Down among men

by Will Levington Comfort

He was in pain; there was lameness in his mind at being driven again. He wished Noyes would go home.... Messengers were back and forth to the Sickles trying to get Nevin. Transportation to New York was the newspaper’s affair; when it was handed him, something went from Morning that he could not get again. There was much to drink. Noyes had put all this from him so long that he found the novelty humorous—and yet, what a bore it was after all! Field was a steaming geyser of enthusiasms. Both talked. Others talked. Morning was sick with words. He had not had words drummed into his brain in so long. He half-realized that his impatience for all these things was disgust at himself, but all his past years, and their one-pointed aim held him now. This was his great chance.... He wanted Nevin.

These city men gave him everything, and disappointed him. Had he been forced to battle with them for markets; had he been forced to accept the simple column rate, he could not have seen them as now. Because they had become his servants, he touched their weakness. And what giants he had known—Fallows and Nevin—and Endicott, the little Englishman at Tongu.... You must answer a man’s need when that need is desperate—to make a heart-hold. A man makes his friends before his world capitulates.

He was waiting in the bar of the Polander.... Nevin had not been found. Morning was clothed, expensed; his order upon New York for the price of the story would not be touched until he reached there. He had won already; he had the world by the tail.... Nevin did not come. There was no bite in the drink for Morning. He was in pain; others made a night of it. He struggled in the pits of self, that sleepless, never-forgetting self. There was a calling, a calling deep within, but the outer noise spoiled the meaning. Men drank with single aim; they drank like Russian officers—to get drunk. They were drunk; all was rich and free. Noyes knew many whom he saw every day, and many whom he had seen long ago. He called them forward to meet Morning, who had brought in the story.... Morning who knew Duke Fallows—Morning who had the big story of the year, beginning to-morrow.... And always when they passed, Noyes remarked that the down-town stuff was silly as the devil. White and clerical, his oaths were effective. He drank hard and well as men go. Field drank well—his impulses becoming more gusty, but not evil.... Once Morning would have called this a night of triumph. Every one looked at him—talked respectfully—whispered, pointed.... Twenty minutes left—the crowd grew denser in the Polander bar. There was a voice in the arch to the hotel. Ferry entered in the midst of men. He was talking high, his eyes dancing madly.

“Why, the son of ... threw me—that’s all. He’s done with the Sickles.... Who? Why, Nevin, the squint-eyed son of a.... He threw me.... I thought this Morning was some drunken remittance man wanting passage. Reever Kennard said he was a thief.... Nevin might have come to me.... Why, Morning didn’t even pay his commutation for rations——”

“I would have mailed it to you, Ferry—except for this meeting,” said Morning, his voice raised a little to carry.

An important moment to him, and one of the strangest of his life. This was the man whom he had dreamed of murdering, the man who had made him suffer as only the gods should make men suffer. And yet Ferry was like an unpleasant child; and Morning, troubled by greater things, had no hate now, no time nor inclination to hate. The face that had seemed dark and pitiless on the deck in Nagasaki harbor—was only weak and undone—an unpleasant child crying, refusing to be quieted—an annoyance to the house. Such was the devil of the Sickles, the man who had stood between him and America, the man who had tried to make him miss beating the Coptic mails.... They faced each other, the quartermaster, wincing and shrunken.

“I had to get across, Ferry. I was too sick to make you see. Kennard always says that. He seems to know that best—but it isn’t true.... I was bad to look at. You see, I had come a long way. I was off my head and eyes——”

“I didn’t know,” Ferry blurted, “and now Nevin has thrown me. I wasn’t supposed to take civilians——”

“I know it—only I had to get across.... I don’t know what I’d have done but for Nevin. He was mother and father on the voyage. I can give you the commutation now——”

“You were a stowaway——”