CHAPTER XVI
Two days later, as the steamer Mariposa plied her customary route
between Tahiti and San Francisco, the passengers ceased playing
deck quoits, abandoned their card games in the smoker, their
novels and deck chairs, and crowded the rail to stare at the small
boat that skimmed to them across the sea before a light following
breeze. When Big John, aided by Ah Moy and Kwaque, lowered the
sail and unstepped the mast, titters and laughter arose from the
passengers. It was contrary to all their preconceptions of mid-
ocean rescue of ship-wrecked mariners from the open boat.
It caught their fancy that this boat was the Ark, what of its
freightage of bedding, dry goods boxes, beer-cases, a cat, two
dogs, a white cockatoo, a Chinaman, a kinky-headed black, a gangly
pallid-haired giant, a grizzled Dag Daughtry, and an Ancient
Mariner who looked every inch the part. Him a facetious,
vacationing architect's clerk dubbed Noah, and so greeted him.
"I say, Noah," he called. "Some flood, eh? Located Ararat yet?"
"Catch any fish?" bawled another youngster down over the rail.
"Gracious! Look at the beer! Good English beer! Put me down for
a case!"
Never was a more popular wrecked crew more merrily rescued at sea.
The young blades would have it that none other than old Noah
himself had come on board with the remnants of the Lost Tribes,
and to elderly female passengers spun hair-raising accounts of the
sinking of an entire tropic island by volcanic and earthquake
action.
"I'm a steward," Dag Daughtry told the Mariposa's captain, "and
I'll be glad and grateful to berth along with your stewards in the
glory-hole. Big John there's a sailorman, an' the fo'c's'le 'll
do him. The Chink is a ship's cook, and the nigger belongs to me.
But Mr. Greenleaf, sir, is a gentleman, and the best of cabin fare
and staterooms'll be none too good for him, sir."
And when the news went around that these were part of the
survivors of the three-masted schooner, Mary Turner, smashed into
kindling wood and sunk by a whale, the elderly females no more
believed than had they the yarn of the sunken island.
"Captain Hayward," one of them demanded of the steamer's skipper,
"could a whale sink the Mariposa?"
"She has never been so sunk," was his reply.
"I knew it!" she declared emphatically. "It's not the way of
ships to go around being sunk by whales, is it, captain?"
"No, madam, I assure you it is not," was his response.
"Nevertheless, all the five men insist upon it."
"Sailors are notorious for their unveracity, are they not?" the
lady voiced her flat conclusion in the form of a tentative query.
"Worst liars I ever saw, madam. Do you know, after forty years at
sea, I couldn't believe myself under oath."
Nine days later the Mariposa threaded the Golden Gate and docked
at San Francisco. Humorous half-columns in the local papers,
written in the customary silly way by unlicked cub reporters just
out of grammar school, tickled the fancy of San Francisco for a
fleeting moment in that the steamship Mariposa had rescued some
sea-waifs possessed of a cock-and-bull story that not even the
reporters believed. Thus, silly reportorial unveracity usually
proves extraordinary truth a liar. It is the way of cub
reporters, city newspapers, and flat-floor populations which get
their thrills from moving pictures and for which the real world
and all its spaciousness does not exist.
"Sunk by a whale!" demanded the average flat-floor person.
"Nonsense, that's all. Just plain rotten nonsense. Now, in the
'Adventures of Eleanor,' which is some film, believe me, I'll tell
you what I saw happen . . . "
So Daughtry and his crew went ashore into 'Frisco Town uheralded
and unsung, the second following morning's lucubrations of the sea
reporters being varied disportations upon the attack on an Italian
crab fisherman by an enormous jellyfish. Big John promptly sank
out of sight in a sailors' boarding-house, and, within the week,
joined the Sailors' Union and shipped on a steam schooner to load
redwood ties at Bandon, Oregon. Ah Moy got no farther ashore than
the detention sheds of the Federal Immigration Board, whence he
was deported to China on the next Pacific Mail steamer. The Mary
Turner's cat was adopted by the sailors' forecastle of the
Mariposa, and on the Mariposa sailed away on the back trip to
Tahiti. Scraps was taken ashore by a quartermaster and left in
the bosom of his family.
And ashore went Dag Daughtry, with his small savings, to rent two
cheap rooms for himself and his remaining responsibilities,
namely, Charles Stough Greenleaf, Kwaque, Michael, and, not least,
Cocky. But not for long did he permit the Ancient Mariner to live
with him.
"It's not playing the game, sir," he told him. "What we need is
capital. We've got to interest capital, and you've got to do the
interesting. Now this very day you've got to buy a couple of
suitcases, hire a taxicab, go sailing up to the front door of the
Bronx Hotel like good pay and be damned. She's a real stylish
hotel, but reasonable if you want to make it so. A little room,
an inside room, European plan, of course, and then you can
economise by eatin' out."
"But, steward, I have no money," the Ancient Mariner protested.
"That's all right, sir; I'll back you for all I can."
"But, my dear man, you know I'm an old impostor. I can't stick
you up like the others. You . . . why . . . why, you're a friend,
don't you see?"
