooker. It's murrder ye'd be
doing to have daycint min sign articles on a
rotten auld hulk widout ribs or annything to
hauld her together !"

The Captain wet his lips with his long red
tongue. He looked at me sort of puzzled, then
his eyes shifted to the Irishman, and he sighed
heavily, and self-consciously. For a moment
there was a lull in the conversation — even the

CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 189

pumps stopped. The breakers that broke on the
sprits of the bar had an echo-gnawing sound,
noticeable in that moment of intense rat-super-
stition. Then the Irishman spoke again,
solemnly :

"There isn't wan of us will sail wit yez. We're
sailors, ivery wan av us, but behivins we're not
web-footed. Did yez hear that now? And the
divil foot will we put on your ship !"

The ultimatum seemed to be as terrible to the
captain as if it had been possible for the crew
to do otherwise than sail, seeing that they were
already on the way.

"Is she leaking any worse?" he asked.

"I think she is," I answered cruelly, at the
same time turning my back on the Irishman, for
it would never do to let him hear about the rats.

"I know where it is," and the captain looked
wildly about him. "It's that damned stern-post
again. I've been calking it off and on for the
last ten years."

He removed his hat and rubbed his bald head.
He seemed to be thinking deeply. There was
reason to think. Undoubtedly the rats knew
about that old leak in the stern-post. Why then

190 OCEAN ECHOES

should they desert their old nests after all these
years? It was an old leak with a new aspect

The lime-juice crew had stopped pumping, and
stood around the mainmast talking, their voices
having a raspy twang.

Toot, toot, toot! came the tugboat, none too
soon.

At once the Captain put ship's dignity into a
bad situation.

"I'll put her on the dry-dock next trip," he
promised, "but we'll have to get to sea with her
now. I'll talk to the crew."

He walked forward bravely, for he didn't want
to go to sea any more than the crew did, but for
him it was a choice between the risk and giving
up his command, not to mention undergoing the
jibes of other captains, his drinking-mates ashore.
With the crew it was simply risk, and it is always
a pity to take discontented men forcibly to sea.

He talked to them kindly, singing the praises
of his ship, and their argument was fortunately
cut short by the tug-boat captain, who unfeel-
ingly demanded why he should be forced to wait
all day on a bunch of good-for-nothing loafers.

So we heaved up the anchor, taking the tow-

CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 191

line aboard, and soon the tug-boat let go of us.
We put sail on her and headed for the open
sea.

CHAPTER XXIII
MORE PSYCHOLOGY AND SOME ACTION

WE were bound for Kedondo, southern
California. It was the month of
January, and cold and snappy.
Having possession of the sounding-rod, I was in
a position to encourage the crew, though they
received my well-meant promptings with sarcasm
and scorn. They pumped, I pumped, the Captain
pumped, and even the cook, in intervals of cook-
ing; we pumped, and pumped, and pumped.
We did manage to keep her down to about three
feet of water in the hold.

Finally there came a night when the storm-
bound sun, set with yellow streamers, crammed
into the ocean, and by the time the sidelights
were lighted and fastened into the screens, the
wind had a vicious whip to it, and the waves from
out the evening shadows rushed in upon the
defenseless ship like a strange army of humpy
creatures.

192

MORE PSYCHOLOGY 193

It was interesting to one with a nautical eye
to watch the maneuvers of the Captain and the
Irishman.

"Reef her down!" roared the Captain, now
entirely renouncing his superstitious fears for
real action, as a real sailor will do every time.

"The curse of God on the day I iver rounded
the Horn," shouted the Irishman. "Here we are,
mind yez, in a hurricane, and in an auld ship that
opens up her sames to let the ocean in. It's a
good mind I have not to do a hand's turn, jist
let her sink and drownd yez like rats !"

"You'll drown no rats on her this trip!" I
shouted to him, for the pure mischief of it.

His raging reply was drowned out by a little
stubby Swede who had also heard, and now
breasted the wind and walked up to me.

"Did you say there ban no rats in her?"

"Yes," said I. "They left her this trip at
Garden City."

"Oh, by Yiminy Mike," he shouted to the
Irishman, "the rats ban gone !"

It was pitch dark now, and the spray from the
waves threw shadows of light across the deck-
load, but not enough to show the expression of

194 OCEAN ECHOES

Mike's face when the Swede told him that the
rats had left the ship. There is something about
an Irishman in a crisis that is different from
most people. When hope is gone he doesn't
want to be told about it. He may feel more the
danger of dying, due perhaps to training and
superstition, but to say to him, "This is the end,
let us make our peace with God," would surely
make him fight you before the end did come.

When the Swede told Mike that the rats had
gone, and the other sailors heard the news, there
was a human nucleus of silence in the rising
storm, while each took stock of himself after his
fashion. The situation was really serious
enough without the added dread caused by the
deserting rats.

No one felt the solemnity of it all more than
Mike. But when the Swede spoke up: "Well,
by Yiminy, this is the last of us," Mike flew at
him.

"Ah to Hell wit yez, shure it's wailin' like a
Banshee ye are. What does an auld rat amount
to annyway? Shure they left the auld hooker
because they were all shtarved to death, that's
what they did, and who would blame thim?

MORE PSYCHOLOGY 195

Let's reef her down, me byes, she's a foine little
ship, so she is."

We reefed her down, and hove her to, and all
the time Mike sang songs of love and songs of
hate, but never a song of fear.

The Captain, feeling temporary relief from
anxiety, returned to his superstition and asked
Mike to stop singing, thinking that his high notes
caused the apexes of wind, which certainly did
accompany them.

"It's bad enough as it is," whined the squirm-
ing Captain, "without tantalizing the elements."

The wind, like the night, came stronger. The
ship rolled, groaned, and flung herself carelessly
at the humpy ocean. When an extra daring sea
would leap to the high deckload and find its level
on the heads of the pumpers, the Swede would
cry out, "Another like that ban the last of us,"
and Mike would roar :

"Keep yer clapper closed. Shure it'll be the
likes of you that'll be drivin' me from the say,
and not the storms at all, at all."

The night was gloomy, and to look at the Cap-
tain made it gloomier still. He kept running
from the barometer to the pump exclaiming:

196 OCEAN ECHOES

"Didn't I know that it would come to this?"
When he'd look at the compass, the binnacle light
shining in his face would show wrinkles of pain
there, made by the agonies of the ship. Morning
came, and the topaz sky cast an angry glare on
the agitated sea. The wind whipped and bit at
the ship, and in her leakiness she would shiver
at the violence of the waves. The part of her
hull that wasn't submerged would rise up to their
taunts like a black-finned mammoth from the
deep, writhing in torture.

Towards noon the weather grew better, we
gave her more sail, and headed her away on her
course. For nineteen days we pumped to keep
her afloat until we made Eedondo. Sleep we
hardly had at all, and our aching muscles hard-
ened, and grew to monstrous size.

The port had neither harbor nor tug-boats,
and the open sea washed in against the wharves,
running far out from the shore. When we came
to anchor, and the ship brought strain on the
cable, it snapped, and the long ground swells
made a total wreck of her on the sandy beach.
That was the end of her, whether the rats had
anything to do with it or not.

MORE PSYCHOLOGY 197

It was a great relief to have my feet finally
touch the sand. I was happy too. I had a red-
headed sweetheart in that town, and I set about
finding her. She was there all right, but there
was no love in her eyes for a ship-wrecked sailor.
Shortly after that she was married to a young
customs house inspector, and I scratched another
red-haired l$dy from my memory.

We were paid off at Bedondo, and with money
in our pockets we headed for Murphy's saloon
and drank one another's health. The Captain
and I left Mike and the Swede with their arms
around each other singing, "Boiling Home
Across the Sea," as we started by rail for San
Francisco.

The owners were glad to see us, and happy
that we didn't bring their old rotten ship into
port again. If we had had to go down in her it
would have been regrettable, though after all
our risk; but they were just as well pleased that
we should live to pump another day. But we
had a different greeting from the insurance com-
pany. One would have thought that we were
murderers from the gruelling they gave us. We
stuck to the truth, try as they might to shake

198 OCEAN ECHOES

us, and in the end the owners received a large
sum of money for their worthless, unseaworthy
ship.

The Captain and I, like a river with two chan-
nels, parted, never to meet on this earth again.
He told me that he was tired of the sea, and
intended to put his savings into a little place
ashore. We shook hands; and, as we parted, I
am sure that we were both thinking of rats,
rotten ships, and storms.

CHAPTER XXIV

SOME FACTS ABOUT WOMEN, EED HAIRED AND

OTHERWISE,, WITH A WORD ABOUT WIVES,

AND A PEACEFUL CONCLUSION IN THE

PICK AND THE GOLD-PAN

A~ mate my next ship was bound for the
Fijis in the South Seas, and the Cap-
tain died on the voyage, and I took the
ship to port and home again. I have described
this voyage in my book "The Flying Bo'sun."

The critics, who plow not the oceans, received
it very kindly, as I hope they will receive this
narrative. So I yarn along, and think of past
things, and write them down, partly as a sailor
who knew all that was hard and rough, and
partly as a man recently come to writing who is
intoxicated with the new-found use of words to
evoke old scenes.

Now "The Flying Bo'sun," though being in-
tended to present me fairly to the world, did not

199

200 OCEAN ECHOES

mention that I had a girl in the Fijis. Well I
did. A real sweetheart. She wasn't black —
they never were — nor yellow; just a sweet and
wholesome girl, and as fond of me as I of her.

A sailor not in love is a discontented one, and
it was seldom in this respect that I was out of
harmony with the world. I hope that I can go
on loving till my eyes are closed, and my toes
are tied together, like my grandmother's were
when she died, when I was a little boy. They
tied her toes together, but the knees would not
stay down. Finally, to keep them from bending
up and scaring everyone, a large stone was put
upon them. Somehow the knees jumped up any-
way, the stone rolled off, and everyone thought
that she must have seen some sight in Heaven
to make her jump so.

I'm sure I'll be all the better for the beauties
I see in Heaven, as I have been for those I've
seen on earth, and so is every other man, regard-
less of the years that kink ard wrinkle and round
him into narrowness.

Women that I've met I've often compared with
ships that I have sailed on. Some are better in
a storm than others. Then there are the cranky

FACTS ABOUT WOMEN 201

ones who throw up their head and balk the tide,
and spill you into an ocean of trouble.

Of course, there are instances where the master
is at fault. That is where you carry too much
sail, and you wait too long to reef her down.
Then there is a separation of something. You are
either dismantled and left with but a memory
of your once-beautiful ship, or you both sink
together.

There is another kind of ship that will with-
stand gales in an open sea, but once you point
her landward you have to be careful of sub-
merged reefs, for she's sure to find them.

There are a few ships, not too few, that sailors
love, whose compass course will steer them
through iceberg-gaps and narrow straits, and on
to Isles of Splendor.

My South Sea sweetheart lived in Suva, the
capital of the Fijis. Our fondness for each other
ripened into more than friendship. Although
my stay there was short, my impressions of her
still linger, like memories of hawthorn blossoms
when the dew lifts and fuses away in the morn-
ing sun. It was two years after that that I
sailed there again, and meantime my letters to

202 OCEAN ECHOES

her were as irregular as the winds of ocean.
When I arrived I learned that she was married
and living in Australia.

The Fijis held little to interest me after that.
I was disheartened and discouraged with every-
thing. But the Sea, my first love, took me back,
and in her lanes I found the tonic to cure aches
and longings, and make me a lover again, almost
before the isles of shadowed pines had faded into
a blur of azure light.

Six months had passed, and I was in a home
port again. I became engaged to a girl in the
State of Washington. I was twenty-seven years
old then, and a Captain sailing on coastwise
ships. We were married, and I gave up the sea
for a while. This marriage proved to be the
ship that balks the tide. For six years we held
true to our course, then a squall from the desert,
for we were living there, arose from the cactus
and sage-brush and blew us apart, but left its
memories of the wreck.

Five years later I met and married another.
She lived in the jungles of Idaho. She was slick
and trim, and had memory's likeness to my South
Sea girl. Like the ship that handles well in the

FACTS ABOUT WOMEN 203

open sea, she made for the land without compass
and struck a reef. That was a total wreck of
memories, and a short voyage — two months in
all. We parted, I going to the sea — wailing over
me now, in despair of me — and she to a man who
had many sheep and many fleeces to his credit.

I was married again, but that's another story
and needs atmosphere, so I'll paddle past it and
survey the shores below ; and some quiet evening
when the muskrat's splash spreads a splatter of
spray, I'll buck the stream and paddle back, and
spin the yarn.

When I first left the sea I went to mining in
Goldfield, Nevada. That was in 1903. There
was a boom on then, and a few of the mines held
high-grade ore. There were about ten thousand
people in the camp. Being fresh from the sea,
and knowing nothing about mines or mining, I
thought that the people I met there were about
as crazy as anything I had ever seen.

The camp was wide open. There was nothing
barred — everything went. Justifiable homicide
was the verdict for those who were quick on the
trigger, and it behooved the tenderfoot to get
acclimated with the utmost speed to those who

204 OCEAN ECHOES

sniffed the alkali. There was no room for friend-
liness in that great selfish clamor. Everyone
was for himself.

The mountains that had hitherto guarded their
secrets from the lust of men were now gouged
and cut, and in some places showed their treas-
ure. Burros and pack mules climbed the steep
trails, their old and new masters pushing, and
cursing, and clubbing them along. Like hungry
locusts, these men of no particular nationality,
and little love of home, swept the hills as If to
raven on the bushes and the dust.

I, like the drift from a wreck, was swept away
by a comber of greed, to join the rest in the con-
quest of canyon and peak. I bought burros,
bacon, beans, and flour, picks and shovels and
drilling-steel. I rambled the hills and gophered
holes. I staked claims and located town and
water sites. I thought of myself as big in a
financial way. I talked in millions, as did every-
one else there.

But that's the joke the desert plays on the vic-
tim who wrestles with her mysteries. I had
thought that I owned gold and silver mines, cop-
per, cinnabar, and turquoise. They had surface

FACTS ABOUT WOMEN 205

symptoms to lead one on to dig, and dig, and toil
and sweat, and spend the last cent to reach the
utmost peak of stained illusion. So I mined in
Nevada till the last dollar was gone, and I was
left with a broken home and lawsuits, typhoid
and rheumatism.

There is another side to the mountain ranges
and desert sands, but the lust for gold must dis-
appear before one sees the beauty of nature.
The men who spend their lives there are as inter-
esting as the little brown brook that bubbles
down the mountain-side.

"Desert rats" they are called; and they and
their old shaggy burros who nibble the green
tops of the sage-brush are as much a part of the
landscape as the silent cactus-sentinel of the
desert which is supposed to shelter the souls of
pioneers dead and gone; the "Joshua."

CHAPTER XXV

THE STORY OP THE RETURN OF LIDA AND OF
Two STRANGE MEN

LIDA had been an old silver camp, and in
the early sixties it was a booming town.
This much was told me by an old squaw
man who lived there. He was one of those early
miners who stayed on in a town after the mines
played out, in the hope that some day it would
awake once more to the click of a pistol and the
bray of the burro.

He was an Austrian by birth, and his name
ended in "vitch." I could never pronounce it.
A squaw lived with him who showed the years
more than he. The desert wrinkles, like kinks
in a juniper, were furrowed in her face. He
treated her much as one would an outlaw cayuse,
kicking and beating her when he felt like it ; and
in course of time when prosperity made him inde-
pendent of the little comfort she gave him, it was
said that he doped a bottle of whiskey for her.

206

TWO STRANGE MEN 207

Certain it was that she died suddenly, with all
the symptoms of poisoning, and that he buried
her alongside the pump in the back yard with as
little consideration as one would show a mongrel
dog. There was no law there to punish him,
and the squaw was covered up and soon forgot-
ten. He had, in spite of this, a kind of pathetic
way with him, and when he told a story to the
miners about his poor old mother in Austria they
fell for it, and bought drinks from him.

But I am straying ahead of my story. When
I first saw him, the squaw was alive, and she and
he lived in a 'dobe house at the head of what once
had been the principal street of Lida. You could
not tell that then. The sage-brush grew over it,
covering the wagon ruts, and up on the hill
beyond was the graveyard, shrouded in under-
brush, dead as dead could be. Few, if any, of
the miners buried there had died natural deaths,
as the scrawly hand-written grave boards bore
witness.

But no decay could obliterate memories of
former greatness, and it was decreed that Lida
should come to life again, after forty years. A
new generation of miners came and took on

208 OCEAN ECHOES

where the old generation had left off. The town
site was grubbed, the brush burned up, and lots
were sold to newcomers. Tents went up, the
squaw man started a saloon, chips rattled and
pistols clicked, and Lida was herself again.

The Austrian's dream had come true. He
owned the town site, and money came in fast.
His only trouble was with an occasional "lot-
jumper," someone who was rash enough to settle
in dispute of his quit-claim title to the town lots.
But this trouble was a small item, being quickly
settled with a gun. He was a big man now, and
dictated town policies of the tent town, and
signed as many checks as he cashed.

One day, when the old town had been new
about six months, a stranger drove up in an auto-
mobile. There was nothing unusual in this, but
there was something unusual in the man. Big
and broad and strong he looked, and his large
round face showed that he had been carefully
fed. The tan of the desert was missing. His
eyes were black and penetrating, and he carried
an atmosphere of power over men, which was
confirmed by the tight lips which concealed a
mouth well filled with fine teeth, and covered by

TWO STRANGE MEN 209

a jet black mustache. He must have been past
middle age, for his hair was graying at the tem-
ples, and he had quite a swagger as he pulled
off his linen duster.

"Yes," said he, without preliminary, as his
compelling eye roved over a chance group of
miners while he marched about limbering his
legs, "Yes, boys, I am going to do things here that
will astonish the natives. I'm going to put Lida
on the map."

"Vot's dot?" asked the Austrian, sidling up to
him with elbows squared, "Vot's dot?"

The stranger saw fit to dispose of him with a
stare which had been useful on other similar
occasions, and the Austrian growled and went
away.

That night there was a meeting in Dutch
John's saloon. The stranger took charge. He
bought the miners drinks, and told them of Lida's
wonderful possibilities. At first, when their
vision had been unclouded, they had been inclined
to think him an unscrupulous promoter and a
crook. Now they fell for his golden words.

"Eight at your door, gentlemen," he cried, in
concluding a flowery and powerful speech,

210 OCEAN ECHOES

"under your eyes, beneath these grand old peaks,
is one of the richest gold camps in the world.
It is no more than right that we should dedicate
a city of granite blocks to those noble spires
that have been true to their trust these million
years, even if, as my engineers tell me, it will be
necessary to abandon the present town site for
one on the slope of the hill. Near here, Men of
the Hills, are the graves of silent pioneers. If
each of those mouldering forms could rise up
and speak to you, I am ,sure they would say,
"Move, and buy, and be not afraid, for the future
is golden."

Then he bought drinks, and shook each miner
by the hand. As he searched the faces, his black
eyes spoke : "I'm here to trim you, and trim you
right!"

It was plain that the stranger had them going,
and the squaw man told them so. He reduced
the price of his lots — a quarter, a half — and he
had the main street plowed and rolled. While
they commented on how much better it looked,
he, too, gave the miners free drinks. His corral
gate was opened, and the town burros hee-hawed
in, and nibbled on the baled hay. The burro

TWO STRANGE MEN 211

men were pleased, and slapped the squaw man
on the back, assuring him of their loyalty to the
old town.

At last he gave way to his emotion. With his
old face warped in coyote grins he cried : "Veil,
Byes, I haf von ting to do before I vos dead."

The burro men looked at each other. The
squaw man waved them away as they tried to
pat him on the back. He was shaking as if with
a chill. The flimsy pine bar shook with him,
and the glasses rattled. Again he spoke : "I do
it, and I do it queek !"

He got no further, for a shadow broke the
desert sunlight on the floor, and the stranger
stood in the doorway.

"Give us a drink, Dutchy," he said quietly, as
if the very atmosphere were not charged with
hate of him, and as quietly moved up to the bar.
The squaw man reached under the bar with
his old desert-bleached hand, and brought up a
revolver. The burro men scattered like scud
before a gale, but the stranger stood there, lean-
ing against the bar, looking quietly into the ter-
rible face of Dutchy.

The squaw man licked his dry lips and spoke :

212 OCEAN ECHOES

"I vos going to kill you, you damned crook.
You steal mine town up mit de hill."

The stranger threw his eyes full on Dutchy.
Then he walked along the bar without a word,
and wrenched the revolver from him; easily,
deliberately, it seemed. Then he slapped him on
the jaw.

"Dutchy," he said, and the miners outside the
door began to come back at the words ; "you may
poison squaws, and shoot men in the back, but
when it comes to an even break you are a coward.
Now hurry and get drinks for the boys. Come
on," he called, "the fight is over, and Dutchy
feels better now."

We drank, and the stranger pulled out a great
roll of bills, stripping them down until he came
to a twenty, on which Dutchy's eyes fastened
with the look of a greedy hound. The stranger
bade him keep the change.

The stranger's reputation was made now.
He had proved his steel to the natives of Lida.
He was one of those great men of early times
whose genius was real, no matter how mis-
directed. He was an old hand at the game of
fleecing, and he knew that before you commence

TWO STRANGE MEN 213

I

to shear the sheep you must first get them cor-
ralled.

