I
When the Cubans, led by Gomez and Maceo, were waging their final rebellion against the immemorial tyranny of Spain, it may be recalled that there was much filibustering out of American ports, and a lively demand for seafaring men of an intrepid temper who could be relied on to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. Such a one was young Captain O’Shea, and, moreover, he was no amateur at this ticklish industry, having already “jolted one presidente off his perch in Hayti, and set fire to the coat-tails of another one in Honduras,” as he explained to the swarthy gentlemen of the Cuban Junta in New York, who passed on his credentials.
They gave him a sea-going tug called the Fearless, permitted him to pick his own crew, and told him where to find his cargo, in a fairly lonesome inlet of the Florida coast. Thereafter he was to work out his own salvation. The programme was likely to be anything else than monotonous. To be nabbed by a Yankee cruiser in home waters for breaking the laws of nations meant that Captain O’Shea would cool his heels in a Federal jail, a mishap most distasteful to a man of a roving disposition. To run afoul of the Spanish blockading fleet in Cuban waters was to be unceremoniously shot full of holes and drowned in the bargain.
Such risks as these were incidental to his trade, and Captain O’Shea maintained his cheerful composure until the Fearless had taken her explosive cargo on board and was dropping the sandy coast-line of Florida over her stern. Then he scrutinized his passengers and became annoyed. The Junta had sent him a Cuban colonel and forty patriots, recruited from the cigar factories of Tampa and Key West, who ardently, even clamorously, desired to return to their native land and fight for the glorious cause of liberty.
Their organization was separate from that of the ship’s company. It was not the business of Captain O’Shea to enforce his hard-fisted discipline among them, nor did he have to feed them, for they had brought their own stores on board. Early in the voyage he expressed his superheated opinion of the party to the chief engineer. The twain stood on the little bridge above the wheel-house, the clean-built, youthful Irish-American skipper, and the beefy, gray-headed Johnny Kent, whose variegated career had begun among the Yankees of ’way down East.
The deep-laden Fearless was wallowing through the uneasy seas of the Gulf Stream. The Cuban patriots were already sea-sick in squads, and they lay helpless amid an amazing disorder of weapons, blankets, haversacks, valises, and clothing. Now and then the crest of a sea flicked merrily over the low guard-rail and swashed across the pallid sufferers.
“Did ye ever see such a mess in all your born days?” disgustedly observed Captain O’Shea. “And we will have to live with this menagerie for a week or so, Johnny.”
“It’ll be a whole lot worse when all of ’em are took sea-sick,” was the discouraging reply. “Doggone ’em, they ain’t even stowed their kits away. They just flopped and died in their tracks. Why don’t you make their colonel kick some savvey into ’em, eh, Cap’n Mike?”
“Colonel Calvo?” and O’Shea spat to leeward with a laugh. “He is curled up in the spare state-room, and his complexion is as green as a starboard light. There is one American in the lot. Wait till I fetch him up.”
A deck-hand was sent into the dismal chaos, and there presently returned in his wake a lean, sandy man in khaki who clutched an old-fashioned Springfield rifle. At a guess his years might have been forty, and his visage had never a trace of humor in it. Much drill had squared his shoulders and flattened his back, and he stiffly saluted Captain O’Shea.
“Who are you, and what are ye doing in such amazin’ bad company?” asked the latter.
“My name is Jack Gorham, sir. I served four enlistments in the Fifth Infantry, and I have medals for marksmanship. The Cubans took me on as a sharp-shooter. They promised me a thousand dollars for every Spanish officer I pick off with this old gun of mine. I have a hundred and fifty rounds. You can figure it out for yourself, sir. I’ll be a rich man.”
“Provided ye are not picked off first, me hopeful sharp-shooter. Are there any more good men in your crowd?”
The old regular dubiously shook his head as he answered:
“There’s a dozen or so that may qualify on dry land. The rest ain’t what you’d call reliable comrades-in-arms.”
