The Wrecker
by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by

Robert Louis Stevenson
and Lloyd Osbourne

PROLOGUE.

IN THE MARQUESAS.

It was about three o'clock of a winter's afternoon in
Tai-o-hae, the French capital and port of entry of the
Marquesas Islands. The trades blew strong and squally;
the surf roared loud on the shingle beach; and the fifty-ton
schooner of war, that carries the flag and influence of
France about the islands of the cannibal group, rolled at
her moorings under Prison Hill. The clouds hung low and
black on the surrounding amphitheatre of mountains; rain
had fallen earlier in the day, real tropic rain, a waterspout
for violence; and the green and gloomy brow of the mountain
was still seamed with many silver threads of torrent.

In these hot and healthy islands winter is but a name. The
rain had not refreshed, nor could the wind invigorate, the
dwellers of Tai-o-hae: away at one end, indeed, the
commandant was directing some changes in the residency
garden beyond Prison Hill; and the gardeners, being all
convicts, had no choice but to continue to obey. All other folks
slumbered and took their rest: Vaekehu, the native queen, in
her trim house under the rustling palms; the Tahitian
commissary, in his beflagged official residence; the merchants,
in their deserted stores; and even the club-servant in the club,
his head fallen forward on the bottle-counter, under the map of
the world and the cards of navy officers. In the whole length of
the single shoreside street, with its scattered board houses
looking to the sea, its grateful shade of palms and green jungle
of puraos, no moving figure could be seen. Only, at the end of
the rickety pier, that once (in the prosperous days of the
American rebellion) was used to groan under the cotton of John
Hart, there might have been spied upon a pile of lumber the
famous tattooed white man, the living curiosity of Tai-o-hae.

His eyes were open, staring down the bay. He saw the
mountains droop, as they approached the entrance, and break
down in cliffs; the surf boil white round the two sentinel islets;
and between, on the narrow bight of blue horizon, Ua-pu
upraise the ghost of her pinnacled mountain tops. But his mind
would take no account of these familiar features; as he dodged
in and out along the frontier line of sleep and waking, memory
would serve him with broken fragments of the past: brown
faces and white, of skipper and shipmate, king and chief,
would arise before his mind and vanish; he would recall old
voyages, old landfalls in the hour of dawn; he would hear again
the drums beat for a man-eating festival; perhaps he would
summon up the form of that island princess for the love of
whom he had submitted his body to the cruel hands of the
tattooer, and now sat on the lumber, at the pier-end of
Tai-o-hae, so strange a figure of a European. Or perhaps from
yet further back, sounds and scents of England and his
childhood might assail him: the merry clamour of cathedral
bells, the broom upon the foreland, the song of the river on the
weir.

It is bold water at the mouth of the bay; you can steer a ship
about either sentinel, close enough to toss a biscuit on the
rocks. Thus it chanced that, as the tattooed man sat dozing and
dreaming, he was startled into wakefulness and animation by
the appearance of a flying jib beyond the western islet. Two
more headsails followed; and before the tattooed man had
scrambled to his feet, a topsail schooner, of some hundred tons,
had luffed about the sentinel and was standing up the bay,
close-hauled.

The sleeping city awakened by enchantment. Natives appeared
upon all sides, hailing each other with the magic cry "Ehippy"
--ship; the Queen stepped forth on her verandah, shading her
eyes under a hand that was a miracle of the fine art of tattooing;
the commandant broke from his domestic convicts and ran into
the residency for his glass; the harbour master, who was also
the gaoler, came speeding down the Prison Hill; the seventeen
brown Kanakas and the French boatswain's mate, that make up
the complement of the war-schooner, crowded on the forward
deck; and the various English, Americans, Germans, Poles,
Corsicans, and Scots--the merchants and the clerks of
Tai-o-hae--deserted their places of business, and gathered,
according to invariable custom, on the road before the club.

So quickly did these dozen whites collect, so short are the
distances in Tai-o-hae, that they were already exchanging
guesses as to the nationality and business of the strange vessel,
before she had gone about upon her second board towards the
anchorage. A moment after, English colours were broken out
at the main truck.

"I told you she was a Johnny Bull--knew it by her headsails,"
said an evergreen old salt, still qualified (if he could anywhere
have found an owner unacquainted with his story) to adorn
another quarter-deck and lose another ship.

"She has American lines, anyway," said the astute Scots
engineer of the gin-mill; "it's my belief she's a yacht."

"That's it," said the old salt, "a yacht! look at her davits, and the
boat over the stern."

"A yacht in your eye!" said a Glasgow voice. "Look at her red
ensign! A yacht! not much she isn't!"

"You can close the store, anyway, Tom," observed a
gentlemanly German. "Bon jour, mon Prince!" he added, as a
dark, intelligent native cantered by on a neat chestnut. "Vous
allez boire un verre de biere?"

But Prince Stanilas Moanatini, the only reasonably busy human
creature on the island, was riding hot-spur to view this
morning's landslip on the mountain road: the sun already
visibly declined; night was imminent; and if he would avoid
the perils of darkness and precipice, and the fear of the dead,
the haunters of the jungle, he must for once decline a hospitable
invitation. Even had he been minded to alight, it presently
appeared there would be difficulty as to the refreshment
offered.

"Beer!" cried the Glasgow voice. "No such a thing; I tell you
there's only eight bottles in the club! Here's the first time I've
seen British colours in this port! and the man that sails under
them has got to drink that beer."

The proposal struck the public mind as fair, though far from
cheering; for some time back, indeed, the very name of beer
had been a sound of sorrow in the club, and the evenings had
passed in dolorous computation.

"Here is Havens," said one, as if welcoming a fresh topic.
"What do you think of her, Havens?"

"I don't think," replied Havens, a tall, bland, cool-looking,
leisurely Englishman, attired in spotless duck, and deliberately
dealing with a cigarette. "I may say I know. She's consigned
to me from Auckland by Donald & Edenborough. I am on my
way aboard."

"What ship is she?" asked the ancient mariner.

"Haven't an idea," returned Havens. "Some tramp they have
chartered."

With that he placidly resumed his walk, and was soon seated in
the stern-sheets of a whaleboat manned by uproarious Kanakas,
himself daintily perched out of the way of the least maculation,
giving his commands in an unobtrusive, dinner-table tone of
voice, and sweeping neatly enough alongside the schooner.

A weather-beaten captain received him at the gangway.

"You are consigned to us, I think," said he. "I am Mr. Havens."

"That is right, sir," replied the captain, shaking hands. "You
will find the owner, Mr. Dodd, below. Mind the fresh paint on
the house."

Havens stepped along the alley-way, and descended the ladder
into the main cabin.

"Mr. Dodd, I believe," said he, addressing a smallish, bearded
gentleman, who sat writing at the table. "Why," he cried, "it
isn't Loudon Dodd?"

"Myself, my dear fellow," replied Mr. Dodd, springing to his
feet with companionable alacrity. "I had a half-hope it might
be you, when I found your name on the papers. Well, there's no
change in you; still the same placid, fresh-looking Britisher."

"I can't return the compliment; for you seem to have become a
Britisher yourself," said Havens.

"I promise you, I am quite unchanged," returned Dodd. "The
red tablecloth at the top of the stick is not my flag; it's my
partner's. He is not dead, but sleepeth. There he is," he added,
pointing to a bust which formed one of the numerous
unexpected ornaments of that unusual cabin.

Havens politely studied it. "A fine bust," said he; "and a very
nice-looking fellow."

"Yes; he's a good fellow," said Dodd. "He runs me now. It's
all his money."

"He doesn't seem to be particularly short of it," added the other,
peering with growing wonder round the cabin.

"His money, my taste," said Dodd. "The black-walnut
bookshelves are Old English; the books all mine,--mostly
Renaissance French. You should see how the beach-combers
wilt away when they go round them looking for a change of
Seaside Library novels. The mirrors are genuine Venice; that's
a good piece in the corner. The daubs are mine--and his; the
mudding mine."

"Mudding? What is that?" asked Havens.

"These bronzes," replied Dodd. "I began life as a sculptor."

"Yes; I remember something about that," said the other. "I
think, too, you said you were interested in Californian real
estate."

"Surely, I never went so far as that," said Dodd. "Interested? I
guess not. Involved, perhaps. I was born an artist; I never took
an interest in anything but art. If I were to pile up this old
schooner to-morrow," he added, "I declare I believe I would try
the thing again!"

"Insured?" inquired Havens.

"Yes," responded Dodd. "There's some fool in 'Frisco who
insures us, and comes down like a wolf on the fold on the
profits; but we'll get even with him some day."

"Well, I suppose it's all right about the cargo," said Havens.

"O, I suppose so!" replied Dodd. "Shall we go into the
papers?"

"We'll have all to-morrow, you know," said Havens; "and
they'll be rather expecting you at the club. C'est l'heure de
l'absinthe. Of course, Loudon, you'll dine with me later on?"

Mr. Dodd signified his acquiescence; drew on his white coat,
not without a trifling difficulty, for he was a man of middle age,
and well-to-do; arranged his beard and moustaches at one of
the Venetian mirrors; and, taking a broad felt hat, led the way
through the trade-room into the ship's waist.

The stern boat was waiting alongside,--a boat of an elegant
model, with cushions and polished hard-wood fittings.

"You steer," observed Loudon. "You know the best place to
land."

"I never like to steer another man's boat," replied Havens.

"Call it my partner's, and cry quits," returned Loudon, getting
nonchalantly down the side.

Havens followed and took the yoke lines without further
protest. "I am sure I don't know how you make this pay," he
said. "To begin with, she is too big for the trade, to my taste;
and then you carry so much style."

"I don't know that she does pay," returned Loudon. "I never
pretend to be a business man. My partner appears happy; and
the money is all his, as I told you--I only bring the want of
business habits."

"You rather like the berth, I suppose?" suggested Havens.

"Yes," said Loudon; "it seems odd, but I rather do."

While they were yet on board, the sun had dipped; the sunset
gun (a rifle) cracked from the war-schooner, and the colours
had been handed down. Dusk was deepening as they came
ashore; and the Cercle Internationale (as the club is officially
and significantly named) began to shine, from under its low
verandas, with the light of many lamps. The good hours of the
twenty-four drew on; the hateful, poisonous day-fly of
Nukahiva, was beginning to desist from its activity; the
land-breeze came in refreshing draughts; and the club men
gathered together for the hour of absinthe. To the commandant
himself, to the man whom he was then contending with at
billiards--a trader from the next island, honorary member of the
club, and once carpenter's mate on board a Yankee war-ship--
to the doctor of the port, to the Brigadier of Gendarmerie, to the
opium farmer, and to all the white men whom the tide of
commerce, or the chances of shipwreck and desertion, had
stranded on the beach of Tai-o-hae, Mr. Loudon Dodd was
formally presented; by all (since he was a man of pleasing
exterior, smooth ways, and an unexceptionable flow of talk,
whether in French or English) he was excellently well received;
and presently, with one of the last eight bottles of beer on a
table at his elbow, found himself the rather silent centre-piece
of a voluble group on the verandah.

Talk in the South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is a wide
ocean, indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never talk long
and not hear the name of Bully Hayes, a naval hero whose
exploits and deserved extinction left Europe cold; commerce
will be touched on, copra, shell, perhaps cotton or fungus; but
in a far-away, dilettante fashion, as by men not deeply
interested; through all, the names of schooners and their
captains, will keep coming and going, thick as may-flies; and
news of the last shipwreck will be placidly exchanged and
debated. To a stranger, this conversation will at first seem
scarcely brilliant; but he will soon catch the tone; and by the
time he shall have moved a year or so in the island world, and
come across a good number of the schooners so that every
captain's name calls up a figure in pyjamas or white duck, and
becomes used to a certain laxity of moral tone which prevails
(as in memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling,
barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other kindred fields of
human activity, he will find Polynesia no less amusing and no
less instructive than Pall Mall or Paris.

Mr. Loudon Dodd, though he was new to the group of the
Marquesas, was already an old, salted trader; he knew the
ships and the captains; he had assisted, in other islands, at the
first steps of some career of which he now heard the
culmination, or (vice versa) he had brought with him from
further south the end of some story which had begun in
Tai-o-hae. Among other matter of interest, like other arrivals in
the South Seas, he had a wreck to announce. The John T.
Richards, it appeared, had met the fate of other island
schooners.

"Dickinson piled her up on Palmerston Island," Dodd
announced.

"Who were the owners?" inquired one of the club men.

"O, the usual parties!" returned Loudon,--"Capsicum & Co."

A smile and a glance of intelligence went round the group; and
perhaps Loudon gave voice to the general sentiment by
remarking, "Talk of good business! I know nothing better than
a schooner, a competent captain, and a sound, reliable reef."

"Good business! There's no such a thing!" said the Glasgow
man. "Nobody makes anything but the missionaries--dash it!"

"I don't know," said another. "There's a good deal in opium."

"It's a good job to strike a tabooed pearl-island, say, about the
fourth year," remarked a third; "skim the whole lagoon on the
sly, and up stick and away before the French get wind of you."

"A pig nokket of cold is good," observed a German.

"There's something in wrecks, too," said Havens. "Look at that
man in Honolulu, and the ship that went ashore on Waikiki
Reef; it was blowing a kona, hard; and she began to break up
as soon as she touched. Lloyd's agent had her sold inside an
hour; and before dark, when she went to pieces in earnest, the
man that bought her had feathered his nest. Three more hours
of daylight, and he might have retired from business. As it
was, he built a house on Beretania Street, and called it for the
ship."

"Yes, there's something in wrecks sometimes," said the
Glasgow voice; "but not often."

"As a general rule, there's deuced little in anything," said
Havens.

"Well, I believe that's a Christian fact," cried the other. "What
I want is a secret; get hold of a rich man by the right place, and
make him squeal."

"I suppose you know it's not thought to be the ticket," returned
Havens.

"I don't care for that; it's good enough for me," cried the man
from Glasgow, stoutly. "The only devil of it is, a fellow can
never find a secret in a place like the South Seas: only in
London and Paris."

"M'Gibbon's been reading some dime-novel, I suppose," said
one club man.

"He's been reading _Aurora Floyd_," remarked another.

"And what if I have?" cried M'Gibbon. "It's all true. Look at
the newspapers! It's just your confounded ignorance that sets
you snickering. I tell you, it's as much a trade as underwriting,
and a dashed sight more honest."

The sudden acrimony of these remarks called Loudon (who
was a man of peace) from his reserve. "It's rather singular,"
said he, "but I seem to have practised about all these means of
livelihood."

"Tit you effer vind a nokket?" inquired the inarticulate German,
eagerly.

"No. I have been most kinds of fool in my time," returned
Loudon, "but not the gold-digging variety. Every man has a
sane spot somewhere."

"Well, then," suggested some one, "did you ever smuggle
opium?"

"Yes, I did," said Loudon.

"Was there money in that?"

"All the way," responded Loudon.

"And perhaps you bought a wreck?" asked another.

"Yes, sir," said Loudon.

"How did that pan out?" pursued the questioner.

"Well, mine was a peculiar kind of wreck," replied Loudon. "I
don't know, on the whole, that I can recommend that branch of
industry."

"Did she break up?" asked some one.

"I guess it was rather I that broke down," says Loudon. "Head
not big enough."

"Ever try the blackmail?" inquired Havens.

"Simple as you see me sitting here!" responded Dodd.

"Good business?"

"Well, I'm not a lucky man, you see," returned the stranger. "It
ought to have been good."

"You had a secret?" asked the Glasgow man.

"As big as the State of Texas."

"And the other man was rich?"

"He wasn't exactly Jay Gould, but I guess he could buy these
islands if he wanted."

"Why, what was wrong, then? Couldn't you get hands on him?"

"It took time, but I had him cornered at last; and then----"

"What then?"

"The speculation turned bottom up. I became the man's bosom
friend."

"The deuce you did!"

"He couldn't have been particular, you mean?" asked Dodd
pleasantly. "Well, no; he's a man of rather large sympathies."

"If you're done talking nonsense, Loudon," said Havens, "let's
be getting to my place for dinner."

Outside, the night was full of the roaring of the surf. Scattered
lights glowed in the green thicket. Native women came by
twos and threes out of the darkness, smiled and ogled the two
whites, perhaps wooed them with a strain of laughter, and went
by again, bequeathing to the air a heady perfume of palm-oil
and frangipani blossom. From the club to Mr. Havens's
residence was but a step or two, and to any dweller in Europe
they must have seemed steps in fairyland. If such an one could
but have followed our two friends into the wide-verandahed
house, sat down with them in the cool trellised room, where the
wine shone on the lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic
food--the raw fish, the breadfruit, the cooked bananas, the roast
pig served with the inimitable miti, and that king of delicacies,
palm-tree salad; seen and heard by fits and starts, now peering
round the corner of the door, now railing within against
invisible assistants, a certain comely young native lady in a
sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member of the family,
and too imperious to be less; and then if such an one were
whisked again through space to Upper Tooting, or wherever
else he honored the domestic gods, "I have had a dream," I
think he would say, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes, in the
familiar chimney-corner chair, "I have had a dream of a place,
and I declare I believe it must be heaven." But to Dodd and his
entertainer, all this amenity of the tropic night and all these
dainties of the island table, were grown things of custom; and
they fell to meat like men who were hungry, and drifted into
idle talk like men who were a trifle bored.

The scene in the club was referred to.

"I never heard you talk so much nonsense, Loudon," said the
host.

"Well, it seemed to me there was sulphur in the air, so I talked
for talking," returned the other. "But it was none of it
nonsense."

"Do you mean to say it was true?" cried Havens,--"that about
the opium and the wreck, and the blackmailing and the man
who became your friend?"

"Every last word of it," said Loudon.

"You seem to have been seeing life," returned the other.

"Yes, it's a queer yarn," said his friend; "if you think you would
like, I'll tell it you."

Here follows the yarn of Loudon Dodd, not as he told it to his
friend, but as he subsequently wrote it.

THE YARN.

CHAPTER I.

A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION.

The beginning of this yarn is my poor father's character. There
never was a better man, nor a handsomer, nor (in my view) a
more unhappy--unhappy in his business, in his pleasures, in his
place of residence, and (I am sorry to say it) in his son. He had
begun life as a land-surveyor, soon became interested in real
estate, branched off into many other speculations, and had the
name of one of the smartest men in the State of Muskegon.
"Dodd has a big head," people used to say; but I was never so
sure of his capacity. His luck, at least, was beyond doubt for
long; his assiduity, always. He fought in that daily battle of
money-grubbing, with a kind of sad-eyed loyalty like a
martyr's; rose early, ate fast, came home dispirited and over-
eary, even from success; grudged himself all pleasure, if his
nature was capable of taking any, which I sometimes
wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or corner in
aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway
robbery, treasures of conscientiousness and self-denial.

Unluckily, I never cared a cent for anything but art, and never
shall. My idea of man's chief end was to enrich the world with
things of beauty, and have a fairly good time myself while
doing so. I do not think I mentioned that second part, which is
the only one I have managed to carry out; but my father must
have suspected the suppression, for he branded the whole affair
as self-indulgence.

"Well," I remember crying once, "and what is your life? You
are only trying to get money, and to get it from other people at
that."

He sighed bitterly (which was very much his habit), and shook
his poor head at me. "Ah, Loudon, Loudon!" said he, "you
boys think yourselves very smart. But, struggle as you please,
a man has to work in this world. He must be an honest man or
a thief, Loudon."

You can see for yourself how vain it was to argue with my
father. The despair that seized upon me after such an interview
was, besides, embittered by remorse; for I was at times
petulant, but he invariably gentle; and I was fighting, after all,
for my own liberty and pleasure, he singly for what he thought
to be my good. And all the time he never despaired. "There is
good stuff in you, Loudon," he would say; "there is the right
stuff in you. Blood will tell, and you will come right in time. I
am not afraid my boy will ever disgrace me; I am only vexed he
should sometimes talk nonsense." And then he would pat my
shoulder or my hand with a kind of motherly way he had, very
affecting in a man so strong and beautiful.

As soon as I had graduated from the high school, he packed me
off to the Muskegon Commercial Academy. You are a
foreigner, and you will have a difficulty in accepting the reality
of this seat of education. I assure you before I begin that I am
wholly serious. The place really existed, possibly exists to-day:
we were proud of it in the State, as something exceptionally
nineteenth century and civilized; and my father, when he saw
me to the cars, no doubt considered he was putting me in a
straight line for the Presidency and the New Jerusalem.

"Loudon," said he, "I am now giving you a chance that Julius
Caesar could not have given to his son--a chance to see life as
it is, before your own turn comes to start in earnest. Avoid rash
speculation, try to behave like a gentleman; and if you will take
my advice, confine yourself to a safe, conservative business in
railroads. Breadstuffs are tempting, but very dangerous; I
would not try breadstuffs at your time of life; but you may feel
your way a little in other commodities. Take a pride to keep
your books posted, and never throw good money after bad.
There, my dear boy, kiss me good-by; and never forget that
you are an only chick, and that your dad watches your career
with fond suspense."

The commercial college was a fine, roomy establishment,
pleasantly situate among woods. The air was healthy, the food
excellent, the premium high. Electric wires connected it (to use
the words of the prospectus) with "the various world centres."
The reading-room was well supplied with "commercial
organs." The talk was that of Wall Street; and the pupils (from
fifty to a hundred lads) were principally engaged in rooking or
trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what was called
"college paper." We had class hours, indeed, in the morning,
when we studied German, French, book-keeping, and the like
goodly matters; but the bulk of our day and the gist of the
education centred in the exchange, where we were taught to
gamble in produce and securities. Since not one of the
participants possessed a bushel of wheat or a dollar's worth of
stock, legitimate business was of course impossible from the
beginning. It was cold-drawn gambling, without colour or
disguise. Just that which is the impediment and destruction of
all genuine commercial enterprise, just that we were taught
with every luxury of stage effect. Our simulacrum of a market
was ruled by the real markets outside, so that we might
experience the course and vicissitude of prices. We must keep
books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the month's end by
the principal or his assistants. To add a spice of verisimilitude,
"college paper" (like poker chips) had an actual marketable
value. It was bought for each pupil by anxious parents and
guardians at the rate of one cent for the dollar. The same pupil,
when his education was complete, resold, at the same figure,
so much as was left him to the college; and even in the midst of
his curriculum, a successful operator would sometimes realize
a proportion of his holding, and stand a supper on the sly in the
neighbouring hamlet. In short, if there was ever a worse
education, it must have been in that academy where Oliver met
Charlie Bates.

When I was first guided into the exchange to have my desk
pointed out by one of the assistant teachers, I was overwhelmed
by the clamour and confusion. Certain blackboards at the other
end of the building were covered with figures continually
replaced. As each new set appeared, the pupils swayed to and
fro, and roared out aloud with a formidable and to me quite
meaningless vociferation; leaping at the same time upon the
desks and benches, signalling with arms and heads, and
scribbling briskly in note-books. I thought I had never beheld a
scene more disagreeable; and when I considered that the whole
traffic was illusory, and all the money then upon the market
would scarce have sufficed to buy a pair of skates, I was at first
astonished, although not for long. Indeed, I had no sooner
called to mind how grown-up men and women of considerable
estate will lose their temper about half-penny points, than
(making an immediate allowance for my fellow-students) I
transferred the whole of my astonishment to the assistant
teacher, who--poor gentleman--had quite forgot to show me to
my desk, and stood in the midst of this hurly-burly, absorbed
and seemingly transported.

"Look, look," he shouted in my ear; "a falling market! The
bears have had it all their own way since yesterday."

"It can't matter," I replied, making him hear with difficulty, for
I was unused to speak in such a babel, "since it is all fun."

"True," said he; "and you must always bear in mind that the
real profit is in the book-keeping. I trust, Dodd, to be able to
congratulate you upon your books. You are to start in with ten
thousand dollars of college paper, a very liberal figure, which
should see you through the whole curriculum, if you keep to a
safe, conservative business.... Why, what's that?" he broke off,
once more attracted by the changing figures on the board.
"Seven, four, three! Dodd, you are in luck: this is the most
spirited rally we have had this term. And to think that the
same scene is now transpiring in New York, Chicago, St.
Louis, and rival business centres! For two cents, I would try a
flutter with the boys myself," he cried, rubbing his hands; "only
it's against the regulations."

"What would you do, sir?" I asked.

"Do?" he cried, with glittering eyes. "Buy for all I was worth!"

"Would that be a safe, conservative business?" I inquired, as
innocent as a lamb.

He looked daggers at me. "See that sandy-haired man in
glasses?" he asked, as if to change the subject. "That's Billson,
our most prominent undergraduate. We build confidently on
Billson's future. You could not do better, Dodd, than follow
Billson."

Presently after, in the midst of a still growing tumult, the
figures coming and going more busily than ever on the board,
and the hall resounding like Pandemonium with the howls of
operators, the assistant teacher left me to my own resources at
my desk. The next boy was posting up his ledger, figuring his
morning's loss, as I discovered later on; and from this ungenial
task he was readily diverted by the sight of a new face.

"Say, Freshman," he said, "what's your name? What? Son of
Big Head Dodd? What's your figure? Ten thousand? O,
you're away up! What a soft-headed clam you must be to touch
your books!"

I asked him what else I could do, since the books were to be
examined once a month.

"Why, you galoot, you get a clerk!" cries he. "One of our dead
beats--that's all they're here for. If you're a successful operator,
you need never do a stroke of work in this old college."

The noise had now become deafening; and my new friend,
telling me that some one had certainly "gone down," that he
must know the news, and that he would bring me a clerk when
he returned, buttoned his coat and plunged into the tossing
throng. It proved that he was right: some one had gone down;
a prince had fallen in Israel; the corner in lard had proved fatal
to the mighty; and the clerk who was brought back to keep my
books, spare me all work, and get all my share of the education,
at a thousand dollars a month, college paper (ten dollars,
United States currency) was no other than the prominent
Billson whom I could do no better than follow. The poor lad
was very unhappy. It's the only good thing I have to say for
Muskegon Commercial College, that we were all, even the
small fry, deeply mortified to be posted as defaulters; and the
collapse of a merchant prince like Billson, who had ridden
pretty high in his days of prosperity, was, of course, particularly
hard to bear. But the spirit of make-believe conquered even the
bitterness of recent shame; and my clerk took his orders, and
fell to his new duties, with decorum and civility.

Such were my first impressions in this absurd place of
education; and, to be frank, they were far from disagreeable.
As long as I was rich, my evenings and afternoons would be
my own; the clerk must keep my books, the clerk could do the
jostling and bawling in the exchange; and I could turn my mind
to landscape-painting and Balzac's novels, which were then my
two preoccupations. To remain rich, then, became my
problem; or, in other words, to do a safe, conservative line of
business. I am looking for that line still; and I believe the
nearest thing to it in this imperfect world is the sort of
speculation sometimes insidiously proposed to childhood, in
the formula, "Heads, I win; tails, you lose." Mindful of my
father's parting words, I turned my attention timidly to
railroads; and for a month or so maintained a position of
inglorious security, dealing for small amounts in the most inert
stocks, and bearing (as best I could) the scorn of my hired
clerk. One day I had ventured a little further by way of
experiment; and, in the sure expectation they would continue to
go down, sold several thousand dollars of Pan-Handle
Preference (I think it was). I had no sooner made this venture
than some fools in New York began to bull the market;
Pan-Handles rose like a balloon; and in the inside of half an
hour I saw my position compromised. Blood will tell, as my
father said; and I stuck to it gallantly: all afternoon I continued
selling that infernal stock, all afternoon it continued skying. I
suppose I had come (a frail cockle-shell) athwart the hawse of
Jay Gould; and, indeed, I think I remember that this vagary in
the market proved subsequently to be the first move in a
considerable deal. That evening, at least, the name of H.
Loudon Dodd held the first rank in our collegiate gazette, and I
and Billson (once more thrown upon the world) were
competing for the same clerkship. The present object takes the
present eye. My disaster, for the moment, was the more
conspicuous; and it was I that got the situation. So you see,
even in Muskegon Commercial College, there were lessons to
be learned.

For my own part, I cared very little whether I lost or won at a
game so random, so complex, and so dull; but it was sorry
news to write to my poor father, and I employed all the
resources of my eloquence. I told him (what was the truth) that
the successful boys had none of the education; so that if he
wished me to learn, he should rejoice at my misfortune. I went
on (not very consistently) to beg him to set me up again, when I
would solemnly promise to do a safe business in reliable
railroads. Lastly (becoming somewhat carried away), I assured
him I was totally unfit for business, and implored him to take
me away from this abominable place, and let me go to Paris to
study art. He answered briefly, gently, and sadly, telling me
the vacation was near at hand, when we could talk things over.

When the time came, he met me at the depot, and I was
shocked to see him looking older. He seemed to have no
thought but to console me and restore (what he supposed I had
lost) my courage. I must not be down-hearted; many of the
best men had made a failure in the beginning. I told him I had
no head for business, and his kind face darkened. "You must
not say that, Loudon," he replied; "I will never believe my son
to be a coward."

"But I don't like it," I pleaded. "It hasn't got any interest for
me, and art has. I know I could do more in art," and I
reminded him that a successful painter gains large sums; that a
picture of Meissonier's would sell for many thousand dollars.

"And do you think, Loudon," he replied, "that a man who can
paint a thousand dollar picture has not grit enough to keep his
end up in the stock market? No, sir; this Mason (of whom you
speak) or our own American Bierstadt--if you were to put them
down in a wheat pit to-morrow, they would show their mettle.
Come, Loudon, my dear; heaven knows I have no thought but
your own good, and I will offer you a bargain. I start you again
next term with ten thousand dollars; show yourself a man, and
double it, and then (if you still wish to go to Paris, which I
know you won't) I'll let you go. But to let you run away as if
you were whipped, is what I am too proud to do."

My heart leaped at this proposal, and then sank again. It
seemed easier to paint a Meissonier on the spot than to win ten
thousand dollars on that mimic stock exchange. Nor could I
help reflecting on the singularity of such a test for a man's
capacity to be a painter. I ventured even to comment on this.

He sighed deeply. "You forget, my dear," said he, "I am a
judge of the one, and not of the other. You might have the
genius of Bierstadt himself, and I would be none the wiser."

"And then," I continued, "it's scarcely fair. The other boys are
helped by their people, who telegraph and give them pointers.
There's Jim Costello, who never budges without a word from
his father in New York. And then, don't you see, if anybody is
to win, somebody must lose?"

"I'll keep you posted," cried my father, with unusual animation;
"I did not know it was allowed. I'll wire you in the office
cipher, and we'll make it a kind of partnership business,
Loudon:--Dodd & Son, eh?" and he patted my shoulder and
repeated, "Dodd & Son, Dodd & Son," with the kindliest
amusement.

If my father was to give me pointers, and the commercial
college was to be a stepping-stone to Paris, I could look my
future in the face. The old boy, too, was so pleased at the idea
of our association in this foolery that he immediately plucked
up spirit. Thus it befell that those who had met at the depot
like a pair of mutes, sat down to table with holiday faces.