He slung his money about like a drunken
sailor, and everyone, even the Piute Indians,
sang his praises. We believed that there was
fabulous wealth in the hills, and that his purpose
was to build comfortable homes for the men of
the desert; as he said, "to help put windows into
the mountains/' that we might see the fortunes
which were to be ours for the asking.

When a man of the stranger's type visits a
desert mining town it is not from choice, but to
create a gap in the trail of his reputation. Un-
fortunately he, who could have played high fin-
ance equally well on the square, had chosen the
line of least resistance in hidden places.

He had a record, which included a peniten-
tiary term. It was said that there he had sold
the warden fifteen thousand dollars worth of
wildcat stock, and yet got pardoned. He had
been a lawyer, and was gifted with a mind that
could squeeze him out of any tight place. His
scheme for the new town site in Lida was backed
by a Goldfield bank that had no scruples about
spending depositors' money. So the new town

214 OCEAN ECHOES

site was cleared of sage-brush and Joshua, streets
were laid out, and blocks plotted.

In vain the squaw man offered us inducements
to stay. His cowardice and greed had killed him
in face of the stranger's liberality and promises,
and like the sheep again, we rolled up our tents
and moved them up the hill to the new town.

By this time the stranger had six automobiles,
all new, running from Goldfield and bringing in
newcomers with money to buy lots. A one-plank
sidewalk was laid which was only a preliminary
to the granite buildings, but it inspired confi-
dence, for lumber was one hundred and fifty dol-
lars a thousand feet at the railroad sixty miles
away. It cost three cents a pound to haul it to
Lida by mule-team.

The stranger cared nothing for these minor
matters of expense. The bank in Goldfield had
plenty of money. The sap-headed depositors
were too busy in the mountains hunting gold to
bother their heads about banks or plank side-
walks.

CHAPTER XXVI

CONCERNING THE LAST OF THE NEW AND THE

OLD-NEW TOWN OF LIDA; OF DUTCHY AND

THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER,, AND

LEAVING THINGS ALMOST AS THEY

WERE IN THE SIXTIES. A

SHAKE-DOWN

DUTCHY was alone now. No induce-
ment he could make would hold any-
one, and he was left pretty much to
the company of stray burros, and the dead squaw
under the pump. His hair and beard grew long
and weedy. The nails on his fingers resembled
the talons of an eagle, his overalls and shirt-front
were dirty and spattered with flour dough. He
refused to visit the new town, although the
stranger, knowing that he had money, used every
wile to get him there, and stayed on in the old
Lida, praying for a vengeance that he had him-
self failed to get.

215

216 OCEAN ECHOES

The mountains chimed the echoes of pounding
steel. The exploding giant powder rang through
the canyons like the roar of an angry bull. Hill-
sides were torn open by the hungry, gaunt, and
ravenous miners. Women were there, too, with
boots and picks on their shoulders, and as savage
as the male brutes in their scrambling greed.

The old graveyard of the sixties was grubbed
of its underbrush, and a fence stuck around it.
Many fresh graves were made open to be filled
by men who were clumsy with a gun. One day
a woman of the underworld was to be buried
there. She might have gone on living, it was
said, had she had a good doctor. There was a
doctor there, but he had waited until he was
forty-five years old to graduate by a correspond-
ence course. Meantime he ran a hoist.

When a man died, very little attention was
paid to him. He was boxed up as a matter of
course, dumped into the grave, and as quickly
forgotten. But with this woman it was different.

There was a feeling of sentiment in the air.
Those rough men of the hills threw down their
picks and put their giant powder away, and
wandered solemnly into town. She who now

THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 217

lay stretched in death on a cot in the back end
of a saloon and who had received little in life
but whiskey, grunts and kicks from men — she
was going to have a funeral. However little her
joy may have been in her frock-apron days, her
spirit must rejoice now at the faces sorrowing
at her departure from the clay.

There was a Scotchman in the hills who in
days gone by had been a Presbyterian minister.
He was sent for to bury the prostitute.

There was another sorrow on the wing to Lida,
far greater to the minds of most men than the
death of her who had bartered her body that
brutes might lust to scorn her.

The bank in Goldfield, to which the stranger
had given his brains that the new town of Lida
might grow, had gotten about all of the people's
money that it needed. The president and the
cashier had absconded, stealing everything but
a five-dollar gold piece and a five-cent piece that
rolled under the safe. That was all that was
left of a hundred thousand dollars of deposits.
The news was to strike Lida when the miners
were in from the hills, drawn by the funeral to
meet in a greater grief.

218 OCEAN ECHOES

They were all small depositors, and their hun-
dred dollars or so represented years of depriva-
tion in the desert, misery, thirst, and hunger.
Lida would be swept off the map as quickly as
she had been put on it. Her granite buildings
that were to welcome the morning rays of the
desert sun, must now mirage the specter of a
thief's glory — the granite ghost of yesterday.

That day the stranger did not face the music.
By the time the stage-coach brought the news of
disaster, he had sought trails still more hidden
from the light of day. The driver of the stage-
coach was the owner of lots in Lida, and a depos-
itor in the bank in Goldfield. He whipped his
horses most of the thirty miles to get the news
to Lida, and the news settled on the town like
the March wind that brings hail.

Men began to look queer and snuff the air, as
before a battle. They were not to be trifled with
that day. A double duty confronted them.
They had not forgotten their reverence for the
open grave, but their eyes shifted quickly away
to where the sage and sky met — where might be
some puff of dust to betray a fugitive bank
robber.

THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 219

The ex-preacher arrived late in the afternoon.
He was tired, and so was the cayuse he was
riding. He was a heavy man, fat from eating
sour-belly and beans. His khaki trousers had
been whipped clean by the brush he had squeezed
through. His cheeks were flabby and hairy, his
knuckles were skinned, and the loose soles on his
worn-out boots flopped when he walked.

The men of Lida had been waiting for him
since the stage-coach came in. That was two
long hours ago — years of suspense it seemed to
them. A man of the desert, whose casual eye is
his companion in danger, might have noticed the
queer actions of the miners that peaceful May
evening.

Horses, saddled and bridled, pranced nerv-
ously and snapped at the halters that bound
them to tent pegs. Then there were wild-looking
bronchos hitched to buckboards, that would rear
back in their harness and plunge forward, hurry-
ingly anxious to get away to the dust of the
desert.

A man who plows his own field and never
roams beyond his own boundary line would have
been afraid had he looked into the faces of the

220 OCEAN ECHOES

miners, so grim they were, so resolute in restraint,
so death-respecting, and death-dealing. All
armed as they were, with notched rifles and re-
volvers, some with lighthearted mother-of-pearl
adornment to make their work more palatable,
still the expression on their faces outdid in
threat the fact of their wreapons.

The preacher dismounted at the saloon where
the body of the dead woman lay. "Give me
some beer," he demanded, and they gave him
beer. "Now we'll take up the corpse," he an-
nounced, "and go to the graveyard and bury it."

It was a quarter of a mile up the hill to the
grave. The woman was tenderly carried there
on the shoulders of men who were quick on their
feet and quick with their eye. She might have
been a precious gem, such delicate care she had
in being lowered into the open hole.

Hats were taken off. The preacher stood on
the mound of loose dirt that was soon to cover
her up. There was the serenity of peace in the
poise of the miners. The hill and the canyon
below were in shadow, and beyond the peaks of
the Panamint were ablaze in amber coloring.
What a strange picture it made! Half a thou-

THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 221

sand men with heads bared and bowed over the
grave of a whore. Half a thousand ruined men,
waiting for revenge!

The preacher read a burial service, and spoke
a simple word in defense of the faults that had
been the ruin of her. Then he called on them
to sing "Nearer my God to Thee," leading the
hymn in a rich baritone. One by one those soul-
hardened men joined in, and as they sang their
faces relaxed and the anguish-wizened lines dis-
appeared.

When they had finished, there was a great
clearing of throats. The preacher, looking down
solemnly on the grave, said: "Let us all offer a
silent prayer, that her soul may take wing from
these canyons and ranges, and on to the East
where the dark clouds grow less, on to the King-
Star whose brilliant aurora will cleanse and
cure it from Earth's wandering wounds."

The heads were bent again, and as the prayer
went out, an uncanny silence crept over the
grave, a silence that the sea makes, sometimes to
be broken by the leap of a fish or the spout of a
whale.

This silence was broken by a laugh — a laugh

222 OCEAN ECHOES

that had the ring of hate, lust, selfish greed, and
madness — and a muddled articulation of oaths,
and groans and epithets. Somewhere in the
crowd a rifle spoke, and less than a quarter of a
mile away the squaw man dropped into the brush
to laugh no more. The ex-preacher raised his
head and shouted, "Amen !"

They filled in the grave and tamped the loose
soil around, that the coyotes might not burrow
in and disturb her. The job was done without
haste. As night shadows were gathering from
the hills the miners walked away, not in the
solemn way they had come, but with a quick,
released step which led them to their saddle-
horses and buckboards.

Like a charge of cavalry they were off; just
dashed into the darkness. The bank robbers
were ahead with a twelve-hour start. Two days
later the president and the cashier were caught.

They weren't killed, sad to say, but brought
back and made to stand trial. Nevada had no
banking laws then. All that was required was
a sign on the door: "Bank open from ten till
three." Depositors had no protection. Paid for
with the stolen money, the trial was put off from

THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 223

time to time, and eventually thrown out of court.

The stranger had disappeared before the crash
came, but soon afterwards he was heard from
again. A desert editor, the newspaper said, had
blown off his head with a sawed-off shotgun in
a quarrel.

Lida was no more. Jackrabbits ran unhin-
dered where the town had stood. The sage-
brush began to grow over old and new graves
alike. The hills lay pock-marked, pitted. The
microbe, man, had gone somewhere to bore an-
other hole. Time, with its charter of shifting
sands, would fill the pits, and the afterglow of
the early sixties would haze the hills in ether
waves, and cover the spots with sage and shist.

The money-and-faith-robbed miners, I among
them, scattered to new work. It was in Gold-
field, shortly afterwards, that typhoid fever
overtook me.

My doctor, who loved to needle himself with
morphine, told me that I had had a narrow
escape, and I believed him, judging from the
trouble it was to learn to walk again. The Gold-
field undertakers, too, were making inquiries
about me, as to where I lived, and whether I had

224 OCEAN ECHOES

much money. Ah, they throve there in those
days! Five hundred dollars for a pine box. If
the bereaved lived outside the state, and wanted
the body, the lead casing around the coffin cost
the price of a desert convoy.

By this time my wife had left me, and what
money I had saved from the wreck in Lida went
to pay doctor, druggist, and hospital. I had
rheumatism, and limped around on a couple of
canes. I had a great longing for the sea, and
wanted to raise enough money to go back.