“Oh, they may buck up,” exclaimed Captain O’Shea. “Look here, Gorham, you can’t live on deck with those sea-sick swine. Better go for’ard and bunk with my crew.”
Jack Gorham looked grateful, but firmly declared:
“Thank you, sir, I belong with the Cuban outfit, and I’ll take my medicine. It would make bad feeling if I was to quit ’em. They are as jealous and touchy as children. I have a tip for you. There is one ugly lad in the bunch, the big, black nigger settin’ yonder on the hatch. They tell me he comes from Colombia and left there two jumps ahead of the police.”
They gazed down at the powerful figure of the negro, whose tattered shirt disclosed swelling ridges of muscle and more than one long scar defined in pink against the shining black skin. Thick-lipped, flat-nosed, he was the primitive African savage whose ancestors had survived the middle passage in the hold of a Spanish slaver. He was snarling and grumbling to a group of Cubans, and Captain O’Shea pricked up his ears.
“Raising a row about the grub, is he? ’Tis a pity he could not be sea-sick early and often.”
“Why don’t you crack him over the head with a belayin’-pin just for luck?” amiably suggested the chief engineer. “It would sweeten him up considerable.”
“I am carrying them as passengers, you blood-thirsty old buccaneer,” retorted O’Shea. “I must keep me hands off till they really mix things up. But I do not like the looks of the big nigger. He is one of your born trouble-hunters.”
“You take my advice and beat him up good and plenty before he gets started,” was the sage farewell of Johnny Kent as he lumbered below to exhort his oilers and stokers.
The night came down and obscured the hurrying tug whose course was laid for the Yucatan passage around the western end of Cuba. The lights of a merchant-steamer twinkled far distant and Captain O’Shea sheered off to give her a wide berth. He had no desire to be sighted or reported.
To him, keeping lookout on the darkened bridge, came his cook, a peaceable mulatto who had a grievance which he aired as follows:
“Please, cap’n, them Cubans what ain’t sea-sick is actin’ powerful unreasonable. I lets ’em heat their stuff and make coffee in my galley, but I ain’t ’sponsible for th’ rations they all draws. That big, black niggah is stirrin’ ’em up. Jiminez, they calls him. At supper-time to-night, cap’n, he tried to swipe some of th’ crew’s bacon and hash, and I had to chase him outen th’ galley.”
“All right, George. I will keep an eye on him to-morrow,” said the skipper. “Between you and me the Cuban party did not bring enough provisions aboard to run them on full allowance for the voyage. There was graft somewhere. But I’m hanged if they can steal any of my stores. We may need every pound of them. I will see to it that your galley isn’t raided. And if this big bucko Jiminez gets gay again, give him the tea-kettle and scald the black hide off him—understand?”
“Yes, suh, cap’n; I’ll parboil him if you’ll look out he don’t carve me when he’s done recuperated.”
The cook descended to his realm of pots and pans while Captain O’Shea reflected that the voyage might be even livelier than he had anticipated. With calm weather his forty passengers would recover their appetites and demand three meals per day. They might whine and grumble over the shortage, but without a leader they were fairly harmless.
“I will have to lock horns with the big nigger before he gets any more headway,” soliloquized Captain O’Shea.
For once he heartily desired high winds and rough seas, but the following morning brought weather so much smoother, that the pangs of hunger took hold of the reviving patriots, who arose from the coal-sacks and crowded to the galley windows. The cook toiled with one eye warily lifted lest the formidable negro from Colombia should board him unawares.
Captain O’Shea leaned over the rail of his bridge and surveyed the scene. Black Jiminez was making loud complaint in his guttural Spanish patois, but his following was not eager to encounter the rough-and-tumble deck-hands of the Fearless, besides which the prudent cook hovered within easy distance of the steaming tea-kettle.