And now I have to introduce a new character that never said a
word nor wagged a finger, and yet shaped my whole
subsequent career. You have crossed the States, so that in all
likelihood you have seen the head of it, parcel-gilt and
curiously fluted, rising among trees from a wide plain; for this
new character was no other than the State capitol of Muskegon,
then first projected. My father had embraced the idea with a
mixture of patriotism and commercial greed both perfectly
genuine. He was of all the committees, he had subscribed a
great deal of money, and he was making arrangements to have
a finger in most of the contracts. Competitive plans had been
sent in; at the time of my return from college my father was
deep in their consideration; and as the idea entirely occupied
his mind, the first evening did not pass away before he had
called me into council. Here was a subject at last into which I
could throw myself with pleasurable zeal. Architecture was
new to me, indeed; but it was at least an art; and for all the arts
I had a taste naturally classical and that capacity to take
delighted pains which some famous idiot has supposed to be
synonymous with genius. I threw myself headlong into my
father's work, acquainted myself with all the plans, their merits
and defects, read besides in special books, made myself a
master of the theory of strains, studied the current prices of
materials, and (in one word) "devilled" the whole business so
thoroughly, that when the plans came up for consideration, Big
Head Dodd was supposed to have earned fresh laurels. His
arguments carried the day, his choice was approved by the
committee, and I had the anonymous satisfaction to know that
arguments and choice were wholly mine. In the recasting of
the plan which followed, my part was even larger; for I
designed and cast with my own hand a hot-air grating for the
offices, which had the luck or merit to be accepted. The energy
and aptitude which I displayed throughout delighted and
surprised my father, and I believe, although I say it whose
tongue should be tied, that they alone prevented Muskegon
capitol from being the eyesore of my native State.

Altogether, I was in a cheery frame of mind when I returned to
the commercial college; and my earlier operations were
crowned with a full measure of success. My father wrote and
wired to me continually. "You are to exercise your own
judgment, Loudon," he would say. "All that I do is to give you
the figures; but whatever operation you take up must be upon
your own responsibility, and whatever you earn will be entirely
due to your own dash and forethought." For all that, it was
always clear what he intended me to do, and I was always
careful to do it. Inside of a month I was at the head of
seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars, college paper. And
here I fell a victim to one of the vices of the system. The paper
(I have already explained) had a real value of one per cent; and
cost, and could be sold for, currency. Unsuccessful speculators
were thus always selling clothes, books, banjos, and sleeve-
links, in order to pay their differences; the successful, on the
other hand, were often tempted to realise, and enjoy some
return upon their profits. Now I wanted thirty dollars' worth of
artist-truck, for I was always sketching in the woods; my
allowance was for the time exhausted; I had begun to regard
the exchange (with my father's help) as a place where money
was to be got for stooping; and in an evil hour I realised three
thousand dollars of the college paper and bought my easel.

It was a Wednesday morning when the things arrived, and set
me in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. My father (for I can
scarcely say myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in
wheat between Chicago and New York; the operation so called
is, as you know, one of the most tempting and least safe upon
the chess-board of finance. On the Thursday, luck began to
turn against my father's calculations; and by the Friday
evening, I was posted on the boards as a defaulter for the
second time. Here was a rude blow: my father would have
taken it ill enough in any case; for however much a man may
resent the incapacity of an only son, he will feel his own more
sensibly. But it chanced that, in our bitter cup of failure, there
was one ingredient that might truly be called poisonous. He
had been keeping the run of my position; he missed the three
thousand dollars, paper; and in his view, I had stolen thirty
dollars, currency. It was an extreme view perhaps; but in some
senses, it was just: and my father, although (to my judgment)
quite reckless of honesty in the essence of his operations, was
the soul of honour as to their details. I had one grieved letter
from him, dignified and tender; and during the rest of that
wretched term, working as a clerk, selling my clothes and
sketches to make futile speculations, my dream of Paris quite
vanished. I was cheered by no word of kindness and helped by
no hint of counsel from my father.

All the time he was no doubt thinking of little else but his son,
and what to do with him. I believe he had been really appalled
by what he regarded as my laxity of principle, and began to
think it might be well to preserve me from temptation; the
architect of the capitol had, besides, spoken obligingly of my
design; and while he was thus hanging between two minds,
Fortune suddenly stepped in, and Muskegon State capitol
reversed my destiny.

"Loudon," said my father, as he met me at the depot, with a
smiling countenance, "if you were to go to Paris, how long
would it take you to become an experienced sculptor?"

"How do you mean, father?" I cried. "Experienced?"

"A man that could be entrusted with the highest styles," he
answered; "the nude, for instance; and the patriotic and
emblematical styles."

"It might take three years," I replied.

"You think Paris necessary?" he asked. "There are great
advantages in our own country; and that man Prodgers appears
to be a very clever sculptor, though I suppose he stands too
high to go around giving lessons."

"Paris is the only place," I assured him.

"Well, I think myself it will sound better," he admitted. "A
Young Man, a Native of this State, Son of a Leading Citizen,
Studies Prosecuted under the Most Experienced Masters in
Paris," he added, relishingly.

"But, my dear dad, what is it all about?" I interrupted. "I never
even dreamed of being a sculptor."

"Well, here it is," said he. "I took up the statuary contract on
our new capitol; I took it up at first as a deal; and then it
occurred to me it would be better to keep it in the family. It
meets your idea; there's considerable money in the thing; and
it's patriotic. So, if you say the word, you shall go to Paris, and
come back in three years to decorate the capitol of your native
State. It's a big chance for you, Loudon; and I'll tell you what--
every dollar you earn, I'll put another alongside of it. But the
sooner you go, and the harder you work, the better; for if the
first half-dozen statues aren't in a line with public taste in
Muskegon, there will be trouble."

CHAPTER II.

ROUSSILLON WINE.

My mother's family was Scotch, and it was judged fitting I
should pay a visit on my way Paris-ward, to my Uncle Adam
Loudon, a wealthy retired grocer of Edinburgh. He was very
stiff and very ironical; he fed me well, lodged me sumptuously,
and seemed to take it out of me all the time, cent per cent, in
secret entertainment which caused his spectacles to glitter and
his mouth to twitch. The ground of this ill-suppressed mirth
(as well as I could make out) was simply the fact that I was an
American. "Well," he would say, drawing out the word to
infinity, "and I suppose now in your country, things will be so
and so."  And the whole group of my cousins would titter
joyously. Repeated receptions of this sort must be at the root, I
suppose, of what they call the Great American Jest; and I know
I was myself goaded into saying that my friends went naked in
the summer months, and that the Second Methodist Episcopal
Church in Muskegon was decorated with scalps. I cannot say
that these flights had any great success; they seemed to awaken
little more surprise than the fact that my father was a
Republican or that I had been taught in school to spell
COLOUR without the U. If I had told them (what was after all
the truth) that my father had paid a considerable annual sum to
have me brought up in a gambling hell, the tittering and
grinning of this dreadful family might perhaps have been
excused.

I cannot deny but I was sometimes tempted to knock my Uncle
Adam down; and indeed I believe it must have come to a
rupture at last, if they had not given a dinner party at which I
was the lion. On this occasion, I learned (to my surprise and
relief) that the incivility to which I had been subjected was a
matter for the family circle and might be regarded almost in the
light of an endearment. To strangers I was presented with
consideration; and the account given of "my American brother-
in-law, poor Janie's man, James K. Dodd, the well-known
millionnaire of Muskegon," was calculated to enlarge the heart
of a proud son.

An aged assistant of my grandfather's, a pleasant, humble
creature with a taste for whiskey, was at first deputed to be my
guide about the city. With this harmless but hardly aristocratic
companion, I went to Arthur's Seat and the Calton Hill, heard
the band play in the Princes Street Gardens, inspected the
regalia and the blood of Rizzio, and fell in love with the great
castle on its cliff, the innumerable spires of churches, the
stately buildings, the broad prospects, and those narrow and
crowded lanes of the old town where my ancestors had lived
and died in the days before Columbus.

But there was another curiosity that interested me more deeply
--my grandfather, Alexander Loudon. In his time, the old
gentleman had been a working mason, and had risen from the
ranks more, I think, by shrewdness than by merit. In his
appearance, speech, and manners, he bore broad marks of his
origin, which were gall and wormwood to my Uncle Adam.
His nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in
conspicuous mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and
wrinkles like a ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude,
broad, and dragging: take him at his best, and even when he
could be induced to hold his tongue, his mere presence in a
corner of the drawing-room, with his open-air wrinkles, his
scanty hair, his battered hands, and the cheerful craftiness of
his expression, advertised the whole gang of us for a self-made
family. My aunt might mince and my cousins bridle; but there
was no getting over the solid, physical fact of the stonemason
in the chimney-corner.

That is one advantage of being an American: it never occurred
to me to be ashamed of my grandfather, and the old gentleman
was quick to mark the difference. He held my mother in tender
memory, perhaps because he was in the habit of daily
contrasting her with Uncle Adam, whom he detested to the
point of frenzy; and he set down to inheritance from his
favourite my own becoming treatment of himself. On our
walks abroad, which soon became daily, he would sometimes
(after duly warning me to keep the matter dark from "Aadam")
skulk into some old familiar pot-house; and there (if he had the
luck to encounter any of his veteran cronies) he would present
me to the company with manifest pride, casting at the same
time a covert slur on the rest of his descendants. "This is my
Jeannie's yin," he would say. "He's a fine fallow, him." The
purpose of our excursions was not to seek antiquities or to
enjoy famous prospects, but to visit one after another a series of
doleful suburbs, for which it was the old gentleman's chief
claim to renown that he had been the sole contractor, and too
often the architect besides. I have rarely seen a more shocking
exhibition: the bricks seemed to be blushing in the walls, and
the slates on the roof to have turned pale with shame; but I was
careful not to communicate these impressions to the aged
artificer at my side; and when he would direct my attention to
some fresh monstrosity--perhaps with the comment, "There's an
idee of mine's: it's cheap and tasty, and had a graand run; the
idee was soon stole, and there's whole deestricts near Glesgie
with the goathic adeetion and that plunth,"--I would civilly
make haste to admire and (what I found particularly delighted
him) to inquire into the cost of each adornment. It will be
conceived that Muskegon capitol was a frequent and a
welcome ground of talk; I drew him all the plans from memory;
and he, with the aid of a narrow volume full of figures and
tables, which answered (I believe) to the name of Molesworth,
and was his constant pocket companion, would draw up rough
estimates and make imaginary offers on the various contracts.
Our Muskegon builders he pronounced a pack of cormorants;
and the congenial subject, together with my knowledge of
architectural terms, the theory of strains, and the prices of
materials in the States, formed a strong bond of union between
what might have been otherwise an ill-assorted pair, and led
my grandfather to pronounce me, with emphasis, "a real
intalligent kind of a cheild." Thus a second time, as you will
presently see, the capitol of my native State had influentially
affected the current of my life.

I left Edinburgh, however, with not the least idea that I had
done a stroke of excellent business for myself, and singly
delighted to escape out of a somewhat dreary house and plunge
instead into the rainbow city of Paris. Every man has his own
romance; mine clustered exclusively about the practice of the
arts, the life of Latin Quarter students, and the world of Paris as
depicted by that grimy wizard, the author of the _Comedie
Humaine_. I was not disappointed--I could not have been; for I
did not see the facts, I brought them with me ready-made. Z.
Marcas lived next door to me in my ungainly, ill-smelling hotel
of the Rue Racine; I dined at my villainous restaurant with
Lousteau and with Rastignac: if a curricle nearly ran me down
at a street-crossing, Maxime de Trailles would be the driver. I
dined, I say, at a poor restaurant and lived in a poor hotel; and
this was not from need, but sentiment. My father gave me a
profuse allowance, and I might have lived (had I chosen) in the
Quartier de l'Etoile and driven to my studies daily. Had I done
so, the glamour must have fled: I should still have been but
Loudon Dodd; whereas now I was a Latin Quarter student,
Murger's successor, living in flesh and blood the life of one of
those romances I had loved to read, to re-read, and to dream
over, among the woods of Muskegon.

At this time we were all a little Murger-mad in the Latin
Quarter. The play of the _Vie de Boheme_ (a dreary, snivelling
piece) had been produced at the Odeon, had run an
unconscionable time--for Paris, and revived the freshness of the
legend. The same business, you may say, or there and
thereabout, was being privately enacted in consequence in
every garret of the neighbourhood, and a good third of the
students were consciously impersonating Rodolphe or
Schaunard to their own incommunicable satisfaction. Some of
us went far, and some farther. I always looked with awful envy
(for instance) on a certain countryman of my own who had a
studio in the Rue Monsieur le Prince, wore boots, and long hair
in a net, and could be seen tramping off, in this guise, to the
worst eating-house of the quarter, followed by a Corsican
model, his mistress, in the conspicuous costume of her race and
calling. It takes some greatness of soul to carry even folly to
such heights as these; and for my own part, I had to content
myself by pretending very arduously to be poor, by wearing a
smoking-cap on the streets, and by pursuing, through a series
of misadventures, that extinct mammal, the grisette. The most
grievous part was the eating and the drinking. I was born with
a dainty tooth and a palate for wine; and only a genuine
devotion to romance could have supported me under the cat-
civets that I had to swallow, and the red ink of Bercy I must
wash them down withal. Every now and again, after a hard
day at the studio, where I was steadily and far from
unsuccessfully industrious, a wave of distaste would overbear
me; I would slink away from my haunts and companions,
indemnify myself for weeks of self-denial with fine wines and
dainty dishes; seated perhaps on a terrace, perhaps in an arbour
in a garden, with a volume of one of my favourite authors
propped open in front of me, and now consulted awhile, and
now forgotten:--so remain, relishing my situation, till night fell
and the lights of the city kindled; and thence stroll homeward
by the riverside, under the moon or stars, in a heaven of poetry
and digestion.

One such indulgence led me in the course of my second year
into an adventure which I must relate: indeed, it is the very
point I have been aiming for, since that was what brought me
in acquaintance with Jim Pinkerton. I sat down alone to dinner
one October day when the rusty leaves were falling and
scuttling on the boulevard, and the minds of impressionable
men inclined in about an equal degree towards sadness and
conviviality. The restaurant was no great place, but boasted a
considerable cellar and a long printed list of vintages. This I
was perusing with the double zest of a man who is fond of
wine and a lover of beautiful names, when my eye fell (near the
end of the card) on that not very famous or familiar brand,
Roussillon. I remembered it was a wine I had never tasted,
ordered a bottle, found it excellent, and when I had discussed
the contents, called (according to my habit) for a final pint. It
appears they did not keep Roussillon in half-bottles. "All
right," said I. "Another bottle."  The tables at this eating-house
are close together; and the next thing I can remember, I was in
somewhat loud conversation with my nearest neighbours.
From these I must have gradually extended my attentions; for I
have a clear recollection of gazing about a room in which every
chair was half turned round and every face turned smilingly to
mine. I can even remember what I was saying at the moment;
but after twenty years, the embers of shame are still alive; and I
prefer to give your imagination the cue, by simply mentioning
that my muse was the patriotic. It had been my design to
adjourn for coffee in the company of some of these new friends;
but I was no sooner on the sidewalk than I found myself
unaccountably alone. The circumstance scarce surprised me at
the time, much less now; but I was somewhat chagrined a little
after to find I had walked into a kiosque. I began to wonder if I
were any the worse for my last bottle, and decided to steady
myself with coffee and brandy. In the Cafe de la Source, where
I went for this restorative, the fountain was playing, and (what
greatly surprised me) the mill and the various mechanical
figures on the rockery appeared to have been freshly repaired
and performed the most enchanting antics. The cafe was
extraordinarily hot and bright, with every detail of a
conspicuous clearness, from the faces of the guests to the type
of the newspapers on the tables, and the whole apartment
swang to and fro like a hammock, with an exhilarating motion.
For some while I was so extremely pleased with these
particulars that I thought I could never be weary of beholding
them: then dropped of a sudden into a causeless sadness; and
then, with the same swiftness and spontaneity, arrived at the
conclusion that I was drunk and had better get to bed.

It was but a step or two to my hotel, where I got my lighted
candle from the porter and mounted the four flights to my own
room. Although I could not deny that I was drunk, I was at the
same time lucidly rational and practical. I had but one
preoccupation--to be up in time on the morrow for my work;
and when I observed the clock on my chimney-piece to have
stopped, I decided to go down stairs again and give directions
to the porter. Leaving the candle burning and my door open, to
be a guide to me on my return, I set forth accordingly. The
house was quite dark; but as there were only the three doors on
each landing, it was impossible to wander, and I had nothing to
do but descend the stairs until I saw the glimmer of the porter's
night light. I counted four flights: no porter. It was possible, of
course, that I had reckoned incorrectly; so I went down another
and another, and another, still counting as I went, until I had
reached the preposterous figure of nine flights. It was now
quite clear that I had somehow passed the porter's lodge
without remarking it; indeed, I was, at the lowest figure, five
pairs of stairs below the street, and plunged in the very bowels
of the earth. That my hotel should thus be founded upon
catacombs was a discovery of considerable interest; and if I had
not been in a frame of mind entirely businesslike, I might have
continued to explore all night this subterranean empire. But I
was bound I must be up betimes on the next morning, and for
that end it was imperative that I should find the porter. I faced
about accordingly, and counting with painful care, remounted
towards the level of the street. Five, six, and seven flights I
climbed, and still there was no porter. I began to be weary of
the job, and reflecting that I was now close to my own room,
decided I should go to bed. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
thirteen flights I mounted; and my open door seemed to be as
wholly lost to me as the porter and his floating dip. I
remembered that the house stood but six stories at its highest
point, from which it appeared (on the most moderate
computation) I was now three stories higher than the roof. My
original sense of amusement was succeeded by a not unnatural
irritation. "My room has just GOT to be here," said I, and I
stepped towards the door with outspread arms. There was no
door and no wall; in place of either there yawned before me a
dark corridor, in which I continued to advance for some time
without encountering the smallest opposition. And this in a
house whose extreme area scantily contained three small
rooms, a narrow landing, and the stair! The thing was
manifestly nonsense; and you will scarcely be surprised to learn
that I now began to lose my temper. At this juncture I
perceived a filtering of light along the floor, stretched forth my
hand which encountered the knob of a door-handle, and
without further ceremony entered a room. A young lady was
within; she was going to bed, and her toilet was far advanced,
or the other way about, if you prefer.

"I hope you will pardon this intrusion," said I; "but my room is
No. 12, and something has gone wrong with this blamed
house."

She looked at me a moment; and then, "If you will step outside
for a moment, I will take you there," says she.

Thus, with perfect composure on both sides, the matter was
arranged. I waited a while outside her door. Presently she
rejoined me, in a dressing-gown, took my hand, led me up
another flight, which made the fourth above the level of the
roof, and shut me into my own room, where (being quite weary
after these contraordinary explorations) I turned in, and
slumbered like a child.

I tell you the thing calmly, as it appeared to me to pass; but the
next day, when I awoke and put memory in the witness-box, I
could not conceal from myself that the tale presented a good
many improbable features. I had no mind for the studio, after
all, and went instead to the Luxembourg gardens, there, among
the sparrows and the statues and the falling leaves, to cool and
clear my head. It is a garden I have always loved. You sit
there in a public place of history and fiction. Barras and
Fouche have looked from these windows. Lousteau and de
Banville (one as real as the other) have rhymed upon these
benches. The city tramples by without the railings to a lively
measure; and within and about you, trees rustle, children and
sparrows utter their small cries, and the statues look on forever.
Here, then, in a seat opposite the gallery entrance, I set to work
on the events of the last night, to disengage (if it were possible)
truth from fiction.

The house, by daylight, had proved to be six stories high, the
same as ever. I could find, with all my architectural
experience, no room in its altitude for those interminable
stairways, no width between its walls for that long corridor,
where I had tramped at night. And there was yet a greater
difficulty. I had read somewhere an aphorism that everything
may be false to itself save human nature. A house might
elongate or enlarge itself--or seem to do so to a gentleman who
had been dining. The ocean might dry up, the rocks melt in the
sun, the stars fall from heaven like autumn apples; and there
was nothing in these incidents to boggle the philosopher. But
the case of the young lady stood upon a different foundation.
Girls were not good enough, or not good that way, or else they
were too good. I was ready to accept any of these views: all
pointed to the same conclusion, which I was thus already on
the point of reaching, when a fresh argument occurred, and
instantly confirmed it. I could remember the exact words we
had each said; and I had spoken, and she had replied, in
English. Plainly, then, the whole affair was an illusion:
catacombs, and stairs, and charitable lady, all were equally the
stuff of dreams.

I had just come to this determination, when there blew a flaw
of wind through the autumnal gardens; the dead leaves
showered down, and a flight of sparrows, thick as a snowfall,
wheeled above my head with sudden pipings. This agreeable
bustle was the affair of a moment, but it startled me from the
abstraction into which I had fallen like a summons. I sat
briskly up, and as I did so, my eyes rested on the figure of a
lady in a brown jacket and carrying a paint-box. By her side
walked a fellow some years older than myself, with an easel
under his arm; and alike by their course and cargo I might
judge they were bound for the gallery, where the lady was,
doubtless, engaged upon some copying. You can imagine my
surprise when I recognized in her the heroine of my adventure.
To put the matter beyond question, our eyes met, and she,
seeing herself remembered and recalling the trim in which I
had last beheld her, looked swiftly on the ground with just a
shadow of confusion.

I could not tell you to-day if she were plain or pretty; but she
had behaved with so much good sense, and I had cut so poor a
figure in her presence, that I became instantly fired with the
desire to display myself in a more favorable light. The young
man besides was possibly her brother; brothers are apt to be
hasty, theirs being a part in which it is possible, at a
comparatively early age, to assume the dignity of manhood;
and it occurred to me it might be wise to forestall all possible
complications by an apology.

On this reasoning I drew near to the gallery door, and had
hardly got in position before the young man came out. Thus it
was that I came face to face with my third destiny; for my
career has been entirely shaped by these three elements,--my
father, the capitol of Muskegon, and my friend, Jim Pinkerton.
As for the young lady with whom my mind was at the moment
chiefly occupied, I was never to hear more of her from that day
forward: an excellent example of the Blind Man's Buff that we
call life.

CHAPTER III.

TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON.

The stranger, I have said, was some years older than myself: a
man of a good stature, a very lively face, cordial, agitated
manners, and a gray eye as active as a fowl's.

"May I have a word with you?" said I.

"My dear sir," he replied, "I don't know what it can be about,
but you may have a hundred if you like."

"You have just left the side of a young lady," I continued,
"towards whom I was led (very unintentionally) into the
appearance of an offence. To speak to herself would be only to
renew her embarrassment, and I seize the occasion of making
my apology, and declaring my respect, to one of my own sex
who is her friend, and perhaps," I added, with a bow, "her
natural protector."

"You are a countryman of mine; I know it!" he cried: "I am
sure of it by your delicacy to a lady. You do her no more than
justice. I was introduced to her the other night at tea, in the
apartment of some people, friends of mine; and meeting her
again this morning, I could not do less than carry her easel for
her. My dear sir, what is your name?"

I was disappointed to find he had so little bond with my young
lady; and but that it was I who had sought the acquaintance,
might have been tempted to retreat. At the same time,
something in the stranger's eye engaged me.

"My name," said I, "is Loudon Dodd; I am a student of
sculpture here from Muskegon."

"Of sculpture?" he cried, as though that would have been his
last conjecture. "Mine is James Pinkerton; I am delighted to
have the pleasure of your acquaintance."

"Pinkerton!" it was now my turn to exclaim. "Are you Broken-
Stool Pinkerton?"

He admitted his identity with a laugh of boyish delight; and
indeed any young man in the quarter might have been proud to
own a sobriquet thus gallantly acquired.

In order to explain the name, I must here digress into a chapter
of the history of manners in the nineteenth century, very well
worth commemoration for its own sake. In some of the studios
at that date, the hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and
obscene. Two incidents, following one on the heels of the other
tended to produce an advance in civilization by the means (as
so commonly happens) of a passing appeal to savage
standards. The first was the arrival of a little gentleman from
Armenia. He had a fez upon his head and (what nobody
counted on) a dagger in his pocket. The hazing was set about
in the customary style, and, perhaps in virtue of the victim's
head-gear, even more boisterously than usual. He bore it at
first with an inviting patience; but upon one of the students
proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out his knife
and suddenly plunged it in the belly of the jester. This
gentleman, I am pleased to say, passed months upon a bed of
sickness, before he was in a position to resume his studies.
The second incident was that which had earned Pinkerton his
reputation. In a crowded studio, while some very filthy
brutalities were being practised on a trembling debutant, a tall,
pale fellow sprang from his stool and (without the smallest
preface or explanation) sang out, "All English and Americans
to clear the shop!" Our race is brutal, but not filthy; and the
summons was nobly responded to. Every Anglo-Saxon student
seized his stool; in a moment the studio was full of bloody
coxcombs, the French fleeing in disorder for the door, the
victim liberated and amazed. In this feat of arms, both English
-speaking nations covered themselves with glory; but I am
proud to claim the author of the whole for an American, and a
patriotic American at that, being the same gentleman who had
subsequently to be held down in the bottom of a box during a
performance of _L'Oncle Sam_, sobbing at intervals, "My
country! O my country!"  While yet another (my new
acquaintance, Pinkerton) was supposed to have made the most
conspicuous figure in the actual battle. At one blow, he had
broken his own stool, and sent the largest of his opponents
back foremost through what we used to call a "conscientious
nude." It appears that, in the continuation of his flight, this
fallen warrior issued on the boulevard still framed in the burst
canvas.

It will be understood how much talk the incident aroused in the
students' quarter, and that I was highly gratified to make the
acquaintance of my famous countryman. It chanced I was to
see more of the quixotic side of his character before the
morning was done; for as we continued to stroll together, I
found myself near the studio of a young Frenchman whose
work I had promised to examine, and in the fashion of the
quarter carried up Pinkerton along with me. Some of my
comrades of this date were pretty obnoxious fellows. I could
almost always admire and respect the grown-up practitioners of
art in Paris; but many of those who were still in a state of
pupilage were sorry specimens, so much so that I used often to
wonder where the painters came from, and where the brutes of
students went to. A similar mystery hangs over the
intermediate stages of the medical profession, and must have
perplexed the least observant. The ruffian, at least, whom I
now carried Pinkerton to visit, was one of the most crapulous in
the quarter. He turned out for our delectation a huge "crust" (as
we used to call it) of St. Stephen, wallowing in red upon his
belly in an exhausted receiver, and a crowd of Hebrews in blue,
green, and yellow, pelting him--apparently with buns; and
while we gazed upon this contrivance, regaled us with a piece
of his own recent biography, of which his mind was still very
full, and which he seemed to fancy, represented him in a heroic
posture. I was one of those cosmopolitan Americans, who
accept the world (whether at home or abroad) as they find it,
and whose favourite part is that of the spectator; yet even I was
listening with ill-suppressed disgust, when I was aware of a
violent plucking at my sleeve.

"Is he saying he kicked her down stairs?" asked Pinkerton,
white as St. Stephen.

"Yes," said I: "his discarded mistress; and then he pelted her
with stones. I suppose that's what gave him the idea for his
picture. He has just been alleging the pathetic excuse that she
was old enough to be his mother."

Something like a sob broke from Pinkerton. "Tell him," he
gasped--"I can't speak this language, though I understand a
little; I never had any proper education--tell him I'm going to
punch his head."

"For God's sake, do nothing of the sort!" I cried. "They don't
understand that sort of thing here."  And I tried to bundle him
out.

"Tell him first what we think of him," he objected. "Let me tell
him what he looks in the eyes of a pure-minded American"

"Leave that to me," said I, thrusting Pinkerton clear through the
door.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il a?"[1] inquired the student.

[1] "What's the matter with him?"

"Monsieur se sent mal au coeur d'avoir trop regarde votre
croute,"[2] said I, and made my escape, scarce with dignity, at
Pinkerton's heels.

[2] "The gentleman is sick at his stomach from having looked
too long at your daub."

"What did you say to him?" he asked.

"The only thing that he could feel," was my reply.

After this scene, the freedom with which I had ejected my new
acquaintance, and the precipitation with which I had followed
him, the least I could do was to propose luncheon. I have
forgot the name of the place to which I led him, nothing loath;
it was on the far side of the Luxembourg at least, with a garden
behind, where we were speedily set face to face at table, and
began to dig into each other's history and character, like terriers
after rabbits, according to the approved fashion of youth.

Pinkerton's parents were from the old country; there too, I
incidentally gathered, he had himself been born, though it was
a circumstance he seemed prone to forget. Whether he had run
away, or his father had turned him out, I never fathomed; but
about the age of twelve, he was thrown upon his own
resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked him up,
like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took
a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering
life; taught him all he knew himself--to take tin-types (as well
as I can make out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in
Ohio at the corner of a road. "He was a grand specimen," cried
Pinkerton; "I wish you could have seen him, Mr. Dodd. He had
an appearance of magnanimity that used to remind me of the
patriarchs."  On the death of this random protector, the boy
inherited the plant and continued the business. "It was a life I
could have chosen, Mr. Dodd!" he cried. "I have been in all the
finest scenes of that magnificent continent that we were born to
be the heirs of. I wish you could see my collection of tin-types;
I wish I had them here. They were taken for my own pleasure
and to be a memento; and they show Nature in her grandest as
well as her gentlest moments." As he tramped the Western
States and Territories, taking tin-types, the boy was continually
getting hold of books, good, bad, and indifferent, popular and
abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's
Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder)
he had managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of
the people, the products, and the country, with an eye unusually
observant and a memory unusually retentive; and he was
collecting for himself a body of magnanimous and semi-
intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the natural
thoughts and to contain the whole duty of the born American.
To be pure-minded, to be patriotic, to get culture and money
with both hands and with the same irrational fervour--these
appeared to be the chief articles of his creed. In later days (not
of course upon this first occasion) I would sometimes ask him
why; and he had his answer pat. "To build up the type!" he
would cry. "We're all committed to that; we're all under bond
to fulfil the American Type! Loudon, the hope of the world is
there. If we fail, like these old feudal monarchies, what is
left?"

The trade of a tin-typer proved too narrow for the lad's
ambition; it was insusceptible of expansion, he explained, it
was not truly modern; and by a sudden conversion of front, he
became a railroad-scalper. The principles of this trade I never
clearly understood; but its essence appears to be to cheat the
railroads out of their due fare. "I threw my whole soul into it; I
grudged myself food and sleep while I was at it; the most
practised hands admitted I had caught on to the idea in a month
and revolutionised the practice inside of a year," he said. "And
there's interest in it, too. It's amusing to pick out some one
going by, make up your mind about his character and tastes,
dash out of the office and hit him flying with an offer of the
very place he wants to go to. I don't think there was a scalper
on the continent made fewer blunders. But I took it only as a
stage. I was saving every dollar; I was looking ahead. I knew
what I wanted--wealth, education, a refined home, and a
conscientious, cultured lady for a wife; for, Mr. Dodd"--this
with a formidable outcry--"every man is bound to marry above
him: if the woman's not the man's superior, I brand it as mere
sensuality. There was my idea, at least. That was what I was
saving for; and enough, too! But it isn't every man, I know that
--it's far from every man--could do what I did: close up the
livest agency in Saint Jo, where he was coining dollars by the
pot, set out alone, without a friend or a word of French, and
settle down here to spend his capital learning art."