One of Tiffany's engineers examined a tur-
quoise claim that I held, and approved it. Tif-
fany offered to buy on a bond sale, with a cash
payment down of five thousand dollars. I was
happy again, but not for long. Another crook
crossed my trail, with falsified affidavits of pre-
vious ownership. That meant endless litigation.
Tiffany wasn't buying a lawsuit, and my deal fell
through.

I hobbled away to another camp, where I met
the young man whom I had helped in Vancouver.
He now assisted me back to strength, and sent
me away with money in my pocket. I went
straight to San Francisco, and feasted on Dunge-

THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 225

ness crabs the night of my arrival. I went to
bed, and felt the comfort of the clean linen sheets,
so different from the dirty-dusty sage tuck blan*
kets of the desert. I went to sleep with that
sigh that brings relaxation like that of a child
after a hard cry.

I was suddenly awakened, it must have been
about five in the morning. The walls came
tumbling down upon me, and it seemed that I
would choke from lime dust, and loose bricks.

The door leading to the stairs was warped,
and I could not open it. For a moment a prayer
for deliverance flashed through my mind; then
the sailor in me rebelled, and took command. I
fished a chair out of a pile of bricks, and drove
it through the door.

I dressed in the street that morning with thou-
sands of people of both sexes.

In the face of the widespread disaster of the
earthquake, private misfortune dwindled and
for my own sake I do not regret the experience,
hard as it was, nor even the total loss of all my
papers and the treasured, useless, invaluable
souvenirs of a lifetime in which hitherto there
had not been overmuch of love and sweetness.

226 OCEAN ECHOES

My life, like that of so many others, was
spared only by a miracle. After doing what I
could, through the next awful hours, to help in
the rescue work, I booked passage North by
steamer.

CHAPTER XXVII

WAYS AND MEANS. THE NOBLE ART OF SALES-
MANSHIP, WITH SOME HOUSE-TO-HOUSE
PHILOSOPHY

ANIGHT or two later in Tacoma, I was
sitting in the hotel lobby, wondering
what to do next. A fat, flabby man,
whose eyes, however, had a fine quality, squeezed
himself into the chair alongside of me. We
talked about the weather, and the people going
past outside the window, and of the thousands
who had suffered in the earthquake. Then he
encouraged me to talk of myself, and I sketched
my life for him in some detail, not cheerfully, I
must admit.

He listened with interest, for he seemed to
fancy me. When I had done, he asked : "What's
the loss of a few dollars?" And unbuttoning his
coat, and exposing a large morocco-bound book;
"It amounts to nothing. Why, you haven't
found yourself yet, that's the trouble. I was

227

228 OCEAN ECHOES

forty years old before I found myself, and the
result is that the last year I made twenty thou-
sand dollars, and this year promises to double
that amount."

He talked on, fairly bristling with energy.

"It's seldom that I do what I am going to do
for you," he whispered ; "I am going to take you
along with me, and show you how to pile up
dollars."

"Doing what?" I asked. I'll grant him that
he had me swamped in dollars, and that I felt as
nervous as any bank-robber.

He pulled out the morocco-bound book from
his pocket. His eyes beamed with enthusiasm,
and he forgot that we were not alone in the hotel.
He slapped the book down on the arm of his chair
and shouted :

"This is what we get our money from. The
'Student's Reference/ in three volumes, sold in
every home in the U. S. for nineteen dollars and
seventy-five cents! Children knock you down
in the street for it. Women weep for the privi-
lege of buying it from you! Five dollars com-
mission on each set, and ten sets a day you sell !
Four hours work! Three hundred dollars a

THE ART OF SALESMANSHIP 229

week ! Friends by the thousands ! Crazy about
you! Too many! A wonderful business!"

Giving me no time even to catch my breath,
he jumped to his feet, as he went telling me to
meet him the next morning at nine o'clock.
Then he trotted rapidly off to the elevator, from
which, as it whisked him out of sight, he called
a final "Good night!"

I went to bed, oblivious of rheumatism and
earthquake, to dream of treasure, and thousands
of friends.

Two hours later, the hotel being cleared of the
mold of the day, and the yawning clerks and the
busy night-porter willing me off to bed, I went,
my mind still foggy, as it had been these two
hours, with books and greenbacks, and the hope
of getting back again to ease and self-respect.

I met the book man at nine o'clock the follow-
ing morning. He had lost none of the charm of
the night before. We flew to talking ; and I went
to work under his instructions, selling books.

For three months I was a successful book
agent, making money easily. But as if some
fluency lay in money so easily gained, it went
as if it had no value, and seemed to lack the

230 OCEAN ECHOES

power to accumulate. This appealed to my
sailor's superstition. By what right, I thought,
did I assume control of my fellow beings, to the
extent that they must get something they did
not want, for which they must deprive themselves
materially? How could I deny responsibility,
shrugging it onto them for being so easily domi-
nated? Was it not a kind of black art that I
was practising? God forbid, I thought, and gave
it up.

As I look back on it now, I still can see it no
other way, for the rich and the poor were help-
less in our hands. Our arguments flowed over
them, covered them, swamped them, sucked them
under — and they were gone, as if their money
were ours, and not theirs.

So I went back to "that old devil, sea" again,
to clean soiled hands with Stockholm tar.

CHAPTER XXVIII

FAREWELL TO AN OLD FRIEND OF THE EARLY

DAYS — AND Au EEVOIR TO THE FIRST, AND

ONLY FRIEND OF ALL THE YEARS.

BATHER A SAD CHAPTER,, TAKE

IT ALL IN ALL

ONE day, shortly after I left the book
business, I was in a small town on the
Puget Sound, looking for a ship.
Strolling around, I was attracted by a crowd in
front of a general store. Policemen were run-
ning and women screaming, and with one thing
and another there seemed, for a small town, to
be no end of excitement.

Always being of a curious nature, I hurried
with the rest to the store, elbowing my way
through the crowd as I went, in order not to miss
the finish, whatever it might be. As I passed the
outer noisy strata of human beings, and pene-
trated the last hushed edge before a clearing on
the sidewalk, I saw a tall and skinny policeman

231

232 OCEAN ECHOES

stretched out there bleeding, while triumphantly
posed over him, making no effort to get away,
and drunk as drunk could be, stood none other
than Liverpool Jack.

He was bare-headed, his coat was off, and his
shirt was torn to ribbons. His hairy bare arms
showed beautiful tattooed ladies, ships, anchors,
and flags of many nations. For a moment, at
what one might call this "show down" of emotion,
I felt the distance I had traveled mentally and
materially since Liverpool Jack and I had been
mates. I was no better than I had been, but
whether it was a feeling of difference caused by
having had money, or whether some real refine-
ment had grown out of what I had known at
home — anyway, I shrank from the sight of him.
Then my loyalty shamed me, and I became alert,
as always, to help him out.

Fortunately, I did not have a chance to speak
to him then ; for three strapping policemen, who
were armed to handle him and me, grabbed hold
of him, and putting the "twisters" on his wrist,
led him off to the lockup. He didn't see me, and
I didn't want him to until I had time to find the
best way to get him out.

A SAD CHAPTER 233

While the crowd helped the policeman to his
feet, the man who owned the general store told
me about the fight. It seems that the "cop" had
imprudently undertaken to arrest Liverpool
Jack single-handed when he found him drunk in
the street. He was promptly thrown through
the window of the general store, where Jack's
follow-up work did all possible damage to a loose
and innocent display of potatoes, apples, cereals,
and tobacco.

The store-keeper was mourning his loss, and
damning the inefficient Limb of the Law. Who
was to pay him for his goods? he whined. Who,
indeed? For, speeding away to the jail, I man-
aged for a two hundred dollars' fine, to get Jack
released. And before the poor store-keeper had
time to figure the damage we were out of town,
and on our way to Tacoma.

There we had to wait a few days for a ship.
I was now going to take him to sea with me, as
I feared to leave him. But one night he got
away from me, and I never again saw him alive.
Next day his body was found on the railway
track, mutilated by a train, and some one who
had been drinking in the saloon where Jack had

234 OCEAN ECHOES

been testified that he had heard him say that
since there seemed to be no one to fight with he
guessed he might as well pull a few trains off the
track.

Probably this statement was not true, but it
was certainly characteristic of the man the poor
dead creature had been, and of the savage set to
his jaw. Even in death he seemed not to have
found peace ; I must remember him as he looked
then, and be sorry that, at the end, it had to be
the terrible scrappiness of him that dominated,
and not the real tender-heartedness and manli-
ness that I knew so well lay beneath. Poor, poor,
lonesome Liverpool Jack !

With the last of my book-agent money I had
him buried, and not in the potter's field. Let us
hope that the better part of him found its inno-
cent release, and is going on, sailing oceans,
splicing ropes, and tattooing other souls of fight-
ing children of the sea.

For two years now I rambled the oceans, being
mate, and sometimes master, of fine ships, almost
of my choice — for I was seasoned, and knew
something of men, and was free from that in my
youth which had been unreliable.

A SAD CHAPTER 235

Yet something made me weary of the sea, per-
haps that very fact that youth was gone, even
to Liverpool Jack — the connecting-link ; and that
the sea, however much she may still the thirst for
change, is no husbander of men's strength against
the future, and has no care for their material
provision.

The slow saving of a seaman's wages was a
process untried by me ever, and my conception
of provision for the future was gold. Gold in the
hills, waiting somewhere for me. Somewhere
opportunity for rest, and a home. More and
more my thoughts returned to Ireland : to go back
there with even a little stake, to see my mother ;
to buy a little piece of land near her and work it ;
to have my dog, and my horse, and my chickens
and my pigs — and perhaps some day, when the
Dead Past should have buried its Dead, some
day, a son of my own to raise, fearless of me and
of the world.

"Simply a sailor's dream," you, reader, who
now perhaps know enough of me to despair of me,
will say. Ay, simply a sailor's dream ! Simply
a sailor's dream !

For although I knew well enough that thoughts

236 OCEAN ECHOES

of home were ever bound up in my mother, and
although I knew well enough that had I not been
stubbornly foolish I could have been back in Ire-
land this many a year, and prosperous, and a
delight to her, yet never had it occurred to me
that she might grow other than I had known her
years ago — that there might not be plenty of
time; that she might be nearing the end of the
span.

So the news that she was dead found me dig-
ging, and Gold turned hard and lifeless before
my eyes, and Love sat there beside me, bleeding.
Blinded by sorrow I went a-roving, and the
steep braes knew me. I picked and dug and
washed, from habit, for good luck meant only
food to me now. Often there was no food, nor
even water, for that matter, although when thirst
gets you, you cannot will to die, however cheaply
you may hold your life.

