SUNDRY ADVENTURES
1
The night was starless, windless. The funnels of the John Dividend, a tramp steamer, lying in the yellow water off Woosung, were smearing the deck; the cinders crunched under the boots of the solitary forward watch. This was a white man who leaned over the railing, and reflected in the dull fashion of a bruised mind, that he would have to scrub down that deck at dawn. A live cinder dropped on the back of his neck. He brushed it away stolidly without haste. The action was that of one so accustomed to suffering that the finer sense was deadened to ordinary pangs. The tall attenuated figure was clad in loose and dirty garments of cotton. One of his reckless eyes a fist had rimmed with black. In some respects this was the most miserable man that ever swabbed the decks of the John Dividend.
He had been given a berth without undue questioning while the ship lay in Manila harbour; had spent eleven days and nights on board the tramp, learning what the deeper hell is like. He had been refused the privilege of going ashore at Woosung, had been abused by the captain and the crew, beaten by the second mate and bitten by the engineer's dog. Besides he had gotten onto McLean's books to the extent of twenty-five dollars.
McLean was the second engineer, a sober Scot who augmented his earnings by loaning money to the crew at interest. The murderous rate which he charged reinforced him somewhat against the big chances necessary in dealing with lawless, ship-jumping wanderers. Yet his losses were smaller than men believed. McLean had a sleepless gray eye—only one, but that sufficed—and a memory for faces and wrongs as remorseless as temporal things can be.
He never accounted a debt lost until he had seen the dead body of the debtor and found it barren. He was a profound believer in the smallness of the world and in the efficacy of time. He had money banked in all the Oriental seaport towns from Aden to Yokohama. He was a money-lender by nature. The sea was a means, not a labour of love. In a word it was wisdom to keep away from McLean; and if that were impossible, the next best thing was to pay what he had coming with interest in full, for he had a way of overturning cities and draining seas for his own.
The white man on watch had seen the more favoured members of the crew return from the port in song and sottishness. He thought of the lights of Shanghai up the river, beyond fourteen miles of foul marsh mist. His own various and recent miseries had often recurred. On this night that the John Dividend dropped anchor off the Shanghai port, they brought the white man a kind of madness. There was nothing in particular to watch. Overside, the sea and dark were one, though the ship was surrounded by Chinese junks. Some of the junks were manned by begging lepers, but the needy would have fared ill from the mercy of the John Dividend's crew.
As if moved by an involuntary impulse, the white man tumbled forward into the dark. The junks shot toward the splash, like a school of sharks after a chunk of pork. The nearest dragged in the prize, and the forward deck of the John Dividend was left without a watch. This was not exactly a loss, since the missing man as a sailor was equally worthless above and below, but there was a bad debt and a bad name left behind, consequently a memory. McLean held the memory and the missing man's note for five pounds.
Dawn was upon the water as the junk approached the city. From either bank came the shrill voices of the river-dwellers not unlike the waking sound of winged scavengers. Hoarse shouts were heard ahead. The American buried his face while the last drunken party of the John Dividend pulled past, headed for the ship. When the voices could be heard no more, the fugitive raised his head, shuddering. It was then that he noticed the other occupant of his own junk—a hairless female without hand, without teeth, with an empty socket in the place of one eye. She manipulated the oars by means of straps attached from her wrists to the handles. A child was in her lap, and the child was so far clean.
This was the creature who had helped him into the boat before light, who had touched him. When the junk bumped into the masonry of the city's front, he tossed a silver dollar into the leper's dress. She screamed for more as she would have done had the piece been a double-eagle. Fearful lest she should spring at him, the white man threw another coin into her lap and fled.