"Was it an old taste?" I asked him, "or a sudden fancy?"

"Neither, Mr. Dodd," he admitted. "Of course I had learned in
my tin-typing excursions to glory and exult in the works of
God. But it wasn't that. I just said to myself, What is most
wanted in my age and country? More culture and more art, I
said; and I chose the best place, saved my money, and came
here to get them."

The whole attitude of this young man warmed and shamed me.
He had more fire in his little toe than I had in my whole
carcase; he was stuffed to bursting with the manly virtues;
thrift and courage glowed in him; and even if his artistic
vocation seemed (to one of my exclusive tenets) not quite clear,
who could predict what might be accomplished by a creature so
full-blooded and so inspired with animal and intellectual
energy? So, when he proposed that I should come and see his
work (one of the regular stages of a Latin Quarter friendship), I
followed him with interest and hope.

He lodged parsimoniously at the top of a tall house near the
Observatory, in a bare room, principally furnished with his own
trunks and papered with his own despicable studies. No man
has less taste for disagreeable duties than myself; perhaps there
is only one subject on which I cannot flatter a man without a
blush; but upon that, upon all that touches art, my sincerity is
Roman. Once and twice I made the circuit of his walls in
silence, spying in every corner for some spark of merit; he,
meanwhile, following close at my heels, reading the verdict in
my face with furtive glances, presenting some fresh study for
my inspection with undisguised anxiety, and (after it had been
silently weighed in the balances and found wanting) whisking
it away with an open gesture of despair. By the time the
second round was completed, we were both extremely
depressed.

"O!" he groaned, breaking the long silence, "it's quite
unnecessary you should speak!"

"Do you want me to be frank with you? I think you are wasting
time," said I.

"You don't see any promise?" he inquired, beguiled by some
return of hope, and turning upon me the embarrassing
brightness of his eye. "Not in this still-life here, of the melon?
One fellow thought it good."

It was the least I could do to give the melon a more particular
examination; which, when I had done, I could but shake my
head. "I am truly sorry, Pinkerton," said I, "but I can't advise
you to persevere."

He seemed to recover his fortitude at the moment, rebounding
from disappointment like a man of india-rubber. "Well," said
he stoutly, "I don't know that I'm surprised. But I'll go on with
the course; and throw my whole soul into it, too. You mustn't
think the time is lost. It's all culture; it will help me to extend
my relations when I get back home; it may fit me for a position
on one of the illustrateds; and then I can always turn dealer," he
said, uttering the monstrous proposition, which was enough to
shake the Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire simplicity. "It's
all experience, besides;" he continued, "and it seems to me
there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit
and investment. Never mind. That's done with. But it took
courage for you to say what you did, and I'll never forget it.
Here's my hand, Mr. Dodd. I'm not your equal in culture or
talent--"

"You know nothing about that," I interrupted. "I have seen
your work, but you haven't seen mine.

"No more I have," he cried; "and let's go see it at once! But I
know you are away up. I can feel it here."

To say truth, I was almost ashamed to introduce him to my
studio--my work, whether absolutely good or bad, being so
vastly superior to his. But his spirits were now quite restored;
and he amazed me, on the way, with his light-hearted talk and
new projects. So that I began at last to understand how matters
lay: that this was not an artist who had been deprived of the
practice of his single art; but only a business man of very
extended interests, informed (perhaps something of the most
suddenly) that one investment out of twenty had gone wrong.

As a matter of fact besides (although I never suspected it) he
was already seeking consolation with another of the muses, and
pleasing himself with the notion that he would repay me for my
sincerity, cement our friendship, and (at one and the same
blow) restore my estimation of his talents. Several times
already, when I had been speaking of myself, he had pulled out
a writing-pad and scribbled a brief note; and now, when we
entered the studio, I saw it in his hand again, and the pencil go
to his mouth, as he cast a comprehensive glance round the
uncomfortable building.

"Are you going to make a sketch of it?" I could not help asking,
as I unveiled the Genius of Muskegon.

"Ah, that's my secret," said he. "Never you mind. A mouse
can help a lion."

He walked round my statue and had the design explained to
him. I had represented Muskegon as a young, almost a
stripling, mother, with something of an Indian type; the babe
upon her knees was winged, to indicate our soaring future; and
her seat was a medley of sculptured fragments, Greek, Roman,
and Gothic, to remind us of the older worlds from which we
trace our generation.

"Now, does this satisfy you, Mr. Dodd?" he inquired, as soon
as I had explained to him the main features of the design.

"Well," I said, "the fellows seem to think it's not a bad bonne
femme for a beginner. I don't think it's entirely bad myself.
Here is the best point; it builds up best from here. No, it seems
to me it has a kind of merit," I admitted; "but I mean to do
better."

"Ah, that's the word!" cried Pinkerton. "There's the word I
love!" and he scribbled in his pad.

"What in creation ails you?" I inquired. "It's the most
commonplace expression in the English language."

"Better and better!" chuckled Pinkerton. "The unconsciousness
of genius. Lord, but this is coming in beautiful!" and he
scribbled again.

"If you're going to be fulsome," said I, "I'll close the place of
entertainment."  And I threatened to replace the veil upon the
Genius.

"No, no," said he. "Don't be in a hurry. Give me a point or
two. Show me what's particularly good."

"I would rather you found that out for yourself," said I.

"The trouble is," said he, "that I've never turned my attention to
sculpture, beyond, of course, admiring it, as everybody must
who has a soul. So do just be a good fellow, and explain to me
what you like in it, and what you tried for, and where the merit
comes in. It'll be all education for me."

"Well, in sculpture, you see, the first thing you have to consider
is the masses. It's, after all, a kind of architecture," I began,
and delivered a lecture on that branch of art, with illustrations
from my own masterpiece there present, all of which, if you
don't mind, or whether you mind or not, I mean to
conscientiously omit. Pinkerton listened with a fiery interest,
questioned me with a certain uncultivated shrewdness, and
continued to scratch down notes, and tear fresh sheets from his
pad. I found it inspiring to have my words thus taken down
like a professor's lecture; and having had no previous
experience of the press, I was unaware that they were all being
taken down wrong. For the same reason (incredible as it must
appear in an American) I never entertained the least suspicion
that they were destined to be dished up with a sauce of penny-
a-lining gossip; and myself, my person, and my works of art
butchered to make a holiday for the readers of a Sunday paper.
Night had fallen over the Genius of Muskegon before the issue
of my theoretic eloquence was stayed, nor did I separate from
my new friend without an appointment for the morrow.

I was indeed greatly taken with this first view of my
countryman, and continued, on further acquaintance, to be
interested, amused, and attracted by him in about equal
proportions. I must not say he had a fault, not only because my
mouth is sealed by gratitude, but because those he had sprang
merely from his education, and you could see he had cultivated
and improved them like virtues. For all that, I can never deny
he was a troublous friend to me, and the trouble began early.

It may have been a fortnight later that I divined the secret of the
writing-pad. My wretch (it leaked out) wrote letters for a paper
in the West, and had filled a part of one of them with
descriptions of myself.  I pointed out to him that he had no
right to do so without asking my permission.

"Why, this is just what I hoped!" he exclaimed. "I thought you
didn't seem to catch on; only it seemed too good to be true."

"But, my good fellow, you were bound to warn me," I objected.

"I know it's generally considered etiquette," he admitted; "but
between friends, and when it was only with a view of serving
you, I thought it wouldn't matter. I wanted it (if possible) to
come on you as a surprise; I wanted you just to waken, like
Lord Byron, and find the papers full of you. You must admit it
was a natural thought. And no man likes to boast of a favour
beforehand."

"But, heavens and earth! how do you know I think it a favour?"
I cried.

He became immediately plunged in despair. "You think it a
liberty," said he; "I see that. I would rather have cut off my
hand. I would stop it now, only it's too late; it's published by
now. And I wrote it with so much pride and pleasure!"

I could think of nothing but how to console him. "O, I daresay
it's all right," said I. "I know you meant it kindly, and you
would be sure to do it in good taste."

"That you may swear to," he cried. "It's a pure, bright, A
number 1 paper; the St. Jo _Sunday Herald_. The idea of the
series was quite my own; I interviewed the editor, put it to him
straight; the freshness of the idea took him, and I walked out of
that office with the contract in my pocket, and did my first Paris
letter that evening in Saint Jo. The editor did no more than
glance his eye down the headlines. 'You're the man for us,'
said he."

I was certainly far from reassured by this sketch of the class of
literature in which I was to make my first appearance; but I
said no more, and possessed my soul in patience, until the day
came when I received a copy of a newspaper marked in the
corner, "Compliments of J.P."  I opened it with sensible
shrinkings; and there, wedged between an account of a prize-
fight and a skittish article upon chiropody--think of chiropody
treated with a leer!--I came upon a column and a half in which
myself and my poor statue were embalmed. Like the editor
with the first of the series, I did but glance my eye down the
head-lines and was more than satisfied.

          ANOTHER OF PINKERTON'S SPICY CHATS.
                        
              ART PRACTITIONERS IN PARIS.
                     
             MUSKEGON'S COLUMNED CAPITOL.
                          
               SON OF MILLIONAIRE DODD,
                          
                  PATRIOT AND ARTIST.
                        
               "HE MEANS TO DO BETTER."

In the body of the text, besides, my eye caught, as it passed,
some deadly expressions: "Figure somewhat fleshy," "bright,
intellectual smile," "the unconsciousness of genius," "'Now,
Mr. Dodd,' resumed the reporter, 'what would be your idea of a
distinctively American quality in sculpture?'"  It was true the
question had been asked; it was true, alas! that I had answered;
and now here was my reply, or some strange hash of it,
gibbeted in the cold publicity of type. I thanked God that my
French fellow-students were ignorant of English; but when I
thought of the British--of Myner (for instance) or the Stennises
--I think I could have fallen on Pinkerton and beat him.

To divert my thoughts (if it were possible) from this calamity, I
turned to a letter from my father which had arrived by the same
post. The envelope contained a strip of newspaper-cutting; and
my eye caught again, "Son of Millionaire Dodd--Figure
somewhat fleshy," and the rest of the degrading nonsense.
What would my father think of it? I wondered, and opened his
manuscript. "My dearest boy," it began, "I send you a cutting
which has pleased me very much, from a St. Joseph paper of
high standing. At last you seem to be coming fairly to the
front; and I cannot but reflect with delight and gratitude how
very few youths of your age occupy nearly two columns of
press-matter all to themselves. I only wish your dear mother
had been here to read it over my shoulder; but we will hope she
shares my grateful emotion in a better place. Of course I have
sent a copy to your grandfather and uncle in Edinburgh; so you
can keep the one I enclose. This Jim Pinkerton seems a
valuable acquaintance; he has certainly great talent; and it is a
good general rule to keep in with pressmen."

I hope it will be set down to the right side of my account, but I
had no sooner read these words, so touchingly silly, than my
anger against Pinkerton was swallowed up in gratitude. Of all
the circumstances of my career, my birth, perhaps, excepted,
not one had given my poor father so profound a pleasure as this
article in the _Sunday Herald_. What a fool, then, was I, to be
lamenting! when I had at last, and for once, and at the cost of
only a few blushes, paid back a fraction of my debt of gratitude.
So that, when I next met Pinkerton, I took things very lightly;
my father was pleased, and thought the letter very clever, I told
him; for my own part, I had no taste for publicity: thought the
public had no concern with the artist, only with his art; and
though I owned he had handled it with great consideration, I
should take it as a favour if he never did it again.

"There it is," he said despondingly. "I've hurt you. You can't
deceive me, Loudon. It's the want of tact, and it's incurable."
He sat down, and leaned his head upon his hand. "I had no
advantages when I was young, you see," he added.

"Not in the least, my dear fellow," said I. "Only the next time
you wish to do me a service, just speak about my work; leave
my wretched person out, and my still more wretched
conversation; and above all," I added, with an irrepressible
shudder, "don't tell them how I said it! There's that phrase,
now: 'With a proud, glad smile.'  Who cares whether I smiled
or not?"

"Oh, there now, Loudon, you're entirely wrong," he broke in.
"That's what the public likes; that's the merit of the thing, the
literary value. It's to call up the scene before them; it's to
enable the humblest citizen to enjoy that afternoon the same as
I did. Think what it would have been to me when I was
tramping around with my tin-types to find a column and a half
of real, cultured conversation--an artist, in his studio abroad,
talking of his art--and to know how he looked as he did it, and
what the room was like, and what he had for breakfast; and to
tell myself, eating tinned beans beside a creek, that if all went
well, the same sort of thing would, sooner or later, happen to
myself: why, Loudon, it would have been like a peephole into
heaven!"

"Well, if it gives so much pleasure," I admitted, "the sufferers
shouldn't complain. Only give the other fellows a turn."

The end of the matter was to bring myself and the journalist in
a more close relation. If I know anything at all of human
nature--and the IF is no mere figure of speech, but stands for
honest doubt--no series of benefits conferred, or even dangers
shared, would have so rapidly confirmed our friendship as this
quarrel avoided, this fundamental difference of taste and
training accepted and condoned.

CHAPTER IV.

IN WHICH I EXPERIENCE EXTREMES OF FORTUNE.

Whether it came from my training and repeated bankruptcy at
the commercial college, or by direct inheritance from old
Loudon, the Edinburgh mason, there can be no doubt about the
fact that I was thrifty. Looking myself impartially over, I
believe that is my only manly virtue. During my first two years
in Paris I not only made it a point to keep well inside of my
allowance, but accumulated considerable savings in the bank.
You will say, with my masquerade of living as a penniless
student, it must have been easy to do so: I should have had no
difficulty, however, in doing the reverse. Indeed, it is
wonderful I did not; and early in the third year, or soon after I
had known Pinkerton, a singular incident proved it to have
been equally wise. Quarter-day came, and brought no
allowance. A letter of remonstrance was despatched, and for
the first time in my experience, remained unanswered. A
cablegram was more effectual; for it brought me at least a
promise of attention. "Will write at once," my father
telegraphed; but I waited long for his letter. I was puzzled,
angry, and alarmed; but thanks to my previous thrift, I cannot
say that I was ever practically embarrassed. The
embarrassment, the distress, the agony, were all for my
unhappy father at home in Muskegon, struggling for life and
fortune against untoward chances, returning at night from a day
of ill-starred shifts and ventures, to read and perhaps to weep
over that last harsh letter from his only child, to which he
lacked the courage to reply.

Nearly three months after time, and when my economies were
beginning to run low, I received at last a letter with the
customary bills of exchange.

"My dearest boy," it ran, "I believe, in the press of anxious
business, your letters and even your allowance have been
somewhile neglected. You must try to forgive your poor old
dad, for he has had a trying time; and now when it is over, the
doctor wants me to take my shotgun and go to the Adirondacks
for a change. You must not fancy I am sick, only over-driven
and under the weather. Many of our foremost operators have
gone down: John T. M'Brady skipped to Canada with a
trunkful of boodle; Billy Sandwith, Charlie Downs, Joe Kaiser,
and many others of our leading men in this city bit the dust.
But Big-Head Dodd has again weathered the blizzard, and I
think I have fixed things so that we may be richer than ever
before autumn.

"Now I will tell you, my dear, what I propose. You say you are
well advanced with your first statue; start in manfully and
finish it, and if your teacher--I can never remember how to spell
his name--will send me a certificate that it is up to market
standard, you shall have ten thousand dollars to do what you
like with, either at home or in Paris. I suggest, since you say
the facilities for work are so much greater in that city, you
would do well to buy or build a little home; and the first thing
you know, your dad will be dropping in for a luncheon.
Indeed, I would come now, for I am beginning to grow old, and
I long to see my dear boy; but there are still some operations
that want watching and nursing. Tell your friend, Mr.
Pinkerton, that I read his letters every week; and though I have
looked in vain lately for my Loudon's name, still I learn
something of the life he is leading in that strange, old world,
depicted by an able pen."

Here was a letter that no young man could possibly digest in
solitude. It marked one of those junctures when the confidant
is necessary; and the confidant selected was none other than
Jim Pinkerton. My father's message may have had an influence
in this decision; but I scarce suppose so, for the intimacy was
already far advanced. I had a genuine and lively taste for my
compatriot; I laughed at, I scolded, and I loved him. He, upon
his side, paid me a kind of doglike service of admiration,
gazing at me from afar off as at one who had liberally enjoyed
those "advantages" which he envied for himself. He followed
at heel; his laugh was ready chorus; our friends gave him the
nickname of "The Henchman."  It was in this insidious form
that servitude approached me.

Pinkerton and I read and re-read the famous news: he, I can
swear, with an enjoyment as unalloyed and far more vocal than
my own. The statue was nearly done: a few days' work sufficed
to prepare it for exhibition; the master was approached; he gave
his consent; and one cloudless morning of May beheld us
gathered in my studio for the hour of trial. The master wore his
many-hued rosette; he came attended by two of my French
fellow-pupils--friends of mine and both considerable sculptors
in Paris at this hour. "Corporal John" (as we used to call him)
breaking for once those habits of study and reserve which have
since carried him so high in the opinion of the world, had left
his easel of a morning to countenance a fellow-countryman in
some suspense. My dear old Romney was there by particular
request; for who that knew him would think a pleasure quite
complete unless he shared it, or not support a mortification
more easily if he were present to console? The party was
completed by John Myner, the Englishman; by the brothers
Stennis,--Stennis-aine and Stennis-frere, as they used to figure
on their accounts at Barbizon--a pair of hare-brained Scots; and
by the inevitable Jim, as white as a sheet and bedewed with the
sweat of anxiety.

I suppose I was little better myself when I unveiled the Genius
of Muskegon. The master walked about it seriously; then he
smiled.

"It is already not so bad," said he, in that funny English of
which he was so proud. "No, already not so bad."

We all drew a deep breath of relief; and Corporal John (as the
most considerable junior present) explained to him it was
intended for a public building, a kind of prefecture--

"He! Quoi?" cried he, relapsing into French. "Qu'est-ce que
vous me chantez la? O, in America," he added, on further
information being hastily furnished. "That is anozer sing. O,
very good, very good."

The idea of the required certificate had to be introduced to his
mind in the light of a pleasantry--the fancy of a nabob little
more advanced than the red Indians of "Fennimore Cooperr";
and it took all our talents combined to conceive a form of words
that would be acceptable on both sides. One was found,
however: Corporal John engrossed it in his undecipherable
hand, the master lent it the sanction of his name and flourish, I
slipped it into an envelope along with one of the two letters I
had ready prepared in my pocket, and as the rest of us moved
off along the boulevard to breakfast, Pinkerton was detached in
a cab and duly committed it to the post.

The breakfast was ordered at Lavenue's, where no one need be
ashamed to entertain even the master; the table was laid in the
garden; I had chosen the bill of fare myself; on the wine
question we held a council of war with the most fortunate
results; and the talk, as soon as the master laid aside his painful
English, became fast and furious. There were a few
interruptions, indeed, in the way of toasts. The master's health
had to be drunk, and he responded in a little well-turned
speech, full of neat allusions to my future and to the United
States; my health followed; and then my father's must not only
be proposed and drunk, but a full report must be despatched to
him at once by cablegram--an extravagance which was almost
the means of the master's dissolution. Choosing Corporal John
to be his confidant (on the ground, I presume, that he was
already too good an artist to be any longer an American except
in name) he summed up his amazement in one oft-repeated
formula--"C'est barbare!"  Apart from these genial formalities,
we talked, talked of art, and talked of it as only artists can.
Here in the South Seas we talk schooners most of the time; in
the Quarter we talked art with the like unflagging interest, and
perhaps as much result.

Before very long, the master went away; Corporal John (who
was already a sort of young master) followed on his heels; and
the rank and file were naturally relieved by their departure. We
were now among equals; the bottle passed, the conversation
sped. I think I can still hear the Stennis brothers pour forth
their copious tirades; Dijon, my portly French fellow-student,
drop witticisms well-conditioned like himself; and another
(who was weak in foreign languages) dash hotly into the
current of talk with some "Je trove que pore oon sontimong de
delicacy, Corot ...," or some "Pour moi Corot est le plou ...,"
and then, his little raft of French foundering at once, scramble
silently to shore again. He at least could understand; but to
Pinkerton, I think the noise, the wine, the sun, the shadows of
the leaves, and the esoteric glory of being seated at a foreign
festival, made up the whole available means of entertainment.

We sat down about half past eleven; I suppose it was two
when, some point arising and some particular picture being
instanced, an adjournment to the Louvre was proposed. I paid
the score, and in a moment we were trooping down the Rue de
Renne. It was smoking hot; Paris glittered with that superficial
brilliancy which is so agreeable to the man in high spirits, and
in moods of dejection so depressing; the wine sang in my ears,
it danced and brightened in my eyes. The pictures that we saw
that afternoon, as we sped briskly and loquaciously through the
immortal galleries, appear to me, upon a retrospect, the
loveliest of all; the comments we exchanged to have touched
the highest mark of criticism, grave or gay.

It was only when we issued again from the museum that a
difference of race broke up the party. Dijon proposed an
adjournment to a cafe, there to finish the afternoon on beer; the
elder Stennis, revolted at the thought, moved for the country, a
forest if possible, and a long walk. At once the English
speakers rallied to the name of any exercise: even to me, who
have been often twitted with my sedentary habits, the thought
of country air and stillness proved invincibly attractive. It
appeared, upon investigation, we had just time to hail a cab
and catch one of the fast trains for Fontainebleau. Beyond the
clothes we stood in, all were destitute of what is called (with
dainty vagueness) personal effects; and it was earnestly
mooted, on the other side, whether we had not time to call upon
the way and pack a satchel? But the Stennis boys exclaimed
upon our effeminacy. They had come from London, it
appeared, a week before with nothing but greatcoats and tooth
-brushes. No baggage--there was the secret of existence. It
was expensive, to be sure; for every time you had to comb your
hair, a barber must be paid, and every time you changed your
linen, one shirt must be bought and another thrown away; but
anything was better (argued these young gentlemen) than to be
the slaves of haversacks. "A fellow has to get rid gradually of
all material attachments; that was manhood" (said they); "and
as long as you were bound down to anything,--house, umbrella,
or portmanteau,--you were still tethered by the umbilical cord."
Something engaging in this theory carried the most of us away.
The two Frenchmen, indeed, retired, scoffing, to their bock; and
Romney, being too poor to join the excursion on his own
resources and too proud to borrow, melted unobtrusively away.
Meanwhile the remainder of the company crowded the benches
of a cab; the horse was urged (as horses have to be) by an
appeal to the pocket of the driver; the train caught by the inside
of a minute; and in less than an hour and a half we were
breathing deep of the sweet air of the forest and stretching our
legs up the hill from Fontainebleau octroi, bound for Barbizon.
That the leading members of our party covered the distance in
fifty-one minutes and a half is (I believe) one of the historic
landmarks of the colony; but you will scarce be surprised to
learn that I was somewhat in the rear. Myner, a comparatively
philosophic Briton, kept me company in my deliberate advance;
the glory of the sun's going down, the fall of the long shadows,
the inimitable scent and the inspiration of the woods, attuned
me more and more to walk in a silence which progressively
infected my companion; and I remember that, when at last he
spoke, I was startled from a deep abstraction.

"Your father seems to be a pretty good kind of a father," said
he. "Why don't he come to see you?"  I was ready with some
dozen of reasons, and had more in stock; but Myner, with that
shrewdness which made him feared and admired, suddenly
fixed me with his eye-glass and asked, "Ever press him?"

The blood came in my face. No; I had never pressed him; I had
never even encouraged him to come. I was proud of him;
proud of his handsome looks, of his kind, gentle ways, of that
bright face he could show when others were happy; proud, too
(meanly proud, if you like) of his great wealth and startling
liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my
Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had
feared to expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art; I had
told myself, I had even partly believed, he did not want to
come; I had been (and still am) convinced that he was sure to
be unhappy out of Muskegon; in short, I had a thousand
reasons, good and bad, not all of which could alter one iota of
the fact that I knew he only waited for my invitation.

"Thank you, Myner," said I; "you're a much better fellow than
ever I supposed. I'll write to-night."

"O, you're a pretty decent sort yourself," returned Myner, with
more than his usual flippancy of manner, but (as I was
gratefully aware) not a trace of his occasional irony of meaning.

Well, these were brave days, on which I could dwell forever.
Brave, too, were those that followed, when Pinkerton and I
walked Paris and the suburbs, viewing and pricing houses for
my new establishment, or covered ourselves with dust and
returned laden with Chinese gods and brass warming-pans
from the dealers in antiquities. I found Pinkerton well up in the
situation of these establishments as well as in the current
prices, and with quite a smattering of critical judgment; it
turned out he was investing capital in pictures and curiosities
for the States, and the superficial thoroughness of the creature
appeared in the fact, that although he would never be a
connoisseur, he was already something of an expert. The
things themselves left him as near as may be cold; but he had a
joy of his own in understanding how to buy and sell them.

In such engagements the time passed until I might very well
expect an answer from my father. Two mails followed each
other, and brought nothing. By the third I received a long and
almost incoherent letter of remorse, encouragement,
consolation, and despair. From this pitiful document, which
(with a movement of piety) I burned as soon as I had read it, I
gathered that the bubble of my father's wealth was burst, that
he was now both penniless and sick; and that I, so far from
expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away in juvenile
extravagance, must look no longer for the quarterly remittances
on which I lived. My case was hard enough; but I had sense
enough to perceive, and decency enough to do my duty. I sold
my curiosities, or rather I sent Pinkerton to sell them; and he
had previously bought and now disposed of them so wisely that
the loss was trifling. This, with what remained of my last
allowance, left me at the head of no less than five thousand
francs. Five hundred I reserved for my own immediate
necessities; the rest I mailed inside of the week to my father at
Muskegon, where they came in time to pay his funeral
expenses.

The news of his death was scarcely a surprise and scarce a grief
to me. I could not conceive my father a poor man. He had led
too long a life of thoughtless and generous profusion to endure
the change; and though I grieved for myself, I was able to
rejoice that my father had been taken from the battle. I grieved,
I say, for myself; and it is probable there were at the same date
many thousands of persons grieving with less cause. I had lost
my father; I had lost the allowance; my whole fortune
(including what had been returned from Muskegon) scarce
amounted to a thousand francs; and to crown my sorrows, the
statuary contract had changed hands. The new contractor had a
son of his own, or else a nephew; and it was signified to me,
with business-like plainness, that I must find another market
for my pigs. In the meanwhile I had given up my room, and
slept on a truckle-bed in the corner of the studio, where as I
read myself to sleep at night, and when I awoke in the morning,
that now useless bulk, the Genius of Muskegon, was ever
present to my eyes. Poor stone lady! born to be enthroned
under the gilded, echoing dome of the new capitol, whither was
she now to drift? for what base purposes be ultimately broken
up, like an unseaworthy ship? and what should befall her ill-
starred artificer, standing, with his thousand francs, on the
threshold of a life so hard as that of the unbefriended sculptor?

It was a subject often and earnestly debated by myself and
Pinkerton. In his opinion, I should instantly discard my
profession. "Just drop it, here and now," he would say. "Come
back home with me, and let's throw our whole soul into
business. I have the capital; you bring the culture. Dodd &
Pinkerton--I never saw a better name for an advertisement; and
you can't think, Loudon, how much depends upon a name."  On
my side, I would admit that a sculptor should possess one of
three things--capital, influence, or an energy only to be
qualified as hellish. The first two I had now lost; to the third I
never had the smallest claim; and yet I wanted the cowardice
(or perhaps it was the courage) to turn my back on my career
without a fight. I told him, besides, that however poor my
chances were in sculpture, I was convinced they were yet worse
in business, for which I equally lacked taste and aptitude. But
upon this head, he was my father over again; assured me that I
spoke in ignorance; that any intelligent and cultured person
was Bound to succeed; that I must, besides, have inherited
some of my father's fitness; and, at any rate, that I had been
regularly trained for that career in the commercial college.

"Pinkerton," I said, "can't you understand that, as long as I was
there, I never took the smallest interest in any stricken thing?
The whole affair was poison to me."

"It's not possible," he would cry; "it can't be; you couldn't live
in the midst of it and not feel the charm; with all your poetry of
soul, you couldn't help! Loudon," he would go on, "you drive
me crazy. You expect a man to be all broken up about the
sunset, and not to care a dime for a place where fortunes are
fought for and made and lost all day; or for a career that
consists in studying up life till you have it at your finger-ends,
spying out every cranny where you can get your hand in and a
dollar out, and standing there in the midst--one foot on
bankruptcy, the other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing
spinning round you like a mill--raking in the stamps, in spite of
fate and fortune."

To this romance of dickering I would reply with the romance
(which is also the virtue) of art: reminding him of those
examples of constancy through many tribulations, with which
the role of Apollo is illustrated; from the case of Millet, to those
of many of our friends and comrades, who had chosen this
agreeable mountain path through life, and were now bravely
clambering among rocks and brambles, penniless and hopeful.

"You will never understand it, Pinkerton," I would say. "You
look to the result, you want to see some profit of your
endeavours: that is why you could never learn to paint, if you
lived to be Methusalem. The result is always a fizzle: the eyes
of the artist are turned in; he lives for a frame of mind. Look at
Romney, now. There is the nature of the artist. He hasn't a
cent; and if you offered him to-morrow the command of an
army, or the presidentship of the United States, he wouldn't
take it, and you know he wouldn't."

"I suppose not," Pinkerton would cry, scouring his hair with
both his hands; "and I can't see why; I can't see what in fits he
would be after, not to; I don't seem to rise to these views. Of
course, it's the fault of not having had advantages in early life;
but, Loudon, I'm so miserably low that it seems to me silly.
The fact is," he might add with a smile, "I don't seem to have
the least use for a frame of mind without square meals; and you
can't get it out of my head that it's a man's duty to die rich, if he
can."

"What for?" I asked him once.

"O, I don't know," he replied. "Why in snakes should anybody
want to be a sculptor, if you come to that? I would love to
sculp myself. But what I can't see is why you should want to
do nothing else. It seems to argue a poverty of nature."

Whether or not he ever came to understand me--and I have
been so tossed about since then that I am not very sure I
understand myself--he soon perceived that I was perfectly in
earnest; and after about ten days of argument, suddenly
dropped the subject, and announced that he was wasting
capital, and must go home at once. No doubt he should have
gone long before, and had already lingered over his intended
time for the sake of our companionship and my misfortune; but
man is so unjustly minded that the very fact, which ought to
have disarmed, only embittered my vexation. I resented his
departure in the light of a desertion; I would not say, but
doubtless I betrayed it; and something hang-dog in the man's
face and bearing led me to believe he was himself remorseful.
It is certain at least that, during the time of his preparations, we
drew sensibly apart--a circumstance that I recall with shame.
On the last day, he had me to dinner at a restaurant which he
knew I had formerly frequented, and had only forsworn of late
from considerations of economy. He seemed ill at ease; I was
myself both sorry and sulky; and the meal passed with little
conversation.

"Now, Loudon," said he, with a visible effort, after the coffee
was come and our pipes lighted, "you can never understand the
gratitude and loyalty I bear you. You don't know what a boon
it is to be taken up by a man that stands on the pinnacle of
civilization; you can't think how it's refined and purified me,
how it's appealed to my spiritual nature; and I want to tell you
that I would die at your door like a dog."

I don't know what answer I tried to make, but he cut me short.

"Let me say it out!" he cried. "I revere you for your whole-
souled devotion to art; I can't rise to it, but there's a strain of
poetry in my nature, Loudon, that responds to it. I want you to
carry it out, and I mean to help you."

"Pinkerton, what nonsense is this?" I interrupted.

"Now don't get mad, Loudon; this is a plain piece of business,"
said he; "it's done every day; it's even typical. How are all
those fellows over here in Paris, Henderson, Sumner, Long?
--it's all the same story: a young man just plum full of artistic
genius on the one side, a man of business on the other who
doesn't know what to do with his dollars--"

"But, you fool, you're as poor as a rat," I cried.

"You wait till I get my irons in the fire!" returned Pinkerton.
"I'm bound to be rich; and I tell you I mean to have some of the
fun as I go along. Here's your first allowance; take it at the
hand of a friend; I'm one that holds friendship sacred as you do
yourself. It's only a hundred francs; you'll get the same every
month, and as soon as my business begins to expand we'll
increase it to something fitting. And so far from it's being a
favour, just let me handle your statuary for the American
market, and I'll call it one of the smartest strokes of business in
my life."

It took me a long time, and it had cost us both much grateful
and painful emotion, before I had finally managed to refuse his
offer and compounded for a bottle of particular wine. He
dropped the subject at last suddenly with a "Never mind; that's
all done with," nor did he again refer to the subject, though we
passed together the rest of the afternoon, and I accompanied
him, on his departure; to the doors of the waiting-room at St.
Lazare. I felt myself strangely alone; a voice told me that I had
rejected both the counsels of wisdom and the helping hand of
friendship; and as I passed through the great bright city on my
homeward way, I measured it for the first time with the eye of
an adversary.

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH I AM DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS.

In no part of the world is starvation an agreeable business; but I
believe it is admitted there is no worse place to starve in than
this city of Paris. The appearances of life are there so
especially gay, it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the
houses are so ornate, the theatres so numerous, the very pace of
the vehicles is so brisk, that a man in any deep concern of mind
or pain of body is constantly driven in upon himself. In his
own eyes, he seems the one serious creature moving in a world
of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing from a cafe, the
queue at theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate pleasure-
seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the
jewellers' windows--all the familiar sights contributing to flout
his own unhappiness, want, and isolation. At the same time, if
he be at all after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a
childish satisfaction: this is life at last, he may tell himself, this
is the real thing; the bladders on which I was set swimming are
now empty, my own weight depends upon the ocean; by my
own exertions I must perish or succeed; and I am now enduring
in the vivid fact, what I so much delighted to read of in the case
of Lonsteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard.

Of the steps of my misery, I cannot tell at length. In ordinary
times what were politically called "loans" (although they were
never meant to be repaid) were matters of constant course
among the students, and many a man has partly lived on them
for years. But my misfortune befell me at an awkward
juncture. Many of my friends were gone; others were
themselves in a precarious situation. Romney (for instance)
was reduced to tramping Paris in a pair of country sabots, his
only suit of clothes so imperfect (in spite of cunningly adjusted
pins) that the authorities at the Luxembourg suggested his
withdrawal from the gallery. Dijon, too, was on a leeshore,
designing clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer; and the most he
could do was to offer me a corner of his studio where I might
work. My own studio (it will be gathered) I had by that time
lost; and in the course of my expulsion the Genius of
Muskegon was finally separated from her author. To continue
to possess a full-sized statue, a man must have a studio, a
gallery, or at least the freedom of a back garden. He cannot
carry it about with him, like a satchel, in the bottom of a cab,
nor can he cohabit in a garret, ten by fifteen, with so
momentous a companion. It was my first idea to leave her
behind at my departure. There, in her birthplace, she might
lend an inspiration, methought, to my successor. But the
proprietor, with whom I had unhappily quarrelled, seized the
occasion to be disagreeable, and called upon me to remove my
property. For a man in such straits as I now found myself, the
hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that I could
have faced, if I had had anywhere to drive to after it was hired.
Hysterical laughter seized upon me as I beheld (in imagination)
myself, the waggoner, and the Genius of Muskegon, standing
in the public view of Paris, without the shadow of a
destination; perhaps driving at last to the nearest rubbish heap,
and dumping there, among the ordures of a city, the beloved
child of my invention. From these extremities I was relieved by
a seasonable offer, and I parted from the Genius of Muskegon
for thirty francs. Where she now stands, under what name she
is admired or criticised, history does not inform us; but I like to
think she may adorn the shrubbery of some suburban tea-
garden, where holiday shop-girls hang their hats upon the
mother, and their swains (by way of an approach of gallantry)
identify the winged infant with the god of love.

In a certain cabman's eating-house on the outer boulevard I got
credit for my midday meal. Supper I was supposed not to
require, sitting down nightly to the delicate table of some rich
acquaintances. This arrangement was extremely ill-considered.
My fable, credible enough at first, and so long as my clothes
were in good order, must have seemed worse than doubtful
after my coat became frayed about the edges, and my boots
began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors. The
allowance of one meal a day besides, though suitable enough to
the state of my finances, agreed poorly with my stomach. The
restaurant was a place I had often visited experimentally, to
taste the life of students then more unfortunate than myself; and
I had never in those days entered it without disgust, or left it
without nausea. It was strange to find myself sitting down with
avidity, rising up with satisfaction, and counting the hours that
divided me from my return to such a table. But hunger is a
great magician; and so soon as I had spent my ready cash, and
could no longer fill up on bowls of chocolate or hunks of bread,
I must depend entirely on that cabman's eating-house, and upon
certain rare, long-expected, long-remembered windfalls. Dijon
(for instance) might get paid for some of his pot-boiling work,
or else an old friend would pass through Paris; and then I
would be entertained to a meal after my own soul, and contract
a Latin Quarter loan, which would keep me in tobacco and my
morning coffee for a fortnight. It might be thought the latter
would appear the more important. It might be supposed that a
life, led so near the confines of actual famine, should have
dulled the nicety of my palate. On the contrary, the poorer a
man's diet, the more sharply is he set on dainties. The last of
my ready cash, about thirty francs, was deliberately squandered
on a single dinner; and a great part of my time when I was
alone was passed upon the details of imaginary feasts.

One gleam of hope visited me--an order for a bust from a rich
Southerner. He was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of
countenance; kept me in good humour through the sittings, and
when they were over, carried me off with him to dinner and the
sights of Paris. I ate well; I laid on flesh; by all accounts, I
made a favourable likeness of the being, and I confess I thought
my future was assured. But when the bust was done, and I had
despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never so much as
learn of its arrival. The blow felled me; I should have lain
down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of
my country been involved. For Dijon improved the opportunity
in the European style; informing me (for the first time) of the
manners of America: how it was a den of banditti without the
smallest rudiment of law or order, and debts could be there
only collected with a shotgun. "The whole world knows it," he
would say; "you are alone, mon petit Loudon, you are alone to
be in ignorance of these facts. The judges of the Supreme
Court fought but the other day with stilettos on the bench at
Cincinnati. You should read the little book of one of my
friends: _Le Touriste dans le Far-West_; you will see it all
there in good French."  At last, incensed by days of such
discussion, I undertook to prove to him the contrary, and put
the affair in the hands of my late father's lawyer. From him I
had the gratification of hearing, after a due interval, that my
debtor was dead of the yellow fever in Key West, and had left
his affairs in some confusion. I suppress his name; for though
he treated me with cruel nonchalance, it is probable he meant
to deal fairly in the end.

Soon after this a shade of change in my reception at the
cabman's eating-house marked the beginning of a new phase in
my distress. The first day, I told myself it was but fancy; the
next, I made quite sure it was a fact; the third, in mere panic I
stayed away, and went for forty-eight hours fasting. This was
an act of great unreason; for the debtor who stays away is but
the more remarked, and the boarder who misses a meal is sure
to be accused of infidelity. On the fourth day, therefore, I
returned, inwardly quaking. The proprietor looked askance
upon my entrance; the waitresses (who were his daughters)
neglected my wants and sniffed at the affected joviality of my
salutations; last and most plain, when I called for a suisse
(such as was being served to all the other diners) I was bluntly
told there were no more. It was obvious I was near the end of
my tether; one plank divided me from want, and now I felt it
tremble. I passed a sleepless night, and the first thing in the
morning took my way to Myner's studio. It was a step I had
long meditated and long refrained from; for I was scarce
intimate with the Englishman; and though I knew him to
possess plenty of money, neither his manner nor his reputation
were the least encouraging to beggars.

I found him at work on a picture, which I was able
conscientiously to praise, dressed in his usual tweeds, plain,
but pretty fresh, and standing out in disagreeable contrast to my
own withered and degraded outfit. As we talked, he continued
to shift his eyes watchfully between his handiwork and the fat
model, who sat at the far end of the studio in a state of nature,
with one arm gallantly arched above her head. My errand
would have been difficult enough under the best of
circumstances: placed between Myner, immersed in his art,
and the white, fat, naked female in a ridiculous attitude, I found
it quite impossible. Again and again I attempted to approach
the point, again and again fell back on commendations of the
picture; and it was not until the model had enjoyed an interval
of repose, during which she took the conversation in her own
hands and regaled us (in a soft, weak voice) with details as to
her husband's prosperity, her sister's lamented decline from the
paths of virtue, and the consequent wrath of her father, a
peasant of stern principles, in the vicinity of Chalons on the
Marne;--it was not, I say, until after this was over, and I had
once more cleared my throat for the attack, and once more
dropped aside into some commonplace about the picture, that
Myner himself brought me suddenly and vigorously to the
point.

"You didn't come here to talk this rot," said he.

"No," I replied sullenly; "I came to borrow money."

He painted awhile in silence.

"I don't think we were ever very intimate?" he asked.

"Thank you," said I. "I can take my answer," and I made as if
to go, rage boiling in my heart.

"Of course you can go if you like," said Myner; "but I advise
you to stay and have it out."

"What more is there to say?" I cried. "You don't want to keep
me here for a needless humiliation?"

"Look here, Dodd, you must try and command your temper,"
said he. "This interview is of your own seeking, and not mine;
if you suppose it's not disagreeable to me, you're wrong; and if
you think I will give you money without knowing thoroughly
about your prospects, you take me for a fool. Besides," he
added, "if you come to look at it, you've got over the worst of it
by now: you have done the asking, and you have every reason
to know I mean to refuse. I hold out no false hopes, but it may
be worth your while to let me judge."

Thus--I was going to say--encouraged, I stumbled through my
story; told him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but
began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a
corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures
for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan,
musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had
never (up to that day) been honoured with the least approval.

"And your room?" asked Myner.

"O, my room is all right, I think," said I. "She is a very good
old lady, and has never even mentioned her bill."

"Because she is a very good old lady, I don't see why she
should be fined," observed Myner.

"What do you mean by that?" I cried.

"I mean this," said he. "The French give a great deal of credit
amongst themselves; they find it pays on the whole, or the
system would hardly be continued; but I can't see where WE
come in; I can't see that it's honest of us Anglo-Saxons to profit
by their easy ways, and then skip over the Channel or (as you
Yankees do) across the Atlantic."

"But I'm not proposing to skip," I objected.

"Exactly," he replied. "And shouldn't you? There's the problem.
You seem to me to have a lack of sympathy for the proprietors
of cabmen's eating-houses. By your own account you're not
getting on: the longer you stay, it'll only be the more out of the
pocket of the dear old lady at your lodgings. Now, I'll tell you
what I'll do: if you consent to go, I'll pay your passage to New
York, and your railway fare and expenses to Muskegon (if I
have the name right) where your father lived, where he must
have left friends, and where, no doubt, you'll find an opening. I
don't seek any gratitude, for of course you'll think me a beast;
but I do ask you to pay it back when you are able. At any rate,
that's all I can do. It might be different if I thought you a
genius, Dodd; but I don't, and I advise you not to."

"I think that was uncalled for, at least," said I.

"I daresay it was," he returned, with the same steadiness. "It
seemed to me pertinent; and, besides, when you ask me for
money upon no security, you treat me with the liberty of a
friend, and it's to be presumed that I can do the like. But the
point is, do you accept?"

"No, thank you," said I; "I have another string to my bow."

"All right," says Myner. "Be sure it's honest."

"Honest? honest?" I cried. "What do you mean by calling my
honesty in question?"

"I won't, if you don't like it," he replied. "You seem to think
honesty as easy as Blind Man's Buff: I don't. It's some
difference of definition."

I went straight from this irritating interview, during which
Myner had never discontinued painting, to the studio of my old
master. Only one card remained for me to play, and I was now
resolved to play it: I must drop the gentleman and the frock
-coat, and approach art in the workman's tunic.

"Tiens, this little Dodd!" cried the master; and then, as his eye
fell on my dilapidated clothing, I thought I could perceive his
countenance to darken.

I made my plea in English; for I knew, if he were vain of
anything, it was of his achievement of the island tongue.
"Master," said I, "will you take me in your studio again? but
this time as a workman."

"I sought your fazer was immensely reech," said he.

I explained to him that I was now an orphan and penniless.

He shook his head. "I have betterr workmen waiting at my
door," said he, "far betterr workmen.

"You used to think something of my work, sir," I pleaded.

"Somesing, somesing--yes!" he cried; "enough for a son of a
reech man--not enough for an orphan. Besides, I sought you
might learn to be an artist; I did not sink you might learn to be
a workman."

On a certain bench on the outer boulevard, not far from the
tomb of Napoleon, a bench shaded at that date by a shabby
tree, and commanding a view of muddy roadway and blank
wall, I sat down to wrestle with my misery. The weather was
cheerless and dark; in three days I had eaten but once; I had no
tobacco; my shoes were soaked, my trousers horrid with mire;
my humour and all the circumstances of the time and place
lugubriously attuned. Here were two men who had both
spoken fairly of my work while I was rich and wanted nothing;
now that I was poor and lacked all: "no genius," said the one;
"not enough for an orphan," the other; and the first offered me
my passage like a pauper immigrant, and the second refused
me a day's wage as a hewer of stone--plain dealing for an
empty belly. They had not been insincere in the past; they were
not insincere to-day: change of circumstance had introduced a
new criterion: that was all.

But if I acquitted my two Job's comforters of insincerity, I was
yet far from admitting them infallible. Artists had been
contemned before, and had lived to turn the laugh on their
contemners. How old was Corot before he struck the vein of
his own precious metal? When had a young man been more
derided (or more justly so) than the god of my admiration,
Balzac? Or if I required a bolder inspiration, what had I to do
but turn my head to where the gold dome of the Invalides
glittered against inky squalls, and recall the tale of him
sleeping there: from the day when a young artillery-sub could
be giggled at and nicknamed Puss-in-Boots by frisky misses;
on to the days of so many crowns and so many victories, and so
many hundred mouths of cannon, and so many thousand war-
hoofs trampling the roadways of astonished Europe eighty
miles in front of the grand army? To go back, to give up, to
proclaim myself a failure, an ambitious failure, first a rocket,
then a stick! I, Loudon Dodd, who had refused all other
livelihoods with scorn, and been advertised in the Saint Joseph
_Sunday Herald_ as a patriot and an artist, to be returned upon
my native Muskegon like damaged goods, and go the circuit of
my father's acquaintance, cap in hand, and begging to sweep
offices! No, by Napoleon! I would die at my chosen trade; and
the two who had that day flouted me should live to envy my
success, or to weep tears of unavailing penitence behind my
pauper coffin.

Meantime, if my courage was still undiminished, I was none
the nearer to a meal. At no great distance my cabman's eating-
house stood, at the tail of a muddy cab-rank, on the shores of a
wide thoroughfare of mud, offering (to fancy) a face of
ambiguous invitation. I might be received, I might once more
fill my belly there; on the other hand, it was perhaps this day
the bolt was destined to fall, and I might be expelled instead,
with vulgar hubbub. It was policy to make the attempt, and I
knew it was policy; but I had already, in the course of that one
morning, endured too many affronts, and I felt I could rather
starve than face another. I had courage and to spare for the
future, none left for that day; courage for the main campaign,
but not a spark of it for that preliminary skirmish of the
cabman's restaurant. I continued accordingly to sit upon my
bench, not far from the ashes of Napoleon, now drowsy, now
light-headed, now in complete mental obstruction, or only
conscious of an animal pleasure in quiescence; and now
thinking, planning, and remembering with unexampled
clearness, telling myself tales of sudden wealth, and gustfully
ordering and greedily consuming imaginary meals: in the
course of which I must have dropped asleep.

It was towards dark that I was suddenly recalled to famine by a
cold souse of rain, and sprang shivering to my feet. For a
moment I stood bewildered: the whole train of my reasoning
and dreaming passed afresh through my mind; I was again
tempted, drawn as if with cords, by the image of the cabman's
eating-house, and again recoiled from the possibility of insult.
"Qui dort dine," thought I to myself; and took my  homeward
way with wavering footsteps, through rainy streets in which the
lamps and the shop-windows now began to gleam; still
marshalling imaginary dinners as I went.

"Ah, Monsieur Dodd," said the porter, "there has been a
registered letter for you. The facteur will bring it again
to-morrow."

A registered letter for me, who had been so long without one?
Of what it could possibly contain, I had no vestige of a guess;
nor did I delay myself guessing; far less form any conscious
plan of dishonesty: the lies flowed from me like a natural
secretion.

"O," said I, "my remittance at last! What a bother I should
have missed it! Can you lend me a hundred francs until
to-morrow?"

I had never attempted to borrow from the porter till that
moment: the registered letter was, besides, my warranty; and
he gave me what he had--three napoleons and some francs in
silver. I pocketed the money carelessly, lingered a while
chaffing, strolled leisurely to the door; and then (fast as my
trembling legs could carry me) round the corner to the Cafe de
Cluny. French waiters are deft and speedy; they were not deft
enough for me; and I had scarce decency to let the man set the
wine upon the table or put the butter alongside the bread,
before my glass and my mouth were filled. Exquisite bread of
the Cafe Cluny, exquisite first glass of old Pomard tingling to
my wet feet, indescribable first olive culled from the hors
d'oeuvre--I suppose, when I come to lie dying, and the lamp
begins to grow dim, I shall still recall your savour. Over the
rest of that meal, and the rest of the evening, clouds lie thick;
clouds perhaps of Burgundy; perhaps, more properly, of famine
and repletion.

I remember clearly, at least, the shame, the despair, of the next
morning, when I reviewed what I had done, and how I had
swindled the poor honest porter; and, as if that were not
enough, fairly burnt my ships, and brought bankruptcy home to
that last refuge, my garret. The porter would expect his money;
I could not pay him; here was scandal in the house; and I knew
right well the cause of scandal would have to pack. "What do
you mean by calling my honesty in question?" I had cried the
day before, turning upon Myner. Ah, that day before! the day
before Waterloo, the day before the Flood; the day before I had
sold the roof over my head, my future, and my self-respect, for
a dinner at the Cafe Cluny!

In the midst of these lamentations the famous registered letter
came to my door, with healing under its seals. It bore the
postmark of San Francisco, where Pinkerton was already
struggling to the neck in multifarious affairs: it renewed the
offer of an allowance, which his improved estate permitted him
to announce at the figure of two hundred francs a month; and in
case I was in some immediate pinch, it enclosed an
introductory draft for forty dollars. There are a thousand
excellent reasons why a man, in this self-helpful epoch, should
decline to be dependent on another; but the most numerous and
cogent considerations all bow to a necessity as stern as mine;
and the banks were scarce open ere the draft was cashed.

It was early in December that I thus sold myself into slavery;
and for six months I dragged a slowly lengthening chain of
gratitude and uneasiness. At the cost of some debt I managed
to excel myself and eclipse the Genius of Muskegon, in a small
but highly patriotic Standard Bearer for the Salon; whither it
was duly admitted, where it stood the proper length of days
entirely unremarked, and whence it came back to me as
patriotic as before. I threw my whole soul (as Pinkerton would
have phrased it) into clocks and candlesticks; the devil a
candlestick-maker would have anything to say to my designs.
Even when Dijon, with his infinite good humour and infinite
scorn for all such journey-work, consented to peddle them in
indiscriminately with his own, the dealers still detected and
rejected mine. Home they returned to me, true as the Standard
Bearer; who now, at the head of quite a regiment of lesser
idols, began to grow an eyesore in the scanty studio of my
friend. Dijon and I have sat by the hour, and gazed upon that
company of images. The severe, the frisky, the classical, the
Louis Quinze, were there--from Joan of Arc in her soldierly
cuirass to Leda with the swan; nay, and God forgive me for a
man that knew better! the humorous was represented also. We
sat and gazed, I say; we criticised, we turned them hither and
thither; even upon the closest inspection they looked quite like
statuettes; and yet nobody would have a gift of them!

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man:
but about the sixth month, when I already owed near two
hundred dollars to Pinkerton, and half as much again in debts
scattered about Paris, I awoke one morning with a horrid
sentiment of oppression, and found I was alone: my vanity had
breathed her last during the night. I dared not plunge deeper in
the bog; I saw no hope in my poor statuary; I owned myself
beaten at last; and sitting down in my nightshirt beside the
window, whence I had a glimpse of the tree-tops at the corner
of the boulevard, and where the music of its early traffic fell
agreeably upon my ear, I penned my farewell to Paris, to art, to
my whole past life, and my whole former self. "I give in," I
wrote. "When the next allowance arrives, I shall go straight
out West, where you can do what you like with me."

It is to be understood that Pinkerton had been, in a sense,
pressing me to come from the beginning; depicting his isolation
among new acquaintances, "who have none of them your
culture," he wrote; expressing his friendship in terms so warm
that it sometimes embarrassed me to think how poorly I could
echo them; dwelling upon his need for assistance; and the next
moment turning about to commend my resolution and press me
to remain in Paris. "Only remember, Loudon," he would write,
"if you ever DO tire of it, there's plenty of work here for you
--honest, hard, well-paid work, developing the resources of this
practically virgin State. And of course I needn't say what a
pleasure it would be to me if we were going at it SHOULDER
TO SHOULDER."  I marvel (looking back) that I could so long
have resisted these appeals, and continue to sink my friend's
money in a manner that I knew him to dislike. At least, when I
did awake to any sense of my position, I awoke to it entirely;
and determined not only to follow his counsel for the future, but
even as regards the past, to rectify his losses. For in this
juncture of affairs I called to mind that I was not without a
possible resource, and resolved, at whatever cost of
mortification, to beard the Loudon family in their historic city.

In the excellent Scots' phrase, I made a moonlight flitting, a
thing never dignified, but in my case unusually easy. As I had
scarce a pair of boots worth portage, I deserted the whole of my
effects without a pang. Dijon fell heir to Joan of Arc, the
Standard Bearer, and the Musketeers. He was present when I
bought and frugally stocked my new portmanteau; and it was at
the door of the trunk shop that I took my leave of him, for my
last few hours in Paris must be spent alone. It was alone (and
at a far higher figure than my finances warranted) that I
discussed my dinner; alone that I took my ticket at Saint
Lazare; all alone, though in a carriage full of people, that I
watched the moon shine on the Seine flood with its tufted
islets, on Rouen with her spires, and on the shipping in the
harbour of Dieppe. When the first light of the morning called
me from troubled slumbers on the deck, I beheld the dawn at
first with pleasure; I watched with pleasure the green shores of
England rising out of rosy haze; I took the salt air with delight
into my nostrils; and then all came back to me; that I was no
longer an artist, no longer myself; that I was leaving all I cared
for, and returning to all that I detested, the slave of debt and
gratitude, a public and a branded failure.

From this picture of my own disgrace and wretchedness, it is
not wonderful if my mind turned with relief to the thought of
Pinkerton, waiting for me, as I knew, with unwearied affection,
and regarding me with a respect that I had never deserved, and
might therefore fairly hope that I should never forfeit. The
inequality of our relation struck me rudely. I must have been
stupid, indeed, if I could have considered the history of that
friendship without shame--I, who had given so little, who had
accepted and profited by so much. I had the whole day before
me in London, and I determined (at least in words) to set the
balance somewhat straighter. Seated in the corner of a public
place, and calling for sheet after sheet of paper, I poured forth
the expression of my gratitude, my penitence for the past, my
resolutions for the future. Till now, I told him, my course had
been mere selfishness. I had been selfish to my father and to
my friend, taking their help, and denying them (which was all
they asked) the poor gratification of my company and
countenance.

Wonderful are the consolations of literature! As soon as that
letter was written and posted, the consciousness of virtue
glowed in my veins like some rare vintage.

CHAPTER VI.

IN WHICH I GO WEST.

I reached my uncle's door next morning in time to sit down
with the family to breakfast. More than three years had
intervened almost without mutation in that stationary
household, since I had sat there first, a young American
freshman, bewildered among unfamiliar dainties, Finnan
haddock, kippered salmon, baps and mutton ham, and had
wearied my mind in vain to guess what should be under the
tea-cosey. If there were any change at all, it seemed that I had
risen in the family esteem. My father's death once fittingly
referred to, with a ceremonial lengthening of Scotch upper lips
and wagging of the female head, the party launched at once
(God help me) into the more cheerful topic of my own
successes. They had been so pleased to hear such good
accounts of me; I was quite a great man now; where was that
beautiful statue of the Genius of Something or other? "You
haven't it here? not here? Really?" asks the sprightliest of my
cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it were likely I had
brought it in a cab, or kept it concealed about my person like a
birthday surprise. In the bosom of this family, unaccustomed
to the tropical nonsense of the West, it became plain the
_Sunday Herald_ and poor, blethering Pinkerton had been
accepted for their face. It is not possible to invent a
circumstance that could have more depressed me; and I am
conscious that I behaved all through that breakfast like a whipt
schoolboy.

At length, the meal and family prayers being both happily over,
I requested the favour of an interview with Uncle Adam on "the
state of my affairs."  At sound of this ominous expression, the
good man's face conspicuously lengthened; and when my
grandfather, having had the proposition repeated to him (for he
was hard of hearing) announced his intention of being present
at the interview, I could not but think that Uncle Adam's
sorrow kindled into momentary irritation. Nothing, however,
but the usual grim cordiality appeared upon the surface; and we
all three passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a
gloomy theatre for a depressing piece of business. My
grandfather charged a clay pipe, and sat tremulously smoking
in a corner of the fireless chimney; behind him, although the
morning was both chill and dark, the window was partly open
and the blind partly down: I cannot depict what an air he had
of being out of place, like a man shipwrecked there. Uncle
Adam had his station at the business table in the midst.
Valuable rows of books looked down upon the place of torture;
and I could hear sparrows chirping in the garden, and my
sprightly cousin already banging the piano and pouring forth an
acid stream of song from the drawing-room overhead.

It was in these circumstances that, with all brevity of speech
and a certain boyish sullenness of manner, looking the while
upon the floor, I informed my relatives of my financial
situation: the amount I owed Pinkerton; the hopelessness of
any maintenance from sculpture; the career offered me in the
States; and how, before becoming more beholden to a stranger,
I had judged it right to lay the case before my family.

"I am only sorry you did not come to me at first," said Uncle
Adam. "I take the liberty to say it would have been more
decent."

"I think so too, Uncle Adam," I replied; "but you must bear in
mind I was ignorant in what light you might regard my
application."

"I hope I would never turn my back on my own flesh and
blood," he returned with emphasis; but to my anxious ear, with
more of temper than affection. "I could never forget you were
my sister's son. I regard this as a manifest duty. I have no
choice but to accept the entire responsibility of the position you
have made."

I did not know what else to do but murmur "thank you."

"Yes," he pursued, "and there is something providential in the
circumstance that you come at the right time. In my old firm
there is a vacancy; they call themselves Italian Warehousemen
now," he continued, regarding me with a twinkle of humour;
"so you may think yourself in luck: we were only grocers in my
day. I shall place you there to-morrow."

"Stop a moment, Uncle Adam," I broke in. "This is not at all
what I am asking. I ask you to pay Pinkerton, who is a poor
man. I ask you to clear my feet of debt, not to arrange my life
or any part of it."

"If I wished to be harsh, I might remind you that beggars
cannot be choosers," said my uncle; "and as to managing your
life, you have tried your own way already, and you see what
you have made of it. You must now accept the guidance of
those older and (whatever you may think of it) wiser than
yourself. All these schemes of your friend (of whom I know
nothing, by the by) and talk of openings in the West, I simply
disregard. I have no idea whatever of your going troking across
a continent on a wild-goose chase. In this situation, which I
am fortunately able to place at your disposal, and which many a
well-conducted young man would be glad to jump at, you will
receive, to begin with, eighteen shillings a week."

"Eighteen shillings a week!" I cried. "Why, my poor friend
gave me more than that for nothing!"

"And I think it is this very friend you are now trying to repay?"
observed my uncle, with an air of one advancing a strong
argument.

"Aadam!" said my grandfather.

"I'm vexed you should be present at this business," quoth Uncle
Adam, swinging rather obsequiously towards the stonemason;
"but I must remind you it is of your own seeking."

"Aadam!" repeated the old man.

"Well, sir, I am listening," says my uncle.

My grandfather took a puff or two in silence; and then, "Ye're
makin' an awfu' poor appearance, Aadam," said he.

My uncle visibly reared at the affront. "I'm sorry you should
think so," said he, "and still more sorry you should say so
before present company."

"A believe that; A ken that, Aadam," returned old Loudon,
dryly; "and the curiis thing is, I'm no very carin'. See here, ma
man," he continued, addressing himself to me. "A'm your
grandfaither, amn't I not? Never you mind what Aadam says.
A'll see justice din ye. A'm rich."

"Father," said Uncle Adam, "I would like one word with you in
private."

I rose to go.

"Set down upon your hinderlands," cried my grandfather,
almost savagely. "If Aadam has anything to say, let him say it.
It's me that has the money here; and by Gravy! I'm goin' to be
obeyed."

Upon this scurvy encouragement, it appeared that my uncle had
no remark to offer: twice challenged to "speak out and be done
with it," he twice sullenly declined; and I may mention that
about this period of the engagement, I began to be sorry for
him.

"See here, then, Jeannie's yin!" resumed my grandfather. "A'm
goin' to give ye a set-off. Your mither was always my fav'rite,
for A never could agree with Aadam. A like ye fine yoursel';
there's nae noansense aboot ye; ye've a fine nayteral idee of
builder's work; ye've been to France, where they tell me they're
grand at the stuccy. A splendid thing for ceilin's, the stuccy!
and it's a vailyable disguise, too; A don't believe there's a
builder in Scotland has used more stuccy than me. But as A
was sayin', if ye'll follie that trade, with the capital that A'm
goin' to give ye, ye may live yet to be as rich as mysel'. Ye see,
ye would have always had a share of it when A was gone; it
appears ye're needin' it now; well, ye'll get the less, as is only
just and proper."

