HIDDEN COUNTRY

by Henry Oyen

Author of “The Snow Burner,” “The Man Trail,” “Gaston Olaf,” etc.

I

George Chanler’s offer of a position as literary secretary of his Arctic expedition came to me one fine May morning when I was sitting at my desk, glooming from an eighteenth-story height down upon the East River, and dreading to begin the day’s work.

I had sat so for many mornings past. I was not happy; I was a failure. I was thirty years old, had a college education; my health was splendid and I was intelligent and ambitious. And I was precariously occupying a position as country correspondent in Hurst’s Mail Order Emporium, salary $25 a week, with every reason to believe that I had achieved the limits of such success as my capabilities entitled me to.

“You ain’t got no punch, Mr. Pitt; that’s the matter vit’ you,” was my employer’s verdict. “You’re a fine feller, but—oof! How you haf got into the rut!”

I had. I was in so deeply that I had lost confidence and was losing hope. That was why I, Gardner Pitt, bookman by instinct and office-cog by vocation, was ripe for Chanler’s sensational offer.

My friendship with Chanler, which had been a close one at school where I had done half his work for him, had of a necessity languished during the last few years. There is not much room for friendship between a poorly paid office man and an idle young millionaire. Yet it was apparent that George had not forgotten, for now he turned to me when he wanted some one to accompany him and write the history of his Arctic achievements.

His offer came in the form of a long telegram from Seattle where he was outfitting his new yacht, Wanderer. Being what he was George gave me absolutely no useful information concerning the nature of his expedition. In what most concerned me, however, his message was sufficient: a light task, a Summer vacation, and at generous terms.

I looked out of the window at the wearying roofs of the city, and the yellow paper crumpled in my fingers as I clenched my fist. There was none of the adventurer in me. I was not in the optimistic frame of mind necessary to an explorer. But Chanler’s offer was, at least, a chance to escape from New York. I bade Mr. Hurst good-by, and went out and sent a wire of acceptance.

Eight days later, shortly before noon, I stood on the curb outside the station in Seattle bargaining with a cabman to drive me to the dock where I had been directed to find a launch from the Wanderer awaiting me that morning. The particular cabman that I happened to hit upon was an honest man. He cheerfully admitted that he did not know the exact location of the dock mentioned in my directions, but he assured me that he knew in a general way in which section of the water-front it must be.

“And when we get down there I’ll step in and ask at Billy Taylor’s,” he said, as if that settled the matter. “Billy’ll know; he knows everything that’s going along the water-front.”

Billy Taylor’s proved to be a tiny waterfront saloon which my man entered with an alacrity that testified to a desire for something more than information concerning my dock. I waited in patience for many minutes with no sign of his return. I waited many more minutes in impatience with a like result.

In my broken-spirited condition I was not fit or inclined to reprimand a drinking cabman, but neither was I minded to sit idle while my man filled himself up. I stepped out of the cab and thrust open the swinging doors of the saloon.

I did not enter. My cabman was in the act of coming out, standing with one hand absently thrust out toward the doors, his attention arrested and held by something that was taking place in a small room at the rear of the saloon. The door of this room was half open. I saw a small, wiry man in seaman’s clothes leaning over a round table, shaking his fist at a large man with light cropped hair who sat opposite him. A bottle of beer, knocked over, was gurgling out its contents on the floor. The large man was sitting up very stiff and straight, but smiling easily at the other’s fury.

“No, you don’t, Foxy; no you don’t! You can’t come any of your ‘Captain’ business on me, you Laughing Devil,” screamed the little man. “Ah, ha! That stung, eh? Didn’t think I knew what the Aleuts called you, eh, Foxy? ‘Laughing Devil.’ An’ you talk like a captain to me, and ask me to go North with you! Here: what became of Slade and Harris, that let you into partnership with ’em after you’d lost your sealer in Omkutsk Strait? And what became of the gold strike they’d made? Eh? And you talk to me about a rich gold find you’ve got, and want me to help you take a rich sucker up North——”

“Still,” said the big man suddenly. “Still, Madigan.”

He had been smiling up till then, his huge, red face lighted up like a wrinkled red sun, but suddenly the light seemed to go out. The fat of his face seemed to become like cast bronze, with two pin-points of fire gleaming, balefully from under down-drawn lids. Several heavy lines which had been hidden in genial wrinkles now were apparent, and, though only the flat profile was visible to me, I saw, or rather I felt, that the man’s face for the while was terrible.

To my amazement the infuriated sea-man’s abuse ceased as abruptly as if the power of speech had been taken from him. He remained in his threatening attitude, leaning across the table, his clenched fist thrust forward, his mouth open; but his eyes were held by the crop-haired man’s and not a sound came from his lips.

“Down, Madigan,” continued the big man. “It is my wish that you sit down.”

A snarl came from the small man’s lips. He seemed about to break out again, but suddenly he subsided and sat down. The big man nodded stiffly, as one might at child who has obeyed an unpleasant command, and the smaller man humbly closed the door.

My cabman came hurtling out through the swinging doors, nearly running me down in his hurry.

“Hullo!” he cried. “Did you see that, too? Whee-yew! That was a funny thing. That little fellow’s Tad Madigan, a mate that’s lost his papers, and the toughest man along the water-front; and he—he shut up like a schoolboy, didn’t he?”

Saloon brawls, even when displaying amazing characters, do not interest me.

I reminded him that he had gone in to inquire about the location of my dock.

“Oh, that’s a good joke on me,” he laughed. “Your dock’s right next door here, and you can see the Wanderer from Billy’s back room.”

A few minutes later I was standing in the midst of my baggage on this dock, looking out across the water to where lay anchored the white, clean-lined yacht, Wanderer.

It was a morning in early June, a day alive with bright, warm sun. A slight breeze with a mingling of sea, and pine, and the subtle scents of Spring in it, was coming up the Sound, and beneath its breath the water was rippling into wavelets, each with a touch of sun on its tiny crest.

An outdoor man might have thrilled with the scene, the sun, the fresh Spring-scent and all. But I was fresh from the asphalt and stone walls of New York, and I was broken-spirited, resigned to anything, elated over nothing, that fate might allot me. I merely looked over the water to the Wanderer to see if the promised launch was on its way.

“Sure enough, Mister, there comes a little gas-boat for you now,” exclaimed my cabman, pointing with his whip to a small launch that was coming away from the yacht’s stern. “You’ll be all right; your friends have seen you. Well, good luck to you, friend, and lots of it.”

“Thank you,” I said, “and the same to you.”

But I felt bitterly that there was little hope that his cheery wish would be realized for me.

As the launch drew nearer the dock I saw that a bareheaded and red-haired young man was in charge, and as it came quite near I saw that the young man’s mouth was opening and closing prodigiously, and from snatches of sound that drifted toward me above the noise of the engine, I heard that he was singing joyously at the top of a strained and thoroughly unmusical voice.

He drove the launch straight at the dock in a fashion that seemed to threaten inevitable collision, but at the crucial moment the engine suddenly was reversed, the rudder swung around, and the little craft came sidling alongside against the timber on which I was standing; the young man tossed a rope around a pile, and with a sudden spring he was on the dock beside me.

“You’re Mr. Gardner Pitt, if your baggage is marked right,” he said, though I had not seen the swift glance he had shot at the initials on my bags.

He stood on his tip-toes, blinking in the sun, and filled his lungs with a great draft of air.

“Gee! It’s some morning, ain’t it, Mr. Pitt? A-a-ah-ah!” he continued with ineffable satisfaction. “It certainly is one grand thing to be alive.”

I could not wholly subscribe to his sentiment at that time, but there was such an aura of wholesome good humor about the young man that I warmed toward him at once. He was probably twenty-three years old, short and boyish of build: his face was a mass of freckles; his eyes were very blue and merry; his nose very snubbed, his mouth large. He wore one of the most awful red ties that ever tortured the eyes of humanity, and the crime was aggravated by a pin containing a large yellow stone; but when he grinned it was apparent that he was one of those whom much is to be forgiven.

“I’m Freddy Pierce,” he said. “Wireless operator and odd-job-man on the Wanderer. Say, Mr. Pitt, will you do me a favor?”

He looked at me with an expression of indescribable comicality on his sun-wrinkled face, and, willy-nilly, I found myself smiling.

“Thank you for them kind words,” he laughed before I had opened my mouth. “Knew you’d do it; knew I had you sized up right. Let me roll a pill before we start back? Thanks.”

With amazing swiftness he had produced tobacco and paper, rolled a cigaret, and sent a ring of smoke rolling upward through the clear air.

“Mr. Pitt,” he said suddenly in a new tone, “do you know Captain Brack?”

“No,” I said. “Who is Captain Brack?”

“Captain of the Wanderer,” was the reply.

“I don’t know him.”

He threw away his cigaret and began easing my baggage down into the launch. He was serious for the moment.

“And—and say, Mr. Pitt, do you know a Jane—I mean, a lady named Miss Baldwin?”

I did not.

“Who is Miss Baldwin?”

Pierce suddenly snapped his teeth together, and the look that came upon his freckled countenance puzzled me for days to come.

“God knows—and the boss,” he said enigmatically. “She—she’s——”

He shook his head vigorously, then sprang into the launch. His serious moment had gone.

“Now get in while I’m holding ’er steady, Mr. Pitt. That’s right.” And now, putt-putt said the engine, and bearing its precious freight the launch sped across the blue water to the noble yacht. “Ah, ha! And there’s old ‘Frozen Face,’ the Boss’s valet, waiting to welcome you on board.”

II

I followed the direction of Pierce’s outstretched arm and on the deck of the Wanderer made out the stiff, precise figure of Chanler’s man, Simmons, waiting in exactly the same pose with which he admitted one to his master’s bachelor apartments in Central Park West. It was Simmons who welcomed me on board, and he did it ill, for it irked his serving-man’s soul to countenance his master’s friendship with persons of no wealth.

“Mr. Chanler is in his room, sir. You are to come there at once. This way, if you please, sir.”

He led the way in his stiffest manner to a stateroom in the forward part of the yacht and knocked diffidently on the door.

“Go away! Please go away!” came the petulant response.

“Mr. Pitt, sir,” said Simmons.

“Oh!” There was the sound of a desk being closed. “Show him in. Hello, Gardy! Glad to see you! I’m fairly dying for somebody to talk to!”

Chanler was sprawled gracefully over a chair before a writing-desk built into the forward wall of the stateroom. He was wearing a mauve dressing-gown of padded silk and smoking one of his phenomenally long cigarets in a phenomenally long amber holder. It had been long since I had seen him and he had changed deplorably; but so rapid and eager was his greeting that I had no time to note just where the change had come.

“You’re a good fellow to come, Gardy,” said he with a genuine note of gratitude in his tones. “I knew you’d help me, though. Simmons—bring a couple of green ones, please.”

“Not for me,” I hastened to interpose. “You know I never touch anything before dinner.”

“That’s so; I forgot. You’ve got yourself disciplined. Well, bring one green one, Simmons. I don’t usually do this sort of thing so early, either,” he continued as Simmons vanished, “but I sat up late with Captain Brack last night, and I’m a little off. Wonderful chap, the captain; head on him like a piece of steel. Well, Gardy, what do you think of the trip?”

“When you have told me something about it I may have an opinion,” I replied. “You know all the knowledge of it that I have was what came in your message.”

“That’s so. Well, what did you think when you got the wire? You must have thought something; you think about everything. What did you think when you heard that I was planning a stunt like this—something useful, you know? Eh?”

“Well, it was something of a shock,” I admitted.

Chanler smiled. But it was not the likable, indolent, boyish smile of old which admitted:

“Quite so. Came as a shock to hear that I was planning to be something besides a loafer spending the money my governor made. I knew it would. You never expected anything like this of me, Gardy?”

“No, I can’t say that I did.”

“Neither did I. Never dreamed of it until three months ago, and then—then I discovered that I had to do—come in, Simmons,” he interrupted himself as the valet knocked.

While he was swallowing his little drink of absinth I studied him more closely.

There had always been something of the young Greek god about George Chanler, an indolent, likable, self-satisfied young god with a long, elegant body and a small curl-wrapped head. Now I saw how he had changed. The fine body and head had grown flabby from too much self-indulgence and too little use. There was a new look about the lazy eyes which hinted at a worry, the sort of worry which troubles a man awake or sleeping. Something had happened to George Chanler, something that had shaken him out of the armor of indolent self-sufficiency which Chanler money had grown around him. The boyish lines about his mouth were gone. It was not a likable face now; it was cynical, almost brutal.

“That’s all, Simmons,” he said, allowing Simmons to take the empty glass from his hand. “What was I saying, Gardy, when I stopped?”

“That you discovered that you had to do——”

“Oh, yes.” He paused a while. “Didn’t you wonder why I was doing this sort of thing when you got my wire, Gardy?”

“Naturally, I did.”

“And you haven’t got any idea, or that sort of thing, about why I’m doing it?”

“You say that your purpose is to explore——”

“I mean, what started me on the trip?”

I shook my head.

“Haven’t you even got a good guess?”

“Well, it might be a bet, doctor’s orders, or just an ordinary whim.”

He shook his head, looking pensively out of the window, or at least, as near pensively as he could.

“No,” he said. “Nothing so easy as that. I’m doing it because of a——”

He caught himself sharply and looked at me.

“What did you think I was going to finish with, Gardy?”

“I had three guesses,” I replied. “I wouldn’t guess again.”

“I’m doing it,” he resumed slowly, “I’m doing it because—I had to do something useful, and this is the sort of thing I like to do.”

I smiled a little.

“What’s that for, Gardy?” he asked.

“I didn’t know you ever recognized the words ‘had to’ as applicable to yourself.”

“By jove! And I didn’t, Gardy; I never did in the world—until three months ago. But then something happened.”

He looked out of the window for a long time.

“No, I’m not going to tell you, Gardy. It’s none of your business. No offense, you know.”

“Of course not. I didn’t ask.”

“You’ll know without asking, in time. Well, I’ve told you I found I had to do something—something useful. That was quite a jolt, you know. Never fancied I’d ever have to do anything, and as for doing anything useful—rot, my boy, for me, you know. But I found I had to, and so when I met Brack—By the way, Brack’s the chap who’s responsible for my ‘doing something’ in this way. Wonderful fellow. Met him in San Francisco. Don’t mind admitting to you, old man, that I was traveling pretty fast.

“Went to San Francisco with an idea of going to China, or around the world, or something like that, to forget. Met him in the Palace barroom. Saved me. He’d just come back from the North, where he’d lost his sealing vessel. He said: ‘Why don’t you buy the Wanderer and do some exploring?’ ‘What’s the Wanderer,’ says I. ‘Strongest gasoline yacht in the world,’ he says. I began to pick up; life held interest, you know. Went to see the Wanderer. Belonged to old Harrison, the steel man, who’d done a world tour in her and wanted to sell. ‘Where’s a good place to explore if I do buy her?’ says I, and Brack told me about Petroff Sound. Ever hear of it before this, Gardy?”

“I’ve seen the name some place, nothing more.”

“I wired old Doc Harper about it after Brack had talked to me about the place. Asked if it would be a good stunt to go up there; credit to the old school to have a ‘grad’ get the bones, you know.”

“Bones?” I exclaimed.

“Bones,” said Chanler. “Read that,” and he handed me a long letter signed by the venerable president of our school.

The Petroff Sound territory unquestionably is a district which science demands be explored. Mikal Petroff, the Russian who in 1889 brought out the tibea of a mammoth, (elephas primigenius) and several bone fragments which certainly had belonged to an animal of characteristics similar to the extinct elephant species, was an illiterate fur-trader and therefore his report of a field of similar bones frozen in the never-thawing ice of the Sound must not be accepted as positive information.

In 1892, however, Sturlasson, the Norwegian captain, who reached the Sound after the wreck of his sealing vessel, made entries in his diary before dying which substantiate Petroff’s story. As the location of the Sound, as recorded by Sturlasson, is three minutes west of the location as given by your informant, it is certain that the latter knows of Petroff Sound. No nobler use could be found for your activity and wealth than the expedition you are considering. Before expressing myself further, I will give such data as is obtainable from sources at my command.

Dr. Harper’s data on Petroff Sound was deadly dry scientific matter which explained that while the possible discovery of frozen mammoth bones would be of great interest to the scientific world, the study of the terrain and of conditions surrounding these bones would be of infinitely greater value.

“Then it’s purely a scientific affair,” I said. “To be of any value it must be scientific.”

“Positively, dear boy, positively. I’ll give you a lot of stuff to read up on after luncheon. Old Harper took trouble to wire me to be sure to have an authentic, coherent report made of the expedition’s findings. Well, that’s where you came in. I haven’t got brains, but you have, Gardy, and you’re going to help me out. We sail tonight, by the way, and we won’t be back until cold weather, so ye who have tears prepare to shed them between now and midnight.”

“But who is the scientist of the expedition?”

“Brack. He’s a geologist, mineralogist, oceanographer, and general shark on all that sort of stuff. Expert explorer. Quit exploring and went sealing. Lost his schooner, and had come down and was living at the Palace, waiting for capital to start again. Wonderful mind. He’s ashore at present framing up a little sport to help us pass the afternoon. We’ll get ready for luncheon now, Gardy. He’ll be here then and you’ll meet him. Sure you won’t have a tot of grog before eating, Gardy?”

“No, thanks.”

“Well, I will, just a little. Simmons will show you to your stateroom. Hope you’re witty and full of scandal, Gardy, ’cause I’m awf’ly, awf’ly bored these days and I’ve got to be amused.”

Simmons, summoned by the bell, ushered me into the stateroom next to Chanler’s. The two rooms were nearly identical in size and furnishings, and I wondered idly why Chanler, as owner, did not occupy the owner’s suite forward. Later I had a glimpse into the owner’s suite through a half-open door, and was more puzzled: the suite was obviously furnished for feminine occupation.

Captain Brack had not arrived when we entered the dining-saloon of the Wanderer for luncheon. There were present Mr. Riordan, Chief Engineer, Dr. Olson, physician to the expedition, and the second officer, Mr. Wilson. Riordan was a pale, sour-looking Irishman, tall, loosely built, heavy-jawed, and with a bitter down-curve to the corners of his large, loose mouth. Once I saw him shoot a sly glance at George Chanler’s long, thin hands, and the look was not what a dutiful employee should have bestowed upon so generous an employer.

Opposite Riordan, and beside me, sat Mr. Wilson, second in command, who had come with the Wanderer from her former owner. He was a strongly built, silent, brown-faced man, of about thirty-five who always appeared as if he had just been shaven, as if his clothes had just been brushed, and whose shoes always seemed to be polished to the same degree. His face was square and lean, and against the weather-beaten neck his immaculate collar gleamed with startling whiteness. He spoke seldom except when spoken to and then modestly and to the point. “Yes sir” and, “No sir,” were the words most frequently on his lips.

Dr. Olson was a small, unobtrusive man with a light Vandyke beard, to whom no one paid any attention and who spoke even less than Mr. Wilson.

The introductions were barely over when a quick light step fell on the deck outside and Chanler, languidly waving his hand at the door behind me, said—

“Mr. Pitt, meet Captain Brack.”

I rose and turned with interest. My interest suddenly gave way to consternation. A chill went flashing along my spine. I stood like a dumb man. Captain Brack was the large man whom I had heard called “Laughing Devil” in Billy Taylor’s saloon a short time before.

III

The Captain was bowing to me with the easy impressiveness of the man to whom ceremonial is no novelty. He was smiling. There was in his smile the good humor of an adult toward a half-grown child. He stood up very straight and precise, his shoulders at exact right angles to his thick neck, his out-thrust chest almost pompous in its roundness.

He was, I judged, exactly my own height, which was five feet nine, but so thick was he in every portion of his anatomy that the physical impression which he made was overpowering. His head and face were large and, thanks to a closely cropped pompadour, gave, in spite of considerable fat, the impression of being square. The eyes were out of place in his head. Hidden under half-closed, fat lids they were mere specks in size, yet when I had once looked into them I stared in fascination.

The head, and the fat, square face with its brutalized lines were frankly, flauntingly animal. The eyes betrayed a great mind. In that gross, brutal countenance the gleam of such an intellect seemed a shocking accident, one of those perversions of Nature’s plans which result in the production of abnormalities. What was this man? Was he the common creature of his thick jowls? or was he the developed man to whom belonged those eyes? Was that animal countenance but a mask? Or did the low instincts, which its lines betrayed, dominate, while the mind struggled in vain beneath such a handicap?

Those tiny eyes held mine and studied me cruelly. Before them I felt stripped to the marrow of my soul. My dreams, my weaknesses, my failures seemed to stand out like print for Brack to read. His superior smile indicated that he had read, that he had appraised me for a weakling; and for the life of me I could not control the resentment that leaped within me.

I looked him as steadily in the eyes as I could. He saw the resentment that lay there; for an instant there flickered a new look in his eyes; then they were bland and smiling again. But that instant was enough for each of us to know that one could never be aught but the other’s enemy.

“I am glad to see you on board, Mr. Pitt, as they say in the navy,” said Captain Brack with deepest courtesy.

“I am glad to be on board, Captain Brack,” I replied steadfastly.

“It is a pleasure to have for shipmate a literary man like Mr. Pitt.”

“It is a pleasure to contemplate a voyage in such company as Captain Brack’s.”

“We shall strive to make the voyage as interesting as possible, for you, Mr. Pitt,” said he.

“I am sure of that,” said I, “and I will do my poor best to reciprocate.”

“In a rough seaman’s way I have studied a little—enough to be interested in books. So we have, in a way, a bond of interest to begin with.”

“Mr. Chanler has told me something of your achievements, Captain Brack; I am sure you belittle them.”

It was very ridiculous. Brack had put me on my mettle; so there we stood and slavered each other with fine speeches, each knowing well that the other meant not a word of the esteem that he uttered. Yet as the luncheon progressed I was inclined to agree with George: Brack was a wonderful chap. The man’s mind seemed to be a great, well-ordered storehouse of facts and impressions which he had collected in his travels. Sitting back in his chair he dominated the company, led the talk whither he willed, and having said his say, beamed contentedly. And before the meal was over I had a distinct impression that Brack not Chanler, was master on the yacht.

Chanler, Brack, Riordan and Dr. Olson drank steadily throughout the luncheon. Mr. Wilson and myself drank not at all. As the luncheon neared its end, Chanler, his eyes steady but his under lip hanging drunkenly, broke out:

“Well, how about it, cappy? Did you land your two bad men?”

“Yes,” said Brack. “After luncheon I can promise you a little sport.”

Chanler laughed a dreary, half-drunken laugh.

“Gardy, we’ve fixed up a little sport. Awf’lly dull lying here. Have to pass the time some way.”

“If I may make the suggestion,” said Brack courteously, “perhaps Mr. Pitt has duties or wishes which will prevent him from viewing our little sport.”

“Not ’tall, not ’tall,” said Chanler.

“Perhaps it would be well for Mr. Pitt to wait a few days until—shall we say until he has become more accustomed to our ways—before treating himself to a sight of our little amusements?”

“Why so?” I demanded.

“Oh, it is merely a suggestion. Our sport is rather primitive—the bare, crawling stuff of life without the perfumery, wrappings, or other fanciful hypocrisies of civilization. Mr. Pitt does not look like a man who would admit that life so exists, and therefore must refuse to behold it.”

Chanler turned from Brack to me, his teeth showing in a pleased smile.

“Ha! Hot shot for you, that, Gardy. What say, old peg; where’s your comeback—repartee, and all that?”

As I hesitated for a reply, he tapped the table impatiently.

“Come, come, Gardy! A little brilliance, please. We don’t let him touch us and get away without a counter, do we? Ha! At ’im, boy; at ’im!”

“As Mr. Brack——”

“Ha! Mister Brack! Well, struck, Gardy; go on.”

“As Captain Brack has failed to inform me what it is we are about to see I, of course, can not be expected to express any opinion on it,” I said. “But as concerns ‘the bare, crawling stuff of life,’ I will reply that Life no longer crawls, nor is it bare.”

Chanler turned his eyes upon Brack.

“Your shot, cappy. What say to that?”

Brack bowed.

“I will reply by asking Mr. Pitt why he thinks life no longer is bare and crawling?”

“Because,” said I, “the mind of man has decreed that it should not be so. Because mas has erected a civilization in order to insure that life shall not be bare and crawling.”

“Civilization is not the point,” said Brack. “We spoke of Life. We, as we stand here, clothed, barbered, wearing the products of machinery to hide our bodies, we are Civilization. We, as we enter the bathtub in the morning, are Life—forked radishes.” He rolled his great head far back and looked down his thick cheeks at me appraisingly. “Some are small radishes; others are large.”

“Ha! Rather raw on you with that last one, Gardy. Small and large ones. You are small, you know, Gardy, compared to me or the captain.”

“Size can scarcely matter to radishes,” I said.

“Cappy, cappy! He scored on you there. What say to that?”

“I will say—” began Captain Brack, but Chanler had tired of his sport as suddenly as he had become interested.

“Rot, rot!” he said, tapping on the table. “You were going to amuse us with your new finds. Let’s have it.”

“Very well,” said the captain, arising. “It will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

I was glad of that respite of fifteen minutes. It gave me an opportunity to slip into my stateroom and pull myself together. Brack had shaken and stirred me as I had not thought possible. His terrific personality had exerted upon me the effects of a powerful stimulant. Once or twice in my life I had taken whisky in sufficient quantity to cause me to experience thoughts, emotions, elations which did not properly belong in the normal, self-controlled Me. Now I experienced something of the same sensation. My mind was buzzing with a hundred swift impressions and conjectures upon Brack.

The picture I had beheld and the words I had heard through the swinging doors of Billy Taylor’s repeated themselves to me, and I felt the same sensation of a chill that I had felt upon recognizing in Brack the big man from the saloon. The words which the small man had uttered were fraught with sinister suggestion. From them it was apparent that he recognized in the captain a man who was known as “Laughing Devil,” whose reputation, if the seaman’s words might be taken for truth, was not of the sort that one would care to have in the captain of the yacht on which one was sailing into far seas. Also it was apparent from the man’s words that Brack had made some sort of proposition: “a rich sucker,” had been mentioned.

My course was plain before me: to go to Chanler’s state-room, tell him what I had seen and heard, and demand that he investigate Brack’s actions or permit me to resign my position. I had no definite idea of what the words between Brack and Madigan might portend, but there was no doubt that they established faithfully the captain’s character. In my depressed condition I shuddered at the idea of putting to sea with such a man.

But—Captain Brack had smiled. That smile stopped me. The appalling brutality of the captain’s mental processes had started within me a slow, steady flame. It was ghastly; the man’s expression had shown that he considered me a thing to play with! The brute had looked in my eyes, had stripped me to the marrow, read me for a weakling, and smiled, so that I might know that he had seen all! And the worst of it was that he was doing it with a mind which weighed me calmly, without prejudice, with scientific calmness.

It was not fair, it was not human. The man should at least have refrained from forcing me to see how weak he considered me. And was I so weak? Was I the worm he thought me to be?

“No!” I cried aloud; and I was pacing the floor when Simmons knocked on my door.

IV

Up on the roomy bridge of the yacht I found Chanler and Brack seated on deck stools drawn close to the rail, looking down upon the immaculate fore-deck. As I followed their example I saw near the port side two seamen holding a squat, heavy negro by a rope passed under his arms. The man was trembling and moaning.

“He’s a bad man and near the snakes from gin,” laughed Chanler. “Over there’s Garvin, who fought Sharkey a couple of times.”

The pugilist, a large, young man, flashily dressed, though miserably bedraggled, was leaning against the starboard rail, scowling darkly at the negro.

“Give you gin?” he was saying to the negro. “Give you gin? What yah talkin’ about, Smoke? Give you gin? Nix. I’m the guy who gets the gin. I’m Bill Garvin. That’s why I get the gin and you get hell.”

As the negro broke out into his terrible moaning, the pugilist’s debauched nerves seemed to snap.

“Stop him! —— you! You lousy ——! Stop him! If you don’t I’ll kick his head off—I’ll kick your black head off, Smoke; I’ll kick your head off.”

His mad wandering eyes caught sight of Brack on the bridge.

“How ’bout that, pal? Won’t I kick his —— black head off. I’m Bill Garvin.”

He took a step forward and stood staring at Brack. “Say, you’re the guy who was going to gimme booze, ain’t you? Billy wouldn’t let me run my face any more; you said, ‘Come on, I’ll take you where there’s lots of it.’ Well, how ’bout it, there? Hah! How ’bout it?”

Brack smiled down upon him. And his smile was the same as he had bestowed upon me; Garvin, too, was a thing to play with.

“Well, I don’t know, Garvin,” he replied. “I promised Black Sam the same thing. I think I shall give him drink before you. He said he’d kill you if you got a drink before him.”

The pugilist stared stupidly while the significance of these words seeped into his sodden brain. A weird smile distorted one side of his face.

“He—” pointing to the negro—“said he’d do that to me?” Thumping his chest he roared: “Kill me! Bill Garvin? Sa-a-ay!”

He lurched over to where the negro stood. At first he seemed undecided what to do. Then he suddenly reached forward and caught the black’s head in chancery, and bent furiously over it. There came a horrible growl from Garvin’s throat, a piercing scream from the negro. Garvin had bitten deeply into the black’s ear.

I started back from the rail, every sense revolting, and found Brack studying me, the smile with which he favored me fixed on his lips.

“So? The stomach is not strong enough, Mr. Pitt? You feel a faintness. Yes; I have even seen delicate ladies lose consciousness under similar circumstances.”

“I do not lose consciousness,”’ I replied, drawing a chair up to the railing and seating myself, “but at the same time I fail to see what amusement a civilized man can find in this spectacle.”

“So? You can not see that, Mr. Pitt? If it would not be rude I would say that it is the truly civilized man, so highly civilized that he is not troubled by sentimentality or humanitarian motives, who can appreciate spectacles of this nature. The scientific type of mind is the ultimate product of civilization, is it not, Mr. Pitt? Well, it is only the scientist who can view properly the bare, crawling thing called Life.”

“Rot, rot, rot!” interrupted Chanler, each word punctuated with a rap of his cane on the deck. “Put on your show, Brack. Hope that wasn’t all you dragged me out here for?”

“That was entirely impromptu. I had no idea Mr. Garvin was so versatile. The show follows. Dr. Olson.”

The little doctor appeared on the deck bearing a large bottle of whisky and a tumbler. First he filled the glass full and poured it down the negro’s gaping mouth, then served Garvin in the same way. The negro grew calmer as the stimulant took hold. He examined the rope with which he was imprisoned and seemed to realize his situation.

“Say, boss, ah ain’t done nuffin. What yah got me in heah foh?” he said in a rational tone of voice. “Lemme out, kain’t yah? Ah’m awri’.”

“Let him go,” said Brack.

The two seamen let go the rope and the black fell forward. Garvin waved his hands at the sea.

“That’s where you’ll go, Smoke—overboard in pieces.”

The negro was crouched against the wheel-house, rubbing his hands on his thighs, his small red eyes feasting on the pugilist, a stream of profanity flowing in low tones from his lips.

“Dah he be, Sam, dah he be,” he whispered. “Dah deh white —— what bit you eah. Got you eah, got you eah! What yah goin’ do ’bout it, what yah goin’ do, what you goin’ do?” His words came swifter and swifter; he crouched lower, his hands moved more rapidly. “Goin’ kill ’im, goin’ kill ’im, kill ’im—kill ’im. Ow!”

With such a howl as belonged in no human throat, he launched himself, a ball of black bounding across the deck, straight at Garvin. He came head down, like a bull charging, and, Garvin side-stepping, he plunged head and shoulders between two rods of the port railing, where he stuck.

Chanler laughed drily.

“Not so bad, cappy,” he drawled. “It promises to be amusing, really.”

Garvin fell upon the negro before the latter had freed himself. He caught one of the black’s hands, drew it upward, and bent the arm over the rail till it threatened to snap or tear out the muscles at the shoulders.

“No,” said Brack in the same tone he had used on Madigan in Taylor’s saloon. “No more of that, Garvin.”

The pugilist, his brutality warming with the work in hand, looked up, a leer of contempt on his face.

“You will let go of his arm, Garvin,” said Brack.

The fighter obeyed, releasing his hold reluctantly, but he obeyed nevertheless. The black thrust himself free of the rail and faced his tormentor.

“Get hold ob ’im, Sammy; get hold ob ’im!” he whispered loudly, and moved toward Garvin with slow shuffling steps.

Garvin waited until the instant when the negro had planned the final spring, then his fist flashed up from below his knees and the black fell like a thrown sack of grain against the wheel-house.

“By Jove!” said Chanler. “Your man Garvin is really promising, Brack. Ha! The nigger’s no cripple, either.”

Black Sam had come to his feet with a spring. Again began his slow, determined advance upon Garvin, again Garvin’s fist flew out and the negro dropped with a thud.

This happened four times, and the negro was red from the neck up. The fifth time his small round head dropped suddenly as Garvin launched another terrific blow. The fist and black poll met with a sharp crack. The negro was flung back on his haunches, but Garvin grasped his right hand and swore futilely. Garvin looked up at the bridge, holding forth his hand.

“Hey! Call ’im off; take a look at me meathook!” he shouted.

“You still have your feet,” said Brack.

The fight raged again. Garvin was on his back now, kicking furiously. At last a kick favored him; he knocked the negro down. But this was his undoing, for Black Sam in falling landed full length upon Garvin, and in an instant his short, thick fingers had closed upon the white man’s throat.

After awhile Brack gave a signal to Mr. Riordan, the chief engineer, who was standing below. Without any hurry or excitement, Riordan walked over and kicked the negro in the temple. The stunned black released his hold. With another kick Riordan lifted him clear off Garvin.

Brack turned toward Chanler.

“Well, are they worth keeping?”

“Oh, I s’pose so,” said Chanler, yawning as he rose. “Rather amusing. Suit yourself, cappy.”

“Come ’long, Gardy,” said Chanler, leading the way off the bridge. He chuckled a little pointing back toward the combatants. “Conceited scum, those. Fighting men. Bad men. Be interesting to see Brack make ’em behave.”

“Chanler,” I said, “do you mean to tell me that you found any pleasure watching that bestial fight?”