"Sure I do, and I thank you for sayin' it, sir. And that's why
I'm with you. And when you've nailed another crowd of treasure-
hunters and got the ship ready, you'll just ship me along as
steward, with Kwaque, and Killeny Boy, and the rest of our family.
You've adopted me, now, an' I'm your grown-up son, an' you've got
to listen to me. The Bronx is the hotel for you--fine-soundin'
name, ain't it? That's atmosphere. Folk'll listen half to you
an' more to your hotel. I tell you, you leaning back in a big
leather chair talkin' treasure with a two-bit cigar in your mouth
an' a twenty-cent drink beside you, why that's like treasure.
They just got to believe. An' if you'll come along now, sir,
we'll trot out an' buy them suit-cases."
Right bravely the Ancient Mariner drove to the Bronx in a taxi,
registered his "Charles Stough Greenleaf" in an old-fashioned
hand, and took up anew the activities which for years had kept him
free of the poor-farm. No less bravely did Dag Daughtry set out
to seek work. This was most necessary, because he was a man of
expensive luxuries. His family of Kwaque, Michael, and Cocky
required food and shelter; more costly than that was maintenance
of the Ancient Mariner in the high-class hotel; and, in addition,
was his six-quart thirst.
But it was a time of industrial depression. The unemployed
problem was bulking bigger than usual to the citizens of San
Francisco. And, as regarded steamships and sailing vessels, there
were three stewards for every Steward's position. Nothing steady
could Daughtry procure, while his occasional odd jobs did not
balance his various running expenses. Even did he do pick-and-
shovel work, for the municipality, for three days, when he had to
give way, according to the impartial procedure, to another needy
one whom three days' work would keep afloat a little longer.
Daughtry would have put Kwaque to work, except that Kwaque was
impossible. The black, who had only seen Sydney from steamers'
decks, had never been in a city in his life. All he knew of the
world was steamers, far-outlying south-sea isles, and his own
island of King William in Melanesia. So Kwaque remained in the
two rooms, cooking and housekeeping for his master and caring for
Michael and Cocky. All of which was prison for Michael, who had
been used to the run of ships, of coral beaches and plantations.
But in the evenings, sometimes accompanied a few steps in the rear
by Kwaque, Michael strolled out with Steward. The multiplicity of
man-gods on the teeming sidewalks became a real bore to Michael,
so that man-gods, in general, underwent a sharp depreciation. But
Steward, the particular god of his fealty and worship,
appreciated. Amongst so many gods Michael felt bewildered, while
Steward's Abrahamic bosom became more than ever the one sure haven
where harshness and danger never troubled.
"Mind your step," is the last word and warning of twentieth-
century city life. Michael was not slow to learn it, as he
conserved his own feet among the countless thousands of leather-
shod feet of men, ever hurrying, always unregarding of the
existence and right of way of a lowly, four-legged Irish terrier.
The evening outings with Steward invariably led from saloon to
saloon, where, at long bars, standing on sawdust floors, or seated
at tables, men drank and talked. Much of both did men do, and
also did Steward do, ere, his daily six-quart stint accomplished,
he turned homeward for bed. Many were the acquaintances he made,
and Michael with him. Coasting seamen and bay sailors they mostly
were, although there were many 'longshoremen and waterfront
workmen among them.
From one of these, a scow-schooner captain who plied up and down
the bay and the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, Daughtry had
the promise of being engaged as cook and sailor on the schooner
Howard. Eighty tons of freight, including deckload, she carried,
and in all democracy Captain Jorgensen, the cook, and the two
other sailors, loaded and unloaded her at all hours, and sailed
her night and day on all times and tides, one man steering while
three slept and recuperated. It was time, and double-time, and
over-time beyond that, but the feeding was generous and the wages
ran from forty-five to sixty dollars a month.
"Sure, you bet," said Captain Jorgensen. "This cook-feller,
Hanson, pretty quick I smash him up an' fire him, then you can
come along . . . and the bow-wow, too." Here he dropped a hearty,
wholesome hand of toil down to a caress of Michael's head.
"That's one fine bow-wow. A bow-wow is good on a scow when all
hands sleep alongside the dock or in an anchor watch."
"Fire Hanson now," Dag Daughtry urged.
But Captain Jorgensen shook his slow head slowly. "First I smash
him up."
"Then smash him now and fire him," Daughtry persisted. "There he
is right now at the corner of the bar."
"No. He must give me reason. I got plenty of reason. But I want
reason all hands can see. I want him make me smash him, so that
all hands say, 'Hurrah, Captain, you done right.' Then you get
the job, Daughtry."
Had Captain Jorgensen not been dilatory in his contemplated
smashing, and had not Hanson delayed in giving sufficient
provocation for a smashing, Michael would have accompanied Steward
upon the schooner, Howard, and all Michael's subsequent
experiences would have been totally different from what they were
destined to be. But destined they were, by chance and by
combinations of chance events over which Michael had no control
and of which he had no more awareness than had Steward himself.
At that period, the subsequent stage career and nightmare of
cruelty for Michael was beyond any wildest forecast or
apprehension. And as to forecasting Dag Daughtry's fate, along
with Kwaque, no maddest drug-dream could have approximated it.