And so six years went by, and the loneliness
of the mountains healed me; and I was a better
man, but very solitary.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE OLD MAN AND THE VIOLET ROCK, THE

GUARDIANS AND THE STORY OF THE

OLD MAN'S LOVE

I WAS mining where the Snake River makes
a boundary line between Idaho and Oregon.
From seventy miles away came the report
of a big gold strike. I lost no time in getting
there. It turned out to be a fluke, based on the
finding, by a prospector, of a few outcroppings
of gold.

I went away as fast as I had come. This time
I took a trail that led me about a hundred miles
away from the railroad, into a country where
there was no mining, and little of anything else.
What subconscious impulse took me there I can-
not say.

My new trail led me to the Owyhee, a long and
crooked river. It plows through deep gorges,
and again spreads out where the canyons are
wide. On its banks are small patches of fertile

237

238 OCEAN ECHOES

land. It was on one of these patches that I met
The Old Man of Violet Kock.

I had been traveling all day long without see-
ing anything human. I was hungry, and my
horse was tired. There was a high mountain on
the western side of the river that lay hooded in
mourning. A lava cap fitted snugly over it ; the
evening sun seemed perched on its top.

To the east of me, and the side on which I was
traveling, a steep table-land broke off, leaving a
perpendicular sandstone precipice of a thousand
feet or more. Here were caves, many of them
large, and semicircular in shape.

There issued from them a peculiar kind of
odor. It may have been that wild animals car-
ried their plunder there to appease their hunger
in peace, or perhaps it may have been the decay-
ing of an ancient race.

The sun had rolled over behind the lava-cap
now, and as I rode on a squeaky groaning star-
tled my horse. I dismounted, and leading him,
walked ahead. It wasn't over three hundred
yards to the river. I dreaded even this short
walk, for being in the month of July, snakes with
many rattles challenged me as I wended my

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 239

way through the sage-brush, in the direction of
the groaning.

It was an old water-wheel, run by the current,
laboring furiously lifting the water to a flume.
My horse nickered, and I felt happy. We both
knew that not far from that water-wheel there
must be some sort of a home, where we could
rest and feed.

Following the water ditch a quarter of a mile
I came to The Lava Kock. Anyone would have
stopped to admire it, it looked so unusual, large,
isolated, lying there on the bank of the river. A
net-wire fence stood around three sides of it, and
the fourth side faced the river. It would have
been hard for anyone to reach it from this side,
where the drop to the water was a sheer twenty
feet.

While my horse nibbled on a bunch of withered
bunch-grass, I leaned against the fence and
looked in. There must have been half an acre in
the enclosure — the rock took up one third of
that. It stood high, peaked and irregular, with
a broad base. From its summit one could com-
mand a far view up and down the river. What
attracted me most to it was the quantity of beau-

240 OCEAN ECHOES

tif ul flowers that grew around and over it, start-
lingly colorful in the dusk, a lovely deep blue.
Violets in bunches, in sods, in great masses, over
the rock and down its sides, in fissures somehow
filled with soil, and glorying in release from
desert barrenness.

Grass, too, grew on the rock, neatly trimmed
grass, forming a little path clean over the top
of it. It is hard to describe the impression of
peace and sentiment that this sight created in
me.

While I still lingered, trying to trace some
reason for this blooming memorial to geological
ages, an old man mounted the rock from the
other side, and came over the violet and grassy
path toward me.

"Good evening, sir," said I, instinctively tak-
ing off my hat to the bent and venerable figure,
as he stood gazing intently at me with eyes whose
piercing quality was as yet untouched by time.
His white hair was blowing with the wind, his
shoulders were stooped like the slant of a tree
that has grown always away from some hard
prevailing wind.

"Good evening/' he replied, in a voice whose

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 241

tonelessness betokened one who talked but little
with his fellow-men. He looked at me without
either surprise or interest, as one whose duty to
humanity will soon be done.

"If you want food and rest overnight," he con-
tinued, pointing to a little-used trail along the
river bank, "follow the irrigation ditch down a
hundred yards. Then take the path to the left
till you come to the barn, feed your horse, and
come back here for your supper."

I thanked him, and followed his directions.
The barn was small and shut in by leafy mul-
berry trees. I fed the horse, and, being hungry,
hurried back. The old man was standing inside
the fence by the rock. He held a pan in his hand,
and at my approach handed it out to me over the
fence saying:

"Help yourself to what you want, then wash
the pan and leave it here. Here is coffee, too,"
and he handed me a cup of real china, strangely
out of keeping with the desert feast of beans and
pork and biscuit in the rough pan. Seeing my
thought in my face, he said quite simply, "Yes, I
prefer a cup for coffee," and left me to my own
conclusions.

242 OCEAN ECHOES

He went to the corner of the fence, and looked
down the river. So great was his dignity that I
should not have thought of questioning him, but
I could not but wonder at his choosing this
apparently solid rock as a place to which to bring
warm food. He had not carried the pan far.
He must have a fire and a house somewhere. But
where? Evidently not inside the rock, and no-
where else visible.

•

As if to put a stop to my thoughts, he turned
back and began to question me. "Why did you
come this way?" he asked.

I told him that I had not had the slightest idea
where I was going, that I simply wanted to
ramble.

"How would you like to work for me a week or
two?"

"What doing?" I asked, munching the beans.

"I have some hay to be cut and stacked, and
there's work to be done on the water-wheel."

"All right," said I. "I'll do it. How about
the pay?"

"I'll pay you whatever is right," said he,
glancing around suspiciously at the rock.

There was no more said about pay, nor did I

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 243

doubt his good faith. I finished eating, and
washed the pan, handing it back to him across
the fence.

"What a wonderful place for a house there in
the rock," I said, tentatively.

He turned savagely upon me, his whitish
bushy beard seeming to stick out in protest at
my profanation.

"You sleep in the barn," he cried. "You do
work for me; you can't come inside this fence.
Good night !"

He went around the rock, and whether away
by the other side, or into the rock itself, I had
no means of telling. Nor did I find out for
many days, so secret was he about it all.

What did he have in the rock, to guard so care-
fully that he would not even let me in? I asked
myself, as I found my way to the barn. Could
it be that in his rambles through the hills he had
found gold? He seemed sane enough, and yet
his eyes had that odd and fiery glow which I had
noticed.

Commonplace thoughts would not set me at
ease. I seemed to grasp the wildest imagina-
tions about him and the rock. I wasn't afraid,

244 OCEAN ECHOES

and yet there was a strangeness about the whole
thing, rock, violets, and man, that made me sleep-
less where I lay in my blanket in the hay. The
slightest sound startled me ; the stamp of a horse
brought me to my feet, the rustling of the mul-
berry leaves wrought a shiver through me, and
for that night, and for the nights that followed,
I was haunted by the strange things about me.

I must have been in the barn about four hours
that first night when the noise of a falling tree
scared the very wits out of me. Surely there
wasn't enough wind to blow it down. As I lis-
tened, trying to quiet my heart, there came to my
ears the sound of the groaning water-wheel,
laboring away in the current of the river.

Frightened as I was, I opened the barn door
and walked out and around the building. Then,
as if to give myself courage, I shouted :
"What the devil's going on around here?"
Instantly there came an answering sound.
"Ka-plunk! Ka-plunk! Ka-plunk!"
I laughed aloud, went into the barn, slammed
the door, and crawled into the saddle-blanket,
but not before I had cursed the beavers of the
Owyhee River!

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 245

When I went out the next morning the sun
was up, but the rays had not yet reached the
canyon. The old man was out on the rock,
watering his violets. He might have been some
strange animal up there, sucking nectar from the
hues of the purple glow. Indeed, he did look like
an animal, hatless and shoeless as he was. His
short, gnarly legs, his withered arms suggested
the limbs of a vine.

That picture of him there, perched upon the
rock amidst the tender profusion of blooms,
lingers with me as vividly as the memory of my
old music master. As I watched him, he picked
a bunch of violets and disappeared around the
rock. Who could the flowers be for? Did he
have a wife? Again my thoughts ran rampant,
worse than the night before. Curiosity, making
the adventure worth while, would eventually find
the secret of the Violet Eock.

I had breakfast from over the fence that morn-
ing, and for ten mornings after. Biscuits, bacon,
or salt pork and beans, and black coffee were
mostly the fare. I cut the hay, nine acres in all.
The old Buckeye mowing machine was as ragged
and worn as its owner. The sickle had to be filed

246 OCEAN ECHOES

many times a day. The horses were as mysteri-
ous, too, as they could be. They'd work steadily
for awhile, then refuse to work entirely, fall to
eating, and lie down all harnessed, in the tall
alfalfa. I'd just sit there atop of the old mower
and whistle till they got ready to work again;
then, without warning, with a simultaneous lunge
they would be up and off, with me hard put to it
to hold them. The old man would not allow me
to carry a whip. The horses were old, he said;
he had had them many years, and no one must
be unkind to them.

So it took me three days to mow the hay, and
I had ample time for amusement between times.
There was real enjoyment in killing rattlesnakea
I carried a pitchfork for those of them that the
sickle missed. It seemed that to me wherever
I turned I saw or heard a rattler. To say that
they didn't have me afraid would not be telling
the truth. I was as nervous and shifty as a
squirrel.

In the evenings I tried to draw out the old man
to talk about himself. He always evaded con-
versation of any kind; seldom he moved away
from the rock, and never when I was around.

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 247

And at the end of the tenth day I was as far
from knowing anything about him as I had been
at the end of the first.

One afternoon when I had about finished
stacking the hay a thunderstorm came up the
river, bringing rain and lightning. I hurried
for shelter to the barn. As I ran the noise of the
thunder in the canyon was deafening. I was
soaked. Before I reached the barn lightning
struck the lava-capped mountain, and released
great boulders which came plunging down into
the river. No snake would have had time to
strike me before I gained the barn, and my snort-
ing horse and I found reassurance with each
other, and agreed that Violet Eock was no happy
place for us.

The storm increased. It wasn't past three
o'clock, yet it felt as if night was setting in. I
felt danger around me, and the sailor in me drove
me again to the open. I ran for the rock, feeling
that the old man might be glad of my company
as I of his.

Within a hundred yards of the rock I stopped,
and stood, forgetting myself at the sight of him.
Through the gaps of spilling cloud-water I saw

248 OCEAN ECHOES

him standing on the rock, bareheaded, his long
white hair lying like loose rope-ends about his
head. He was talking. His voice reached me
in mumbles. He was addressing someone or
something that was hidden by the ridge of droop-
ing violets.

A thought flashed through my mind with the
quickness of the forked lightning that sizzled
overhead. It was gold he had there, gold to glit-
ter in the soft rainwater, aged gold to an aged
Idolater !

As I stood there watching him, with the water
making pools around my feet, I was seized with
hot resentment and disgust at his daring, there
in the open, under the eye of the angry gods of
the elements, to obtrude the little matter of his
greed !

"Shame," I cried aloud; "shame, shame!"
And I ran again to the barn to get away from
him, thankful in my heart that gold had never
meant that much to me.

When the sun came out I wrung out my clothes,
and hung them out to dry; then in clean things
I went out into the clean world and found ripe

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 249

mulberries to feast upon cleansingly. Then I
strolled off to the sandstone bluffs and wandered
in and out of caves where once the aborigines
had made their homes.

The sun had set, and the shadowed noise of
creeping things stirred me barnwards. I didn't
go after my supper that night, nor did he come
after me to get his. I rolled into my saddle
blanket and went to sleep, hoping that my im-
pressions of him were wrong, and resolved to
leave there in two or three days more, in any
case.

The old man awoke me in the morning. He
stood over me crying excitedly, "Get up, get up !
The dam has broken ; the wheel has stopped. We
must get to work at it right away."

The breakwater that forced the current from
the center of the river to the side of the bank
where the wheel turned, was broken by a freshet
from the storm. While I was filling and carry-
ing sacks of sand to mend the break, the old
man was busy working at the wheel, nailing loose
boards and tightening nuts here and there on it.

I paid little attention to him, nor did I know

250 OCEAN ECHOES

that my work on the breakwater was slowly driv-
ing the current under the wheel, where it might
start to turn at any time.

That was just what did happen. The water-
wheel was started going by the force of the cur-
rent under it. The old man, who was hanging
on top of it wrenching at a bolt, fell ten or twelve
feet down into shallow water.

The noise of the splash hurried me to him. As
I pulled him out blood was oozing from the side
of his head. I thought that he was killed, and I
was alarmed and sorry, for, though I have never
stayed away from a fight, I would not be the
cause of hurting anyone. With him in my arms
— and he was heavy enough — I struggled to the
top of the bank.

Gently I laid him down and felt his pulse. It
was pitiably weak. His blood wet the grass. I
tore off my shirt and bound his head. The sun
was over the mountain-top sending down waves
of heat. There was no shade this side the Violet
Kock or barn, and big flies were buzzing around.

It was a long way to the rock, but then, I
thought, suppose it was. The chance was that
he was dying, and after all, why shouldn't he be

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 251

near the thing that he prized most in life, what-
ever it might be? I placed my arms around his
hips, and slung his trunk to my shoulder. This
way I carried him to the fence, found the gate,
and squeezed him through; then eased him from
my shoulder, and laid him down alongside the
rock.

He groaned aloud, and made an effort as if
to rise. Surely, I thought, he must have some
kind of medicine around here that would help
him to regain consciousness. Timidly, I don't
know why, I started to explore the rock. I
hunted around till I came to the river end of it.
There I found a door.

Eight in front of it was one of the largest rat-
tlesnakes I have ever seen. Coiled he was, and
ready for a fight. In an instant I forgot every-
thing but that snake. I killed him, and made no
mistake about it.

The door was fastened with a padlock, the
frames set loosely in the lava rock. I jumped
at it with both feet, being by this time so excited
that I hardly knew what I was doing. The door
flew off its frail hinges and daylight stopped
short, at a curtain of inner gloom.

252 OCEAN ECHOES

It was a cave, and dark. A hibernating odor
seemed to come out of it. Ugh! what a place
to live! I thought, for now I had no doubt that
this was the old man's house. I took a step or
two forward, then hesitated. Suppose there
were snakes here, too? My flesh crept, and I
retreated, only to be prompted to effort of some
kind by a groan from outside.

My eyes being now used to the darkness, I
could see a feeble ray of light proceeding from,
I thought, a hole in the roof; and I went slowly
and carefully ahead. Gradually things began to
appear. The old man's bed, a chair, shoes under-
foot, a box or two. No table as yet, no stove.
But these I thought would reveal themselves
when I should reach the shaft of light.

I kept moving on, but somehow I had a sub-
conscious warning of evil. The hair on my head
straightened out; I was as springy on my feet
as a wildcat, and my heart gave me pile-driving
blows. Then I reached a sort of inner room
where the light fell, and my muscles set like the
click of a bear-trap.

There, .sitting on a chair by a table, was a
skeleton! Evidently that of a woman, and

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 253

before it, upon the table, a great bunch of violets,
still starry with morning dew. As my muscles
gradually relaxed, I tiptoed closer.

It was plain that years had passed since her
life went out. Much of the long black hair that
had been hers remained. Time had not parched
that ; and in the sunken dried-up eyes, the parch-
ment cheeks, the slender neck, the puckered,
pointed mouth, was evidence that she may have
once been beautiful.

One side of her face had been artfully turned
to conceal the bones where the light leathery skin
had fallen off. But the breast and ribs stood
out starkly, and on the hands and arms skin still
clung only in little patches. Around the waist
was tucked a khaki shirt, and the legs and feet
were, from where I stood, invisible.

I was overcome by a sort of spiritual reverence.
The violets upon the table oozed the essence of
purity, and I knew that I was standing within a
shrine. My mind took a jump back past time.

It was easy to picture her, as she used to be.
Young and beautiful, and full of life, dwelling
with her lover in the sandstone caves above the
river, grinding the nuts he brought her for food,

254 OCEAN ECHOES

and decking out her hair for him in desert flowers.

Then something happened that killed the
pleasure of the thought. The present came back
upon me fully, and I was sorry for having in-
truded on the old man's love, and felt that I
must hasten more than ever, to help him.

There was a sound behind me, somewhat louder
than a baby makes when it breathes the sting of
life into its delicate body. It was a cry that
would have meant nothing to an unknowing
listener, but for the one that uttered it it voiced
life, death, passion, and despair.

There, through the darkness came the old man,
staggering towards me. He spoke: "You
thought I was dead, did you?" And now his
voice seemed to fill the cave. "You have killed
the snake that guarded me for years. Now you
have found Her. You must go away and leave
me. I ask of you not to tell. There is money
under my pillow. Take what you think you have
earned. But, go ! go. Leave me, for I must be
alone."

He knelt down by the skeleton as he spoke,
and great tears ran down over the crusted blood
upon his hand, unhindered. Without a word I

THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 255

turned and walked out of the cave. Money I
did not want from that old man. My misty
eyes welcomed the sunshine.

I made for the barn, saddled my horse, and in
deep inner quiet rode up the river, past the
violets and the lone rock, past the old water-
wheel that was groaning again with its laden
buckets. Somehow this seemed to me a good
omen. I felt that the old man would be all right
again. But to this day I regret the killing of
his snake, for a pet it really was, as I learned that
afternoon. Feeling the lack of food, for I had
not eaten since the noon before, I drew up at a
little farm about twelve miles from the rock.

A Spaniard who lived there and ran a few
sheep, told me about the snake — how the old man
pulled out his fangs and made almost a com-
panion of him, and how, when he rang a bell, the
snake would come to him. Then, for the first
time, I learned the old man's name : John Dakin,
the Spaniard called him, and I realized that this
was perhaps the first time that it never had
occurred to me to try to find out someone's name.
I had been content to think of him not otherwise
than as the Old Man. The Spaniard said that he

256 OCEAN ECHOES

had been educated, rich, and an archaeologist,
and of his own accord had settled in these parts,
and become a kind of hermit, of whom no one
knew much, except that he was hard to speak to.
Of the skeleton the Spaniard did not know, nor
did I enlighten him.

CHAPTER XXX

TREATS OF FAIR PLAY, IN WHICH I LOSE ONE

HORSE ; AND OF JUSTICE, IN WHICH I LOSE

ANOTHER; AND OF PITY, AND MY

ACQUISITION OF A THIRD

TWO days later I rode into Jordan Valley,
Oregon, a cattle and sheep country. I
came upon a little town in the heart of
the valley, and remained there one day. It was
a bad day for me, as I had to leave it on foot,
having gambled my horse away.

An old prospector met up with me who had a
horse as good as mine. Then it happened that
a farmer drove into town with an old buckboard
to sell. It was cheap; twelve dollars he asked
for it. It was of no use to me, nor was it to the
prospector, each of us having but one horse ; and
yet we both wished that we had it, for it was
built for two horses, and roomy, and a stout
hazel-wood neckyoke stuck out of the front of it.

257

258 OCEAN ECHOES

"Well," said the prospector, as we felt of the
spokes and examined the tires, "we both can't
have it, but I have a scheme for one of us get-
ting it."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Come over to the hall," he said ; "there's dice
there, honest dice."

"One flop out of the box," he continued. "Aces
high. The high dice take both horses."

For a moment my mind wandered back to San
Francisco, to my dice game of tops and bottoms,
the last game I had played. I had learned a lot
since then, but the thought of the comfortable
buckboard, and the obvious honesty of the old
prospector made me take another chance.

"Come on," said I. "It shall be as you say."

"You understand," he said, "the high dice takes
both horses."

"How about the saddles?"

"Everything goes with the horse, and one flop
out of the box settles it."

He shook first and rolled two fives.

I shook the dice, I blew on them ; I swung them
over my head three times. When they rolled
onto the mahogany bar two threes were all I

FAIR PLAY 259

had. I felt a bit sad when I saw the prospector
drive away with the two horses hitched to the
buckboard.

Then commenced a series of makeshifts for
me. I footed it through the hills and desert,
getting work where I could to earn enough
money for a grubstake, always with the pros-
pector's thought that sooner or later I should
strike it rich.

In 1915 I discovered a ledge not far from
Mono Lake, California. "At last!" I thought.
"At last!"

The ledge had all the ear-marks of a mine. It
was three feet across with perfect walls, dipping
at an angle of forty-five degrees. The ore was
free-milling, and although low grade on the sur-
face it warranted work for depth to find rich
values.

I set about with a feeling of optimism that I
had never before experienced. For three months
I worked and starved. I had to pack my grub
sixteen miles, and poor grub it was. Coffee and
very little bacon, and beans. Boiled beans for
breakfast, cold beans for lunch, and warmed-
over beans for supper. Day in and day out. No

260 OCEAN ECHOES

one to speak to, no news, and no new thoughts.
Only work.

Sometimes I would get discouraged. Then I
would look at the beautiful sugar-loaf quartz in
the ledge, and my eye would catch a little glint
of gold. That was all I needed, to go at it again.

One morning I made up my mind to go away.
I was a slave to a rainbow, and I knew it, and
wanted to break away forever. I knew that if
I ever did break away I should never return to
this or any other mine unless in later years and
sanely.

But even then it is doubtful if my resolution
would have held had it not been for the farmer.
Fate surely brought him that very morning
mounted on one horse, and leading another, with
rifles slung across the saddles.

"Have you a little time to spare?" he called,
stopping at the mouth of my tunnel.

"Yes," I answered. "All kinds of time."

"Come along with me," he said. "Get on this
horse, and take this rifle. Three Mexicans killed
the sheriff this morning. We are out after them.
Come on."

