“You make me tired,” retorted his superior. “If he gets ashore in one piece, and isn’t lynched in the next ten minutes, he’ll do yet. The owners have a longer memory than the public, they’ll stand by him; they don’t find as smart a captain every day in the year.”
“O, he’s a son of a gun of a fine captain; there ain’t no doubt of that,” concurred the other heartily. “Why, I don’t suppose there’s been no wages paid aboard that Gleaner for three trips.”
“No wages?” I exclaimed, for I was still a novice in maritime affairs.
“Not to sailor-men before the mast,” agreed the mate. “Men cleared out; wasn’t the soft job they maybe took it for. She isn’t the first ship that never paid wages.”
I could not but observe that our pace was progressively relaxing; and, indeed, I have often wondered since whether the hurry of the start were not intended for the gallery alone. Certain it is, at least, that when we had reached the police office, and the mates had made their deposition, and told their horrid tale of five men murdered—some with savage passion, some with cold brutality—between Sandy Hook and San Francisco, the police were despatched in time to be too late. Before we arrived the ruffian had slipped out upon the dock, and mingled with the crowd, and found a refuge in the house of an acquaintance; and the ship was only tenanted by his late victims. Well for him that he had been thus speedy; for when word began to go abroad among the shore-side characters, when the last victim was carried by to the hospital, when those who had escaped (as by miracle) from that floating shambles began to circulate and show their wounds in the crowd, it was strange to witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured to brutality,—and above all, brutality to sailors—shook their fists at heaven. If hands could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner, his shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was headed up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay. In two ships already he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet, by last accounts, he now commands another on the Western Ocean.
As I have said, I was never quite certain whether Mr. Nares (the mate) did not intend that his superior should escape. It would have been like his preference of loyalty to law; it would have been like his prejudice, which was all in favour of the after-guard. But it must remain a matter of conjecture only. Well as I came to know him in the sequel, he was never communicative on that point—nor, indeed, on any that concerned the voyage of the Gleaner. Doubtless he had some reason for his reticence. Even during our walk to the police office he debated several times with Johnson, the third officer, whether he ought not to give up himself, as well as to denounce the captain. He had decided in the negative, arguing that “it would probably come to nothing; and even if there was a stink, he had plenty good friends in San Francisco.” And to nothing it came; though it must have very nearly come to something, for Mr. Nares disappeared immediately from view, and was scarce less closely hidden than his captain.
Johnson, on the other hand, I often met. I could never learn this man’s country; and though he himself claimed to be American, neither his English nor his education warranted the claim. In all likelihood he was of Scandinavian birth and blood, long pickled in the forecastles of English and American ships. It is possible that, like so many of his race in similar positions, he had already lost his native tongue. In mind, at least, he was quite denationalised; thought only in English—to call it so; and though by nature one of the mildest, kindest, and most feebly playful of mankind, he had been so long accustomed to the cruelty of sea discipline that his stories (told perhaps with a giggle) would sometimes turn me chill. In appearance he was tall, light of weight, bold and high-bred of feature, dusky-haired, and with a face of a clean even brown—the ornament of outdoor men. Seated in a chair, you might have passed him off for a baronet or a military officer; but let him rise, and it was Fo’c’s’le Jack that came rolling toward you, crab-like; let him but open his lips, and it was Fo’c’s’le Jack that piped and drawled his ungrammatical gibberish. He had sailed (among other places) much among the islands; and after a Cape Horn passage with its snow-squalls and its frozen sheets, he announced his intention of “taking a turn among them Kanakas.” I thought I should have lost him soon; but, according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had first to dissipate his wages. “Guess I’ll have to paint this town red,” was his hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder course of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little parlour behind Black Tom’s public-house, with a select corps of old particular acquaintances, all from the South Seas, and all patrons of a long yarn, a short pipe, and glasses round.
