Kieran shot a side glance at the passenger. "H-m-m—a good thing he didn't know it if he was. He was irresponsible enough without having that excuse. If he thought then that it was poetry in him which kept him hopping about the world, he'd have been no good at all. He did enough dreaming [pg 287] as it was. It was probably only the discipline of a warship, of having to do a daily stint, that kept him from loafing all his time away, for, as maybe I've said, a power used to take hold of him at times and swing him. An idea would come to him and he'd follow it like a guide to heaven.
"He wondered what had become of her, and one day, being now free of the navy, he took a bald-headed schooner out of Portland, Oregon, with a load of lumber for Callao. Between watches he studied a Spanish-Without-A-Master for one dollar. The lumber schooner never reached Callao, but she did make one of those volcanic islands to the south side of the harbor—piled up there and began to fill, which forced the crew to leave in a hurry and row into Callao harbor in their quarter-boat. From Callao the crew took a trolley to Lima to see the American consul. In Lima they became scattered, and Cogan and an old fellow named Tommie Jones found themselves together. Cogan had met Tommie in a restaurant in Portland at about the time Tommie was taking notice of a tall, well-nourished, red-headed lass waiting on table there. Tommie was a hearty lad of fifty-four or so, and Cogan had helped the little romance along, and because of his interest in the case was how Cogan and Tommie came to ship together. Well, here was Tommie adrift in Lima after five weeks to sea, [pg 288] and in all that time he hadn't had a drink, and he wanted one now. He had no money, but Cogan had a half-dollar, and American silver is good money in Peru; so Cogan bought Tommie three drinks of some kind of Spanish wine and himself one lemonade for the half-dollar.
"It couldn't have been the wine—he hadn't had enough of that. Maybe it was the reaction from the excitement of the wreck that made Tommie sleepy. He wanted to turn in, and it being now night-time they went into a park where a fine band was playing. It was a beautiful night, with a moon; and under the moon, while the music rolled out, dark-eyed señoritas with their mothers strolled up and down, and the young fellows hung around and got in a word when they could. On the edges the police kept an eye on the loafers.
"The night breeze which made the trees almost talk, the water of the fountain arching under the colored lights, the scent of the flowering bushes—Tommie and Cogan after their five weeks at sea just sat there till long after the music had stopped and everybody gone home. Then Tommie fell asleep, full length under a tree. Cogan tried to stand watch but he was tired, too, and after a while, with his back against the same tree, and the water-play of the fountain still tinkling in his ears, he fell asleep alongside Tommie.
[pg 289]
"Cogan had a dream of somebody trying to pull his leg off and it woke him. He looked down and saw that the lace of one of his shoes was untied. He retied it and looked at his chum. He was still asleep, snoring, but there was something missing. In half a minute, his brain clearing, he saw that Tommie's shoes were gone, and also his hat, and his pockets turned inside out. Cogan then noticed that his own trousers pockets were turned inside out. He stood up and caught sight of two fellows just dropping over the tall iron fence surrounding the park. The gates of the park were closed, and locked, too, or so Cogan guessed, and wasted no time in trying them. The fence was pretty high and had iron spikes on top, and he felt somewhat stiff in his joints, but a hot temper is good as a bath and a rub-down any time—Cogan vaulted the fence, and the two natives just then turned and saw him. He was coming on pretty fast and they threw up their hands, dropped the shoes and hat, and went tearing away. Cogan had only to stoop down and pick up the stuff, but it wasn't property he was after. To steal the shoes off of a shipwrecked sailor! Even if they weren't told he was shipwrecked, they ought to have guessed, or so he thought, and he held on after them, and Cogan could run pretty well in those days. But so could one of those fellows. Cogan could soon have [pg 290] caught the slow one, but he kept always after the fast fellow and was feeling sure of his man when he took to turning corners. They had come to a part of the city where the streets were narrow and the blocks short. It seemed to Cogan there was a corner every twenty feet, and it was up hill. His man turned one corner and four seconds later Cogan turned it, and, his man not being in sight, Cogan kept on and turned the next corner. Another twenty yards and he ran up against a high wall. 'Wow,' says Cogan, but with a running high jump, he got his fingers on top of the wall and hauled himself up. There was nobody in sight on the other side. 'Trimmed!' says Cogan, and, sitting on the wall, began to fan himself.
"It was bright light now and the city beginning to come awake. People came out and took down the shutters of shops. Indian women went by with loaded baskets of fruit, and other people drove little burros in carts filled with eggs, chickens, and green stuff; and men and women, with fish to sell in big dishes on their heads, came sliding by, and all yelled loud enough to wake a watch below. Girls with baskets of flowers went by, and one, looking up, spied Cogan and stopped and held her basket up and made a motion for him to buy. He turned his pockets inside out and threw his hands apart. That made her laugh, and she took a flower [pg 291] from the basket, touched her lips to it and threw it up to him. She was a pretty girl,—all the girls were pretty this morning,—but she was prettiest of all, and the flower was of a big blue kind which Cogan had never seen before. He blew a kiss after her and she went singing on her way. Cogan sang a little himself. He was beginning to feel pretty good.
"Boys came and gazed up at Cogan, and sometimes men, and some of them laughed, but mostly they paid no attention to him. He heard a bell tolling and he saw people below him filing toward a gate. They all carried tin cups. He looked further and saw that it was a monastery they were heading for, and that at the gate of the monastery two monks in brown habits were passing out bread and filling the tin cups with coffee. Cogan dropped over the wall, and when he saw that one man had finished with his tin cup he asked him for it. He knew Spanish enough for that. The man smiled and handed it over. Cogan went up to the grating and a monk filled his tin cup with coffee. Another handed him three slices of dark bread. Cogan thanked them, but the monks seemed not to hear. He thanked them again, at which one monk, looking up, set a finger to his lips and motioned him to step aside for the next.
"Cogan finished his breakfast, thanked the native [pg 292] for the loan of the cup, and started to look around. He first tried to find the park where he had left Tommie, but there were so many parks with trees and flowers and fountains in them! He crossed a bridge over a river that must have come tumbling all the way from the top of the Andes, it had such a head of speed on. He patrolled he did not know how many streets, and at last gave up hunting for Tommie, on whose account, anyway, he wasn't worrying, for he knew that Tommie, an experienced old sailor man, had by this time laid his course for the Consul's and been taken care of. He sat on a bench at the curbstone in front of a fruit store to think things over. It was a comfortable seat, except that every time a trolley passed he had to lift his feet high so he wouldn't be swept off his perch.