CHAPTER XIII
Captain Doane worked hard, pursuing the sun in its daily course
through the sky, by the equation of time correcting its
aberrations due to the earth's swinging around the great circle of
its orbit, and charting Sumner lines innumerable, working assumed
latitudes for position until his head grew dizzy.
Simon Nishikanta sneered openly at what he considered the
captain's inefficient navigation, and continued to paint water-
colours when he was serene, and to shoot at whales, sea-birds, and
all things hurtable when he was downhearted and sea-sore with
disappointment at not sighting the Lion's Head peak of the Ancient
Mariner's treasure island
"I'll show I ain't a pincher," Nishikanta announced one day, after
having broiled at the mast-head for five hours of sea-searching.
"Captain Doane, how much could we have bought extra chronometers
for in San Francisco--good second-hand ones, I mean?"
"Say a hundred dollars," the captain answered.
"Very well. And this ain't a piker's proposition. The cost of
such a chronometer would have been divided between the three of
us. I stand for its total cost. You just tell the sailors that
I, Simon Nishikanta, will pay one hundred dollars gold money for
the first one that sights land on Mr. Greenleaf's latitude and
longitude."
But the sailors who swarmed the mast-heads were doomed to
disappointment, in that for only two days did they have
opportunity to stare the ocean surface for the reward. Nor was
this due entirely to Dag Daughtry, despite the fact that his own
intention and act would have been sufficient to spoil their chance
for longer staring.
Down in the lazarette, under the main-cabin floor, it chanced that
he took toll of the cases of beer which had been shipped for his
especial benefit. He counted the cases, doubted the verdict of
his senses, lighted more matches, counted again, then vainly
searched the entire lazarette in the hope of finding more cases of
beer stored elsewhere.
He sat down under the trap door of the main-cabin floor and
thought for a solid hour. It was the Jew again, he concluded--the
Jew who had been willing to equip the Mary Turner with two
chronometers, but not with three; the Jew who had ratified the
agreement of a sufficient supply to permit Daughtry his daily six
quarts. Once again the steward counted the cases to make sure.
There were three. And since each case contained two dozen quarts,
and since his whack each day was half a dozen quarts, it was
patent that, the supply that stared him in the face would last him
only twelve days. And twelve days were none too long to sail from
this unidentifiable naked sea-stretch to the nearest possible port
where beer could be purchased.
The steward, once his mind was made up, wasted no time. The clock
marked a quarter before twelve when he climbed up out of the
lazarette, replaced the trapdoor, and hurried to set the table.
He served the company through the noon meal, although it was all
he could do to refrain from capsizing the big tureen of split-pea
soup over the head of Simon Nishikanta. What did effectually
withstrain him was the knowledge of the act which in the lazarette
he had already determined to perform that afternoon down in the
main hold where the water-casks were stored.
At three o'clock, while the Ancient Mariner supposedly drowned in
his room, and while Captain Doane, Grimshaw, and half the watch on
deck clustered at the mast-heads to try to raise the Lion's Head
from out the sapphire sea, Dag Daughtry dropped down the ladder of
the open hatchway into the main hold. Here, in long tiers, with
alleyways between, the water-casks were chocked safely on their
sides.
From inside his shirt the steward drew a brace, and to it fitted a
half-inch bit from his hip-pocket. On his knees, he bored through
the head of the first cask until the water rushed out upon the
deck and flowed down into the bilge. He worked quickly, boring
cask after cask down the alleyway that led to deeper twilight.
When he had reached the end of the first row of casks he paused a
moment to listen to the gurglings of the many half-inch streams
running to waste. His quick ears caught a similar gurgling from
the right in the direction of the next alleyway. Listening
closely, he could have sworn he heard the sounds of a bit biting
into hard wood.
A minute later, his own brace and bit carefully secreted, his hand
was descending on the shoulder of a man he could not recognize in
the gloom, but who, on his knees and wheezing, was steadily boring
into the head of a cask. The culprit made no effort to escape,
and when Daughtry struck a match he gazed down into the upturned
face of the Ancient Mariner.
