“First,” he said, when the nurse was out of earshot, “I’ll tell you what you must do for me. You’ll have to go out of your way to do it, but, unless I’m mistaken, you’ll find it worth your while. I want you to go to Nashville, Tennessee, and I want you to go at once. It’s a case for hurry. I can’t write now, and I daren’t telegraph. Maybe the men I want aren’t there, but you can find where they’re gone. Will you go?”
Elliott hesitated half a moment, wishing he knew what was coming next, but he promised—with a mental reservation.
“That’s all right, then,” said Bennett, “because I know you’re square,”—a remark which touched Elliott’s conscience. “It’s quite a tale that I want you to carry to them, and I’ll have to cut it as short as I can, and you’d better make notes as I go along, for every detail is important.
“I told you how I’d crossed the country from the Coast. I had come as straight as I could from South Africa. I wasn’t in any army there; that’s not in my line. It don’t matter what I was doing; I was just fishing around in the troubled waters.
“Anyway, I had a big deal on that was going to make or break me, and it broke me. I was in Lorenzo Marques then, and it was the most God-awful spot I ever struck. It was full of all the scum of the war, every sort of ruffians and beats, Portuguese and Dutch and Boers and British deserters, and gamblers and mule-drivers from America, all rowing and knifing each other, and it was blazing hot and they had fever there, too.
“I’ve seen a good many wicked places, but I never went against anything like that, and I wanted to get back to America. The American consul wouldn’t do anything for me at all, but I saw an American steamer out in the river,—the Clara McClay of Philadelphia,—loading for the East Coast and then Antwerp. She was the rottenest sort of tramp, but she caught my eye because she was the only American ship I ever saw in those waters. So I went aboard and asked the mate to sign me on as a deck-hand to Antwerp, and he just kicked me over the side.
“Anyway, I was determined to go on that ship, mate or no mate, for there wasn’t anything else going my way, and I expected to die of fever if I waited. So I went aboard again the night before she sailed, and they were getting in cargo by lantern light, and there was such a stir on the decks that nobody paid any attention to me. I got below, and dropped through the hatch into the forehold. They had pretty nearly finished loading by that time, and pretty soon they put the hatches on. It was as dark as Egypt then, and hotter than Henry, with an awful smell, but after awhile I went to sleep, and when I woke up she was at sea, and rolling heavily.
“When I thought she must be good and clear of land, I started to go up and report myself, but when I’d stumbled around in the dark for awhile, I found that the bales and crates were piled up so that I couldn’t get near the hatch. So I sat down and thought it over. I had a quart bottle of water with me, but nothing to eat, and I began to be horribly hungry.
“When I’d been there ten or twelve hours, I guess, I tried moving some of the crates to get to the hatchway, but they were too heavy. But while I was lighting matches to see where I was, I saw a lot of cases just alike, and all marked with the stencil of a Chicago brand of corned beef, and it looked like home. I thought it must be a providential interposition, for I was pretty near starving, and it struck me that I might rip one of the boards off, get out a can or two, and nail the case up again.
“The cases were big and heavy, and they were all screwed up and banded with sheet iron, but I had regularly got it into my head that I was going to get into one of them, and at last I did burst a hole. When I stuck my hand in, it nearly broke my heart. There wasn’t anything there at all, so far as I could make out, but a lot of dry grass.