Uncle Adam cleared his throat. "This is very handsome,
father," said he; "and I am sure Loudon feels it so. Very
handsome, and as you say, very just; but will you allow me to
say that it had better, perhaps, be put in black and white?"

The enmity always smouldering between the two men at this
ill-judged interruption almost burst in flame. The stonemason
turned upon his offspring, his long upper lip pulled down, for
all the world, like a monkey's. He stared a while in virulent
silence; and then "Get Gregg!" said he.

The effect of these words was very visible. "He will be gone to
his office," stammered my uncle.

"Get Gregg!" repeated my grandfather.

"I tell you, he will be gone to his office," reiterated Adam.

"And I tell ye, he's takin' his smoke," retorted the old man.

"Very well, then," cried my uncle, getting to his feet with some
alacrity, as upon a sudden change of thought, "I will get him
myself."

"Ye will not!" cried my grandfather. "Ye will sit there upon
your hinderland."

"Then how the devil am I to get him?" my uncle broke forth,
with not unnatural petulance.

My grandfather (having no possible answer) grinned at his son
with the malice of a schoolboy; then he rang the bell.

"Take the garden key," said Uncle Adam to the servant; "go
over to the garden, and if Mr. Gregg the lawyer is there (he
generally sits under the red hawthorn), give him old Mr.
Loudon's compliments, and will he step in here for a moment?"

"Mr. Gregg the lawyer!"  At once I understood (what had been
puzzling me) the significance of my grandfather and the alarm
of my poor uncle: the stonemason's will, it was supposed, hung
trembling in the balance.

"Look here, grandfather," I said, "I didn't want any of this. All
I wanted was a loan of (say) two hundred pounds. I can take
care of myself; I have prospects and opportunities, good friends
in the States----"

The old man waved me down. "It's me that speaks here," he
said curtly; and we waited the coming of the lawyer in a triple
silence. He appeared at last, the maid ushering him in--a
spectacled, dry, but not ungenial looking man.

"Here, Gregg," cried my grandfather. "Just a question: What
has Aadam got to do with my will?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said the lawyer, staring.

"What has he got to do with it?" repeated the old man, smiting
with his fist upon the arm of his chair. "Is my money mine's, or
is it Aadam's? Can Aadam interfere?"

"O, I see," said Mr. Gregg. "Certainly not. On the marriage of
both of your children a certain sum was paid down and
accepted in full of legitim. You have surely not forgotten the
circumstance, Mr. Loudon?"

"So that, if I like," concluded my grandfather, hammering out
his words, "I can leave every doit I die possessed of to the Great
Magunn?"--meaning probably the Great Mogul.

"No doubt of it," replied Gregg, with a shadow of a smile.

"Ye hear that, Aadam?" asked my grandfather.

"I may be allowed to say I had no need to hear it," said my
uncle.

"Very well," says my grandfather. "You and Jeannie's yin can
go for a bit walk. Me and Gregg has business."

When once I was in the hall alone with Uncle Adam, I turned
to him, sick at heart. "Uncle Adam," I said, "you can
understand, better than I can say, how very painful all this is to
me."

"Yes, I am sorry you have seen your grandfather in so
unamiable a light," replied this extraordinary man. "You
shouldn't allow it to affect your mind though. He has sterling
qualities, quite an extraordinary character; and I have no fear
but he means to behave handsomely to you."

His composure was beyond my imitation: the house could not
contain me, nor could I even promise to return to it: in
concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call
in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left
the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the
arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy
situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered
some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous
conqueror who scorned to take advantage.

It was plain enough that I was to be endowed: to what extent
and upon what conditions I was now left for an hour to
meditate in the wide and solitary thoroughfares of the new
town, taking counsel with street-corner statues of George IV.
and William Pitt, improving my mind with the pictures in the
window of a music-shop, and renewing my acquaintance with
Edinburgh east wind. By the end of the hour I made my way to
Mr. Gregg's office, where I was placed, with a few appropriate
words, in possession of a cheque for two thousand pounds and
a small parcel of architectural works.

"Mr. Loudon bids me add," continued the lawyer, consulting a
little sheet of notes, "that although these volumes are very
valuable to the practical builder, you must be careful not to lose
originality. He tells you also not to be 'hadden doun'--his own
expression--by the theory of strains, and that Portland cement,
properly sanded, will go a long way."

I smiled, and remarked that I supposed it would.

"I once lived in one of my excellent client's houses," observed
the lawyer; "and I was tempted, in that case, to think it had
gone far enough."

"Under these circumstances, sir," said I, "you will be rather
relieved to hear that I have no intention of becoming a builder."

At this, he fairly laughed; and, the ice being broken, I was able
to consult him as to my conduct. He insisted I must return to
the house, at least, for luncheon, and one of my walks with Mr.
Loudon. "For the evening, I will furnish you with an excuse, if
you please," said he, "by asking you to a bachelor dinner with
myself. But the luncheon and the walk are unavoidable. He is
an old man, and, I believe, really fond of you; he would
naturally feel aggrieved if there were any appearance of
avoiding him; and as for Mr. Adam, do you know, I think your
delicacy out of place.... And now, Mr. Dodd, what are you to
do with this money?"

Ay, there was the question. With two thousand pounds--fifty
thousand francs--I might return to Paris and the arts, and be a
prince and millionaire in that thrifty Latin Quarter. I think I
had the grace, with one corner of my mind, to be glad that I had
sent the London letter: I know very well that with the rest and
worst of me, I repented bitterly of that precipitate act. On one
point, however, my whole multiplex estate of man was
unanimous: the letter being gone, there was no help but I must
follow. The money was accordingly divided in two unequal
shares: for the first, Mr. Gregg got me a bill in the name of
Dijon to meet my liabilities in Paris; for the second, as I had
already cash in hand for the expenses of my journey, he
supplied me with drafts on San Francisco.

The rest of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell on a very
agreeable dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family
luncheon, took the form of an excursion with the stonemason,
who led me this time to no suburb or work of his old hands, but
with an impulse both natural and pretty, to that more enduring
home which he had chosen for his clay. It was in a cemetery,
by some strange chance, immured within the bulwarks of a
prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded
with elderly stone memorials, and green with turf and ivy. The
east wind (which I thought too harsh for the old man)
continually shook the boughs, and the thin sun of a Scottish
summer drew their dancing shadows.

"I wanted ye to see the place," said he. "Yon's the stane.
Euphemia Ross: that was my goodwife, your grandmither
--hoots! I'm wrong; that was my first yin; I had no bairns by
her;--yours is the second, Mary Murray, Born 1819, Died 1850:
that's her--a fine, plain, decent sort of a creature, tak' her
athegether. Alexander Loudon, Born Seventeen Ninety-Twa,
Died--and then a hole in the ballant: that's me. Alexander's
my name. They ca'd me Ecky when I was a boy. Eh, Ecky!
ye're an awfu' auld man!"

I had a second and sadder experience of graveyards at my next
alighting-place, the city of Muskegon, now rendered
conspicuous by the dome of the new capitol encaged in
scaffolding. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived, and
raining; and as I walked in great streets, of the very name of
which I was quite ignorant--double, treble, and quadruple lines
of horse-cars jingling by--hundred-fold wires of telegraph and
telephone matting heaven above my head--huge, staring
houses, garish and gloomy, flanking me from either hand--the
thought of the Rue Racine, ay, and of the cabman's eating
-house, brought tears to my eyes. The whole monotonous
Babel had grown, or I should rather say swelled, with such a
leap since my departure, that I must continually inquire my
way; and the very cemetery was brand new. Death, however,
had been active; the graves were already numerous, and I must
pick my way in the rain, among the tawdry sepulchres of
millionnaires, and past the plain black crosses of Hungarian
labourers, till chance or instinct led me to the place that was my
father's. The stone had been erected (I knew already) "by
admiring friends"; I could now judge their taste in monuments;
their taste in literature, methought, I could imagine, and I
refrained from drawing near enough to read the terms of the
inscription. But the name was in larger letters and stared at
me--JAMES K. DODD. What a singular thing is a name, I
thought; how it clings to a man, and continually misrepresents,
and then survives him; and it flashed across my mind, with a
mixture of regret and bitter mirth, that I had never known, and
now probably never should know, what the K had represented.
King, Kilter, Kay, Kaiser, I went, running over names at
random, and then stumbled with ludicrous misspelling on
Kornelius, and had nearly laughed aloud. I have never been
more childish; I suppose (although the deeper voices of my
nature seemed all dumb) because I have never been more
moved. And at this last incongruous antic of my nerves, I was
seized with a panic of remorse and fled the cemetery.

Scarce less funereal was the rest of my experience in
Muskegon, where, nevertheless, I lingered, visiting my father's
circle, for some days. It was in piety to him I lingered; and I
might have spared myself the pain. His memory was already
quite gone out. For his sake, indeed, I was made welcome; and
for mine the conversation rolled awhile with laborious effort on
the virtues of the deceased. His former comrades dwelt, in my
company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public
purposes; when my back was turned, they remembered him no
more. My father had loved me; I had left him alone to live and
die among the indifferent; now I returned to find him dead and
buried and forgotten. Unavailing penitence translated itself in
my thoughts to fresh resolve. There was another poor soul who
loved me: Pinkerton. I must not be guilty twice of the same
error.

A week perhaps had been thus wasted, nor had I prepared my
friend for the delay. Accordingly, when I had changed trains at
Council Bluffs, I was aware of a man appearing at the end of
the car with a telegram in his hand and inquiring whether there
were any one aboard "of the name of LONDON Dodd?"  I
thought the name near enough, claimed the despatch, and
found it was from Pinkerton: "What day do you arrive?
Awfully important."  I sent him an answer giving day and hour,
and at Ogden found a fresh despatch awaiting me: "That will
do. Unspeakable relief. Meet you at Sacramento."  In Paris
days I had a private name for Pinkerton: "The Irrepressible"
was what I had called him in hours of bitterness, and the name
rose once more on my lips. What mischief was he up to now?
What new bowl was my benignant monster brewing for his
Frankenstein? In what new imbroglio should I alight on the
Pacific coast? My trust in the man was entire, and my distrust
perfect. I knew he would never mean amiss; but I was
convinced he would almost never (in my sense) do aright.

I suppose these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to
that already gloomy place of travel: Nebraska, Wyoming,
Utah, Nevada, scowled in my face at least, and seemed to point
me back again to that other native land of mine, the Latin
Quarter. But when the Sierras had been climbed, and the train,
after so long beating and panting, stretched itself upon the
downward track--when I beheld that vast extent of prosperous
country rolling seaward from the woods and the blue
mountains, that illimitable spread of rippling corn, the trees
growing and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys
thronging aboard the train with figs and peaches, and the
conductors, and the very darky stewards, visibly exulting in the
change--up went my soul like a balloon; Care fell from his
perch upon my shoulders; and when I spied my Pinkerton
among the crowd at Sacramento, I thought of nothing but to
shout and wave for him, and grasp him by the hand, like what
he was--my dearest friend.

"O Loudon!" he cried. "Man, how I've pined for you! And you
haven't come an hour too soon. You're known here and waited
for; I've been booming you already; you're billed for a lecture
to-morrow night: _Student Life in Paris, Grave and Gay_:
twelve hundred places booked at the last stock! Tut, man,
you're looking thin! Here, try a drop of this."  And he produced
a case bottle, staringly labelled PINKERTON'S THIRTEEN
STAR GOLDEN STATE BRANDY, WARRANTED
ENTIRE.

"God bless me!" said I, gasping and winking after my first
plunge into this fiery fluid. "And what does 'Warranted Entire'
mean?"

"Why, Loudon! you ought to know that!" cried Pinkerton. "It's
real, copper-bottomed English; you see it on all the old-time
wayside hostelries over there."

"But if I'm not mistaken, it means something Warranted
Entirely different," said I, "and applies to the public house, and
not the beverages sold."

"It's very possible," said Jim, quite unabashed. "It's effective,
anyway; and I can tell you, sir, it has boomed that spirit: it
goes now by the gross of cases. By the way, I hope you won't
mind; I've got your portrait all over San Francisco for the
lecture,  enlarged from that carte de visite: H. Loudon Dodd,
the Americo-Parisienne Sculptor. Here's a proof of the small
handbills; the posters are the same, only in red and blue, and
the letters fourteen by one."

I looked at the handbill, and my head turned. What was the
use of words? why seek to explain to Pinkerton the knotted
horrors of "Americo-Parisienne"? He took an early occasion to
point it out as "rather a good phrase; gives the two sides at a
glance: I wanted the lecture written up to that."  Even after we
had reached San Francisco, and at the actual physical shock of
my own effigy placarded on the streets I had broken forth in
petulant words, he never comprehended in the least the ground
of my aversion.

"If I had only known you disliked red lettering!" was as high as
he could rise. "You are perfectly right: a clear-cut black is
preferable, and shows a great deal further. The only thing that
pains me is the portrait: I own I thought that a success. I'm
dreadfully and truly sorry, my dear fellow: I see now it's not
what you had a right to expect; but I did it, Loudon, for the
best; and the press is all delighted."

At the moment, sweeping through green tule swamps, I fell
direct on the essential. "But, Pinkerton," I cried, "this lecture is
the maddest of your madnesses. How can I prepare a lecture in
thirty hours?"

"All done, Loudon!" he exclaimed in triumph. "All ready.
Trust me to pull a piece of business through. You'll find it all
type-written in my desk at home. I put the best talent of San
Francisco on the job: Harry Miller, the brightest pressman in
the city."

And so he rattled on, beyond reach of my modest protestations,
blurting out his complicated interests, crying up his new
acquaintances, and ever and again hungering to introduce me
to some "whole-souled, grand fellow, as sharp as a needle,"
from whom, and the very thought of whom, my spirit shrank
instinctively.

Well, I was in for it: in for Pinkerton, in for the portrait, in for
the type-written lecture. One promise I extorted--that I was
never again to be committed in ignorance; even for that, when I
saw how its extortion puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible,
my soul repented me; and in all else I suffered myself to be led
uncomplaining at his chariot wheels. The Irrepressible, did I
say? The Irresistible were nigher truth.

But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to Harry
Miller's lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller; he
had a gallant way of skirting the indecent which (in my case)
produced physical nausea; and he could be sentimental and
even melodramatic about grisettes and starving genius. I found
he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence with
Pinkerton: adventures of my own were here and there horridly
misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and exaggerated
till I blushed to recognise them. I will do Harry Miller justice:
he must have had a kind of talent, almost of genius; all
attempts to lower his tone proving fruitless, and the Harry-
Millerism ineradicable. Nay, the monster had a certain key of
style, or want of style, so that certain milder passages, which I
sought to introduce, discorded horribly, and impoverished (if
that were possible) the general effect.

By an early hour of the numbered evening I might have been
observed at the sign of the Poodle Dog, dining with my agent:
so Pinkerton delighted to describe himself. Thence, like an ox
to the slaughter, he led me to the hall, where I stood presently
alone, confronting assembled San Francisco, with no better
allies than a table, a glass of water, and a mass of manuscript
and typework, representing Harry Miller and myself.  I read
the lecture; for I had lacked both time and will to get the trash
by heart--read it hurriedly, humbly, and with visible shame.
Now and then I would catch in the auditorium an eye of some
intelligence, now and then, in the manuscript, would stumble
on a richer vein of Harry Miller, and my heart would fail me,
and I gabbled. The audience yawned, it stirred uneasily, it
muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last in articulate cries of
"Speak up!" and "Nobody can hear!"  I took to skipping, and
being extremely ill-acquainted with the country, almost
invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new
topic. What struck me as extremely ominous, these
misfortunes were allowed to pass without a laugh. Indeed, I
was beginning to fear the worst, and even personal indignity,
when all at once the humour of the thing broke upon me
strongly. I could have laughed aloud; and being again
summoned to speak up, I faced my patrons for the first time
with a smile. "Very well," I said, "I will try, though I don't
suppose anybody wants to hear, and I can't see why anybody
should."  Audience and lecturer laughed together till the tears
ran down; vociferous and repeated applause hailed my
impromptu sally. Another hit which I made but a little after, as
I turned three pages of the copy: "You see, I am leaving out as
much as I possibly can," increased the esteem with which my
patrons had begun to regard me; and when I left the stage at
last, my departing form was cheered with laughter, stamping,
shouting, and the waving of hats.

Pinkerton was in the waiting-room, feverishly jotting in his
pocket-book. As he saw me enter, he sprang up, and I declare
the tears were trickling on his cheeks.

"My dear boy," he cried, "I can never forgive myself, and you
can never forgive me. Never mind: I did it for the best. And
how nobly you clung on! I dreaded we should have had to
return the money at the doors."

"It would have been more honest if we had," said I.

The pressmen followed me, Harry Miller in the front ranks; and
I was amazed to find them, on the whole, a pleasant set of lads,
probably more sinned against than sinning, and even Harry
Miller apparently a gentleman. I had in oysters and
champagne--for the receipts were excellent--and being in a
high state of nervous tension, kept the table in a roar. Indeed, I
was never in my life so well inspired as when I described my
vigil over Harry Miller's literature or the series of my emotions
as I faced the audience. The lads vowed I was the soul of good
company and the prince of lecturers; and--so wonderful an
institution is the popular press--if you had seen the notices next
day in all the papers, you must have supposed my evening's
entertainment an unqualified success.

I was in excellent spirits when I returned home that night, but
the miserable Pinkerton sorrowed for us both.

"O, Loudon," he said, "I shall never forgive myself. When I
saw you didn't catch on to the idea of the lecture, I should have
given it myself!"

CHAPTER VII.

IRONS IN THE FIRE.

   Opes Strepitumque.

The food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the
sage, the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical
elements, variously disguised, support all mortals. A brief
study of Pinkerton in his new setting convinced me of a kindred
truth about that other and mental digestion, by which we
extract what is called "fun for our money" out of life. In the
same spirit as a schoolboy, deep in Mayne Reid, handles a
dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, Pinkerton
sped through Kearney Street upon his daily business,
representing to himself a highly coloured part in life's
performance, and happy for hours if he should have chanced to
brush against a millionnaire. Reality was his romance; he
gloried to be thus engaged; he wallowed in his business.
Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast,
his rakish schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail,
and he, by the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure
ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious beach: such an one
might realise a greater material spoil; he should have no more
profit of romance than Pinkerton when he cast up his weekly
balance-sheet in a bald office. Every dollar gained was like
something brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every
venture made was like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his
bold hand into the plexus of the money-market, he was
delightedly aware of how he shook the pillars of existence,
turned out men (as at a battle-cry) to labour in far countries,
and set the gold twitching in the drawers of millionnaires.

I could never fathom the full extent of his speculations; but
there were five separate businesses which he avowed and
carried like a banner. The Thirteen Star Golden State Brandy,
Warranted Entire (a very flagrant distillation) filled a great part
of his thoughts, and was kept before the public in an eloquent
but misleading treatise: _Why Drink French Brandy? A Word
to the Wise._  He kept an office for advertisers, counselling,
designing, acting as middleman with printers and bill-stickers,
for the inexperienced or the uninspired: the dull haberdasher
came to him for ideas, the smart theatrical agent for his local
knowledge; and one and all departed with a copy of his
pamphlet: _How, When, and Where; or, the Advertiser's
Vade-Mecum._  He had a tug chartered every Saturday
afternoon and night, carried people outside the Heads, and
provided them with lines and bait for six hours' fishing, at the
rate of five dollars a person. I am told that some of them
(doubtless adroit anglers) made a profit on the transaction.
Occasionally he bought wrecks and condemned vessels; these
latter (I cannot tell you how) found their way to sea again under
aliases, and continued to stem the waves triumphantly enough
under the colours of Bolivia or Nicaragua. Lastly, there was a
certain agricultural engine, glorying in a great deal of vermilion
and blue paint, and filling (it appeared) a "long-felt want," in
which his interest was something like a tenth.

This for the face or front of his concerns. "On the outside," as
he phrased it, he was variously and mysteriously engaged. No
dollar slept in his possession; rather he kept all simultaneously
flying like a conjurer with oranges. My own earnings, when I
began to have a share, he would but show me for a moment,
and disperse again, like those illusive money gifts which are
flashed in the eyes of childhood only to be entombed in the
missionary box. And he would come down radiant from a
weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, declare himself
a winner by Gargantuan figures, and prove destitute of a
quarter for a drink.

"What on earth have you done with it?" I would ask.

"Into the mill again; all re-invested!" he would cry, with infinite
delight. Investment was ever his word. He could not bear
what he called gambling. "Never touch stocks, Loudon," he
would say; "nothing but legitimate business."  And yet, Heaven
knows, many an indurated gambler might have drawn back
appalled at the first hint of some of Pinkerton's investments!
One, which I succeeded in tracking home, and instance for a
specimen, was a seventh share in the charter of a certain ill-
starred schooner bound for Mexico, to smuggle weapons on the
one trip, and cigars upon the other. The latter end of this
enterprise, involving (as it did) shipwreck, confiscation, and a
lawsuit with the underwriters, was too painful to be dwelt upon
at length. "It's proved a disappointment," was as far as my
friend would go with me in words; but I knew, from
observation, that the fabric of his fortunes tottered. For the rest,
it was only by accident I got wind of the transaction; for
Pinkerton, after a time, was shy of introducing me to his
arcana: the reason you are to hear presently.

The office which was (or should have been) the point of rest for
so many evolving dollars stood in the heart of the city: a high
and spacious room, with many plate-glass windows. A glazed
cabinet of polished redwood offered to the eye a regiment of
some two hundred bottles, conspicuously labelled. These were
all charged with Pinkerton's Thirteen Star, although from
across the room it would have required an expert to distinguish
them from the same number of bottles of Courvoisier. I used to
twit my friend with this resemblance, and propose a new
edition of the pamphlet, with the title thus improved: _Why
Drink French Brandy, when we give you the same labels?_
The doors of the cabinet revolved all day upon their hinges; and
if there entered any one who was a stranger to the merits of the
brand, he departed laden with a bottle. When I used to protest
at this extravagance, "My dear Loudon," Pinkerton would cry,
"you don't seem to catch on to business principles! The prime
cost of the spirit is literally nothing. I couldn't find a cheaper
advertisement if I tried."  Against the side post of the cabinet
there leaned a gaudy umbrella, preserved there as a relic. It
appears that when Pinkerton was about to place Thirteen Star
upon the market, the rainy season was at hand. He lay dark,
almost in penury, awaiting the first shower, at which, as upon a
signal, the main thoroughfares became dotted with his agents,
vendors of advertisements; and the whole world of San
Francisco, from the businessman fleeing for the ferry-boat, to
the lady waiting at the corner for her car, sheltered itself under
umbrellas with this strange device: Are you wet? Try Thirteen
Star. "It was a mammoth boom," said Pinkerton, with a sigh of
delighted recollection. "There wasn't another umbrella to be
seen. I stood at this window, Loudon, feasting my eyes; and I
declare, I felt like Vanderbilt."  And it was to this neat
application of the local climate that he owed, not only much of
the sale of Thirteen Star, but the whole business of his
advertising agency.

The large desk (to resume our survey of the office) stood about
the middle, knee-deep in stacks of handbills and posters, of
_Why Drink French Brandy?_ and _The Advertiser's Vade-
Mecum._  It was flanked upon the one hand by two female
type-writers, who rested not between the hours of nine and
four, and upon the other by a model of the agricultural
machine. The walls, where they were not broken by telephone
boxes and a couple of photographs--one representing the wreck
of the James L. Moody on a bold and broken coast, the other
the Saturday tug alive with amateur fishers--almost
disappeared under oil-paintings gaudily framed. Many of these
were relics of the Latin Quarter, and I must do Pinkerton the
justice to say that none of them were bad, and some had
remarkable merit. They went off slowly but for handsome
figures; and their places were progressively supplied with the
work of local artists. These last it was one of my first duties to
review and criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all
were saleable. I said so; and the next moment saw myself, the
figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong
camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye
of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream widen that
divided me from all I loved.

"Now, Loudon," Pinkerton had said, the morning after the
lecture, "now Loudon, we can go at it shoulder to shoulder.
This is what I have longed for: I wanted two heads and four
arms; and now I have 'em. You'll find it's just the same as
art--all observation and imagination; only more movement.
Just wait till you begin to feel the charm!"

I might have waited long. Perhaps I lack a sense; for our whole
existence seemed to me one dreary bustle, and the place we
bustled in fitly to be called the Place of Yawning. I slept in a
little den behind the office; Pinkerton, in the office itself,
stretched on a patent sofa which sometimes collapsed, his
slumbers still further menaced by an imminent clock with an
alarm. Roused by this diabolical contrivance, we rose early,
went forth early to breakfast, and returned by nine to what
Pinkerton called work, and I distraction. Masses of letters
must be opened, read, and answered; some by me at a
subsidiary desk which had been introduced on the morning of
my arrival; others by my bright-eyed friend, pacing the room
like a caged lion as he dictated to the tinkling type-writers.
Masses of wet proof had to be overhauled and scrawled upon
with a blue pencil--"rustic"--"six-inch caps"--"bold spacing
here"--or sometimes terms more fervid, as for instance this,
which I remember Pinkerton to have spirted on the margin of
an advertisement of Soothing Syrup: "Throw this all down.
Have you never printed an advertisement? I'll be round in half
an hour."  The ledger and sale-book, besides, we had always
with us. Such was the backbone of our occupation, and
tolerable enough; but the far greater proportion of our time was
consumed by visitors, whole-souled, grand fellows no doubt,
and as sharp as a needle, but to me unfortunately not diverting.
Some were apparently half-witted, and must be talked over by
the hour before they could reach the humblest decision, which
they only left the office to return again (ten minutes later) and
rescind. Others came with a vast show of hurry and despatch,
but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural
model for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of
flypaper for these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn
the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulating (to
nobody's deception) business interest: "Good thing this,
Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use it, I suppose, as
a medium of advertisement for my article?"--which was
perhaps toilet soap. Others (a still worse variety) carried us to
neighbouring saloons to dice for cocktails and (after the
cocktails were paid) for dollars on a corner of the counter. The
attraction of dice for all these people was indeed extraordinary:
at a certain club, where I once dined in the character of "my
partner, Mr. Dodd," the dice-box came on the table with the
wine, an artless substitute for after-dinner wit.

Of all our visitors, I believe I preferred Emperor Norton; the
very mention of whose name reminds me I am doing scanty
justice to the folks of San Francisco. In what other city would a
harmless madman who supposed himself emperor of the two
Americas have been so fostered and encouraged? Where else
would even the people of the streets have respected the poor
soul's illusion? Where else would bankers and merchants have
received his visits, cashed his cheques, and submitted to his
small assessments? Where else would he have been suffered to
attend and address the exhibition days of schools and colleges?
where else, in God's green earth, have taken his pick of
restaurants, ransacked the bill of fare, and departed scathless?
They tell me he was even an exacting patron, threatening to
withdraw his custom when dissatisfied; and I can believe it, for
his face wore an expression distinctly gastronomical. Pinkerton
had received from this monarch a cabinet appointment; I have
seen the brevet, wondering mainly at the good nature of the
printer who had executed the forms, and I think my friend was
at the head either of foreign affairs or education: it mattered,
indeed, nothing, the prestation being in all offices identical. It
was at a comparatively early date that I saw Jim in the exercise
of his public functions. His Majesty entered the office--a
portly, rather flabby man, with the face of a gentleman,
rendered unspeakably pathetic and absurd by the great sabre at
his side and the peacock's feather in his hat.

"I have called to remind you, Mr. Pinkerton, that you are
somewhat in arrear of taxes," he said, with old-fashioned,
stately courtesy.

"Well, your Majesty, what is the amount?" asked Jim; and
when the figure was named (it was generally two or three
dollars), paid upon the nail and offered a bonus in the shape of
Thirteen Star.

"I am always delighted to patronise native industries," said
Norton the First. "San Francisco is public-spirited in what
concerns its Emperor; and indeed, sir, of all my domains, it is
my favourite city."

"Come," said I, when he was gone, "I prefer that customer to
the lot."

"It's really rather a distinction," Jim admitted. "I think it must
have been the umbrella racket that attracted him."

We were distinguished under the rose by the notice of other and
greater men. There were days when Jim wore an air of unusual
capacity and resolve, spoke with more brevity like one pressed
for time, and took often on his tongue such phrases as
"Longhurst told me so this morning," or "I had it straight from
Longhurst himself."  It was no wonder, I used to think, that
Pinkerton was called to council with such Titans; for the
creature's quickness and resource were beyond praise. In the
early days when he consulted me without reserve, pacing the
room, projecting, ciphering, extending hypothetical interests,
trebling imaginary capital, his "engine" (to renew an excellent
old word) labouring full steam ahead, I could never decide
whether my sense of respect or entertainment were the stronger.
But these good hours were destined to curtailment.

"Yes, it's smart enough," I once observed. "But, Pinkerton, do
you think it's honest?"

"You don't think it's honest!" he wailed. "O dear me, that ever I
should have heard such an expression on your lips!"

At sight of his distress, I plagiarised unblushingly from Myner.
"You seem to think honesty as simple as Blind Man's Buff,"
said I. "It's a more delicate affair than that: delicate as any art."

"O well! at that rate!" he exclaimed, with complete relief.
"That's casuistry."

"I am perfectly certain of one thing: that what you propose is
dishonest," I returned.

"Well, say no more about it. That's settled," he replied.

Thus, almost at a word, my point was carried. But the trouble
was that such differences continued to recur, until we began to
regard each other with alarm. If there were one thing Pinkerton
valued himself upon, it was his honesty; if there were one thing
he clung to, it was my good opinion; and when both were
involved, as was the case in these commercial cruces, the man
was on the rack. My own position, if you consider how much I
owed him, how hateful is the trade of fault-finder, and that yet I
lived and fattened on these questionable operations, was
perhaps equally distressing. If I had been more sterling or
more combative things might have gone extremely far. But, in
truth, I was just base enough to profit by what was not forced
on my attention, rather than seek scenes: Pinkerton quite
cunning enough to avail himself of my weakness; and it was a
relief to both when he began to involve his proceedings in a
decent mystery.

Our last dispute, which had a most unlooked-for consequence,
turned on the refitting of condemned ships. He had bought a
miserable hulk, and came, rubbing his hands, to inform me she
was already on the slip, under a new name, to be repaired.
When first I had heard of this industry I suppose I scarcely
comprehended; but much discussion had sharpened my
faculties, and now my brow became heavy.

"I can be no party to that, Pinkerton," said I.

He leaped like a man shot. "What next?" he cried. "What ails
you, anyway? You seem to me to dislike everything that's
profitable."

"This ship has been condemned by Lloyd's agent," said I.

"But I tell you it's a deal. The ship's in splendid condition;
there's next to nothing wrong with her but the garboard streak
and the sternpost. I tell you Lloyd's is a ring like everybody
else; only it's an English ring, and that's what deceives you. If
it was American, you would be crying it down all day. It's
Anglomania, common Anglomania," he cried, with growing
irritation.