"My word!" the steward muttered his amazement softly. "What in
hell are you running water out for?"
He could feel the old man's form trembling with violent
nervousness, and his own heart smote him for gentleness.
"It's all right," he whispered. "Don't mind me. How many have
you bored?"
"All in this tier," came the whispered answer. "You will not
inform on me to the . . . the others?"
"Inform?" Daughtry laughed softly. "I don't mind telling you that
we're playing the same game, though I don't know why you should
play it. I've just finished boring all of the starboard row. Now
I tell you, sir, you skin out right now, quietly, while the goin'
is good. Everybody's aloft, and you won't be noticed. I'll go
ahead and finish this job . . . all but enough water to last us
say a dozen days."
"I should like to talk with you . . . to explain matters," the
Ancient Mariner whispered.
"Sure, sir, an' I don't mind sayin', sir, that I'm just plain mad
curious to hear. I'll join you down in the cabin, say in ten
minutes, and we can have a real gam. But anyway, whatever your
game is, I'm with you. Because it happens to be my game to get
quick into port, and because, sir, I have a great liking and
respect for you. Now shoot along. I'll be with you inside ten
minutes."
"I like you, steward, very much," the old man quavered.
"And I like you, sir--and a damn sight more than them money-sharks
aft. But we'll just postpone this. You beat it out of here,
while I finish scuppering the rest of the water."
A quarter of an hour later, with the three money-sharks still at
the mast-heads, Charles Stough Green-leaf was seated in the cabin
and sipping a highball, and Dag Daughtry was standing across the
table from him, drinking directly from a quart bottle of beer.
"Maybe you haven't guessed it," the Ancient Mariner said; "but
this is my fourth voyage after this treasure."
"You mean . . . ?" Daughtry asked.
"Just that. There isn't any treasure. There never was one--any
more than the Lion's Head, the longboat, or the bearings
unnamable."'
Daughtry rumpled his grizzled thatch of hair in his perplexity, as
he admitted:
"Well, you got me, sir. You sure got me to believin' in that
treasure."
"And I acknowledge, steward, that I am pleased to hear it. It
shows that I have not lost my cunning when I can deceive a man
like you. It is easy to deceive men whose souls know only money.
But you are different. You don't live and breathe for money.
I've watched you with your dog. I've watched you with your nigger
boy. I've watched you with your beer. And just because your
heart isn't set on a great buried treasure of gold, you are harder
to deceive. Those whose hearts are set, are most astonishingly
easy to fool. They are of cheap kidney. Offer them a proposition
of one hundred dollars for one, and they are like hungry pike
snapping at the bait. Offer a thousand dollars for one, or ten
thousand for one, and they become sheer lunatic. I am an old man,
a very old man. I like to live until I die--I mean, to live
decently, comfortably, respectably."
"And you like the voyages long? I begin to see, sir. Just as
they're getting near to where the treasure ain't, a little
accident like the loss of their water-supply sends them into port
and out again to start hunting all over."
The Ancient Mariner nodded, and his sun-washed eyes twinkled.
"There was the Emma Louisa. I kept her on the long voyage over
eighteen months with water accidents and similar accidents. And,
besides, they kept me in one of the best hotels in New Orleans for
over four months before the voyage began, and advanced to me
handsomely, yes, bravely, handsomely."
"But tell me more, sir; I am most interested," Dag Daughtry
concluded his simple matter of the beer. "It's a good game. I
might learn it for my old age, though I give you my word, sir, I
won't butt in on your game. I wouldn't tackle it until you are
gone, sir, good game that it is."
"First of all, you must pick out men with money--with plenty of
money, so that any loss will not hurt them. Also, they are easier
to interest--"
"Because they are more hoggish," the steward interrupted. "The
more money they've got the more they want."