Before I had time to more than snatch my coat

FAIR PLAY 261

we were off at a gallop down the mountain trail.
I was never to see that mine again, and I suppose
some other poor prospector got the benefit of my
worn outfit: ragged blanket, blunt pick, beans,
glittering hopes, and all.

CHAPTER XXXI
KILLING MEXICAN BANDITS

FOB about three miles we rode silently,
the farmer well in the lead, and I hold-
ing to my horse as best I could, for he
was anything but quiet. My mind was swirling
as to what would be the outcome before the sun
should go down.

We reined up in a little meadow, where we
were joined by four other horsemen, farmers also,
one of them cross-eyed and carrying a Springfield
rifle. I wondered how he could be useful on a
man-hunt. How little use he was, was shown
before the day was out, by the things he thought
he saw, the times his gun nearly went off, and the
one time that it did go off, when it was not his
fault that no one was hurt.

"We're on their trail, boys/' he shouted.
"All we have to do is to keep after them." Then
he went on to tell how they had broken into a

262

KILLING MEXICAN BANDITS 263

store and stolen arms, including a Savage rifle,
which he had been told could kill a man at a dis-
tance of two miles. And that these murdering
Mexicans were Pancho Villa's soldiers, revolu-
tionists, who had crossed the line into California.

We scoured the hills, and about four o'clock
came on them where they lay behind some fallen
timber. They were full of fight, and opened fire
on us without warning. The first" shot killed
the horse upon which I was riding, the second
took a sliver out of the cross-eyed farmer's chin —
which was a pity, in that it hurt him, but un-
doubtedly a blessing in that it took his tnind off
his gun.

It seemed that we were to be at the mercy of
the Mexicans. Everything was in their favour,
with us in the open and no shelter within reach.

But it so happened that two of our posse were
Spanish-American War veterans, and good shots,
whose presence saved me, at least, to write this
story. The moment that one of the "hombres"
raised his head above the fallen timber to shoot
again, one of the soldiers silenced him for all
time; and so it went with the second and the
third; without further casualty to us.

264 OCEAN ECHOES

We tied them onto saddles and packed them
to the coroner, who received ten dollars from the
county for pronouncing them dead. The road-
house at the head of Mono Lake, where the
sheriff had been killed, was crowded with people
waiting for news of the desperadoes.

Farmers' wives whose dear ones had joined in
the hunt were there, anxious for news of their
husbands; sweethearts of the dead sheriff hung
around the corpse with wet eyes ; the old widow
whose house, barn, and stacks of hay the Mexi-
cans had burned was there too, and wailing her
loss.

Altogether it seemed a fine chance to the prose-
cuting attorney to square himself with the pub-
lic forever; so he ordered drinks for the crowd,
and addressed them imposingly, telling them
everything they already knew, to their great
interest.

Nevertheless, when the oration was over, and
the dead sheriff had received more homage than
ever he had had in life, and the Mexicans had
been sufficiently reviled, I emerged into the open
air thoughtfully.

It was the farmers I was thinking of, and their

KILLING MEXICAN BANDITS 265

courage, going off that morning of their own
accord, leaving their wives and children, their
stock and growing crops, to which they might
never return, to do duty out there ; the duty that
all right-thinking men owe to civilization — the
performance of the laws of justice, derived from
usage of the ages.

CHAPTER XXXII
ONE WHO SANG

A I walked along that September night
thinking of the good and the bad that
is in all of us I heard away off in the
distance the sound of a banjo. It seemed cheer-
ful in view of the sadness I had just left, and I
turned towards it, walking along the lake.

Now the sound became plainer, and I could
hear a man's voice, old and cracked, singing an
ancient rebel song:

"When first I joined the army

My mother said to me,
'Come back, you red-headed son-of-a-gun

And brand the brindle-steer.' "
Words and music came back to me, re-echoed
from a small island in the lake, and I followed
them to the smudge of a fire where the old
man sat.

Two youngsters were sitting with him, and he

266

ONE WHO SANG 267

was entertaining them, more, it seemed, for the
love of his song, than for the sake of their
proffered bottle.

They made me welcome, and the old man con-
tinued his songs. He had a violin with which
he alternated the banjo. Then he would tell
stories about all sorts of things, for he had had
a queer and roving life. He had been, it seemed,
a traveling circus man for years and years, and
able to do a little something anywhere he might
be needed.

The young men went off somewhere when they
had heard enough, and I was about to start
away, being drawn by a cat-like feeling for the
little camp. I turned to say good-by to the old
man.

"Where do you sleep?" I asked.

"Oh," he answered, "I sleep here in the brush.
That is, when I can find my blankets."

"Do you always go to bed drunk?" I asked,
laughing.

The old fellow fell to sobbing, and I, thinking
that he was none too sober then, was about to
turn away, when he cried :

"No, I don't go to bed drunk. I am almost

268 OCEAN ECHOES

blind. I'm hard put upon once the sun sets.
When he shines in the sky Fm all right."

It was my part now to show him sympathy,
and I questioned him. He told me that he sang,
fiddled, and played the banjo for the food and
the few dimes the people gave him.

"No one will give me work any more. They
don't want me. Why should they? I'm of no
use in the world. I should die damn it! Yes,
I should die. But" — for his pessimism, never too
strong, had run itself out — "I could work, I
know I could. I'm a tough old geezer yet."

I gathered wood and rekindled the fire, and he
and I talked until Mars lit up the dawn sky. It
was a strange thing, meeting this old man, and
it had far-reaching consequences for me and for
others who didn't know me any better than the
loons who cawed on Mono Lake.

At any rate, I was moved that night as I
had never been moved before, perhaps by the
stories of his youth which raised in me memories
of my own ; perhaps by the aged helplessness of
him, which suggested that duty whose fulfil-
ment had been stopped by my mother's death.
I almost thought that some unseen power was

ONE WHO SANG 269

bidding me take charge of him, so blind and help-
less, and at the mercy of the passers-by.

When daylight came I saw his eyes. Pitiful
they were, like those of a blind dog, with sagging
under-lids, and a lifeless look. But one was a
little better than the other, and I felt that for
that one there was hope, could I but get him
to a doctor.

CHAPTER XXXIII

OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT,, I Do, Too, AND
SHE DOES, Too

IT was four hundred miles to an eye special-
ist, eighty to the railroad, and I had nine-
teen dollars in my pocket. Nevertheless, I
made the first move by hiring a horse from a
farmer for ten dollars and the promise to send
him back from Bishop.

I launched the old man — Austen was his name,
and seemed to be all the name he had — upon him,
with a blanket over the horse's bare back, and
the banjo and violin tucked each under an arm.

They laughed at us as we passed the hotel
where the sheriff's funeral was about to take up,
and we laughed back ; Austen because he laughed
at himself as much as anyone could laugh at
him, and I because the air was sweet, and I had
something different to do, and someone else than
myself to plan for. So we jogged off through
the desert, and the dust got into our throats, and

270

OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 271

the coyotes howled at us, and still the sun shone
and the firelight sparkled, and we laughed.

Four days we marched, stopping for coffee,
and Van Camp's pork and beans, and the oats
which I carried on my back for the horse. It
was a bit hard on the old man going down the
steep hills — going up he didn't mind — and he
was constantly surging forward onto the horse's
neck, damning him for not holding his head up.

On the afternoon of the fourth day we came
to Bishop, and I hunted the town to get up a
subscription to send the old man to Los Angeles.
Heartless the people there seemed, and heartless
they were. They were certainly not interested
in blind men, and urged me to send him to the
poor farm, if I could manage to get him in.

I arranged with a cattle man to take the horse
back to Mono Lake, and after a night in the
town and a real feed, we set out on towards
Death Valley, where I knew that I could get
work to keep us both, and eventually to send
Austen to Los Angeles.

We walked about eight miles that morning.
The old fellow was getting tired, and we sat
down to rest. On the slope of the hill, less than

272 OCEAN ECHOES

a mile away, stood a modern farm house, dif-
ferent from any other else in the valley. The
road up to it was graded and wide ; young trees
lined in uniform growth stood at the sides; in
the fields alfalfa grew, and beautiful Percheron
mares were running and playing with their
stocky colts. Jersey cows with fawn-like limbs
nibbled at the grass. And an old Indian, tall
and noble-looking, stood, like a statue, with a
shovel in his hands, watching the tiny irriga-
tion-ditches which, if untended, were so tricky
with the unset soil of that country.

A white mongrel dog who was out chasing rab-
bits saw us, and ran to us, barking and wagging
his tail. I patted him, and he licked the old
man's hands ; then barking again in his friendly
way he ran into his home-road and stood, with
head over his shoulder, as if urging us to come.

"That dog is our first friend in five days,
Austen," said I, "and I'll bet that his master
is kind and considerate too. Let us go up."

We did go, and we found a child of four or
five years playing on the lawn, and a woman in
her early thirties unharnessing a horse.

"Let me do that," said I, quite naturally.

OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 273

"You don't look as if you knew how/' said she,
wickedly.

Of course I knew how, and I took matters into
my own hands at once. "Where does the harness
go?" I asked, paying no attention. "First door
to the right as you go into the barn, horse in the
last stall, halter hanging on the iron hook," said
she, walking off quite unconcernedly, but, I
noticed, with a twinkling eye.

"Frances," she called to the child, "come here
and show this man how to feed Slim, and water
him."

The child came fearlessly, and I, who thought
it was a joke, found it was no joke at all. Sev-
eral work-horses were in the barn, finishing their
dinner, and the little girl told me all about them,
their names, and how they were fed.

We came out from the barn hand in hand —
and although she is now almost as tall as I, she
still gives me my orders when she sees fit.

The mother was standing talking to Austen,
and I saw already that she was in full possession
of her facts. As I looked at her I thought that
she was aged for her years ; that her strong frame

274 OCEAN ECHOES

was accustoming itself to work it had not been
used to, and that the serious face which belied
the smiling eye, hid a considerable knowledge of
loneliness and misery at first hand.

Later I found that this was true; that she
had had a life as changeable, as full of adven-
ture, and disappointment for her, as mine had
been for me. That now she was hanging to this
ranch, which she had been forced to mortgage
heavily, in the forlorn hope of selling it at a time
when the war had driven value out of land every-
where. People were keeping their cash, not
knowing what would happen, and she felt that
if she could not sell she must leave the place she
had redeemed from the desert, and start another
trail.

Partly dependent as she was — for she was a
"remittance-man" — she could not oblige herself
to lose the free feel of the desert in any provided
shelter. So, I being lonely too, and without pre-
tense and as we understood each other, we
agreed some months later to be married; and
were eventually married, to our satisfaction, but
not without trouble, which began to brew that
night at Mono Lake.

OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 275

While she fed us — and it seemed that we could
never stop eating of ranch food that was really
fit for workingmen — she talked to us, and we
consulted about Austen's eyes. She seemed at
once to feel that it was as much her responsibility
as it was his, or mine.

