“This is the end of me commercially. I give up; my nerve has gone. I suppose I ought to be glad, for we’re through the court. I don’t know as ever I knew how, and I’m sure I don’t remember. If it pans out—the wreck, I mean—we’ll go to Europe and live on the interest of our money. No more work for me. I shake when people speak to me. I have gone on, hoping and hoping and working and working, and the lead has pinched right out. I want to lie on my back in a garden and read Shakespeare and E.P. Roe. Don’t suppose it’s cowardice, Loudon. I’m a sick man. Rest is what I must have. I’ve worked hard all my life; I never spared myself, every dollar I ever made I’ve coined my brains for it. I’ve never done a mean thing; I’ve lived respectable, and given to the poor. Who has a better right to a holiday than I have? And I mean to have a year of it straight out, and if I don’t I shall lie right down here in my tracks, and die of worry and brain trouble. Don’t mistake, that’s so. If there are any pickings at all, trust Speedy; don’t let the creditors get wind of what there is. I helped you when you were down, help me now. Don’t deceive yourself; you’ve got to help me right now or never. I am clerking, and not fit to cipher. Mamie’s typewriting at the Phoenix Guano Exchange, down town. The light is right out of my life. I know you’ll not like to do what I propose. Think only of this, that it’s life or death for
“Jim Pinkerton.”
“P.S.—Our figure was seven per cent. O, what a fall was there! Well, well, it’s past mending; I don’t want to whine. But, Loudon, I don’t want to live. No more ambition; all I ask is life. I have so much to make it sweet to me. I am clerking, and useless at that. I know I would have fired such a clerk inside of forty minutes in my time. But my time’s over. I can only cling on to you. Don’t fail
“Jim Pinkerton.”
There was yet one more postscript, yet one more outburst of self-pity and pathetic adjuration; and a doctor’s opinion, unpromising enough, was besides enclosed. I pass them both in silence. I think shame to have shown at so great length the half-baked virtues of my friend dissolving in the crucible of sickness and distress; and the effect upon my spirits can be judged already. I got to my feet when I had done, drew a deep breath, and stared hard at Honolulu. One moment the world seemed at an end, the next I was conscious of a rush of independent energy. On Jim I could rely no longer; I must now take hold myself. I must decide and act on my own better thoughts.
The word was easy to say; the thing, at the first blush, was undiscoverable. I was overwhelmed with miserable, womanish pity for my broken friend; his outcries grieved my spirit; I saw him then and now—then, so invincible; now, brought so low—and knew neither how to refuse nor how to consent to his proposal. The remembrance of my father, who had fallen in the same field unstained, the image of his monument incongruously raising a fear of the law, a chill air that seemed to blow upon my fancy from the doors of prisons, and the imaginary clank of fetters, recalled me to a different resolve. And then, again, the wails of my sick partner intervened. So I stood hesitating, and yet with a strong sense of capacity behind, sure, if I could but choose my path, that I should walk in it with resolution.
Then I remembered that I had a friend on board, and stepped to the companion.
“Gentlemen,” said I, “only a few moments more: but these, I regret to say, I must make more tedious still by removing your companion. It is indispensable that I should have a word or two with Captain Nares.”
Both the smugglers were afoot at once, protesting. The business, they declared, must be despatched at once; they had run risk enough, with a conscience, and they must either finish now, or go.
“The choice is yours, gentlemen,” said I, “and, I believe, the eagerness. I am not yet sure that I have anything in your way; even if I have, there are a hundred things to be considered; and I assure yow it is not at all my habit to do business with a pistol to my head.”