"Precisely," the Ancient Mariner continued. "And, at least, they
are repaid. Such sea-voyages are excellent for their health.
After all, I do them neither hurt nor harm, but only good, and add
to their health."
"But them scars--that gouge out of your face--all them fingers
missing on your hand? You never got them in the fight in the
longboat when the bo's'n carved you up. Then where in Sam Hill
did you get the them? Wait a minute, sir. Let me fill your glass
first." And with a fresh-brimmed glass, Charles Stough Greanleaf
narrated the history of his scars.
"First, you must know, steward, that I am--well, a gentleman. My
name has its place in the pages of the history of the United
States, even back before the time when they were the United
States. I graduated second in my class in a university that it is
not necessary to name. For that matter, the name I am known by is
not my name. I carefully compounded it out of names of other
families. I have had misfortunes. I trod the quarter-deck when I
was a young man, though never the deck of the Wide Awake, which is
the ship of my fancy--and of my livelihood in these latter days.
"The scars you asked about, and the missing fingers? Thus it
chanced. It was the morning, at late getting-up times in a
Pullman, when the accident happened. The car being crowded, I had
been forced to accept an upper berth. It was only the other day.
A few years ago. I was an old man then. We were coming up from
Florida. It was a collision on a high trestle. The train
crumpled up, and some of the cars fell over sideways and fell off,
ninety feet into the bottom of a dry creek. It was dry, though
there was a pool of water just ten feet in diameter and eighteen
inches deep. All the rest was dry boulders, and I bull's-eyed
that pool.
"This is the way it was. I had just got on my shoes and pants and
shirt, and had started to get out of the bunk. There I was,
sitting on the edge of the bunk, my legs dangling down, when the
locomotives came together. The berths, upper and lower, on the
opposite side had already been made up by the porter.
"And there I was, sitting, legs dangling, not knowing where I was,
on a trestle or a flat, when the thing happened. I just naturally
left that upper berth, soared like a bird across the aisle, went
through the glass of the window on the opposite side clean head-
first, turned over and over through the ninety feet of fall more
times than I like to remember, and by some sort of miracle was
mostly flat-out in the air when I bull's-eyed that pool of water.
It was only eighteen inches deep. But I hit it flat, and I hit it
so hard that it must have cushioned me. I was the only survivor
of my car. It struck forty feet away from me, off to the side.
And they took only the dead out of it. When they took me out of
the pool I wasn't dead by any means. And when the surgeons got
done with me, there were the fingers gone from my hand, that scar
down the side of my face . . . and, though you'd never guess it,
I've been three ribs short of the regular complement ever since.
"Oh, I had no complaint coming. Think of the others in that car--
all dead. Unfortunately, I was riding on a pass, and so could not
sue the railroad company. But here I am, the only man who ever
dived ninety feet into eighteen inches of water and lived to tell
the tale.--Steward, if you don't mind replenishing my glass . . .
"
Dag Daughtry complied and in his excitement of interest pulled off
the top of another quart of beer for himself.
"Go on, go on, sir," he murmured huskily, wiping his lips, "and
the treasure-hunting graft. I'm straight dying to hear. Sir, I
salute you."
"I may say, steward," the Ancient Mariner resumed, "that I was
born with a silver spoon that melted in my mouth and left me a
proper prodigal son. Also, that I was born with a back-bone of
pride that would not melt. Not for a paltry railroad accident,
but for things long before as well as after, my family let me die,
and I . . . I let it live. That is the story. I let my family
live. Furthermore, it was not my family's fault. I never
whimpered. I never let on. I melted the last of my silver spoon-
-South Sea cotton, an' it please you, cacao in Tonga, rubber and
mahogany in Yucatan. And do you know, at the end, I slept in
Bowery lodging-houses and ate scrapple in East-Side feeding-dens,
and, on more than one occasion, stood in the bread-line at
midnight and pondered whether or not I should faint before I fed."
"And you never squealed to your family," Dag Daughtry murmured
admiringly in the pause.
The Ancient Mariner straightened up his shoulders, threw his head
back, then bowed it and repeated, "No, I never squealed. I went
into the poor-house, or the county poor-farm as they call it. I
lived sordidly. I lived like a beast. For six months I lived
like a beast, and then I saw my way out. I set about building the
Wide Awake. I built her plank by plank, and copper-fastened her,
selected her masts and every timber of her, and personally signed
on her full ship's complement fore-and-aft, and outfitted her
amongst the Jews, and sailed with her to the South Seas and the
treasure buried a fathom under the sand.
"You see," he explained, "all this I did in my mind, for all the
time I was a hostage in the poor-farm of broken men."
The Ancient Mariner's face grew suddenly bleak and fierce, and his
right hand flashed out to Daughtry's wrist, prisoning it in
withered fingers of steel.
"It was a long, hard way to get out of the poor-farm and finance
my miserable little, pitiful little, adventure of the Wide Awake.
Do you know that I worked in the poor-farm laundry for two years,
for one dollar and a half a week, with my one available hand and
what little I could do with the other, sorting dirty clothes and
folding sheets and pillow-slips until I thought a thousand times
my poor old back would break in two, and until I knew a million
times the location in my chest of every fraction of an inch of my
missing ribs."
"You are a young man yet--"
Daughtry grinned denial as he rubbed his grizzled mat of hair.
"You are a young man yet, steward," the Ancient Mariner insisted
with a show of irritation. "You have never been shut out from
life. In the poor-farm one is shut out from life. There is no
respect--no, not for age alone, but for human life in the poor-
house. How shall I say it? One is not dead. Nor is one alive.
One is what once was alive and is in process of becoming dead.
Lepers are treated that way. So are the insane. I know it. When
I was young and on the sea, a brother-lieutenant went mad.
Sometimes he was violent, and we struggled with him, twisting his
arms, bruising his flesh, tying him helpless while we sat and
panted on him that he might not do harm to us, himself, or the
ship. And he, who still lived, died to us. Don't you understand?
He was no longer of us, like us. He was something other. That is
it--OTHER. And so, in the poor-farm, we, who are yet unburied,
are OTHER. You have heard me chatter about the hell of the
longboat. That is a pleasant diversion in life compared with the
poor-farm. The food, the filth, the abuse, the bullying, the--the
sheer animalness of it!
"For two years I worked for a dollar and a half a week in the
laundry. And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my
mouth--a sizable silver spoon steward--imagine me, my old sore
bones, my old belly reminiscent of youth's delights, my old palate
ticklish yet and not all withered of the deviltries of taste
learned in younger days--as I say, steward, imagine me, who had
ever been free-handed, lavish, saving that dollar and a half
intact like a miser, never spending a penny of it on tobacco,
never mitigating by purchase of any little delicacy the sad
condition of my stomach that protested against the harshness and
indigestibility of our poor fare. I cadged tobacco, poor cheap
tobacco, from poor doddering old chaps trembling on the edge of
dissolution. Ay, and when Samuel Merrivale I found dead in the
morning, next cot to mine, I first rummaged his poor old trousers'
pocket for the half-plug of tobacco I knew was the total estate he
left, then announced the news.
"Oh, steward, I was careful of that dollar and a half. Don't you
see?--I was a prisoner sawing my way out with a tiny steel saw.
And I sawed out!" His voice rose in a shrill cackle of triumph.
"Steward, I sawed out!"
Dag Daughtry held forth and up his beer-bottle as he said gravely
and sincerely:
"Sir, I salute you."
"And I thank you, sir--you understand," the Ancient Mariner
replied with simple dignity to the toast, touching his glass to
the bottle and drinking with the steward eyes to eyes.
"I should have had one hundred and fifty-six dollars when I left
the poor-farm," the ancient one continued. "But there were the
two weeks I lost, with influenza, and the one week from a
confounded pleurisy, so that I emerged from that place of the
living dead with but one hundred and fifty-one dollars and fifty
cents."
"I see, sir," Daughtry interrupted with honest admiration. "The
tiny saw had become a crow-bar, and with it you were going back to
break into life again."
All the scarred face and washed eyes of Charles Stough Greenleaf
beamed as he held his glass up.
"Steward, I salute you. You understand. And you have said it
well. I was going back to break into the house of life. It was a
crowbar, that pitiful sum of money accumulated by two years of
crucifixion. Think of it! A sum that in the days ere the silver
spoon had melted, I staked in careless moods of an instant on a
turn of the cards. But as you say, a burglar, I came back to
break into life, and I came to Boston. You have a fine turn for a
figure of speech, steward, and I salute you."
Again bottle and glass tinkled together, and both men drank eyes
to eyes and each was aware that the eyes he gazed into were honest
and understanding.
"But it was a thin crow-bar, steward. I dared not put my weight
on it for a proper pry. I took a room in a small but respectable
hotel, European plan. It was in Boston, I think I said. Oh, how
careful I was of my crowbar! I scarcely ate enough to keep my
frame inhabited. But I bought drinks for others, most carefully
selected--bought drinks with an air of prosperity that was as a
credential to my story; and in my cups (my apparent cups,
steward), spun an old man's yarn of the Wide Awake, the longboat,
the bearings unnamable, and the treasure under the sand.--A fathom
under the sand; that was literary; it was psychological; it
smacked of the salt sea, and daring rovers, and the loot of the
Spanish Main.
"You have noticed this nugget I wear on my watch-chain, steward?
I could not afford it at that time, but I talked golden instead,
California gold, nuggets and nuggets, oodles and oodles, from the
diggings of forty-nine and fifty. That was literary. That was
colour. Later, after my first voyage out of Boston I was
financially able to buy a nugget. It was so much bait to which
men rose like fishes. And like fishes they nibbled. These rings,
also--bait. You never see such rings now. After I got in funds,
I purchased them, too. Take this nugget: I am talking. I toy
with it absently as I am telling of the great gold treasure we
buried under the sand. Suddenly the nugget flashes fresh
recollection into my mind. I speak of the longboat, of our thirst
and hunger, and of the third officer, the fair lad with cheeks
virgin of the razor, and that he it was who used it as a sinker
when we strove to catch fish.
"But back in Boston. Yarns and yarns, when seemingly I was gone
in drink, I told my apparent cronies--men whom I despised, stupid
dolts of creatures that they were. But the word spread, until one
day, a young man, a reporter, tried to interview me about the
treasure and the Wide Awake. I was indignant, angry.--Oh, softly,
steward, softly; in my heart was great joy as I denied that young
reporter, knowing that from my cronies he already had a
sufficiency of the details.
"And the morning paper gave two whole columns and headlines to the
tale. I began to have callers. I studied them out well. Many
were for adventuring after the treasure who themselves had no
money. I baffled and avoided them, and waited on, eating even
less as my little capital dwindled away.
"And then he came, my gay young doctor--doctor of philosophy he
was, for he was very wealthy. My heart sang when I saw him. But
twenty-eight dollars remained to me--after it was gone, the poor-
house, or death. I had already resolved upon death as my choice
rather than go back to be of that dolorous company, the living
dead of the poor-farm. But I did not go back, nor did I die. The
gay young doctor's blood ran warm at thought of the South Seas,
and in his nostrils I distilled all the scents of the flower-
drenched air of that far-off land, and in his eyes I builded him
the fairy visions of the tradewind clouds, the monsoon skies, the
palm isles and the coral seas.
"He was a gay, mad young dog, grandly careless of his largess,
fearless as a lion's whelp, lithe and beautiful as a leopard, and
mad, a trifle mad of the deviltries and whimsies that tickled in
that fine brain of his. Look you, steward. Before we sailed in
the Gloucester fishing-schooner, purchased by the doctor, and that
was like a yacht and showed her heels to most yachts, he had me to
his house to advise about personal equipment. We were overhauling
in a gear-room, when suddenly he spoke:
"'I wonder how my lady will take my long absence. What say you?