“Pleasure? Pleasure, Gardy? Ha! It’s a long time since I’ve met the lady, m’boy. But a chap’s got to do what he can to keep from being bored. They did it—a little. I’m bored now. Do something, Gardy, say something. Hang it, man; can’t you do as much for me as those two brutes? Simmons! Some other togs, please. These I’ve got on make me dopy.”

He strode down into the cabin, forgetting me absolutely in this new evanescent whim.

V

I stepped to the port rail and bared my head to the young Spring breeze. I was disgusted. The sense of something uncleanly seemed to cling to me from the spectacle on the fore-deck and I was grateful for the antiseptic feel of the wind with its pure odors.

“Pretty raw, wasn’t it, Mr. Pitt?”

I looked up and saw Pierce, the young wireless operator, standing beside me.

“Yep. I feel that way about it, too,” he went on. “Not that I’ve got anything against seeing a good battle any time, ’cause I was raised back o’ the Yards in Chicago, and no more need be said. But that—that go forward, that was too raw. Garvin, he’s a sure ’nough pug—he stayed ten rounds with Sharkey once when Tom was starting, but the poor stew was about ready to have the ‘willies’; and the poor dinge was seeing snakes. Naw, it was too raw. Ear-eating and that kind of stuff. They hadn’t ought to have matched ’em. They couldn’t put up half a battle, the shape they was.”

“I didn’t object to it on those grounds,” I said, and as I looked at his merry, freckled face I was forced to smile. “Though I can appreciate your artistic disapproval. It disgusted me because it was so useless and brutal.”

“That’s what I said,” he responded promptly. “It was useless, because it wasn’t half a go, and brutal because they wasn’t in shape to stand the punishment.”

“We are slightly apart in our view-points, I am afraid, Mr. Pierce.”

“But you’re with me that it was bum match-making?”

I nodded.

“And that a right guy—you know what I mean: a guy who was right all the way through—couldn’t get any fun out of watching it?”

I nodded again. Pierce placed both hands on the railing, running his fingers up and down as if on a keyboard, whistling softly through his teeth.

“Did you notice how the boss ate it up?” he said abruptly.

“Mr. Chanler?”

“Yep. He eyed it like—like it was a pretty little thing to him.”

I said nothing. Pierce resumed his whistling and finger-practise on the rail. Suddenly he turned and faced me squarely, his countenance uncomfortably serious, as it had been on the dock that morning.

“I suppose you’re thinking what an awful dub I am to be making a crack about the boss to one of his friends, ain’t you, Mr. Pitt?”

“Well, to be frank,” I replied, “I have been wondering at your doing so. How do you know that I won’t go straight to Mr. Chanler with your words? I won’t do it, of course, but I would prefer that you do not discuss Mr. Chanler with me. One doesn’t do such things, you know.”

“No,” he said, “I didn’t know; I was raised back o’ the Yards. But if you say, ‘nix on it,’ nix it is. What—what do you think of the boat, Mr. Pitt? We can discuss that, can’t we?”

“Freely,” I laughed. “From what I’ve seen the Wanderer is a remarkable yacht.”

“And you haven’t seen anything but the gingerbread work. I’m off watch. Come on; let’s walk around and pipe her off. It’ll take the taste of that bum battle out of your mouth.”

I accepted willingly, and for an hour Pierce piloted me about the yacht.

The Wanderer is a craft of wonders. I have Pierce’s word that the yacht is 152 feet long on the water line with her present load, and that the load is the maximum which we could carry with safety. Her size below the cabin deck is amazing. In her engine room are some of the largest gasoline engines ever placed in a yacht, if Pierce’s information is correct. There are two great gleaming batteries of them, each battery capable of driving us at a speed of ten knots an hour, the two combined able to hurry us along at fourteen knots, if necessary. Besides this we have a small auxiliary engine and propeller, a novelty installed by the former owner, Harrison. We could smash both of our major engines and the auxiliary still would move us.

Built into the bows are the reserve gasoline tanks. There is enough fuel in them, says Pierce, to drive the Wanderer twice around the world. Aft of these vast tanks are the storerooms. They are locked. Captain Brack has the key, but Freddy assures me that enough provisions have been loaded into them to keep our company of fifteen men well fed for two years.

“Which certainly is playing safe, seeing as we’re not supposed to get frozen in,” said he, as we completed our tour below decks. “Now, come on and I’ll show you my private office.”

He led the way up a ladder to the little wireless house on the aft of the main cabin. This was Pierce’s room. His bunk was beside the table on which were his instruments, and he had covered the walls—“decorated,” he called it—with newspaper cuts of celebrated baseball players, pugilists, motor-racers, and women of the musical comedy stage. Lajoie’s picture was next to Terry McGovern’s, and Chevrolet’s beside Miss Anna Held’s. I smiled as I seated myself.

“Something of a connoisseur, I see, Pierce.”

“Whatever that means,” he responded. He had become serious again. He took a cigaret paper from his pocket, absently tore it to pieces and sat glancing out over the waters of the Sound.

“So you don’t know a Jane—a girl named Miss Beatrice Baldwin, Mr. Pitt?” he said, as if he had been thinking of saying it for a long time.

“You asked me that this morning,” said I. “Why do you think I might know her?”

“You’n’ the Boss is close friends, ain’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘close friends’.”

“I know. But you know him back East, and train with him, and know the bunch he trains with back there, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, to a certain extent.”

“That’s why I thought you might have heard of this Jane—Miss Baldwin, I mean.”

“I assure you, Pierce,” I said, smiling, “that one would have to possess a much larger circle of acquaintances than I have to know all the young ladies of Mr. Chanler’s acquaintance.”

He looked up.

“Is he that kind of a guy?” he asked.

“What kind do you mean?”

“A charmer, a Jane-chaser, lady-killer?”

The perfect naiveté with which he uttered this outrageous slang brought me to hearty laughter, the first of long time.