To the amusement of Captain O’Shea, it was that lathy sharp-shooter of the serious countenance, Jack Gorham, who took it upon himself to read the riot act to the big negro. He regarded himself and his duty with a profound, unshaken gravity. Jiminez overtopped him by a foot, but pride of race and self-respect would not permit him to knuckle under to the black bully.
“Will ye look at the Gorham man?” said Captain O’Shea to the chief engineer who had joined him. “He is bristlin’ up to the nigger like a terrier pup. And Jiminez would make no more than two bites of him.”
“How can the soldier do anything else?” exclaimed Johnny Kent. “He’s the only white man in the bunch.”
“I may as well let him know that I am backin’ his game,” observed the other. He sang out to Gorham, and the veteran infantryman climbed to the bridge, where he stood with heels together, hat in hand. His pensive, freckled countenance failed to respond to the captain’s greeting smile.
“Unless I am mistaken, Gorham, ye have it in mind to tackle a job that looks a couple of sizes too large for you. Will ye start a ruction with Jiminez?”
“Until the colonel gets on his legs I’m the man to take charge of the party, sir,” answered the soldier, reflectively rubbing the bald spot which shone through his thinning thatch of sandy hair.
“But I expect to take a hand,” petulantly declared the captain. “This is my ship.”
“Excuse me, sir,” and Gorham’s accents were most apologetic. “This is your ship, but it ain’t your party. The patriots are a separate command. The big nigger belongs to me. If I don’t discourage him, I lose all chance of winnin’ promotion in the Cuban army. If he downs me, I’ll be called a yellow dog from one end of the island to the other. I intend to earn my shoulder-straps.”
“And you will climb this big, black beggar, and thank nobody to interfere?” asked the admiring Captain O’Shea.
“It is up to me, sir.”
“You strain me patience, Gorham. If ye have any trinkets and messages to send to your friends, better give them to me now.”
Said the chief engineer when the soldier was out of ear-shot:
“Does he really mean it, Cap’n Mike? He’ll sure be a homely-lookin’ corpse.”
“Mean it? That lantern-jawed lunatic wouldn’t know a joke if it hit him bows on.”
“Will you let him be murdered?”
“We will pry the big nigger off him before it goes as far as that. Have ye not learned, Johnny Kent, that it is poor business to come between a man and his good intentions, even though they may be all wrong?”
Later in the day Captain O’Shea sought the state-room of the prostrate Colonel Calvo. The sea was a relentless foe and showed him no mercy. Feebly moving his hands, he turned a ghastly face to the visitor and croaked:
“I have no interes’ in my mens, in my country, in nothings at all. I am dreadful sick. I will not live to see my Cuba. She will weep for me. The ship, she will sink pretty soon? I hope so.”
“Nonsense, colonel,” bluffly returned O’Shea. “The weather couldn’t be finer. A few days more of this and ye will be wading in Spanish gore to your boot-tops. I want to ask about your stores. Your men are growlin’. Who is in charge of the commissary?”
“Talk to me nothings about eats,” moaned the sufferer. “Why do anybody want eats? Come to-morrow, nex’ day, nex’ week. Now I have the wish to die with peace.”
“The sooner, the better,” said the visitor, and departed.
The Fearless, with explosives in the hold and inflammable humanity above-decks, pursued her hard-driven way through another night and turned to double Cape San Antonio and enter the storied waters of the Caribbean. Black Jiminez had failed to play the rôle expected of him and the discontent of the patriots focussed itself in no open outbreak. Captain O’Shea was puzzled at this until the mate came to him and announced that the Cubans had broken through a bulkhead in the after-hold and were stealing the ship’s stores. This accounted for their good behavior on deck. The leader of the secret raiding party was the big negro from Colombia.
“It seems to me that this is my business,” softly quoth the skipper, and his gray eyes danced while he pulled his belt a notch tighter. “But I must play fair and ask permission of the melancholy sharp-shooter before I proceed to make a vacancy in the Jiminez family.”
The interview with Gorham was brief. The captain argued that by breaking through a bulkhead and pilfering the crew’s provisions, the large black one had invaded the O’Shea domain. The soldier held to it with the stubbornness of a wooden Indian that his own self-respect was at stake. O’Shea lost his temper and burst out:
“If ye are so damned anxious to commit suicide, go and get him and put him in irons. I will give you a decent burial at sea, though ye don’t deserve it, you pig-headed old ramrod.”
“The moral effect will be better if I get him,” mildly suggested the soldier.
The Cubans had learned that trouble was in the wind. Their stolen supplies were to be cut off and this meant short rations again. Angry and rebellious, only a spark was needed to set them ablaze. When eight bells struck the noon hour they surged toward the galley, making a great noise, displaying their sea-rusted machetes and rifles. In the lead was Jiminez, a half-clad, barbaric giant who waved a heavy blade over his head and shouted imprecations. The purpose of the mob was to rush the galley and carry off all the food in sight.
The crew of the Fearless liked not the idea of going dinnerless. When the excited patriots charged forward, there quickly rallied in front of the deck-house fourteen earnest-looking men equipped with Mauser rifles broken out of the cargo. In a wheel-house window appeared the head and shoulders of Captain O’Shea. His fist held a piece of artillery known as a Colt’s forty-five. In the background of the picture was the resourceful Johnny Kent, who was coupling the brass nozzle of the fire-hose.
Jiminez had decided to declare war. He appealed to the patriots to use their weapons, but they showed a prudent reluctance to open the engagement. One of them, by way of locating the responsibility for the dispute, pulled a revolver from a holster and took a snap-shot at the cook.
“I guess I’d better turn loose this hose and wash ’em aft, Cap’n Mike,” sung out the chief engineer. “George is a darned good cook and it ain’t right to let these black-and-tans pester him.”
Captain O’Shea bounded from the bridge to the deck, and the crew of the Fearless welcomed him with joyous yelps. Instead of giving them the expected order to charge the Cubans hammer-and-tongs, he made for Jiminez single-handed. His intention was thwarted. Between him and the burly negro appeared the spare figure of Jack Gorham, who moved swiftly, quietly. With courteous intonation and no sign of heat he affirmed:
“This is my job, sir. It’s about time to put a few kinks in him.”
The manner of the man made Captain O’Shea hesitate and feel rebuked, as though he had been properly told to mind his own business. With a boyish grin he slapped Gorham on the back and said:
“I beg your pardon for intrudin’. ’Tis your funeral.”
Although the mob behind Jiminez failed to catch the wording of this bit of dialogue, they comprehended its import. The extraordinary composure of the two men impressed them. They felt more fear of them than of the embattled deck-hands. The tableau lasted only a moment, but a singular silence fell upon the ship.
Big Jiminez nervously licked his lips and his bloodshot eyes roved uneasily. It was apparent that he had been singled out as the leader, and that the sad-featured American soldier in the sea-stained khaki viewed him as no more than an incident in the day’s work.
Captain O’Shea had stepped back to join his own men. Jack Gorham stood alone in a small cleared space of the deck, facing the truculent negro. The Cubans began to edge away from Jiminez as if comprehending that here was an issue between two men. The soldier had for a weapon that beloved old Springfield rifle, but he made no motion to shoot.
Presently he sprang forward, with the heavy butt upraised. The negro swung his machete at the same instant and the blade was parried by the steel barrel. The mob had become an audience. It lost its menacing solidarity and drifted a little way aft to make room for the combatants. Instead of riot or mutiny, the trouble on board the Fearless had defined itself as a duel.
The veteran regular handled the clubbed rifle with amazing ease and dexterity. The wicked machete could not beat down his guard, and he stood his ground, shifting, ducking, weaving in and out, watching for an opening to smash the negro’s face with a thrust of the butt. Once the blade nicked Gorham’s shoulder and a red smear spread over the khaki tunic.