"I will not make money by risking men's lives," was my
ultimatum.

"Great Caesar! isn't all speculation a risk? Isn't the fairest kind
of shipowning to risk men's lives? And mining--how's that for
risk? And look at the elevator business--there's danger, if you
like! Didn't I take my risk when I bought her? She might have
been too far gone; and where would I have been? Loudon," he
cried, "I tell you the truth: you're too full of refinement for this
world!"

"I condemn you out of your own lips," I replied. "'The fairest
kind of shipowning,' says you. If you please, let us only do the
fairest kind of business."

The shot told; the Irrepressible was silenced; and I profited by
the chance to pour in a broadside of another sort. He was all
sunk in money-getting, I pointed out; he never dreamed of
anything but dollars.  Where were all his generous, progressive
sentiments? Where was his culture? I asked. And where was
the American Type?

"It's true, Loudon," he cried, striding up and down the room,
and wildly scouring at his hair. "You're perfectly right. I'm
becoming materialised. O, what a thing to have to say, what a
confession to make! Materialised! Me! Loudon, this must go
on no longer. You've been a loyal friend to me once more; give
me your hand!--you've saved me again. I must do something to
rouse the spiritual side; something desperate; study something,
something dry and tough. What shall it be? Theology?
Algebra? What's Algebra?"

"It's dry and tough enough," said I; "a squared + 2ab + b
squared."

"It's stimulating, though?" he inquired.

I told him I believed so, and that it was considered fortifying to
Types.

"Then that's the thing for me. I'll study Algebra," he concluded.

The next day, by application to one of his type-writing women,
he got word of a young lady, one Miss Mamie McBride, who
was willing and able to conduct him in these bloomless
meadows; and, her circumstances being lean, and terms
consequently moderate, he and Mamie were soon in agreement
for two lessons in the week. He took fire with unexampled
rapidity; he seemed unable to tear himself away from the
symbolic art; an hour's lesson occupied the whole evening; and
the original two was soon increased to four, and then to five. I
bade him beware of female blandishments. "The first thing you
know, you'll be falling in love with the algebraist," said I.

"Don't say it even in jest," he cried. "She's a lady I revere. I
could no more lay a hand upon her than I could upon a spirit.
Loudon, I don't believe God ever made a purer-minded
woman."

Which appeared to me too fervent to be reassuring.

Meanwhile I had been long expostulating with my friend upon
a different matter. "I'm the fifth wheel," I kept telling him.
"For any use I am, I might as well be in Senegambia. The
letters you give me to attend to might be answered by a sucking
child. And I tell you what it is, Pinkerton: either you've got to
find me some employment, or I'll have to start in and find it for
myself."

This I said with a corner of my eye in the usual quarter, toward
the arts, little dreaming what destiny was to provide.

"I've got it, Loudon," Pinkerton at last replied. "Got the idea on
the Potrero cars. Found I hadn't a pencil, borrowed one from
the conductor, and figured on it roughly all the way in town. I
saw it was the thing at last; gives you a real show. All your
talents and accomplishments come in. Here's a sketch
advertisement. Just run your eye over it. "Sun, Ozone, and
Music! PINKERTON'S HEBDOMADARY PICNICS!"
(That's a good, catching phrase, "hebdomadary," though it's
hard to say. I made a note of it when I was looking in the
dictionary how to spell hectagonal. 'Well, you're a boss word,'
I said. 'Before you're very much older, I'll have you in type as
long as yourself.'  And here it is, you see.)  'Five dollars a head,
and ladies free. MONSTER OLIO OF ATTRACTIONS.'
(How does that strike you?)  'Free luncheon under the
greenwood tree. Dance on the elastic sward. Home again in
the Bright Evening Hours. Manager and Honorary Steward, H.
Loudon Dodd, Esq., the well-known connoisseur.'"

Singular how a man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was so
intent on securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I
accepted the rest of the advertisement and all that it involved
without discussion. So it befell that the words "well-known
connoisseur" were deleted; but that H. Loudon Dodd became
manager and honorary steward of Pinkerton's Hebdomadary
Picnics, soon shortened, by popular consent, to the Dromedary.

By eight o'clock, any Sunday morning, I was to be observed by
an admiring public on the wharf. The garb and attributes of
sacrifice consisted of a black frock coat, rosetted, its pockets
bulging with sweetmeats and inferior cigars, trousers of light
blue, a silk hat like a reflector, and a varnished wand. A
goodly steamer guarded my one flank, panting and throbbing,
flags fluttering fore and aft of her, illustrative of the Dromedary
and patriotism. My other flank was covered by the ticket-
office, strongly held by a trusty character of the Scots
persuasion, rosetted like his superior and smoking a cigar to
mark the occasion festive. At half-past, having assured myself
that all was well with the free luncheons, I lit a cigar myself,
and awaited the strains of the "Pioneer Band."  I had never to
wait long--they were German and punctual--and by a few
minutes after the half-hour, I would hear them booming down
street with a long military roll of drums, some score of
gratuitous asses prancing at the head in bearskin hats and
buckskin aprons, and conspicuous with resplendent axes. The
band, of course, we paid for; but so strong is the San
Franciscan passion for public masquerade, that the asses (as I
say) were all gratuitous, pranced for the love of it, and cost us
nothing but their luncheon.

The musicians formed up in the bows of my steamer, and
struck into a skittish polka; the asses mounted guard upon the
gangway and the ticket-office; and presently after, in family
parties of father, mother, and children, in the form of duplicate
lovers or in that of solitary youth, the public began to descend
upon us by the carful at a time; four to six hundred perhaps,
with a strong German flavour, and all merry as children. When
these had been shepherded on board, and the inevitable belated
two or three had gained the deck amidst the cheering of the
public, the hawser was cast off, and we plunged into the bay.

And now behold the honorary steward in hour of duty and
glory; see me circulate amid crowd, radiating affability and
laughter, liberal with my sweetmeats and cigars. I say
unblushing things to hobbledehoy girls, tell shy young persons
this is the married people's boat, roguishly ask the abstracted if
they are thinking of their sweethearts, offer Paterfamilias a
cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow curious about the
age of mamma's youngest who (I assure her gaily) will be a
man before his mother; or perhaps it may occur to me, from the
sensible expression of her face, that she is a person of good
counsel, and I ask her earnestly if she knows any particularly
pleasant place on the Saucelito or San Rafael coast, for the
scene of our picnic is always supposed to be uncertain. The
next moment I am back at my giddy badinage with the young
ladies, wakening laughter as I go, and leaving in my wake
applausive comments of "Isn't Mr. Dodd a funny gentleman?"
and "O, I think he's just too nice!"

An hour having passed in this airy manner, I start upon my
rounds afresh, with a bag full of coloured tickets, all with pins
attached, and all with legible inscriptions: "Old Germany,"
"California," "True Love," "Old Fogies," "La Belle France,"
"Green Erin," "The Land of Cakes," "Washington," "Blue Jay,"
"Robin Red-Breast,"--twenty of each denomination; for when it
comes  to the luncheon, we sit down by twenties. These are
distributed with anxious tact--for, indeed, this is the most
delicate part of my functions--but outwardly with reckless
unconcern, amidst the gayest flutter and confusion; and are
immediately after sported upon hats and bonnets, to the
extreme diffusion of cordiality, total strangers hailing each
other by "the number of their mess"--so we humorously name
it--and the deck ringing with cries of, "Here, all Blue Jays to
the rescue!" or, "I say, am I alone in this blame' ship? Ain't
there no more Californians?"

By this time we are drawing near to the appointed spot. I
mount upon the bridge, the observed of all observers.

"Captain," I say, in clear, emphatic tones, heard far and wide,
"the majority of the company appear to be in favour of the little
cove beyond One Tree Point."

"All right, Mr. Dodd," responds the captain, heartily; "all one to
me. I am not exactly sure of the place you mean; but just you
stay here and pilot me."

I do, pointing with my wand. I do pilot him, to the
inexpressible entertainment of the picnic; for I am (why should
I deny it?) the popular man. We slow down off the mouth of a
grassy valley, watered by a brook, and set in pines and
redwoods. The anchor is let go; the boats are lowered, two of
them already packed with the materials of an impromptu bar;
and the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent asses,
fill the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of
Buffalo Gals, won't you come out to-night? It is a part of our
programme that one of the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness,
in the course of this embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the
water, whereupon the mirth of the picnic can hardly be
assuaged. Upon one occasion, the dummy axe floated, and the
laugh turned rather the wrong way.

In from ten to twenty minutes the boats are along-side again,
the messes are marshalled separately on the deck, and the
picnic goes ashore, to find the band and the impromptu bar
awaiting them. Then come the hampers, which are piled upon
the beach, and surrounded by a stern guard of stalwart asses,
axe on shoulder. It is here I take my place, note-book in hand,
under a banner bearing the legend, "Come here for hampers."
Each hamper contains a complete outfit for a separate twenty,
cold provender, plates, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons: an
agonized printed appeal from the fevered pen of Pinkerton,
pasted on the inside of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of
the glass and silver. Beer, wine, and lemonade are flowing
already from the bar, and the various clans of twenty file away
into the woods, with bottles under their arms, and the hampers
strung upon a stick. Till one they feast there, in a very
moderate seclusion, all being within earshot of the band. From
one till four, dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar does a
roaring business; and the honorary steward, who has already
exhausted himself to bring life into the dullest of the messes,
must now indefatigably dance with the plainest of the women.
At four a bugle-call is sounded; and by half-past behold us on
board again, pioneers, corrugated iron bar, empty bottles, and
all; while the honorary steward, free at last, subsides into the
captain's cabin over a brandy and soda and a book. Free at last,
I say; yet there remains before him the frantic leavetakings at
the pier, and a sober journey up to Pinkerton's office with two
policemen and the day's takings in a bag.

What I have here sketched was the routine. But we appealed to
the taste of San Francisco more distinctly in particular fetes.
"Ye Olde Time Pycke-Nycke," largely advertised in hand-bills
beginning "Oyez, Oyez!" and largely frequented by knights,
monks, and cavaliers, was drowned out by unseasonable rain,
and returned to the city one of the saddest spectacles I ever
remember to have witnessed. In pleasing contrast, and
certainly our chief success, was "The Gathering of the Clans,"
or Scottish picnic. So many milk-white knees were never
before simultaneously exhibited in public, and to judge by the
prevalence of "Royal Stewart" and the number of eagle's
feathers, we were a high-born company. I threw forward the
Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and passed muster as a
clansman with applause. There was, indeed, but one small
cloud on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply of the
national beverage, in the shape of The "Rob Roy MacGregor
O" Blend, Warranted Old and Vatted; and this must certainly
have been a generous spirit, for I had some anxious work
between four and half-past, conveying on board the inanimate
forms of chieftains.

To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and
soul of his own mess, Pinkerton himself came incognito,
bringing the algebraist on his arm. Miss Mamie proved to be a
well-enough-looking mouse, with a large, limpid eye, very
good manners, and a flow of the most correct expressions I
have ever heard upon the human lip. As Pinkerton's incognito
was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's
acquaintance; but I was informed afterwards that she
considered me "the wittiest gentleman she had ever met."  "The
Lord mend your taste in wit!" thought I; but I cannot conceal
that such was the general impression. One of my pleasantries
even went the round of San Francisco, and I have heard it
(myself all unknown) bandied in saloons. To be unknown
began at last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my
passage; above all, in humble neighbourhoods. "Who's that?"
one would ask, and the other would cry, "That! Why,
Dromedary Dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "Not know Mr.
Dodd of the Picnics? Well!" and indeed I think it marked a
rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as
gay and innocent as the age of gold; I am sure no people divert
themselves so easily and so well: and even with the cares of
my stewardship, I was often happy to be there.

Indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable.
The first was my terror of the hobbledehoy girls, to whom
(from the demands of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself
so open. The other, if less momentous, was more mortifying.
In early days, at my mother's knee, as a man may say, I had
acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have never
since been able to lose) of singing _Just before the Battle._  I
have what the French call a fillet of voice, my best notes scarce
audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be
regarded as a higher power of silence: experts tell me besides
that I sing flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does
_Just before the Battle_ occur to my mature taste as the song
that I would choose to sing. In spite of all which
considerations, at one picnic, memorably dull, and after I had
exhausted every other art of pleasing, I gave, in desperation, my
one song. From that hour my doom was gone forth. Either we
had a chronic passenger (though I could never detect him), or
the very wood and iron of the steamer must have retained the
tradition. At every successive picnic word went round that Mr.
Dodd was a singer; that Mr. Dodd sang _Just before the
Battle_, and finally that now was the time when Mr. Dodd
sang _Just before the Battle;_  so that the thing became a
fixture like the dropping of the dummy axe, and you are to
conceive me, Sunday after Sunday, piping up my lamentable
ditty and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause.
It is a beautiful trait in human nature that I was invariably
offered an encore.

I was well paid, however, even to sing. Pinkerton and I, after
an average Sunday, had five hundred dollars to divide. Nay,
and the picnics were the means, although indirectly, of bringing
me a singular windfall. This was at the end of the season, after
the "Grand Farewell Fancy Dress Gala."  Many of the hampers
had suffered severely; and it was judged wiser to save storage,
dispose of them, and lay in a fresh stock when the campaign re-
opened. Among my purchasers was a workingman of the name
of Speedy, to whose house, after several unavailing letters, I
must proceed in person, wondering to find myself once again
on the wrong side, and playing the creditor to some one else's
debtor. Speedy was in the belligerent stage of fear. He could
not pay. It appeared he had already resold the hampers, and he
defied me to do my worst. I did not like to lose my own
money; I hated to lose Pinkerton's; and the bearing of my
creditor incensed me.

"Do you know, Mr. Speedy, that I can send you to the
penitentiary?" said I, willing to read him a lesson.

The dire expression was overheard in the next room. A large,
fresh, motherly Irishwoman ran forth upon the instant, and fell
to besiege me with caresses and appeals. "Sure now, and ye
couldn't have the heart to ut, Mr. Dodd, you, that's so well
known to be a pleasant gentleman; and it's a pleasant face ye
have, and the picture of me own brother that's dead and gone.
It's a truth that he's been drinking. Ye can smell it off of him,
more blame to him. But, indade, and there's nothing in the
house beyont the furnicher, and Thim Stock. It's the stock that
ye'll be taking, dear. A sore penny it has cost me, first and last,
and by all tales, not worth an owld tobacco pipe." Thus
adjured, and somewhat embarrassed by the stern attitude I had
adopted, I suffered myself to be invested with a considerable
quantity of what is called wild-cat stock, in which this excellent
if illogical female had been squandering her hard-earned gold.
It could scarce be said to better my position, but the step
quieted the woman; and, on the other hand, I could not think I
was taking much risk, for the shares in question (they were
those of what I will call the Catamount Silver Mine) had fallen
some time before to the bed-rock quotation, and now lay
perfectly inert, or were only kicked (like other waste paper)
about the kennel of the exchange by bankrupt speculators.

A month or two after, I perceived by the stock-list that
Catamount had taken a bound; before afternoon, "thim stock"
were worth a quite considerable pot of money; and I learned,
upon inquiry, that a bonanza had been found in a condemned
lead, and the mine was now expected to do wonders.
Remarkable to philosophers how bonanzas are found in
condemned leads, and how the stock is always at freezing-point
immediately before! By some stroke of chance the, Speedys
had held on to the right thing; they had escaped the syndicate;
yet a little more, if I had not come to dun them, and Mrs.
Speedy would have been buying a silk dress. I could not bear,
of course, to profit by the accident, and returned to offer
restitution. The house was in a bustle; the neighbours (all
stock-gamblers themselves) had crowded to condole; and Mrs.
Speedy sat with streaming tears, the centre of a sympathetic
group. "For fifteen year I've been at ut," she was lamenting, as
I entered, "and grudging the babes the very milk, more shame
to me! to pay their dhirty assessments. And now, my dears, I
should be a lady, and driving in my coach, if all had their
rights; and a sorrow on that man Dodd! As soon as I set eyes
on him, I seen the divil was in the house."

It was upon these words that I made my entrance, which was
therefore dramatic enough, though nothing to what followed.
For when it appeared that I was come to restore the lost fortune,
and when Mrs. Speedy (after copiously weeping on my bosom)
had refused the restitution, and when Mr. Speedy (summoned
to that end from a camp of the Grand Army of the Republic)
had added his refusal, and when I had insisted, and they had
insisted, and the neighbours had applauded and supported each
of us in turn; and when at last it was agreed we were to hold
the stock together, and share the proceeds in three parts--one
for me, one for Mr. Speedy, and one for his spouse--I will leave
you to conceive the enthusiasm that reigned in that small, bare
apartment, with the sewing-machine in the one corner, and the
babes asleep in the other, and pictures of Garfield and the
Battle of Gettysburg on the yellow walls. Port wine was had in
by a sympathiser, and we drank it mingled with tears.

"And I dhrink to your health, my dear," sobbed Mrs. Speedy,
especially affected by my gallantry in the matter of the third
share; "and I'm sure we all dhrink to his health--Mr. Dodd of
the picnics, no gentleman better known than him; and it's my
prayer, dear, the good God may be long spared to see ye in
health and happiness!"

In the end I was the chief gainer; for I sold my third while it
was worth five thousand dollars, but the Speedys more
adventurously held on until the syndicate reversed the process,
when they were happy to escape with perhaps a quarter of that
sum. It was just as well; for the bulk of the money was (in
Pinkerton's phrase) reinvested; and when next I saw Mrs.
Speedy, she was still gorgeously dressed from the proceeds of
the late success, but was already moist with tears over the new
catastrophe. "We're froze out, me darlin'! All the money we
had, dear, and the sewing-machine, and Jim's uniform, was in
the Golden West; and the vipers has put on a new assessment."

By the end of the year, therefore, this is how I stood. I had
made

     By Catamount Silver Mine.......... $5,000
     By the picnics..............................  3,000
     By the lecture...............................     600
     By profit and loss on capital
         in Pinkerton's business.............  1,350
                                                              ------
                                                            $9,950

to which must be added

     What remained of my grandfather's
          donation..................................   8,500
                                                               ------
                                                          $18,450

It appears, on the other hand, that

     I had spent.................................... 4,000
                                                              ------
Which thus left me to the good....... $14,450

A result on which I am not ashamed to say I looked with
gratitude and pride. Some eight thousand (being late conquest)
was liquid and actually tractile in the bank; the rest whirled
beyond reach and even sight (save in the mirror of a balance-
sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard Pinkerton. Dollars
of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in peril of the
deep and the guarda-costas; they rang on saloon-counters in the
city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the
mountain diggings; the imagination flagged in following them,
so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning
of the wizard's crank. But here, there, or everywhere I could
still tell myself it was all mine, and what was more convincing,
draw substantial dividends. My fortune, I called it; and it
represented, when expressed in dollars, or even British pounds,
an honest pot of money; when extended into francs, a veritable
fortune. Perhaps I have let the cat out of the bag; perhaps you
see already where my hopes were pointing, and begin to blame
my inconsistency. But I must first tell you my excuse, and the
change that had befallen Pinkerton.

About a week after the picnic to which he escorted Mamie,
Pinkerton avowed the state of his affections. From what I had
observed on board the steamer, where methought Mamie
waited on him with her limpid eyes, I encouraged the bashful
lover to proceed; and the very next evening he was carrying me
to call on his affianced.

"You must befriend her, Loudon, as you have always
befriended me," he said, pathetically.

"By saying disagreeable things? I doubt if that be the way to a
young lady's favour," I replied; "and since this picnicking I
begin to be a man of some experience."

"Yes, you do nobly there; I can't describe how I admire you," he
cried. "Not that she will ever need it; she has had every
advantage. God knows what I have done to deserve her. O
man, what a responsibility this is for a rough fellow and not
always truthful!"

"Brace up, old man, brace up!" said I.

But when we reached Mamie's boarding-house, it was almost
with tears that he presented me. "Here is Loudon, Mamie,"
were his words. "I want you to love him; he has a grand
nature."

"You are certainly no stranger to me, Mr. Dodd," was her
gracious expression. "James is never weary of descanting on
your goodness."

"My dear lady," said I, "when you know our friend a little
better, you will make a large allowance for his warm heart. My
goodness has consisted in allowing him to feed and clothe and
toil for me when he could ill afford it. If I am now alive, it is to
him I owe it; no man had a kinder friend. You must take good
care of him," I added, laying my hand on his shoulder, "and
keep him in good order, for he needs it."

Pinkerton was much affected by this speech, and so, I fear, was
Mamie. I admit it was a tactless performance. "When you
know our friend a little better," was not happily said; and even
"keep him in good order, for he needs it" might be construed
into matter of offence; but I lay it before you in all confidence of
your acquittal: was the general tone of it "patronising"? Even if
such was the verdict of the lady, I cannot but suppose the
blame was neither wholly hers nor wholly mine; I cannot but
suppose that Pinkerton had already sickened the poor woman
of my very name; so that if I had come with the songs of
Apollo, she must still have been disgusted.

Here, however, were two finger-posts to Paris. Jim was going
to be married, and so had the less need of my society. I had not
pleased his bride, and so was, perhaps, better absent. Late one
evening I broached the idea to my friend. It had been a great
day for me; I had just banked my five thousand catamountain
dollars; and as Jim had refused to lay a finger on the stock, risk
and profit were both wholly mine, and I was celebrating the
event with stout and crackers. I began by telling him that if it
caused him any pain or any anxiety about his affairs, he had but
to say the word, and he should hear no more of my proposal.
He was the truest and best friend I ever had or was ever like to
have; and it would be a strange thing if I refused him any
favour he was sure he wanted. At the same time I wished him
to be sure; for my life was wasting in my hands. I was like one
from home; all my true interests summoned me away. I must
remind him, besides, that he was now about to marry and
assume new interests, and that our extreme familiarity might be
even painful to his wife.--"O no, Loudon; I feel you are wrong
there," he interjected warmly; "she DOES appreciate your
nature."--So much the better, then, I continued; and went on to
point out that our separation need not be for long; that, in the
way affairs were going, he might join me in two years with a
fortune, small, indeed, for the States, but in France almost
conspicuous; that we might unite our resources, and have one
house in Paris for the winter and a second near Fontainebleau
for summer, where we could be as happy as the day was long,
and bring up little Pinkertons as practical artistic workmen, far
from the money-hunger of the West. "Let me go then," I
concluded; "not as a deserter, but as the vanguard, to lead the
march of the Pinkerton men."

So I argued and pleaded, not without emotion; my friend sitting
opposite, resting his chin upon his hand and (but for that single
interjection) silent. "I have been looking for this, Loudon," said
he, when I had done. "It does pain me, and that's the fact--I'm
so miserably selfish. And I believe it's a death blow to the
picnics; for it's idle to deny that you were the heart and soul of
them with your wand and your gallant bearing, and wit and
humour and chivalry, and throwing that kind of society
atmosphere about the thing. But for all that, you're right, and
you ought to go. You may count on forty dollars a week; and if
Depew City--one of nature's centres for this State--pan out the
least as I expect, it may be double. But it's forty dollars
anyway; and to think that two years ago you were almost
reduced to beggary!"

"I WAS reduced to it," said I.

"Well, the brutes gave you nothing, and I'm glad of it now!"
cried Jim. "It's the triumphant return I glory in! Think of the
master, and that cold-blooded Myner too! Yes, just let the
Depew City boom get on its legs, and you shall go; and two
years later, day for day, I'll shake hands with you in Paris, with
Mamie on my arm, God bless her!"

We talked in this vein far into the night. I was myself so
exultant in my new-found liberty, and Pinkerton so proud of my
triumph, so happy in my happiness, in so warm a glow about
the gallant little woman of his choice, and the very room so
filled with castles in the air and cottages at Fontainebleau, that
it was little wonder if sleep fled our eyelids, and three had
followed two upon the office clock before Pinkerton unfolded
the mechanism of his patent sofa.

CHAPTER VIII.

FACES ON THE CITY FRONT.

It is very much the custom to view life as if it were exactly
ruled in two, like sleep and waking; the provinces of play and
business standing separate. The business side of my career in
San Francisco has been now disposed of; I approach the
chapter of diversion; and it will be found they had about an
equal share in building up the story of the Wrecker--a
gentleman whose appearance may be presently expected.

With all my occupations, some six afternoons and two or three
odd evenings remained at my disposal every week: a
circumstance the more agreeable as I was a stranger in a city
singularly picturesque. From what I had once called myself,
The Amateur Parisian, I grew (or declined) into a waterside
prowler, a lingerer on wharves, a frequenter of shy
neighbourhoods, a scraper of acquaintance with eccentric
characters. I visited Chinese and Mexican gambling-hells,
German secret societies, sailors' boarding-houses, and "dives"
of every complexion of the disreputable and dangerous. I have
seen greasy Mexican hands pinned to the table with a knife for
cheating, seamen (when blood-money ran high) knocked down
upon the public street and carried insensible on board short-
handed ships, shots exchanged, and the smoke (and the
company) dispersing from the doors of the saloon. I have heard
cold-minded Polacks debate upon the readiest method of
burning San Francisco to the ground, hot-headed working men
and women bawl and swear in the tribune at the Sandlot, and
Kearney himself open his subscription for a gallows, name the
manufacturers who were to grace it with their dangling bodies,
and read aloud to the delighted multitude a telegram of
adhesion from a member of the State legislature: all which
preparations of proletarian war were (in a moment) breathed
upon and abolished by the mere name and fame of Mr.
Coleman. That lion of the Vigilantes had but to rouse himself
and shake his ears, and the whole brawling mob was silenced.
I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was,
to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be
so feared by a whole city; and if I was disappointed, in my
character of looker-on, to have the matter end ingloriously
without the firing of a shot or the hanging of a single
millionnaire, philosophy tried to tell me that this sight was
truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns and different
epochs I might have had occasion to behold the cowardice and
carnage of street fighting; where else, but only there and then,
could I have enjoyed a view of Coleman (the intermittent
despot) walking meditatively up hill in a quiet part of town,
with a very rolling gait, and slapping gently his great thigh?

Minora Canamus. This historic figure stalks silently through a
corner of the San Francisco of my memory: the rest is bric-a-
brac, the reminiscences of a vagrant sketcher. My delight was
much in slums. Little Italy was a haunt of mine; there I would
look in at the windows of small eating-shops, transported
bodily from Genoa or Naples, with their macaroni, and chianti
flasks, and portraits of Garibaldi, and coloured political
caricatures; or (entering in) hold high debate with some
ear-ringed fisher of the bay as to the designs of "Mr. Owstria"
and "Mr. Rooshia."  I was often to be observed (had there been
any to observe me) in that dis-peopled, hill-side solitude of
Little Mexico, with its crazy wooden houses, endless crazy
wooden stairs, and perilous mountain goat-paths in the sand.
Chinatown by a thousand eccentricities drew and held me; I
could never have enough of its ambiguous, interracial
atmosphere, as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at
its outlandish, necromantic-looking vegetables set forth to sell
in commonplace American shop-windows, its temple doors
open and the scent of the joss-stick streaming forth on the
American air, its kites of Oriental fashion hanging fouled in
Western telegraph-wires, its flights of paper prayers which the
trade-wind hunts and dissipates along Western gutters. I was a
frequent wanderer on North Beach, gazing at the straits, and
the huge Cape-Horners creeping out to sea, and imminent
Tamalpais. Thence, on my homeward way, I might visit that
strange and filthy shed, earth-paved and walled with the cages
of wild animals and birds, where at a ramshackle counter, amid
the yells of monkeys, and a poignant atmosphere of menagerie,
forty-rod whiskey was administered by a proprietor as dirty as
his beasts. Nor did I even neglect Nob Hill, which is itself a
kind of slum, being the habitat of the mere millionnaire. There
they dwell upon the hill-top, high raised above man's clamour,
and the trade-wind blows between their palaces about deserted
streets.

But San Francisco is not herself only. She is not only the most
interesting city in the Union, and the hugest smelting-pot of
races and the precious metals. She keeps, besides, the doors of
the Pacific, and is the port of entry to another world and an
earlier epoch in man's history. Nowhere else shall you observe
(in the ancient phrase) so many tall ships as here convene from
round the Horn, from China, from Sydney, and the Indies; but
scarce remarked amid that crowd of deep-sea giants, another
class of craft, the Island schooner, circulates: low in the water,
with lofty spars and dainty lines, rigged and fashioned like a
yacht, manned with brown-skinned, soft-spoken, sweet-eyed
native sailors, and equipped with their great double-ender boats
that tell a tale of boisterous sea-beaches. These steal out and in
again, unnoted by the world or even the newspaper press, save
for the line in the clearing column, "Schooner So-and-so for
Yap and South Sea Islands"--steal out with nondescript cargoes
of tinned salmon, gin, bolts of gaudy cotton stuff, women's
hats, and Waterbury watches, to return, after a year, piled as
high as to the eaves of the house with copra, or wallowing deep
with the shells of the tortoise or the pearl oyster. To me, in my
character of the Amateur Parisian, this island traffic, and even
the island world, were beyond the bounds of curiosity, and how
much more of knowledge. I stood there on the extreme shore of
the West and of to-day. Seventeen hundred years ago, and
seven thousand miles to the east, a legionary stood, perhaps,
upon the wall of Antoninus, and looked northward toward the
mountains of the Picts. For all the interval of time and space, I,
when I looked from the cliff-house on the broad Pacific, was
that man's heir and analogue: each of us standing on the verge
of the Roman Empire (or, as we now call it, Western
civilization), each of us gazing onward into zones unromanised.
But I was dull. I looked rather backward, keeping a kind eye
on Paris; and it required a series of converging incidents to
change my attitude of nonchalance for one of interest, and even
longing, which I little dreamed that I should live to gratify.

The first of these incidents brought me in acquaintance with a
certain San Francisco character, who had something of a name
beyond the limits of the city, and was known to many lovers of
good English. I had discovered a new slum, a place of
precarious, sandy cliffs, deep, sandy cuttings, solitary, ancient
houses, and the butt-ends of streets. It was already environed.
The ranks of the street-lamps threaded it unbroken. The city,
upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled with
traffic. To-day, I do not doubt the very landmarks are all swept
away; but it offered then, within narrow limits, a delightful
peace, and (in the morning, when I chiefly went there) a
seclusion almost rural. On a steep sand-hill, in this
neighbourhood, toppled, on the most insecure foundation, a
certain row of houses, each with a bit of garden, and all (I have
to presume) inhabited. Thither I used to mount by a crumbling
footpath, and in front of the last of the houses, would sit down
to sketch. The very first day I saw I was observed, out of the
ground-floor window by a youngish, good-looking fellow,
prematurely bald, and with an expression both lively and
engaging. The second, as we were still the only figures in the
landscape, it was no more than natural that we should nod.
The third, he came out fairly from his intrenchments, praised
my sketch, and with the impromptu cordiality of artists carried
me into his apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a
museum of strange objects,--paddles and battle-clubs and
baskets, rough-hewn stone images, ornaments of threaded
shell, cocoanut bowls, snowy cocoanut plumes--evidences and
examples of another earth, another climate, another race, and
another (if a ruder) culture. Nor did these objects lack a fitting
commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance.
Doubtless you have read his book. You know already how he
tramped and starved, and had so fine a profit of living, in his
days among the islands; and meeting him, as I did, one artist
with another, after months of offices and picnics, you can
imagine with what charm he would speak, and with what
pleasure I would hear. It was in such talks, which we were
both eager to repeat, that I first heard the names--first fell under
the spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first of them
that I returned (a happy man) with _Omoo_ under one arm, and
my friend's own adventures under the other.