Shall she go along?'
"And I had not known that he had any wife or lady. And I looked
my surprise and incredulity.
"'Just that you do not believe I shall take her on the cruise,' he
laughed, wickedly, madly, in my astonished face. 'Come, you shall
meet her.'
"Straight to his bedroom and his bed he led me, and, turning down
the covers, showed there to me, asleep as she had slept for many a
thousand years, the mummy of a slender Egyptian maid.
"And she sailed with us on the long vain voyage to the South Seas
and back again, and, steward, on my honour, I grew quite fond of
the dear maid myself.
The Ancient Mariner gazed dreamily into his glass, and Dag
Daughtry took advantage of the pause to ask:
"But the young doctor? How did he take the failure to find the
treasure?"
The Ancient Mariner's face lighted with joy.
"He called me a delectable old fraud, with his arm on my shoulder
while he did it. Why, steward, I had come to love that young man
like a splendid son. And with his arm on my shoulder, and I know
there was more than mere kindness in it, he told me we had barely
reached the River Plate when he discovered me. With laughter, and
with more than one slap of his hand on my shoulder that was more
caress than jollity, he pointed out the discrepancies in my tale
(which I have since amended, steward, thanks to him, and amended
well), and told me that the voyage had been a grand success,
making him eternally my debtor.
"What could I do? I told him the truth. To him even did I tell
my family name, and the shame I had saved it from by forswearing
it.
"He put his arm on my shoulder, I tell you, and . . . "
The Ancient Mariner ceased talking because of a huskiness in his
throat, and a moisture from his eyes trickled down both cheeks.
Dag Daughtry pledged him silently, and in the draught from his
glass he recovered himself.
"He told me that I should come and live with him, and, to his
great lonely house he took me the very day we landed in Boston.
Also, he told me he would make arrangements with his lawyers--the
idea tickled his fancy--'I shall adopt you,' he said. 'I shall
adopt you along with Isthar'--Isthar was the little maid's name,
the little mummy's name.
"Here was I, back in life, steward, and legally to be adopted.
But life is a fond betrayer. Eighteen hours afterward, in the
morning, we found him dead in his bed, the little mummy maid
beside him. Heart-failure, the burst of some blood-vessel in the
brain--I never learned.
"I prayed and pleaded with them for the pair to be buried
together. But they were a hard, cold, New England lot, his
cousins and his aunts, and they presented Isthar to the museum,
and me they gave a week to be quit of the house. I left in an
hour, and they searched my small baggage before they would let me
depart.
"I went to New York. It was the same game there, only that I had
more money and could play it properly. It was the same in New
Orleans, in Galveston. I came to California. This is my fifth
voyage. I had a hard time getting these three interested, and
spent all my little store of money before they signed the
agreement. They were very mean. Advance any money to me! The
very idea of it was preposterous. Though I bided my time, ran up
a comfortable hotel bill, and, at the very last, ordered my own
generous assortment of liquors and cigars and charged the bill to
the schooner. Such a to-do! All three of them raged and all but
tore their hair . . . and mime. They said it could not be. I
fell promptly sick. I told them they got on my nerves and made me
sick. The more they raged, the sicker I got. Then they gave in.
As promptly I grew better. And here we are, out of water and
heading soon most likely for the Marquesas to fill our barrels.
Then they will return and try for it again!"
"You think so, sir?"
"I shall remember even more important data, steward," the Ancient
Mariner smiled. "Without doubt they will return. Oh, I know them
well. They are meagre, narrow, grasping fools."
"Fools! all fools! a ship of fools!" Dag Daughtry exulted;
repeating what he had expressed in the hold, as he bored the last
barrel, listened to the good water gurgling away into the bilge,
and chuckled over his discovery of the Ancient Mariner on the same
lay as his own.