Jiminez was forced back until he was cramped for room to swing. His machete rang against a metal stanchion and the galley window was at his elbow. His black skin shining with sweat, his breath labored, the splendid brute was beginning to realize that he had met his master. From the tail of his eye he observed that the Cubans no longer thronged the passageway between the deck-house and guard-rail. He turned and ran toward the stern.
Gorham was after him like a shot. In his wake scampered the crew of the Fearless intermingled with the Cubans, all anxious to be in at the finish. Jiminez wheeled where the deck was wide. He was not as formidable as at first. Fear was in his heart. He had never fought such a man as this insignificant-looking American soldier, who was unterrified, unconquerable. Gorham ran at him without an instant’s hesitation, the rifle gripped for a downward swing. The machete grazed his head and chipped the skin from the bald spot.
Before Jiminez could strike again, the butt smote his thick skull and he staggered backward. Caught off his balance, his machete no longer dangerous, he was unable to avoid the next assault. Gorham moved a step nearer and deftly tapped his adversary with the rifle-butt. It was a knock-out blow delivered with the measured precision of a prize-ring artist. The machete dropped from the negro’s limp fingers and he toppled across two sacks of coal with a sighing grunt.
The crew of the Fearless broke into a cheer. The mate on duty in the wheel-house let the vessel steer herself and scrambled to the bridge, where he was clumsily dancing a jig. The Cubans chattered among themselves in subdued accents, and from the state-room door peered the wan countenance of Colonel Calvo, who was wringing his hands and sputtering commands to which nobody paid the slightest attention.
Jack Gorham stood swaying slightly, leaning upon his Springfield, and wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand. A moment later Captain O’Shea had both arms around him and was bellowing in his ear:
“We will hoist ye into a bunk, Jack. Oh, but you are the jewel of a fightin’ man! I hope ye were not hurt bad.”
“Nothing to speak of, sir, but my wind isn’t what it was,” panted Gorham. “Better look after the nigger first. I didn’t plan to kill him.”
The chief engineer was dragging the hose aft with the praiseworthy intention of washing down the combatants, and the captain told him to turn the cool salt-water on the prostrate bulk of the negro.
“I’ll play nurse to him if you haven’t spoiled him entirely,” said Johnny Kent. “I need more help down below and he’ll make a dandy hand with a coal-shovel when his head is mended.”
Just then the mate, who had returned to the wheel, yelled to Captain O’Shea and jerked the whistle-cord. The skipper ran forward and bolted into the wheel-house. With a flourish of his arm the mate indicated a small boat lifting and falling on the azure swells no more than a few hundred yards beyond the bow of the tug. The occupants were vigorously signalling by means of upraised oars and articles of clothing.
The captain rang the engine-room bell to slacken speed and stared at the boat-load of castaways which had none of the ear-marks of shipwreck and suffering. The white paint of the boat was unmarred by the sea and the handsome brass fittings were bright. Two seamen in white clothes were at the oars, and in the stern-sheets were two women and a young man who could not be mistaken for the ordinary voyagers of a trading-vessel’s cabin.
“I ought to have called you sooner, sir,” sheepishly confessed the mate of the Fearless, “but I was watching the shindy on deck, same as all hands of us. What do you make of it?”
“It looks like a pleasure party,” said Captain O’Shea. “I am puzzled for fair.”
He ordered the engines stopped and the Fearless drifted slowly toward the boat. The ship’s company flocked to the rail to see the castaways, who gazed in their turn at the picturesque throng of twentieth-century buccaneers—the swarthy, unshaven Cubans with their flapping straw hats, bright handkerchiefs knotted at the throat, their waists girded with cartridge-belts, holsters, and machete-scabbards—and the sunburnt, reckless rascals of the crew.
There were symptoms of consternation in the small boat as it danced nearer the crowded rail of the Fearless, also perceptibly less eagerness to be rescued. This was making a choice between the devil and the deep sea. It was now possible to discern that of the two women in the stern of the boat one was elderly and the other girlishly youthful. Both wore white shirt-waists and duck skirts, and the young man was smartly attired in a blue double-breasted coat, of a nautical cut, and flannel trousers. One might have supposed that the party was being set ashore from a yacht instead of tossing adrift in a lonely stretch of the Caribbean beyond sight of land.
Captain O’Shea surveyed them with a dismayed air. He was not equipped for the business of rescuing shipwrecked people of such fashionable appearance; and as for taking two women on board the Fearless, here was a complication to vex the soul of an industrious, single-minded filibuster. However, he was a sailor and an Irishman, and his honest heart responded to the appeal of femininity in distress. The steps were hung over the tug’s side to make the transfer from the boat as easy as possible, and a deck-hand stood ready with a coil of heaving-line. From the bridge Captain O’Shea hailed the derelicts.
“For the love of heaven, who are you and where do ye come from, so spick and span? What is it all about, anyhow?”
The young man in the stern answered in somewhat nettled tones:
“It seems more to the point to ask who you are. We are in a deucedly bad fix, and these ladies ought to be taken aboard; but do you mind if I ask whether you intend to make us walk the plank? My word, but you are a frightfully hard-looking lot. Is Captain Kidd with you?”
It was O’Shea’s turn to be ruffled, and he flung back:
“You seem mighty particular about your company. ’Tis a nuisance for me to bother with ye at all.”
“Oh, the ladies can’t drift about in this open boat any longer,” the young man hastened to exclaim. “I shall pay you handsomely to set us ashore at the nearest port.”
“And what would I be doing in the nearest port?” the skipper muttered with a grin. “Well, there is no sense in slingin’ words to and fro. Let them come aboard and find out for themselves.”
Running to the rail to assist these unwelcome guests, he called to the self-possessed young man in the boat:
“How long have ye been adrift?”
“Since midnight. Our yacht ran on a reef and broke her back. Before daylight we lost sight of the other boats.”
Captain O’Shea said nothing more. His interest veered to the girl, who had been shielding her face from the blistering glare of sun and sea. Now, as she looked up at the tug which towered above the boat, the impressionable skipper perceived that her face was fair to see, and that she smiled at him with friendly confidence. Presently he was lending her a steadying hand as she clung to the swaying rail of the tug and found foothold on the steps over which the waves washed.
“You are a plucky one and no mistake!” exclaimed Captain O’Shea. “A man might think ye enjoyed it.”
“I do,” said she, shaking the water from her skirt as she gained the deck. “Now please get my aunt aboard as carefully as you can. She has a touch of rheumatism.”
Without mishap the elderly lady was assisted to accomplish the acrobatic feat of forsaking the bobbing boat, after which the young man and the sailors were allowed to shift for themselves. Leather hand-bags, steamer-rugs, and canned provisions were tossed to the deck and the boat was turned adrift, for there was no room to stow it on board. Immediately the Fearless forged ahead and picked up her course at full speed.
To an elderly spinster of refinement whose years had been spent in a sheltered, effete civilization, mostly bounded by Massachusetts, the deck of the Fearless was an environment shocking beyond words. The chief engineer had resumed his interrupted task of playing the hose on the senseless, half-naked bulk of black Jiminez. Jack Gorham, more or less ensanguined, was stretched upon a hatch, where the surgeon of the Cuban party had detained him to sponge and stitch his shoulder and bandage his head. Near by hovered the disreputable patriots, begrimed with coal-dust and bristling with deadly weapons.
The elderly lady stared with eyes opened very wide. Her lips moved, but made no sound, and her delicately wrinkled cheek grew pale. At length she managed to whisper to her niece that dread saying familiar to many generations of New England spinsters:
“Mercy! We shall all be murdered in our beds.”