The second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a
bearing on my future. I was standing, one day, near a boat-
landing under Telegraph Hill. A large barque, perhaps of
eighteen hundred tons, was coming more than usually close
about the point to reach her moorings; and I was observing her
with languid inattention, when I observed two men to stride
across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently
dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing
where I stood. In a surprisingly short time they came tearing
up the steps; and I could see that both were too well dressed to
be foremast hands--the first even with research, and both, and
specially the first, appeared under the empire of some strong
emotion.

"Nearest police office!" cried the leader.

"This way," said I, immediately falling in with their precipitate
pace. "What's wrong? What ship is that?"

"That's the Gleaner," he replied. "I am chief officer, this
gentleman's third; and we've to get in our depositions before the
crew. You see they might corral us with the captain; and that's
no kind of berth for me. I've sailed with some hard cases in my
time, and seen pins flying like sand on a squally day--but never
a match to our old man. It never let up from the Hook to the
Farallones; and the last man was dropped not sixteen hours
ago. Packet rats our men were, and as tough a crowd as ever
sand-bagged a man's head in; but they looked sick enough
when the captain started in with his fancy shooting."

"O, he's done up," observed the other. "He won't go to sea no
more."

"You make me tired," retorted his superior. "If he gets ashore
in one piece and isn't lynched in the next ten minutes, he'll do
yet. The owners have a longer memory than the public; they'll
stand by him; they don't find as smart a captain every day in the
year."

"O, he's a son of a gun of a fine captain; there ain't no doubt of
that," concurred the other, heartily. "Why, I don't suppose
there's been no wages paid aboard that Gleaner for three trips."

"No wages?" I exclaimed, for I was still a novice in maritime
affairs.

"Not to sailor-men before the mast," agreed the mate. "Men
cleared out; wasn't the soft job they maybe took it for. She isn'
the first ship that never paid wages."

I could not but observe that our pace was progressively
relaxing; and indeed I have often wondered since whether the
hurry of the start were not intended for the gallery alone.
Certain it is at least, that when we had reached the police
office, and the mates had made their deposition, and told their
horrid tale of five men murdered, some with savage passion,
some with cold brutality, between Sandy Hook and San
Francisco, the police were despatched in time to be too late.
Before we arrived, the ruffian had slipped out upon the dock,
had mingled with the crowd, and found a refuge in the house of
an acquaintance; and the ship was only tenanted by his late
victims. Well for him that he had been thus speedy. For when
word began to go abroad among the shore-side characters,
when the last victim was carried by to the hospital, when those
who had escaped (as by miracle) from that floating shambles,
began to circulate and show their wounds in the crowd, it was
strange to witness the agitation that seized and shook that
portion of the city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of
lodging-houses, long inured to brutality, and above all,
brutality to sailors, shook their fists at heaven: if hands could
have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner, his shrift would
have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was headed
up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay: in two ships
already he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet,
by last accounts, he now commands another on the Western
Ocean.

As I have said, I was never quite certain whether Mr. Nares
(the mate) did not intend that his superior should escape. It
would have been like his preference of loyalty to law; it would
have been like his prejudice, which was all in favour of the
after-guard. But it must remain a matter of conjecture only.
Well as I came to know him in the sequel, he was never
communicative on that point, nor indeed on any that concerned
the voyage of the Gleaner. Doubtless he had some reason for
his reticence. Even during our walk to the police office, he
debated several times with Johnson, the third officer, whether
he ought not to give up himself, as well as to denounce the
captain. He had decided in the negative, arguing that "it would
probably come to nothing; and even if there was a stink, he had
plenty good friends in San Francisco."  And to nothing it came;
though it must have very nearly come to something, for Mr.
Nares disappeared immediately from view and was scarce less
closely hidden than his captain.

Johnson, on the other hand, I often met. I could never learn
this man's country; and though he himself claimed to be
American, neither his English nor his education warranted the
claim. In all likelihood he was of Scandinavian birth and
blood, long pickled in the forecastles of English and American
ships. It is possible that, like so many of his race in similar
positions, he had already lost his native tongue. In mind, at
least, he was quite denationalised; thought only in English--to
call it so; and though by nature one of the mildest, kindest, and
most feebly playful of mankind, he had been so long
accustomed to the cruelty of sea discipline, that his stories (told
perhaps with a giggle) would sometimes turn me chill. In
appearance, he was tall, light of weight, bold and high-bred of
feature, dusky-haired, and with a face of a clean even brown:
the ornament of outdoor men. Seated in a chair, you might
have passed him off for a baronet or a military officer; but let
him rise, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack that came rolling toward you,
crab-like; let him but open his lips, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack
that piped and drawled his ungrammatical gibberish. He had
sailed (among other places) much among the islands; and after
a Cape Horn passage with its snow-squalls and its frozen
sheets, he announced his intention of "taking a turn among
them Kanakas."  I thought I should have lost him soon; but
according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had first to
dissipate his wages. "Guess I'll have to paint this town red,"
was his hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever
embarked upon a milder course of dissipation, most of his days
being passed in the little parlour behind Black Tom's public
house, with a select corps of old particular acquaintances, all
from the South Seas, and all patrons of a long yarn, a short
pipe, and glasses round.

Black Tom's, to the front, presented the appearance of a fourth-
rate saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, dirt, negrohead
tobacco, bad cigars, worse gin, and guitars and banjos in a
state of decline. The proprietor, a powerful coloured man, was
at once a publican, a ward politician, leader of some brigade of
"lambs" or "smashers," at the wind of whose clubs the party
bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, and (what hurt
nothing) an active and reliable crimp. His front quarters, then,
were noisy, disreputable, and not even safe. I have seen worse
frequented saloons where there were fewer scandals; for Tom
was often drunk himself; and there is no doubt the Lambs must
have been a useful body, or the place would have been closed.
I remember one day, not long before an election, seeing a blind
man, very well dressed, led up to the counter and remain a long
while in consultation with the negro. The pair looked so ill-
assorted, and the awe with which the drinkers fell back and left
them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so unusual in
such a place, that I turned to my next neighbour with a
question. He told me the blind man was a distinguished party
boss, called by some the King of San Francisco, but perhaps
better known by his picturesque Chinese nickname of the Blind
White Devil. "The Lambs must be wanted pretty bad, I guess,"
my informant added. I have here a sketch of the Blind White
Devil leaning on the counter; on the next page, and taken the
same hour, a jotting of Black Tom threatening a whole crowd
of customers with a long Smith and Wesson: to such heights
and depths we rose and fell in the front parts of the saloon.

Meanwhile, away in the back quarters, sat the small informal
South Sea club, talking of another world and surely of a
different century. Old schooner captains they were, old South
Sea traders, cooks, and mates: fine creatures, softened by
residence among a softer race: full men besides, though not by
reading, but by strange experience; and for days together I
could hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had
indeed some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, when
not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist. Even
through Johnson's inarticulate speech, his "O yes, there ain't no
harm in them Kanakas," or "O yes, that's a son of a gun of a
fine island, mountainious right down; I didn't never ought to
have left that island," there pierced a certain gusto of
appreciation: and some of the rest were master-talkers. From
their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated
landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some
image of the islands and the island life: precipitous shores,
spired mountain tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the
unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending peace of the
lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an imperial brightness; man
moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman lovelier than
Eve; the primal curse abrogated, the bed made ready for the
stranger, life set to perpetual music, and the guest welcomed,
the boat urged, and the long night beguiled, with poetry and
choral song. A man must have been an unsuccessful artist; he
must have starved on the streets of Paris; he must have been
yoked to a commercial force like Pinkerton, before he can
conceive the longings that at times assailed me. The draughty,
rowdy city of San Francisco, the bustling office where my
friend Jim paced like a caged lion daily between ten and four,
even (at times) the retrospect of Paris, faded in comparison.
Many a man less tempted would have thrown up all to realise
his visions; but I was by nature unadventurous and uninitiative:
to divert me from all former paths and send me cruising
through the isles of paradise, some force external to myself
must be exerted; Destiny herself must use the fitting wedge;
and little as I deemed it, that tool was already in her hand of
brass.

I sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy, silvered
saloon, a free lunch at my one elbow, at the other a
"conscientious nude" from the brush of local talent; when, with
the tramp of feet and a sudden buzz of voices, the swing-doors
were flung broadly open and the place carried as by storm. The
crowd which thus entered (mostly seafaring men, and all
prodigiously excited) contained a sort of kernel or general
centre of interest, which the rest merely surrounded and
advertised, as children in the Old World surround and escort
the Punch-and-Judy man; the word went round the bar like
wildfire that these were Captain Trent and the survivors of the
British brig Flying Scud, picked up by a British war-ship on
Midway Island, arrived that morning in San Francisco Bay,
and now fresh from making the necessary declarations.
Presently I had a good sight of them: four brown, seamanlike
fellows, standing by the counter, glass in hand, the centre of a
score of questioners. One was a Kanaka--the cook, I was
informed; one carried a cage with a canary, which occasionally
trilled into thin song; one had his left arm in a sling and looked
gentlemanlike, and somewhat sickly, as though the injury had
been severe and he was scarce recovered; and the captain
himself--a red-faced, blue-eyed, thickset man of five and forty
--wore a bandage on his right hand. The incident struck me; I
was struck particularly to see captain, cook, and foremost
hands walking the street and visiting saloons in company; and,
as when anything impressed me, I got my sketch-book out, and
began to steal a sketch of the four castaways. The crowd,
sympathising with my design, made a clear lane across the
room; and I was thus enabled, all unobserved myself, to
observe with a still-growing closeness the face and the
demeanour of Captain Trent.

Warmed by whiskey and encouraged by the eagerness of the
bystanders, that gentleman was now rehearsing the history of
his misfortune. It was but scraps that reached me: how he
"filled her on the starboard tack," and how "it came up sudden
out of the nor'nor'west," and "there she was, high and dry."
Sometimes he would appeal to one of the men--"That was how
it was, Jack?"--and the man would reply, "That was the way of
it, Captain Trent."  Lastly, he started a fresh tide of popular
sympathy by enunciating the sentiment, "Damn all these
Admirality Charts, and that's what I say!"  From the nodding of
heads and the murmurs of assent that followed, I could see that
Captain Trent had established himself in the public mind as a
gentleman and a thorough navigator: about which period, my
sketch of the four men and the canary-bird being finished, and
all (especially the canary-bird) excellent likenesses, I buckled
up my book, and slipped from the saloon.

Little did I suppose that I was leaving Act I, Scene I, of the
drama of my life; and yet the scene, or rather the captain's face,
lingered for some time in my memory. I was no prophet, as I
say; but I was something else: I was an observer; and one
thing I knew, I knew when a man was terrified. Captain Trent,
of the British brig Flying Scud, had been glib; he had been
ready; he had been loud; but in his blue eyes I could detect the
chill, and in the lines of his countenance spy the agitation of
perpetual terror. Was he trembling for his certificate? In my
judgment, it was some livelier kind of fear that thrilled in the
man's marrow as he turned to drink. Was it the result of recent
shock, and had he not yet recovered the disaster to his brig? I
remembered how a friend of mine had been in a railway
accident, and shook and started for a month; and although
Captain Trent of the Flying Scud had none of the appearance of
a nervous man, I told myself, with incomplete conviction, that
his must be a similar case.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WRECK OF THE "FLYING SCUD."

The next morning I found Pinkerton, who had risen before me,
seated at our usual table, and deep in the perusal of what I will
call the _Daily Occidental_. This was a paper (I know not if it
be so still) that stood out alone among its brethren in the West;
the others, down to their smallest item, were defaced with
capitals, head-lines, alliterations, swaggering misquotations,
and the shoddy picturesque and unpathetic pathos of the Harry
Millers: the _Occidental_ alone appeared to be written by a
dull, sane, Christian gentleman, singly desirous of
communicating knowledge. It had not only this merit, which
endeared it to me, but was admittedly the best informed on
business matters, which attracted Pinkerton.

"Loudon," said he, looking up from the journal, "you
sometimes think I have too many irons in the fire. My notion,
on the other hand, is, when you see a dollar lying, pick it up!
Well, here I've tumbled over a whole pile of 'em on a reef in the
middle of the Pacific."

"Why, Jim, you miserable fellow!" I exclaimed; "haven't we
Depew City, one of God's green centres for this State? haven't
we----"

"Just listen to this," interrupted Jim. "It's miserable copy; these
_Occidental_ reporter fellows have no fire; but the facts are
right enough, I guess."  And he began to read:--

"WRECK OF THE BRITISH BRIG, 'FLYING SCUD.'

"H.B.M.S. Tempest, which arrived yesterday at this port, brings
Captain Trent and four men of the British brig Flying Scud,
cast away February 12th on Midway Island, and most
providentially rescued the next day. The Flying Scud was of
200 tons burthen, owned in London, and has been out nearly
two years tramping. Captain Trent left Hong Kong December
8th, bound for this port in rice and a small mixed cargo of silks,
teas, and China notions, the whole valued at $10,000, fully
covered by insurance. The log shows plenty of fine weather,
with light airs, calms, and squalls. In lat. 28 N., long. 177 W.,
his water going rotten, and misled by Hoyt's _North Pacific
Directory_, which informed him there was a coaling station on
the island, Captain Trent put in to Midway Island. He found it
a literal sandbank, surrounded by a coral reef mostly
submerged. Birds were very plenty, there was good fish in the
lagoon, but no firewood; and the water, which could be
obtained by digging, brackish. He found good holding-ground
off the north end of the larger bank in fifteen fathoms water;
bottom sandy, with coral patches. Here he was detained seven
days by a calm, the crew suffering severely from the water,
which was gone quite bad; and it was only on the evening of
the 12th, that a little wind sprang up, coming puffy out of
N.N.E. Late as it was, Captain Trent immediately weighed
anchor and attempted to get out. While the vessel was beating
up to the passage, the wind took a sudden lull, and then veered
squally into N. and even N.N.W., driving the brig ashore on the
sand at about twenty minutes before six o'clock. John Wallen,
a native of Finland, and Charles Holdorsen, a native of
Sweden, were drowned alongside, in attempting to lower a
boat, neither being able to swim, the squall very dark, and the
noise of the breakers drowning everything. At the same time
John Brown, another of the crew, had his arm broken by the
falls. Captain Trent further informed the OCCIDENTAL
reporter, that the brig struck heavily at first bows on, he
supposes upon coral; that she then drove over the obstacle, and
now lies in sand, much down by the head and with a list to
starboard. In the first collision she must have sustained some
damage, as she was making water forward. The rice will
probably be all destroyed: but the more valuable part of the
cargo is fortunately in the afterhold. Captain Trent was
preparing his long-boat for sea, when the providential arrival of
the Tempest, pursuant to Admiralty orders to call at islands in
her course for castaways, saved the gallant captain from all
further danger. It is scarcely necessary to add that both the
officers and men of the unfortunate vessel speak in high terms
of the kindness they received on board the man-of-war. We
print a list of the survivors: Jacob Trent, master, of Hull,
England; Elias Goddedaal, mate, native of Christiansand,
Sweden; Ah Wing, cook, native of Sana, China; John Brown,
native of Glasgow, Scotland; John Hardy, native of London,
England. The Flying Scud is ten years old, and this morning
will be sold as she stands, by order of Lloyd's agent, at public
auction for the benefit of the underwriters. The auction will
take place in the Merchants' Exchange at ten o'clock.

"Farther Particulars.--Later in the afternoon the OCCIDENTAL
reporter found Lieutenant Sebright, first officer of H.B.M.S.
Tempest, at the Palace Hotel. The gallant officer was
somewhat pressed for time, but confirmed the account given by
Captain Trent in all particulars. He added that the Flying Scud
is in an excellent berth, and except in the highly improbable
event of a heavy N.W. gale, might last until next winter."

"You will never know anything of literature," said I, when Jim
had finished. "That is a good, honest, plain piece of work, and
tells the story clearly. I see only one mistake: the cook is not a
Chinaman; he is a Kanaka, and I think a Hawaiian."

"Why, how do you know that?" asked Jim.

"I saw the whole gang yesterday in a saloon," said I. "I even
heard the tale, or might have heard it, from Captain Trent
himself, who struck me as thirsty and nervous."

"Well, that's neither here nor there," cried Pinkerton. "The
point is, how about these dollars lying on a reef?"

"Will it pay?" I asked.

"Pay like a sugar trust!" exclaimed Pinkerton. "Don't you see
what this British officer says about the safety? Don't you see
the cargo's valued at ten thousand? Schooners are begging just
now; I can get my pick of them at two hundred and fifty a
month; and how does that foot up? It looks like three hundred
per cent. to me."

"You forget," I objected, "the captain himself declares the rice
is damaged."

"That's a point, I know," admitted Jim. "But the rice is the
sluggish article, anyway; it's little more account than ballast;
it's the tea and silks that I look to: all we have to find is the
proportion, and one look at the manifest will settle that. I've
rung up Lloyd's on purpose; the captain is to meet me there in
an hour, and then I'll be as posted on that brig as if I built her.
Besides, you've no idea what pickings there are about a wreck
--copper, lead, rigging, anchors, chains, even the crockery,
Loudon!"

"You seem to me to forget one trifle," said I. "Before you pick
that wreck, you've got to buy her, and how much will she cost?"

"One hundred dollars," replied Jim, with the promptitude of an
automaton.

"How on earth do you guess that?" I cried.

"I don't guess; I know it," answered the Commercial Force.
"My dear boy, I may be a galoot about literature, but you'll
always be an outsider in business. How do you suppose I
bought the James L. Moody for two hundred and fifty, her
boats alone worth four times the money? Because my name
stood first in the list. Well it stands there again; I have the
naming of the figure, and I name a small one because of the
distance: but it wouldn't matter what I named; that would be
the price."

"It sounds mysterious enough," said I. "Is this public auction
conducted in a subterranean vault? Could a plain citizen--
myself, for instance--come and see?"

"O, everything's open and above board!" he cried indignantly.
"Anybody can come, only nobody bids against us; and if he
did, he would get frozen out. It's been tried before now, and
once was enough. We hold the plant; we've got the connection;
we can afford to go higher than any outsider; there's two
million dollars in the ring; and we stick at nothing. Or suppose
anybody did buy over our head--I tell you, Loudon, he would
think this town gone crazy; he could no more get business
through on the city front than I can dance; schooners, divers,
men--all he wanted--the prices would fly right up and strike
him."

"But how did you get in?" I asked. "You were once an outsider
like your neighbours, I suppose?"

"I took hold of that thing, Loudon, and just studied it up," he
replied. "It took my fancy; it was so romantic, and then I saw
there was boodle in the thing; and I figured on the business till
no man alive could give me points. Nobody knew I had an eye
on wrecks till one fine morning I dropped in upon Douglas B.
Longhurst in his den, gave him all the facts and figures, and
put it to him straight: "Do you want me in this ring? or shall I
start another?"  He took half an hour, and when I came back,
"Pink," says he, "I've put your name on."  The first time I came
to the top, it was that Moody racket; now it's the Flying Scud."

Whereupon Pinkerton, looking at his watch, uttered an
exclamation, made a hasty appointment with myself for the
doors of the Merchants' Exchange, and fled to examine
manifests and interview the skipper. I finished my cigarette
with the deliberation of a man at the end of many picnics;
reflecting to myself that of all forms of the dollar hunt, this
wrecking had by far the most address to my imagination. Even
as I went down town, in the brisk bustle and chill of the
familiar San Francisco thoroughfares, I was haunted by a
vision of the wreck, baking so far away in the strong sun, under
a cloud of sea-birds; and even then, and for no better reason,
my heart inclined towards the adventure. If not myself,
something that was mine, some one at least in my employment,
should voyage to that ocean-bounded pin-point and descend to
that deserted cabin.

Pinkerton met me at the appointed moment, pinched of lip and
more than usually erect of bearing, like one conscious of great
resolves.

"Well?" I asked.

"Well," said he, "it might be better, and it might be worse.
This Captain Trent is a remarkably honest fellow--one out of a
thousand. As soon as he knew I was in the market, he owned
up about the rice in so many words. By his calculation, if
there's thirty mats of it saved, it's an outside figure. However,
the manifest was cheerier. There's about five thousand dollars
of the whole value in silks and teas and nut-oils and that, all in
the lazarette, and as safe as if it was in Kearney Street. The
brig was new coppered a year ago. There's upwards of a
hundred and fifty fathom away-up chain. It's not a bonanza,
but there's boodle in it; and we'll try it on."

It was by that time hard on ten o'clock, and we turned at once
into the place of sale. The Flying Scud, although so important
to ourselves, appeared to attract a very humble share of popular
attention. The auctioneer was surrounded by perhaps a score of
lookers-on, big fellows, for the most part, of the true Western
build, long in the leg, broad in the shoulder, and adorned (to a
plain man's taste) with needless finery. A jaunty, ostentatious
comradeship prevailed. Bets were flying, and nicknames.
"The boys" (as they would have called themselves) were very
boyish; and it was plain they were here in mirth, and not on
business. Behind, and certainly in strong contrast to these
gentlemen, I could detect the figure of my friend Captain Trent,
come (as I could very well imagine that a captain would) to
hear the last of his old vessel. Since yesterday, he had rigged
himself anew in ready-made black clothes, not very aptly fitted;
the upper left-hand pocket showing a corner of silk
handkerchief, the lower, on the other side, bulging with papers.
Pinkerton had just given this man a high character. Certainly
he seemed to have been very frank, and I looked at him again to
trace (if possible) that virtue in his face. It was red and broad
and flustered and (I thought) false. The whole man looked sick
with some unknown anxiety; and as he stood there,
unconscious of my observation, he tore at his nails, scowled on
the floor, or glanced suddenly, sharply, and fearfully at
passers-by. I was still gazing at the man in a kind of
fascination, when the sale began.

Some preliminaries were rattled through, to the irreverent,
uninterrupted gambolling of the boys; and then, amid a trifle
more attention, the auctioneer sounded for some two or three
minutes the pipe of the charmer. Fine brig--new copper--
valuable fittings--three fine boats--remarkably choice cargo--
what the auctioneer would call a perfectly safe investment; nay,
gentlemen, he would go further, he would put a figure on it: he
had no hesitation (had that bold auctioneer) in putting it in
figures; and in his view, what with this and that, and one thing
and another, the purchaser might expect to clear a sum equal to
the entire estimated value of the cargo; or, gentlemen, in other
words, a sum of ten thousand dollars. At this modest
computation the roof immediately above the speaker's head (I
suppose, through the intervention of a spectator of ventriloquial
tastes) uttered a clear "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"--whereat all
laughed, the auctioneer himself obligingly joining.

"Now, gentlemen, what shall we say?" resumed that
gentleman, plainly ogling Pinkerton,--"what shall we say for
this remarkable opportunity?"

"One hundred dollars," said Pinkerton.

"One hundred dollars from Mr. Pinkerton," went the
auctioneer, "one hundred dollars. No other gentleman inclined
to make any advance? One hundred dollars, only one hundred
dollars----"

The auctioneer was droning on to some such tune as this, and I,
on my part, was watching with something between sympathy
and amazement the undisguised emotion of Captain Trent,
when we were all startled by the interjection of a bid.

"And fifty," said a sharp voice.

Pinkerton, the auctioneer, and the boys, who were all equally in
the open secret of the ring, were now all equally and
simultaneously taken aback.

"I beg your pardon," said the auctioneer. "Anybody bid?"

"And fifty," reiterated the voice, which I was now able to trace
to its origin, on the lips of a small, unseemly rag of human-
kind. The speaker's skin was gray and blotched; he spoke in a
kind of broken song, with much variety of key; his gestures
seemed (as in the disease called Saint Vitus's dance) to be
imperfectly under control; he was badly dressed; he carried
himself with an air of shrinking assumption, as though he were
proud to be where he was and to do what he was doing, and yet
half expected to be called in question and kicked out. I think I
never saw a man more of a piece; and the type was new to me;
I had never before set eyes upon his parallel, and I thought
instinctively of Balzac and the lower regions of the _Comedie
Humaine_.

Pinkerton stared a moment on the intruder with no friendly eye,
tore a leaf from his note-book, and scribbled a line in pencil,
turned, beckoned a messenger boy, and whispered, "To
Longhurst."  Next moment the boy had sped upon his errand,
and Pinkerton was again facing the auctioneer.

"Two hundred dollars," said Jim.

"And fifty," said the enemy.

"This looks lively," whispered I to Pinkerton.

"Yes; the little beast means cold drawn biz," returned my
friend. "Well, he'll have to have a lesson. Wait till I see
Longhurst. Three hundred," he added aloud.

"And fifty," came the echo.

It was about this moment when my eye fell again on Captain
Trent. A deeper shade had mounted to his crimson face: the
new coat was unbuttoned and all flying open; the new silk
handkerchief in busy requisition; and the man's eye, of a clear
sailor blue, shone glassy with excitement. He was anxious
still, but now (if I could read a face) there was hope in his
anxiety.

"Jim," I whispered, "look at Trent. Bet you what you please he
was expecting this."

"Yes," was the reply, "there's some blame' thing going on here."
And he renewed his bid.

The figure had run up into the neighbourhood of a thousand
when I was aware of a sensation in the faces opposite, and
looking over my shoulder, saw a very large, bland, handsome
man come strolling forth and make a little signal to the
auctioneer.

"One word, Mr. Borden," said he; and then to Jim, "Well, Pink,
where are we up to now?"

Pinkerton gave him the figure. "I ran up to that on my own
responsibility, Mr. Longhurst," he added, with a flush. "I
thought it the square thing."

"And so it was," said Mr. Longhurst, patting him kindly on the
shoulder, like a gratified uncle. "Well, you can drop out now;
we take hold ourselves. You can run it up to five thousand;
and if he likes to go beyond that, he's welcome to the bargain."

"By the by, who is he?" asked Pinkerton. "He looks away
down."

"I've sent Billy to find out."  And at the very moment Mr.
Longhurst received from the hands of one of the expensive
young gentlemen a folded paper. It was passed round from one
to another till it came to me, and I read: "Harry D. Bellairs,
Attorney-at-Law; defended Clara Varden; twice nearly
disbarred."

"Well, that gets me!" observed Mr. Longhurst. "Who can have
put up a shyster [1] like that? Nobody with money, that's a
sure thing. Suppose you tried a big bluff? I think I would,
Pink. Well, ta-ta! Your partner, Mr. Dodd? Happy to have the
pleasure of your acquaintance, sir."  And the great man
withdrew.

[1] A low lawyer.

"Well, what do you think of Douglas B.?" whispered Pinkerton,
looking reverently after him as he departed. "Six foot of perfect
gentleman and culture to his boots."

During this interview the auction had stood transparently
arrested, the auctioneer, the spectators, and even Bellairs, all
well aware that Mr. Longhurst was the principal, and Jim but a
speaking-trumpet. But now that the Olympian Jupiter was
gone, Mr. Borden thought proper to affect severity.

"Come, come, Mr. Pinkerton. Any advance?" he snapped.

And Pinkerton, resolved on the big bluff, replied, "Two
thousand dollars."

Bellairs preserved his composure. "And fifty," said he. But
there was a stir among the onlookers, and what was of more
importance, Captain Trent had turned pale and visibly gulped.

"Pitch it in again, Jim," said I. "Trent is weakening."

"Three thousand," said Jim.

"And fifty," said Bellairs.

And then the bidding returned to its original movement by
hundreds and fifties; but I had been able in the meanwhile to
draw two conclusions. In the first place, Bellairs had made his
last advance with a smile of gratified vanity; and I could see the
creature was glorying in the kudos of an unusual position and
secure of ultimate success. In the second, Trent had once more
changed colour at the thousand leap, and his relief, when he
heard the answering fifty was manifest and unaffected. Here
then was a problem: both were presumably in the same
interest, yet the one was not in the confidence of the other. Nor
was this all. A few bids later it chanced that my eye
encountered that of Captain Trent, and his, which glittered with
excitement, was instantly, and I thought guiltily, withdrawn.
He wished, then, to conceal his interest? As Jim had said,
there was some blamed thing going on. And for certain, here
were these two men, so strangely united, so strangely divided,
both sharp-set to keep the wreck from us, and that at an
exorbitant figure.

Was the wreck worth more than we supposed? A sudden heat
was kindled in my brain; the bids were nearing Longhurst's
limit of five thousand; another minute, and all would be too
late. Tearing a leaf from my sketch-book, and inspired (I
suppose) by vanity in my own powers of inference and
observation, I took the one mad decision of my life. "If you
care to go ahead," I wrote, "I'm in for all I'm worth."

Jim read and looked round at me like one bewildered; then his
eyes lightened, and turning again to the auctioneer, he bid,
"Five thousand one hundred dollars."

"And fifty," said monotonous Bellairs.

Presently Pinkerton scribbled, "What can it be?" and I
answered, still on paper: "I can't imagine; but there's
something. Watch Bellairs; he'll go up to the ten thousand, see
if he don't."

And he did, and we followed. Long before this, word had gone
abroad that there was battle royal: we were surrounded by a
crowd that looked on wondering; and when Pinkerton had
offered ten thousand dollars (the outside value of the cargo,
even were it safe in San Francisco Bay) and Bellairs, smirking
from ear to ear to be the centre of so much attention, had jerked
out his answering, "And fifty," wonder deepened to excitement.

"Ten thousand one hundred," said Jim; and even as he spoke he
made a sudden gesture with his hand, his face changed, and I
could see that he had guessed, or thought that he had guessed,
the mystery. As he scrawled another memorandum in his note-
book, his hand shook like a telegraph-operator's.

"Chinese ship," ran the legend; and then, in big, tremulous
half-text, and with a flourish that overran the margin, "Opium!"

To be sure! thought I: this must be the secret. I knew that
scarce a ship came in from any Chinese port, but she carried
somewhere, behind a bulkhead, or in some cunning hollow of
the beams, a nest of the valuable poison. Doubtless there was
some such treasure on the Flying Scud. How much was it
worth? We knew not, we were gambling in the dark; but Trent
knew, and Bellairs; and we could only watch and judge.

By this time neither Pinkerton nor I were of sound mind.
Pinkerton was beside himself, his eyes like lamps. I shook in
every member. To any stranger entering (say) in the course of
the fifteenth thousand, we should probably have cut a poorer
figure than Bellairs himself. But we did not pause; and the
crowd watched us, now in silence, now with a buzz of
whispers.

Seventeen thousand had been reached, when Douglas B.
Longhurst, forcing his way into the opposite row of faces,
conspicuously and repeatedly shook his head at Jim. Jim's
answer was a note of two words: "My racket!" which, when the
great man had perused, he shook his finger warningly and
departed, I thought, with a sorrowful countenance.

