It came on the Monday following and my cargo was shipped. There was a platform put up on the Plaza, and I heard Flannagan making a speech there, in which the feeling was eloquent, and the languages as they came along. The tin-type man, under the platform, was taking tin-types to make a man remember how he was depraved. David's spots were running with the heat, but he scratched them and made no trouble. The Japanese sat on their heels and smiled.
“For a thousand years,” says Flannagan, “by the imerald seas of the Orient, have the ancesthors of me frinds on me right developed the soopleness of limb an' the art that is becalled by the Mahatmas an' thim Boodhists 'the art of the symbolical attichude,' as discovered and practised in the Injian Ocean's coral isles, which by the same they do expriss their feelin's till ye get a mysthical pain in your stomick wid lookin' at 'em. 'Twas so done,” he says, “by the imerald seas of the Orient.”
That evening they came secretly aboard, Flannagan and the Company, and with them Bill and Madame Bill. We weighed anchor the next morning, and got away. The Bill family became an addition and a credit to the Flannagan and Imperial, as it turned out.
CHAPTER XIII. — FLANNAGAN AND STEVEY TODD—CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM RETURNS TO GREENOUGH—THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
The Flannagan and Imperial was the last cargo I carried, but I carried it near five years. It was what you might call a continuous cargo; the Annalee was in partnership with it; that is, Flannagan and I went into partnership together. Madame Bill's influence appeared to act expansive on Flannagan's ideas, and they expanded the Company. She was an uncommon woman, with a pushing mind, and exhibited as “The Princess Popocatapetl, Lineal Descendant of Montezuma and Queen of the Caribbeans.” Flannagan engaged Bill to exhibit as “The Fat Boy,” and he was very successful in this way, weighing two hundred, and in height four feet eight inches, though thirty to forty years old. His face was round and smooth as an apple, and he wore a little jacket and sailor hat, and carried a piece of gingerbread in general, when on exhibition; and in that way he looked as young as might be needed, and satisfactory to every one. Flannagan used to rent the advertising space on Bill's legs, for “Infants' Foods” and “Patent Medicines for Dyspepsia,” which was popular and profitable. But I was saying Madame Bill was a handsome woman, and valuable, and Flannagan himself hadn't a better eye for giving the public sensations. She expanded his ideas. Yet Flannagan had a knack. He was grand at speech-making, and sudden and spectacular by nature.
He shipped with me then from Rosalia to the different ports I was billed for that voyage, picking up more additions to the Company, till it was a large company. I was free to admit he made good profits out of the seaport cities between South America and Charleston; so at Charleston, when he offered me a partnership, I felt agreeable, and took it, on this agreement; I to put in the use and management of the Annalee, and he to put in “The Flannagan and Imperial;” I to run the ship and he to run the show. The profits should be divided half-yearly, after paying expenses of ship and show.
We ran under this agreement several years, and exhibited all the way from Boston to Rio, according to the season, and sometimes went inland up navigable rivers, such as to Albany and Philadelphia. We summered northward and wintered southward, and did better than most shows on transportation expenses, besides having an open season through the year. Prosperity kept us together until after Bill died, which came from his being too ambitious, and proud of his line in the profession, and having his heart set on two hundred and fifty pounds. Stevey Todd, here, he got too interested in helping Bill along in his career, and fattening him up to a high standard. But Bill's digestion was never good. He died rather young.
Stevey Todd has cooked for me so long, that it's got to the point that other victuals than Stevey Todd's seem unfriendly strangers, likely to be hostile. I claim that, as a cook, Stevey's a bold and skilful one, and enterprising. But outside the galley he's a backward man and caution's his motto, and in argument he's, as you might say, a gradual man. His nature, as differing there from Flannagan's, might be seen in this way. For when Bill was dead, Flannagan and Stevey Todd each wanted to marry Madame Bill, and their notions of it were as different as sharks are different from mud-turtles, Flannagan's notion mainly resembling a shark's, as follows. He says: