The Mate of the "Sea-Horse"
He stalked in behind the captain of the Caliban to the desk in the consul's office at Key West, where the clerk signed on the men. His six feet three inches of solid frame almost filled the doorway as he entered, and he scowled sourly at the group already there. His black face was lined and wrinkled and bore traces of a debauch, but in spite of his sinister expression his eyes told of a good-natured steadiness of temper. The bloodshot whites and heavy lids told plainly that he was a diver, and his peculiar accent, giant frame and general muscular development proclaimed him a Fortune Islander, a Conch of the Great Bahama Bank.
"Nationality?" droned the clerk, in a dull monotone, as he came forward.
"American," he answered, distinctly.
The captain looked at him.
"Where from?" droned the clerk, filling in the blank.
"Jacksonville," he answered, in a deep tone, fixing his eyes upon the man's face.
The clerk smiled a little, but said nothing. It was not his business to argue, and he knew the weakness of the reefer. He had signed the giant on to more than six different vessels within the past two years and each time he had solemnly sworn he was a native of a different country from the last one named. He had now become a citizen of the United States, having reserved this honor for the seventh and last time to sign.
The age of the giant fluctuated. Once he had had an indistinct remembrance of being about twenty-five; now he had leaped suddenly to forty. Something had evidently made him feel aged, and the clerk was amused, for he felt that it must indeed have been a heavy debauch to produce such an effect.
The Islander, or rather the American now, glanced uneasily at the ship's papers. He was signing on for a cruise in a yacht, and the United States articles with their red spread-eagle upon their edges attracted his attention. He could not read the announcement of the government "whack," or ration, as prescribed by law, and he had heretofore signed without looking. Now the papers interested him, and he bade the clerk read them. His voice was low and gentle, but it had nothing except command in each word, and this annoyed the clerk. He read slowly and with bad grace, looking up now and then at the captain, who stood waiting for his man and giving a glance which told plainly that here was a pirate who would probably make no end of trouble aboard his ship. But men like the Conch were extremely rare and he would have him, so he waited impatiently while the clerk read and the rest listened, hearing probably for the first time in their lives the contents of a set of articles which they had always treated with the high disdain existent in all sailors. When the clerk finished, the giant took the pen in his fingers and scrawled "Bahama Bill" in large, wabbly letters to his place on the list as second mate for a voyage to some port north of New York, three months and discharge.