“Mr. Chanler,” I said, suppressing my amusement, “is a much sought after man.”

“Sure; he’s got the dough. But does he chase ’em back? Eh? Is he—Here, I’ll put it up to you straight: would you let your own sister go walking with him alone in the park after dark?”

I rose. But for the life of me I could not hold offense in the face of his honest, worried expression.

“Pierce,” I said, “that is another thing one does not do—ask such questions. And I have told you that you are not to discuss Mr. Chanler with me.”

“Aw, the devil!” he blurted. “Why can’t you be human? You’re a reg’lar fellow; I can see it in the back of your eyes. I’m a reg’lar fellow. Why can’t we get together?”

“Not on a discussion of Mr. Chanler behind his back,” I chuckled. “It isn’t done.”

Pierce doubled himself up on the stool which he was sitting on and grasped his thin ankles in his hands.

“All right, then,” he said moodily. “But I want to tell you I’ve been handling messages between the boss and a Miss Beatrice Baldwin; and he sent her one this morning and got a reply; and—I wished I’d never learned wireless, that’s all.”

“Mr. Chanler is a gentleman,” I said severely.

“A gentleman?” said Pierce gloomily. “I suppose that makes it all right, then, eh? But nevertheless and notwithstanding, I wish I hadn’t learned wireless, just the same. And you don’t even ask me what the message was about,” he continued as I remained silent. “That’s the difference: I’d have asked first crack; you’re a gent. You don’t ask at all.”

“Naturally not,” I replied. “That’s another thing one doesn’t do. I won’t even permit you to tell me what it was.”

“You won’t?”

“Decidedly not.”

“Not even if I tell you——”

“No.”

“All right then,” he said with a comical air of resignation and relief. “I’ve done me jooty. It’s something out of my class; I wanted to pass it up to somebody with a better nut than I’ve got; but if I can’t—all right. I suppose after you ’n’ me ’ve known each other five or six years we’ll be well enough acquainted to talk together like a couple o’ human beings, eh? I know I hadn’t ought to be talking to you like this, Mr. Pitt; you’re a New York highbrow and I’m from back o’ the Yards; but I’ll make you a nice little bet right now, that before this trip is over—if you’re the guy I think you are, Brains—you ’n’ me’ll tear off more’n one little confab behind the boss’s back, and you’ll be darn glad to do it.”

I rose to go.

“I can imagine no reason why we should,” I said. “This is a scientific expedition; you are the wireless operator, and I am Mr. Chanler’s literary secretary. Under the circumstances, why should you be willing to bet?”

“Under those circumstances, I wouldn’t be willing to bet,” he retorted. “But—scientific expedition!” he exploded in disgust. “Scientific ——!”

VI

I retired precipitately to my stateroom, not wishing to hear more. By this time I had seen enough to realize that the hard-drinking George Chanler of the present was not the same man whom I had been friendly with back East. That Chanler never would have endured the brutal sport with Garvin and the negro. He would not have fallen under the spell of a man like Brack; he would not have sent wireless messages to a girl which would make an honest operator like Pierce wish he had never learned his trade. I remembered the owner’s suite, unoccupied and furnished for a woman’s comfort.

“Scientific ——!” Pierce had said.

But it was too late for me to consider quitting now. Captain Brack and his taunting smile had attended to that. If I left now the contempt in his eyes would be justified: I would be the weakling which his look announced me to be. He would smile that smile as I went over the side; would continue to smile it whenever my name was mentioned.

I was disgusted with Chanler. But in my heart I was afraid of Brack, and, paradoxically, for this reason I was afraid to quit.

“Scientific ——!” What did Pierce mean? Whatever it was I judged it to concern only Chanler, therefore it did not greatly concern me. But Brack—so greatly did his smile distress me that I actually looked forward to meeting him again with something akin to relish.

That evening, near the end of the dinner, Dr. Olson happened to speak of the totem gods of the Northern Pacific tribes.

“Yes,” said Brack, “they whittle their gods out of wood with knives; white men use their minds to whittle theirs. Men are greater than gods. What would gods amount to if they didn’t have men to worship them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Can you imagine anything more impotent than an unworshiped god? Man creates gods; not gods man. Men are absolutely indispensable to gods; but men can do very well without gods if it pleases them to do so.”

“Has it pleased you to do so, Captain Brack?” I asked.

“Decidedly so. I sail light. Men make a slavery of this job of existence because they encumber themselves with laws, gods, and so on. I decided long ago not to be a slave to gods or anything.” He turned upon me with his devilish smile. “Now, Mr. Pitt, it is easy to see, is a slave to his gods.”

“Which gods, for instance.”

He burst into ready laughter, as if I had fallen into a trap he had laid for me.

“The petty, insignificant gods of civilized conduct!”

“Hear, hear!” interjected Chanler, lazily blowing away the smoke. “What you two doing: making religious speeches? ‘God,’ you said. Stow that. There’s no room for gods of any kind on board this boat.”

“Except the gods of science,” laughed Brack.

“Ha! Science! That’s good, awf’ly good, cappy. You don’t know how good that is. I’ll stand for science, cappy, but not religion. Religion sort of suggests conscience, and conscience—m’boy, I cut the chap dead days ago and refuse to be re-introduced. One bottle to science, men, and then it’ll be time to kiss our native land good-by. Pitt, if you’ve a tender woman’s heart pining for you some place, better go send her your farewell message, ’cause cappy and I are going to make a wet evening of it until we sail in the interests of science! Glor-ee-ous, glorious science! Hah!”

I accepted his suggestion eagerly as a means to escape from the cabin. There was no woman pining for me; there was no woman in my life. I had no farewell message to send to any one. While Chanler, Brack and the doctor made merry over their bottle I sought the solitude of the upper deck.

It was a dark night, and a rising wind was blowing in from the sea. Along the water-front lights twinkled and gleamed, mere red-hot dots in the all-encompassing darkness.