Black Tom’s, to the front, presented the appearance of a fourth-rate saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, dirt, negrohead tobacco, bad cigars, worse gin, and guitars and banjos in a state of decline. The proprietor, a powerful coloured man, was at once a publican, a ward politician, leader of some brigade of “lambs” or “smashers,” at the wind of whose clubs the party bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, and (what hurt nothing) an active and reliable crimp. His front quarters, then, were noisy, disreputable, and not even safe. I have seen worse-frequented saloons where there were fewer scandals; for Tom was often drunk himself: and there is no doubt the Lambs must have been a useful body, or the place would have been closed. I remember one day, not long before an election, seeing a blind man, very well dressed, led up to the counter and remain a long while in consultation with the negro. The pair looked so ill-assorted, and the awe with which the drinkers fell back and left them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so unusual in such a place, that I turned to my next neighbour with a question. He told me the blind man was a distinguished party boss, called by some the King of San Francisco, but perhaps better known by his picturesque Chinese nickname of the Blind White Devil. “The Lambs must be wanted pretty bad, I guess,” my informant added. I have here a sketch of the Blind White Devil leaning on the counter; on the next page, and taken the same hour, a jotting of Black Tom threatening a whole crowd of customers with a long Smith and Wesson—to such heights and depths we rose and fell in the front parts of the saloon!
Meanwhile, away in the back quarters, sat the small informal South Sea Club, talking of another world, and surely of a different century. Old schooner captains they were, old South Sea traders, cooks, and mates; fine creatures, softened by residence among a softer race: full men besides, though not by reading, but by strange experience; and for days together I could hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had, indeed, some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, when not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist. Even through Johnson’s inarticulate speech, his “O yes, there ain’t no harm in them Kanakas,” or “O yes, that’s a son of a gun of a fine island, mountainous right down; I didn’t never ought to have left that island,” there pierced a certain gusto of appreciation; and some of the rest were master-talkers. From their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image of the islands and the island life; precipitous shores, spired mountain-tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an imperial brightness; man moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman lovelier than Eve; the primal curse abrogated, the bed made ready for the stranger, life set to perpetual music, and the guest welcomed, the boat urged, and the long night beguiled with poetry and choral song. A man must have been an unsuccessful artist; he must have starved on the streets of Paris; he must have been yoked to a commercial force like Pinkerton, before he can conceive the longings that at times assailed me. The draughty, rowdy city of San Francisco, the bustling office where my friend Jim paced like a caged lion daily between ten and four, even (at times) the retrospect of Paris, faded in comparison. Many a man less tempted would have thrown up all to realise his visions; but I was by nature unadventurous and uninitiative; to divert me from all former paths and send me cruising through the isles of paradise, some force external to myself must be exerted; Destiny herself must use the fitting wedge; and, little as I deemed it, that tool was already in her hand of brass.
I sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy, silvered saloon, a free lunch at my one elbow, at the other a “conscientious nude” from the brush of local talent; when, with the tramp of feet and a sudden buzz of voices, the swing-doors were flung broadly open, and the place carried as by storm. The crowd which thus entered (mostly seafaring men, and all prodigiously excited) contained a sort of kernel or general centre of interest, which the rest merely surrounded and advertised, as children in the Old World surround and escort the Punch-and-Judy man; the word went round the bar like wildfire that these were Captain Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying Scud, picked up by a British war-ship on Midway Island, arrived that morning in San Francisco Bay, and now fresh from making the necessary declarations. Presently I had a good sight of them; four brown, seamanlike fellows, standing by the counter, glass in hand, the centre of a score of questioners. One was a Kanaka—the cook, I was informed; one carried a cage with a canary, which occasionally trilled into thin song; one had his left arm in a sling, and looked gentlemanlike and somewhat sickly, as though the injury had been severe and he was scarce recovered; and the captain himself—a red-faced, blue-eyed, thick-set man of five-and-forty—wore a bandage on his right hand. The incident struck me; I was struck particularly to see captain, cook, and foremast hands walking the street and visiting saloons in company; and, as when anything impressed me, I got my sketch-book out, and began to steal a sketch of the four castaways. The crowd, sympathising with my design, made a clear lane across the room; and I was thus enabled, all unobserved myself, to observe with a still growing closeness the face and the demeanour of Captain Trent.