Captain O’Shea joined them, to speak his earnest reassurances.
“You are as safe as if you were in Sunday-school, ladies. This bunch of patriots is perfectly harmless. There was an argument just before we sighted ye, and the best man won.”
“And what is this voyage of yours, captain?” asked the girl.
“Oh, we are just romancin’ around the high-seas. ’Tis nothing that would interest a lady.”
“Do you kill each other every day?”
“You mean the big nigger yonder?” and Captain O’Shea looked a trifle embarrassed. “No, his manners had to be corrected. But will you come for’ard, please, and make yourselves at home in my room? ’Tis yours as long as ye are on board.”
“I am quite sure you have no intention of murdering us,” smilingly quoth the girl. “And we shall ask you no more questions for the present. Come along, Aunt Katharine.”
The young man of the castaways was fidgeting rather sulkily in the background. He wished to interview the captain at once, but the gallant O’Shea had eyes only for the ladies. Overlooked and apparently forgotten, the shipwrecked young man picked his way across the deck to accost Johnny Kent, whose first-aid-to-the-injured treatment with a hose-nozzle had proved efficacious. The vanquished negro was rubbing his head and sputtering salt-water and Spanish.
“There, you’re what I call recussitated in bang-up good style,” cried the engineer, proud of his handiwork. “If you were a white man, your block ’ud have been knocked clean off. You ought to be thankful for your mercies.”
The castaway touched his arm and exclaimed:
“I say, my good man, I need something to eat, and a place to sleep. I was awake all night in an open boat.”
The stout person in the greasy overalls turned to survey the speaker with mild amusement on his broad, red face.
“By the look of your party you must have suffered something awful. The skipper will attend to you pretty soon and he’ll do his best to make you happy. But this ain’t no gold-plated yacht, and it ain’t no table dote hotel.”
“So I see, but I’ll pay for the best on board. Really, money is no object——”
Johnny Kent chuckled and turned to wave the nozzle at the negro, who was sitting up.
“You subside, Jiminez, or I’ll dent this over your head. It ain’t healthy for you to get well too darned fast.”
He scrutinized the castaway with a tolerant, fatherly air and answered him:
“Better stow that you-be-damned manner of yours, young man. We’re outlaws, liable to be blown out of water any blessed minute. Those tarriers for’ard had just as soon throw you overboard as not if they don’t like your style. You ain’t a shipwrecked hero. You’re an unavoidable nuisance aboard this hooker. We’ve got other fish to fry.”
The young man flushed angrily. He was pleasant-featured, fair-haired, of athletic build, his accent suggesting that he had imported it from England. He was conscious of his own importance in the world whose idols were money and social position. Grizzled old Johnny Kent, who had diced with fortune and looked death between the eyes on many seas, knew only one distinction between men. They were “good stuff” or they were “quitters.” As for money, to have a dollar in one’s pocket after a week ashore argued a prudence both stingy and unmanly. Wherefore he wholly failed to grasp the view-point of the young man who had been wrecked in a sea-going yacht.
Fortunately Captain O’Shea came back to divert the chief engineer’s outspoken opinions. He called the castaway aside to say:
“Come to the galley with me and the cook will do his best for ye. I will sit down there and hear your yarn. If you want some clothes, maybe I can fit you out. My men are looking after your sailors.”
“This is a filibustering expedition, I take it,” exclaimed the other as they went forward.
“I do not admit it,” judicially replied Captain O’Shea. “I will not turn state’s evidence against meself.”
When they had perched themselves upon stools at the galley table the young man handed the skipper his card, which read:
“Mr. Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen.”
The recipient eyed the card critically and commented:
“Dutch? I had a Dutchman as bos’n once and, saving your presence, he was an oakum-headed loafer. Now, how did ye come to be in these waters and whose yacht was it?”
Young Mr. Van Steen proceeded to explain.