"I can give him work about the house for a
while/7 she said, "until we can arrange for the
doctor in Los Angeles. That part of it I will
answer for, if you will take him down there.
When he gets through, I will let him irrigate for
a month, to give him some money to go away
with. More than that I cannot promise, for I
expect to rent the ranch this winter, and move
away."

"You are the trouble for me," she continued;
"for you are a sailor and an Irishman, and I
never hire sailors nor Irishmen. Sailors always
want their own way, and Irishmen are here one
minute and get angry and leave the next."

I thought it better to dispute the premise than
to argue the conclusion, which seemed to be
based on experience, and was certainly the truth ;
so I denied that I was either a sailor or an Irish-
man

276 OCEAN ECHOES

"I didn't suppose you'd admit it," she said,
speculatively. "They never do. But you are
both. I know you are a sailor because you walk
like one, and always will; and an Irishman
because that is written all over you."

In vain I protested, wretchedly, too ; for I saw
that she meant what she said. I told her what
I could do, and how well I could do it. I prom-
ised that the best man she had should never
be able to set a pace for me. Finally tears came
into my eyes, and a lump into my throat. Just
then I saw the little girl, standing by.

"You tell her," I said, huskily, and that set-
tled it.

I do believe that for a month I worked as I
had never worked before, and I must say that I
was driven without mercy. But I was well fed,
and had a little house to myself; and the child,
at least when she was not busy with Austen, who
fascinated her completely, was kind to me.

My month was up, and it was pay-day. I was
called into the house and the little girl told me
that her mother was going to Bishop, and wanted
me to go with her.

We went in the mountain-wagon, the child on

OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 277

my knees, her mother doing the driving; for
which, I may say, to this day she is badly lacking
in confidence in me. She told me, when she
started, that she was going to take me to buy a
few things, because she had arranged for Austen
to go down to the hospital the next day, and for
me to go and stay there with him.

I looked down at my worn boots, for I had
been grubbing sage-brush and digging ditches.

"Yes, I know/9 she said, catching the look.
"We are going to get them."

The thought of anyone going to help me buy
my shoes, who had had no one to take a single
thought for me for so long, moved me so that
I could hardly speak. We did go to buy them.
We bought other things for Austen, had our pay
besides, and started south on the train next day.
She told me as we were going that she had sold
a cow to make sure that she could send us !

At the hospital I found plenty to do with the
old man. I held his hand while Dr. McCoy
operated, stitching up the "curtain of film, not
a cataract," as he described it, to either eyelid,
and cheering him through the dismal days that
followed.

278 OCEAN ECHOES

Five days later the doctor took the poor old
man's bandages off, and he nearly went wild.
He could see perfectly with one eye, and almost
as well with the other. He shouted and sang,
and kissed the nurses. He was the circus man
of the sixties again, and the "Brindle Steer" rang
out, until he was stifled by an angry attendant.

The doctor would not take a cent for the opera-
tion. He was one of God's creatures, too.

CHAPTER XXXIV
FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES

A HAPPY greeting Austen and I got when
we got back to the ranch. The lady's
cow money seemed to have given her
happiness in the joy brought to that old man, joy
in having sight of the valleys, the green grass,
and the mountain streams, and to look at his
banjo and really see its strings.

That night in the sitting-room before the fire,
he sang us songs of other days, of the musket and
the broadsword, and his old young voice showed
his happiness. He wound up in fine form with :

"When first I joined the army,

My mother said to me.'7
Then:

"Come back, you red-headed — "

But here he broke down, and cried as he cried
that first night, for the very opposite reason.

279

280 OCEAN ECHOES

Austen was given a house to live in, and work
to do to start him on his way to the remnant of
a relation whom he still had in the East.

I did not linger on. I told her that I was
going, that my mind was made up. Either she
should marry me at Christmas in Los Angeles,
where I was going to look for work, or I should
never see her again. And right there, because
she said she would marry me, did the vicious
chain of consequences to which I have alluded
before, begin to show themselves.

I went to Los Angeles, getting into touch with
what seemed to be an excellent mining proposi-
tion, a new town, which afterward failed at the
threat of impending war. At Thanksgiving I
returned to the ranch for a few days and found
that she had written to her father, and received
his reply. I was a fortune-hunter, and an
"impossible person."

Once there was a cobbler in Michigan. He
made a standard shoe that stood the test of time,
and he had made standard shoes for many years.
One day he was working on a pair, when the mail
brought him a letter from his brother in Califor-
nia asking him for money. He was so disturbed

FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES 281

by the letter, that his mind wandered from the
shoes, and a little variation in one shoe occurred.
A customer in New York who always bought
these shoes happened a little later to be in need
of a pair. He bought the very shoes that the
cobbler had made when he received his brother's
letter.

He wore them out on a rainy day. They were
not quite stout, owing to the defect in one of
them, and the water leaked in and gave the man
pneumonia. When he was recovering, his wife
asked him to hang a picture, and he got upon a
chair to do it. The shoe had never quite
regained its shape, like the other shoe, his foot
turned in it, he was thrown to the ground and
broke his leg. So did the cobbler's brother in
California affect the purchaser in New York.

So did my impulsive sacrifice for Austen cause
the utmost disturbance thousands of miles away,
to which even broken bones would have been
preferable.

How was I, who had always worked hard and
never valued money, going to prove that the pros-
pects of this lonely lady and her people were of
no interest to me? Or that, although I had no

282 OCEAN ECHOES

money, I had some valuable assets of experience,
and honesty and heart? It simply couldn't be
done.

So, when a member of the family appeared
with a written questionnaire, what could I do
but answer him as I did? I said :

"I shall not answer these questions. If you
want to look me up, here are the addresses of
my enemies. Go to them, for my friends will not
interest you."

Surely enough he did, and heard the worst of
me, and much that wasn't true, and my Lady
must needs pay her price, too, for the rescue of
a blind man and the sale of a cow!

We had rather a tumultuous two years, from
which we emerged with great faith in each other,
and little in those who would have kept us apart.
That was while the war was at its height ; small
passions mounted into great ones everywhere,
and many small fry perished.

April 12, 1917, we took a street-car from Los
Angeles to Santa Ana, and were there married
by a justice of the peace, whose witnesses were
vital to us but for an instant, and then passed
forever from our lives.

THE LAST CHAPTER
OCEAN ECHOES

WE had come into the war now, and as
anxious as I was to do something to
help, I found little encouragement in
the West. Wherever I made application, the
response was : "Wait, wait, don't be in a hurry."
The same thing had happened to me in 1898.
I left a ship then and trained for our war with
Spain three months at my own expense, only to
be told that Uncle Sam had more volunteers than
he could use.

This time the excitement grew upon me so
strongly that I decided I would get at least three
thousand miles nearer; and in May, 1918, we
left a little place we had rented, and my wife
started for New York. There I joined her a
month later, and went right to work as Super-
intendent of Deck Eigging in the Port Newark
Shipyard, while she worked in an ammunition
plant.

283

284 OCEAN ECHOES

It seemed that Old Ocean was once more tak-
ing care of me. I was at home with masts and
booms, anchors and cables, life-boats, steering
gear and compasses. I worked there until the
next summer.

Then came a period of idleness, waiting for
another position, and I did a good deal of read-
ing. Stories of the sea, some were. I criticized
them to myself. Those writers who really knew
the sea seemed to be self-conscious, sometimes;
to think that they must use the ocean as scenery
to decorate their plot. Those who did not know
the sea, seemed to want to take awful chances
with the truth. Then I got hold of the
"Trawler," and it got hold of me. Why shouldn't
I try to write? I thought. I had things to say
and no one would sneer at the simplicity of an
old sailor.

I wrote my first book ; and the critics re-
ceived "The Flying Bo'sun" kindly. They said
the most heartening thing — that it rang true.
We can't all visualize the colors on the horizon,
and some of the things that have happened to
me may seem impossible to a reader. But when
we fall a-yarning it is hard to stop, and we

OCEAN ECHOES 285

like our listeners to be awake and calling
"Bravo" at the end.

So this tale is drawing to its close, and I must
not drift, but drop my anchor where the holding-
ground is good, and enter my ship in her port of
discharge.

In the summer of 1921 1 went to sea again, not
as a sailor before the mast this time, nor as a
mate, nor a master, but as a passenger bound for
South America. When the Ambrose Channel
was cleared, and the old Scotland Light-ship bore
away on the starboard beam I felt the motion of
the Sea of my youth. As the land faded away,
and the sky and sea closed in around me, a sad-
ness came over me. Something was wrong, some-
thing different from other times.

It wasn't like being at sea at all. There wasn't
a roll out of the ship, the black smoke that
belched out of the smoke-stacks seemed unreal,
the bulwarks were far away above the floating
water. There were no clanks from blocks nor
flop of sails, no running to and fro of naked feet.
All that reminded me of the old days were the
ship's bells. Their tone was the same, and faith-

286 OCEAN ECHOES

fully to their age-long responsibility, they chimed
the pure Time of the Sun.

As we wore away south, familiar things
showed up again. The blackfin shark still
prowled across the ocean's surface; there was the
dolphin and the flying-fish, the whale and his
enemy the thrasher. Porpoises still played
around the bows.

The clouds still had their old-time glow, the
sunsets fired the skies as in other days. The
night skies, it .seemed to me, were more beauti-
ful. Old, familiar friends I could see up there,
almost always clear of clouds, the Southern
Cross, with its two pilot stars pointing to it
sparkling with beauty brighter than all the rest
of that starry field.

One night when the noisy passengers had gone
to their bunks to sleep, I went forward to the
forecastle head, up to the eyes of her, where I
could see out upon the ocean unobstructed. I
was alone there, everything mortal was behind
me. A gentle breeze blew across the bows. So
cool and soothing it felt! I was not conscious
of the steamer I was on. I felt the influence of
the years that were back of me.

OCEAN ECHOES 287

As I stood there holding the jack-pole, gazing
out into the bright night, ships, misty yet not
dim, sailing-ships of every sort, with every sort
of canvas, sailed up from the lee. They had
memories' sails bellied out to the wind. I knew
them all, one after the other, their hulls, black
or white, their rigs, their painted ports. Of
course I knew them, and their scars and the
queer things about them, and called them each
by name.

How fiery the water looked as it dashed over
their bows, how gracefully they rode with the lee-
rail low! Ships, real ships, the ships of other
years !

I was startled by a voice beside me:

"So you are up here, are you?"

"Yes, Captain," I replied absently, for I knew
I had to let them go.

"You are not the only one," he said ; "there are
nights that I, too, come up here to watch the old
ships go sailing by. The lookout in the crow's-
nest up there never reports them. He doesn't
see them. He is a modern sailor and has only
eyes for smoke."

THE END

FOURTEEN DAY USE

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