“She was the Morning Star, owned by my father, the New York banker—the old house of Van Steen & Van Steen. You have heard of it, of course. He decided to take a winter holiday-trip and asked me to go along—that is to say, Miss Forbes and me. She is my fiancée——”
“You mean the young one. And she has signed on to marry you?” broke in Captain O’Shea with marked interest.
“Yes. She invited her aunt, Miss Hollister, to make the voyage as a sort of chaperon. We cruised to Barbadoes, where my father was called home on business and took a mail-steamer in a hurry. We jogged along in the Morning Star until her captain lost his bearings, or something of the kind, and you know the rest. We were ordered into a boat, but while waiting for an officer and more sailors a rain-squall came along—a nasty blow it was—and our boat broke loose, and we couldn’t get back to the yacht. The wind was dead against us.”
“The other boats will be picked up,” observed O’Shea. “You were lucky to have such an easy time of it. Now comes the rub. What am I going to do with ye?”
“Chuck up your voyage,” cheerfully answered Mr. Van Steen. “We simply can’t go knocking about with you and risking the ladies’ lives. And think of the hardships. My dear man, this tug is no place for a gentlewoman.”
“It is not,” agreed O’Shea, “nor was it meant to be. ’Tis not ladies’ work I have on hand. I have promised to deliver my cargo at a certain place at a certain time, and there are men waitin’ that need it bad. Shall I break me word to them?”
Van Steen made an impatient gesture. He was used to dealing with men who had their price.
“But you are in this business for money,” cried he. “And I fancy you must have been pretty hard up to take such a job and run all these risks. Name your figure. I can understand the situation. Rescuing us is deucedly awkward for you. You don’t know what to do with us. How much do you stand to make on the voyage, and what is the cargo worth?”
Captain Michael O’Shea leaned across the table and his fist was clenched. He did not strike, but the wrath that blazed in his eyes caused Van Steen to draw back. The sailor was not much older in years than the other man, but he had battered his way, not merely sauntered through life, and virile experiences had so strongly stamped his features that Van Steen looked effeminate beside him. It was a masterful man that held himself steady under the provocation and replied to the insulting proposition slowly and carefully, as though choosing his words:
“You heard me say I had given me word to land this cargo as soon as ever I could, Mr. Van Steen. And on top of that ye try to buy me to leave good men in the lurch and break my word when this stuff of mine means life or death to them. All the money your daddy has in his bank could not make me put this ship one point off her course to set you ashore until I am good and ready. Do I make meself clear? You and your dirty money! This isn’t New York.”
Van Steen was honestly amazed. This lowering, flinty-faced young skipper must be crazy. Professional filibusters were a kind of criminal recruited from the roughest classes. They could have no morals, no manners, none of the sentiments of a gentleman. He ventured a final attempt and said with a nervous laugh:
“But what if I offer to buy the vessel outright, cargo and all, and absolutely protect you personally against any loss whatever?”
“I do not like your company,” abruptly exclaimed O’Shea. “Ye fill me with sorrow for the rich. I cannot be rid of you, but we will not be on good terms.”
His sense of humor saved the situation, and he concluded with one of his sunny, mischievous smiles:
“’Tis terrible inconvenient for both of us. Here we are, aboard a kind of a Flying Dutchman that must go dancin’ and dodgin’ about the high seas with every man’s hand against her. And you are no more anxious to quit me than I am to see the last of you.”
“But—but—it is absolutely impossible,” stammered Van Steen. “Think of the ladies——”
“They have my room, and the bit of an upper deck will be sacred to them.”
O’Shea stepped to the galley door, but Van Steen detained him with a question.
“What about me? Can I negotiate for a state-room?”
“Yes, indeed; it is on the overhang with two sacks of coal for a mattress, and ye should be thankful ’tis soft coal and not anthracite. Ye may find the suite a trifle crowded, but by kicking a few patriots in the ribs you can make room for yourself.”