Although Mr. Longhurst knew nothing of Bellairs, the shady
lawyer knew all about the Wrecker Boss. He had seen him
enter the ring with manifest expectation; he saw him depart,
and the bids continue, with manifest surprise and
disappointment. "Hullo," he plainly thought, "this is not the
ring I'm fighting, then?" And he determined to put on a spurt.

"Eighteen thousand," said he.

"And fifty," said Jim, taking a leaf out of his adversary's book.

"Twenty thousand," from Bellairs.

"And fifty," from Jim, with a little nervous titter.

And with one consent they returned to the old pace, only now it
was Bellairs who took the hundreds, and Jim who did the fifty
business. But by this time our idea had gone abroad. I could
hear the word "opium" pass from mouth to mouth; and by the
looks directed at us, I could see we were supposed to have
some private information. And here an incident occurred
highly typical of San Francisco. Close at my back there had
stood for some time a stout, middle-aged gentleman, with
pleasant eyes, hair pleasantly grizzled, and a ruddy, pleasing
face. All of a sudden he appeared as a third competitor, skied
the Flying Scud with four fat bids of a thousand dollars each,
and then as suddenly fled the field, remaining thenceforth (as
before) a silent, interested spectator.

Ever since Mr. Longhurst's useless intervention, Bellairs had
seemed uneasy; and at this new attack, he began (in his turn) to
scribble a note between the bids. I imagined naturally enough
that it would go to Captain Trent; but when it was done, and
the writer turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my
unspeakable amazement, he did not seem to remark the
captain's presence.

"Messenger boy, messenger boy!" I heard him say. "Somebody
call me a messenger boy."

At last somebody did, but it was not the captain.

"He's sending for instructions," I wrote to Pinkerton.

"For money," he wrote back. "Shall I strike out? I think this is
the time."

I nodded.

"Thirty thousand," said Pinkerton, making a leap of close upon
three thousand dollars.

I could see doubt in Bellairs's eye; then, sudden resolution.
"Thirty-five thousand," said he.

"Forty thousand," said Pinkerton.

There was a long pause, during which Bellairs's countenance
was as a book; and then, not much too soon for the impending
hammer, "Forty thousand and five dollars," said he.

Pinkerton and I exchanged eloquent glances. We were of one
mind. Bellairs had tried a bluff; now he perceived his mistake,
and was bidding against time; he was trying to spin out the sale
until the messenger boy returned.

"Forty-five thousand dollars," said Pinkerton: his voice was like
a ghost's and tottered with emotion.

"Forty-five thousand and five dollars," said Bellairs.

"Fifty thousand," said Pinkerton.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinkerton. Did I hear you make an
advance, sir?" asked the auctioneer.

"I--I have a difficulty in speaking," gasped Jim. "It's fifty
thousand, Mr. Borden."

Bellairs was on his feet in a moment. "Auctioneer," he said, "I
have to beg the favour of three moments at the telephone. In
this matter, I am acting on behalf of a certain party to whom I
have just written----"

"I have nothing to do with any of this," said the auctioneer,
brutally. "I am here to sell this wreck. Do you make any
advance on fifty thousand?"

"I have the honour to explain to you, sir," returned Bellairs,
with a miserable assumption of dignity. "Fifty thousand was
the figure named by my principal; but if you will give me the
small favour of two moments at the telephone--"

"O, nonsense!" said the auctioneer. "If you make no advance,
I'll knock it down to Mr. Pinkerton."

"I warn you," cried the attorney, with sudden shrillness. "Have
a care what you're about. You are here to sell for the
underwriters, let me tell you--not to act for Mr. Douglas
Longhurst. This sale has been already disgracefully interrupted
to allow that person to hold a consultation with his minions. It
has been much commented on."

"There was no complaint at the time," said the auctioneer,
manifestly discountenanced. "You should have complained at
the time."

"I am not here to conduct this sale," replied Bellairs; "I am not
paid for that."

"Well, I am, you see," retorted the auctioneer, his impudence
quite restored; and he resumed his sing-song. "Any advance on
fifty thousand dollars? No advance on fifty thousand? No
advance, gentlemen? Going at fifty thousand, the wreck of the
brig Flying Scud--going--going--gone!"

"My God, Jim, can we pay the money?" I cried, as the stroke of
the hammer seemed to recall me from a dream.

"It's got to be raised," said he, white as a sheet. "It'll be a hell
of a strain, Loudon. The credit's good for it, I think; but I shall
have to get around. Write me a cheque for your stuff. Meet me
at the Occidental in an hour."

I wrote my cheque at a desk, and I declare I could never have
recognised my signature. Jim was gone in a moment; Trent
had vanished even earlier; only Bellairs remained exchanging
insults with the auctioneer; and, behold! as I pushed my way
out of the exchange, who should run full tilt into my arms, but
the messenger boy?

It was by so near a margin that we became the owners of the
Flying Scud.

CHAPTER X.

IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH.

At the door of the exchange I found myself along-side of the
short, middle-aged gentleman who had made an appearance, so
vigorous and so brief, in the great battle.

"Congratulate you, Mr. Dodd," he said. "You and your friend
stuck to your guns nobly."

"No thanks to you, sir," I replied, "running us up a thousand at
a time, and tempting all the speculators in San Francisco to
come and have a try."

"O, that was temporary insanity," said he; "and I thank the
higher powers I am still a free man. Walking this way, Mr.
Dodd? I'll walk along with you. It's pleasant for an old fogy
like myself to see the young bloods in the ring; I've done some
pretty wild gambles in my time in this very city, when it was a
smaller place and I was a younger man. Yes, I know you, Mr.
Dodd. By sight, I may say I know you extremely well, you and
your followers, the fellows in the kilts, eh? Pardon me. But I
have the misfortune to own a little box on the Saucelito shore.
I'll be glad to see you there any Sunday--without the fellows in
kilts, you know; and I can give you a bottle of wine, and show
you the best collection of Arctic voyages in the States. Morgan
is my name--Judge Morgan--a Welshman and a forty-niner."

"O, if you're a pioneer," cried I, "come to me and I'll provide
you with an axe."

"You'll want your axes for yourself, I fancy," he returned, with
one of his quick looks. "Unless you have private knowledge,
there will be a good deal of rather violent wrecking to do before
you find that--opium, do you call it?"

"Well, it's either opium, or we are stark, staring mad," I replied.
"But I assure you we have no private information. We went in
(as I suppose you did yourself) on observation."

"An observer, sir?" inquired the judge.

"I may say it is my trade--or, rather, was," said I.

"Well now, and what did you think of Bellairs?" he asked.

"Very little indeed," said I.

"I may tell you," continued the judge, "that to me, the
employment of a fellow like that appears inexplicable. I knew
him; he knows me, too; he has often heard from me in court;
and I assure you the man is utterly blown upon; it is not safe to
trust him with a dollar; and here we find him dealing up to fifty
thousand. I can't think who can have so trusted him, but I am
very sure it was a stranger in San Francisco."

"Some one for the owners, I suppose," said I.

"Surely not!" exclaimed the judge. "Owners in London can
have nothing to say to opium smuggled between Hong Kong
and San Francisco. I should rather fancy they would be the last
to hear of it--until the ship was seized. No; I was thinking of
the captain. But where would he get the money? above all,
after having laid out so much to buy the stuff in China?
Unless, indeed, he were acting for some one in 'Frisco; and in
that case--here we go round again in the vicious circle--Bellairs
would not have been employed."

"I think I can assure you it was not the captain," said I; "for he
and Bellairs are not acquainted."

"Wasn't that the captain with the red face and coloured
handkerchief? He seemed to me to follow Bellairs's game with
the most thrilling interest," objected Mr. Morgan.

"Perfectly true," said I; "Trent is deeply interested; he very
likely knew Bellairs, and he certainly knew what he was there
for; but I can put my hand in the fire that Bellairs didn't know
Trent."

"Another singularity," observed the judge. "Well, we have had
a capital forenoon. But you take an old lawyer's advice, and get
to Midway Island as fast as you can. There's a pot of money on
the table, and Bellairs and Co. are not the men to stick at
trifles."

With this parting counsel Judge Morgan shook hands and
made off along Montgomery Street, while I entered the
Occidental Hotel, on the steps of which we had finished our
conversation. I was well known to the clerks, and as soon as it
was understood that I was there to wait for Pinkerton and
lunch, I was invited to a seat inside the counter. Here, then, in
a retired corner, I was beginning to come a little to myself after
these so violent experiences, when who should come hurrying
in, and (after a moment with a clerk) fly to one of the telephone
boxes but Mr. Henry D. Bellairs in person? Call it what you
will, but the impulse was irresistible, and I rose and took a
place immediately at the man's back. It may be some excuse
that I had often practised this very innocent form of
eavesdropping upon strangers, and for fun. Indeed, I scarce
know anything that gives a lower view of man's intelligence
than to overhear (as you thus do) one side of a communication.

"Central," said the attorney, "2241 and 584 B" (or some such
numbers)--"Who's that?--All right--Mr. Bellairs--Occidental;
the wires are fouled in the other place--Yes, about three
minutes--Yes--Yes--Your figure, I am sorry to say--No--I had
no authority--Neither more nor less--I have every reason to
suppose so--O, Pinkerton, Montana Block--Yes--Yes--Very
good, sir--As you will, sir--Disconnect 584 B."

Bellairs turned to leave; at sight of me behind him, up flew his
hands, and he winced and cringed, as though in fear of bodily
attack. "O, it's you!" he cried; and then, somewhat recovered,
"Mr. Pinkerton's partner, I believe? I am pleased to see you,
sir--to congratulate you on your late success."  And with that he
was gone, obsequiously bowing as he passed.

And now a madcap humour came upon me. It was plain
Bellairs had been communicating with his principal; I knew the
number, if not the name; should I ring up at once, it was more
than likely he would return in person to the telephone; why
should not I dash (vocally) into the presence of this mysterious
person, and have some fun for my money. I pressed the bell.

"Central," said I, "connect again 2241 and 584 B."

A phantom central repeated the numbers; there was a pause,
and then "Two two four one," came in a tiny voice into my ear--
a voice with the English sing-song--the voice plainly of a
gentleman. "Is that you again, Mr. Bellairs?" it trilled. "I tell
you it's no use. Is that you, Mr. Bellairs? Who is that?"

"I only want to put a single question," said I, civilly. "Why do
you want to buy the Flying Scud?"

No answer came. The telephone vibrated and hummed in
miniature with all the numerous talk of a great city; but the
voice of 2241 was silent. Once and twice I put my question;
but the tiny, sing-song English voice, I heard no more. The
man, then, had fled? fled from an impertinent question? It
scarce seemed natural to me; unless on the principle that the
wicked fleeth when no man pursueth. I took the telephone list
and turned the number up: "2241, Mrs. Keane, res. 942
Mission Street."  And that, short of driving to the house and
renewing my impertinence in person, was all that I could do.

Yet, as I resumed my seat in the corner of the office, I was
conscious of a new element of the uncertain, the underhand,
perhaps even the dangerous, in our adventure; and there was
now a new picture in my mental gallery, to hang beside that of
the wreck under its canopy of sea-birds and of Captain Trent
mopping his red brow--the picture of a man with a telephone
dice-box to his ear, and at the small voice of a single question,
struck suddenly as white as ashes.

From these considerations I was awakened by the striking of
the clock. An hour and nearly twenty minutes had elapsed
since Pinkerton departed for the money: he was twenty
minutes behind time; and to me who knew so well his
gluttonous despatch of business and had so frequently admired
his iron punctuality, the fact spoke volumes. The twenty
minutes slowly stretched into an hour; the hour had nearly
extended to a second; and I still sat in my corner of the office,
or paced the marble pavement of the hall, a prey to the most
wretched anxiety and penitence. The hour for lunch was nearly
over before I remembered that I had not eaten. Heaven knows I
had no appetite; but there might still be much to do--it was
needful I should keep myself in proper trim, if it were only to
digest the now too probable bad news; and leaving word at the
office for Pinkerton, I sat down to table and called for soup,
oysters, and a pint of champagne.

I was not long set, before my friend returned. He looked pale
and rather old, refused to hear of food, and called for tea.

"I suppose all's up?" said I, with an incredible sinking.

"No," he replied; "I've pulled it through, Loudon; just pulled it
through. I couldn't have raised another cent in all 'Frisco.
People don't like it; Longhurst even went back on me; said he
wasn't a three-card-monte man."

"Well, what's the odds?" said I. "That's all we wanted, isn't it?"

"Loudon, I tell you I've had to pay blood for that money," cried
my friend, with almost savage energy and gloom. "It's all on
ninety days, too; I couldn't get another day--not another day. If
we go ahead with this affair, Loudon, you'll have to go yourself
and make the fur fly. I'll stay of course--I've got to stay and
face the trouble in this city; though, I tell you, I just long to go.
I would show these fat brutes of sailors what work was; I
would be all through that wreck and out at the other end, before
they had boosted themselves upon the deck! But you'll do your
level best, Loudon; I depend on you for that. You must be all
fire and grit and dash from the word 'go.'   That schooner and
the boodle on board of her are bound to be here before three
months, or it's B. U. S. T.--bust."

"I'll swear I'll do my best, Jim; I'll work double tides," said I.
"It is my fault that you are in this thing, and I'll get you out
again or kill myself. But what is that you say? 'If we go
ahead?'  Have we any choice, then?"

"I'm coming to that," said Jim. "It isn't that I doubt the
investment. Don't blame yourself for that; you showed a fine,
sound business instinct: I always knew it was in you, but then
it ripped right out. I guess that little beast of an attorney knew
what he was doing; and he wanted nothing better than to go
beyond. No, there's profit in the deal; it's not that; it's these
ninety-day bills, and the strain I've given the credit, for I've
been up and down, borrowing, and begging and bribing to
borrow. I don't believe there's another man but me in 'Frisco,"
he cried, with a sudden fervor of self admiration, "who could
have raised that last ten thousand!--Then there's another thing.
I had hoped you might have peddled that opium through the
islands, which is safer and more profitable. But with this
three-month limit, you must make tracks for Honolulu straight,
and communicate by steamer. I'll try to put up something for
you there; I'll have a man spoken to who's posted on that line of
biz. Keep a bright lookout for him as soon's you make the
islands; for it's on the cards he might pick you up at sea in a
whaleboat or a steam-launch, and bring the dollars right on
board."

It shows how much I had suffered morally during my sojourn
in San Francisco, that even now when our fortunes trembled in
the balance, I should have consented to become a smuggler and
(of all things) a smuggler of opium. Yet I did, and that in
silence; without a protest, not without a twinge.

"And suppose," said I, "suppose the opium is so securely
hidden that I can't get hands on it?"

"Then you will stay there till that brig is kindling-wood, and
stay and split that kindling-wood with your penknife," cried
Pinkerton. "The stuff is there; we know that; and it must be
found. But all this is only the one string to our bow--though I
tell you I've gone into it head-first, as if it was our bottom
dollar. Why, the first thing I did before I'd raised a cent, and
with this other notion in my head already--the first thing I did
was to secure the schooner. The Nora Creina, she is, sixty-four
tons, quite big enough for our purpose since the rice is spoiled,
and the fastest thing of her tonnage out of San Francisco. For a
bonus of two hundred, and a monthly charter of three, I have
her for my own time; wages and provisions, say four hundred
more: a drop in the bucket. They began firing the cargo out of
her (she was part loaded) near two hours ago; and about the
same time John Smith got the order for the stores. That's what
I call business."

"No doubt of that," said I. "But the other notion?"

"Well, here it is," said Jim. "You agree with me that Bellairs
was ready to go higher?"

"I saw where he was coming. "Yes--and why shouldn't he?"
said I. "Is that the line?"

"That's the line, Loudon Dodd," assented Jim. "If Bellairs and
his principal have any desire to go me better, I'm their man."

A sudden thought, a sudden fear, shot into my mind. What if I
had been right? What if my childish pleasantry had frightened
the principal away, and thus destroyed our chance? Shame
closed my mouth; I began instinctively a long course of
reticence; and it was without a word of my meeting with
Bellairs, or my discovery of the address in Mission Street, that I
continued the discussion.

"Doubtless fifty thousand was originally mentioned as a round
sum," said I, "or at least, so Bellairs supposed. But at the same
time it may be an outside sum; and to cover the expenses we
have already incurred for the money and the schooner--I am far
from blaming you; I see how needful it was to be ready for
either event--but to cover them we shall want a rather large
advance."

"Bellairs will go to sixty thousand; it's my belief, if he were
properly handled, he would take the hundred," replied
Pinkerton. "Look back on the way the sale ran at the end."

"That is my own impression as regards Bellairs, I admitted.
"The point I am trying to make is that Bellairs himself may be
mistaken; that what he supposed to be a round sum was really
an outside figure."

"Well, Loudon, if that is so," said Jim, with extraordinary
gravity of face and voice, "if that is so, let him take the Flying
Scud at fifty thousand, and joy go with her! I prefer the loss."

"Is that so, Jim? Are we dipped as bad as that?" I cried.

"We've put our hand farther out than we can pull it in again,
Loudon," he replied. "Why, man, that fifty thousand dollars,
before we get clear again, will cost us nearer seventy. Yes, it
figures up overhead to more than ten per cent a month; and I
could do no better, and there isn't the man breathing could have
done as well. It was a miracle, Loudon. I couldn't but admire
myself. O, if we had just the four months! And you know,
Loudon, it may still be done. With your energy and charm, if
the worst comes to the worst, you can run that schooner as you
ran one of your picnics; and we may have luck. And, O, man!
if we do pull it through, what a dashing operation it will be!
What an advertisement! what a thing to talk of, and remember
all our lives! However," he broke off suddenly, "we must try
the safe thing first. Here's for the shyster!"

There was another struggle in my mind, whether I should even
now admit my knowledge of the Mission Street address. But I
had let the favourable moment slip. I had now, which made it
the more awkward, not merely the original discovery, but my
late suppression to confess. I could not help reasoning,
besides, that the more natural course was to approach the
principal by the road of his agent's office; and there weighed
upon my spirits a conviction that we were already too late, and
that the man was gone two hours ago. Once more, then, I held
my peace; and after an exchange of words at the telephone to
assure ourselves he was at home, we set out for the attorney's
office.

The endless streets of any American city pass, from one end to
another, through strange degrees and vicissitudes of splendour
and distress, running under the same name between
monumental warehouses, the dens and taverns of thieves, and
the sward and shrubbery of villas. In San Francisco, the sharp
inequalities of the ground, and the sea bordering on so many
sides, greatly exaggerate these contrasts. The street for which
we were now bound took its rise among blowing sands,
somewhere in view of the Lone Mountain Cemetery; ran for a
term across that rather windy Olympus of Nob Hill, or perhaps
just skirted its frontier; passed almost immediately after
through a stage of little houses, rather impudently painted, and
offering to the eye of the observer this diagnostic peculiarity,
that the huge brass plates upon the small and highly coloured
doors bore only the first names of ladies--Norah or Lily or
Florence; traversed China Town, where it was doubtless
undermined with opium cellars, and its blocks pierced, after the
similitude of rabbit-warrens, with a hundred doors and
passages and galleries; enjoyed a glimpse of high publicity at
the corner of Kearney; and proceeded, among dives and
warehouses, towards the City Front and the region of the water-
rats. In this last stage of its career, where it was both grimy
and solitary, and alternately quiet and roaring to the wheels of
drays, we found a certain house of some pretension to neatness,
and furnished with a rustic outside stair. On the pillar of the
stair a black plate bore in gilded lettering this device: "Harry D.
Bellairs, Attorney-at-law. Consultations, 9 to 6." On ascending
the stairs, a door was found to stand open on the balcony, with
this further inscription, "Mr. Bellairs In."

"I wonder what we do next," said I.

"Guess we sail right in," returned Jim, and suited the action to
the word.

The room in which we found ourselves was clean, but
extremely bare. A rather old-fashioned secretaire stood by the
wall, with a chair drawn to the desk; in one corner was a shelf
with half-a-dozen law books; and I can remember literally not
another stick of furniture. One inference imposed itself: Mr.
Bellairs was in the habit of sitting down himself and suffering
his clients to stand. At the far end, and veiled by a curtain of
red baize, a second door communicated with the interior of the
house. Hence, after some coughing and stamping, we elicited
the shyster, who came timorously forth, for all the world like a
man in fear of bodily assault, and then, recognising his guests,
suffered from what I can only call a nervous paroxysm of
courtesy.

"Mr. Pinkerton and partner!" said he. "I will go and fetch you
seats."

"Not the least," said Jim. "No time. Much rather stand. This
is business, Mr. Bellairs. This morning, as you know, I bought
the wreck, Flying Scud."

The lawyer nodded.

"And bought her," pursued my friend, "at a figure out of all
proportion to the cargo and the circumstances, as they
appeared?"

"And now you think better of it, and would like to be off with
your bargain? I have been figuring upon this," returned the
lawyer. "My client, I will not hide from you, was displeased
with me for putting her so high. I think we were both too
heated, Mr. Pinkerton: rivalry--the spirit of competition. But I
will be quite frank--I know when I am dealing with gentlemen
--and I am almost certain, if you leave the matter in my hands,
my client would relieve you of the bargain, so as you would
lose"--he consulted our faces with gimlet-eyed calculation--
"nothing," he added shrilly.

And here Pinkerton amazed me.

"That's a little too thin," said he. "I have the wreck. I know
there's boodle in her, and I mean to keep her. What I want is
some points which may save me needless expense, and which
I'm prepared to pay for, money down. The thing for you to
consider is just this: am I to deal with you or direct with your
principal? If you are prepared to give me the facts right off,
why, name your figure. Only one thing!" added Jim, holding a
finger up, "when I say 'money down,' I mean bills payable
when the ship returns, and if the information proves reliable. I
don't buy pigs in pokes."

I had seen the lawyer's face light up for a moment, and then, at
the sound of Jim's proviso, miserably fade. "I guess you know
more about this wreck than I do, Mr. Pinkerton," said he. "I
only know that I was told to buy the thing, and tried, and
couldn't."

"What I like about you, Mr. Bellairs, is that you waste no
time," said Jim. "Now then, your client's name and address."

"On consideration," replied the lawyer, with indescribable
furtivity, "I cannot see that I am entitled to communicate my
client's name. I will sound him for you with pleasure, if you
care to instruct me; but I cannot see that I can give you his
address."

"Very well," said Jim, and put his hat on. "Rather a strong
step, isn't it?" (Between every sentence was a clear pause.) "Not
think better of it? Well, come--call it a dollar?"

"Mr. Pinkerton, sir!" exclaimed the offended attorney; and,
indeed, I myself was almost afraid that Jim had mistaken his
man and gone too far.

"No present use for a dollar?" says Jim. "Well, look here, Mr.
Bellairs: we're both busy men, and I'll go to my outside figure
with you right away--"

"Stop this, Pinkerton," I broke in. "I know the address: 924
Mission Street."

I do not know whether Pinkerton or Bellairs was the more
taken aback.

"Why in snakes didn't you say so, Loudon?" cried my friend.

"You didn't ask for it before," said I, colouring to my temples
under his troubled eyes.

It was Bellairs who broke silence, kindly supplying me with all
that I had yet to learn. "Since you know Mr. Dickson's
address," said he, plainly burning to be rid of us, "I suppose I
need detain you no longer."

I do not know how Pinkerton felt, but I had death in my soul as
we came down the outside stair, from the den of this blotched
spider. My whole being was strung, waiting for Jim's first
question, and prepared to blurt out, I believe, almost with tears,
a full avowal. But my friend asked nothing.

"We must hack it," said he, tearing off in the direction of the
nearest stand. "No time to be lost. You saw how I changed
ground. No use in paying the shyster's commission."

Again I expected a reference to my suppression; again I was
disappointed. It was plain Jim feared the subject, and I felt I
almost hated him for that fear. At last, when we were already
in the hack and driving towards Mission Street, I could bear
my suspense no longer.

"You do not ask me about that address," said I.

"No," said he, quickly and timidly. "What was it? I would like
to know."

The note of timidity offended me like a buffet; my temper rose
as hot as mustard. "I must request you do not ask me," said I.
"It is a matter I cannot explain."

The moment the foolish words were said, that moment I would
have given worlds to recall them: how much more, when
Pinkerton, patting my hand, replied: "All right, dear boy; not
another word; that's all done. I'm convinced it's perfectly
right."  To return upon the subject was beyond my courage; but
I vowed inwardly that I should do my utmost in the future for
this mad speculation, and that I would cut myself in pieces
before Jim should lose one dollar.

We had no sooner arrived at the address than I had other things
to think of.

"Mr. Dickson? He's gone," said the landlady.

Where had he gone?

"I'm sure I can't tell you," she answered. "He was quite a
stranger to me."

"Did he express his baggage, ma'am?" asked Pinkerton.

"Hadn't any," was the reply. "He came last night and left again
to-day with a satchel."

"When did he leave?" I inquired.

"It was about noon," replied the landlady. "Some one rang up
the telephone, and asked for him; and I reckon he got some
news, for he left right away, although his rooms were taken by
the week. He seemed considerable put out: I reckon it was a
death."

My heart sank; perhaps my idiotic jest had indeed driven him
away; and again I asked myself, Why? and whirled for a
moment in a vortex of untenable hypotheses.

"What was he like, ma'am?" Pinkerton was asking, when I
returned to consciousness of my surroundings.

"A clean shaved man," said the woman, and could be led or
driven into no more significant description.

"Pull up at the nearest drug-store," said Pinkerton to the driver;
and when there, the telephone was put in operation, and the
message sped to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's office--
this was in the days before Spreckels had arisen--"When does
the next China steamer touch at Honolulu?"

"The City of Pekin; she cast off the dock to-day, at half-past
one," came the reply.

"It's a clear case of bolt," said Jim. "He's skipped, or my
name's not Pinkerton. He's gone to head us off at Midway
Island."

Somehow I was not so sure; there were elements in the case,
not known to Pinkerton--the fears of the captain, for example
--that inclined me otherwise; and the idea that I had terrified
Mr. Dickson into flight, though resting on so slender a
foundation, clung obstinately in my mind. "Shouldn't we see
the list of passengers?" I asked.

"Dickson is such a blamed common name," returned Jim; "and
then, as like as not, he would change it."

At this I had another intuition. A negative of a street scene,
taken unconsciously when I was absorbed in other thought,
rose in my memory with not a feature blurred: a view, from
Bellairs's door as we were coming down, of muddy roadway,
passing drays, matted telegraph wires, a Chinaboy with a
basket on his head, and (almost opposite) a corner grocery with
the name of Dickson in great gilt letters.

"Yes," said I, "you are right; he would change it. And anyway,
I don't believe it was his name at all; I believe he took it from a
corner grocery beside Bellairs's."

"As like as not," said Jim, still standing on the sidewalk with
contracted brows.

"Well, what shall we do next?" I asked.

"The natural thing would be to rush the schooner," he replied.
"But I don't know. I telephoned the captain to go at it head
down and heels in air; he answered like a little man; and I
guess he's getting around. I believe, Loudon, we'll give Trent a
chance. Trent was in it; he was in it up to the neck; even if he
couldn't buy, he could give us the straight tip."

"I think so, too," said I. "Where shall we find him?"

"British consulate, of course," said Jim. "And that's another
reason for taking him first. We can hustle that schooner up all
evening; but when the consulate's shut, it's shut."

At the consulate, we learned that Captain Trent had alighted
(such is I believe the classic phrase) at the What Cheer House.
To that large and unaristocratic hostelry we drove, and
addressed ourselves to a large clerk, who was chewing a
toothpick and looking straight before him.

"Captain Jacob Trent?"

"Gone," said the clerk.

"Where has he gone?" asked Pinkerton.

"Cain't say," said the clerk.

"When did he go?" I asked.

"Don't know," said the clerk, and with the simplicity of a
monarch offered us the spectacle of his broad back.

What might have happened next I dread to picture, for
Pinkerton's excitement had been growing steadily, and now
burned dangerously high; but we were spared extremities by
the intervention of a second clerk.

"Why! Mr. Dodd!" he exclaimed, running forward to the
counter. "Glad to see you, sir! Can I do anything in your
way?"

How virtuous actions blossom! Here was a young man to
whose pleased ears I had rehearsed _Just before the battle,
mother,_ at some weekly picnic; and now, in that tense
moment of my life, he came (from the machine) to be my
helper.

"Captain Trent, of the wreck? O yes, Mr. Dodd; he left about
twelve; he and another of the men. The Kanaka went earlier by
the City of Pekin; I know that; I remember expressing his chest.
Captain Trent? I'll inquire, Mr. Dodd. Yes, they were all here.
Here are the names on the register; perhaps you would care to
look at them while I go and see about the baggage?"

I drew the book toward me, and stood looking at the four
names all written in the same hand, rather a big and rather a
bad one: Trent, Brown, Hardy, and (instead of Ah Sing) Jos.
Amalu.

"Pinkerton," said I, suddenly, "have you that _Occidental_ in
your pocket?"

"Never left me," said Pinkerton, producing the paper.

I turned to the account of the wreck. "Here," said I; "here's the
name. 'Elias Goddedaal, mate.'  Why do we never come across
Elias Goddedaal?"

"That's so," said Jim. "Was he with the rest in that saloon
when you saw them?"

"I don't believe it," said I. "They were only four, and there was
none that behaved like a mate."

At this moment the clerk returned with his report.

"The captain," it appeared, "came with some kind of an express
waggon, and he and the man took off three chests and a big
satchel. Our porter helped to put them on, but they drove the
cart themselves. The porter thinks they went down town. It
was about one."

"Still in time for the City of Pekin," observed Jim.

"How many of them were here?" I inquired.

"Three, sir, and the Kanaka," replied the clerk. "I can't
somehow fin out about the third, but he's gone too."

"Mr. Goddedaal, the mate, wasn't here then?" I asked.

"No, Mr. Dodd, none but what you see," says the clerk.

"Nor you never heard where he was?"

"No. Any particular reason for finding these men, Mr. Dodd?"
inquired the clerk.

"This gentleman and I have bought the wreck," I explained;
"we wished to get some information, and it is very annoying to
find the men all gone."

A certain group had gradually formed about us, for the wreck
was still a matter of interest; and at this, one of the bystanders,
a rough seafaring man, spoke suddenly.

"I guess the mate won't be gone," said he. "He's main sick;
never left the sick-bay aboard the Tempest; so they tell ME."

Jim took me by the sleeve. "Back to the consulate," said he.

But even at the consulate nothing was known of Mr.
Goddedaal. The doctor of the Tempest had certified him very
sick; he had sent his papers in, but never appeared in person
before the authorities.

"Have you a telephone laid on to the Tempest?" asked
Pinkerton.

"Laid on yesterday," said the clerk.

"Do you mind asking, or letting me ask? We are very anxious
to get hold of Mr. Goddedaal."

"All right," said the clerk, and turned to the telephone. "I'm
sorry," he said presently, "Mr. Goddedaal has left the ship, and
no one knows where he is."

"Do you pay the men's passage home?" I inquired, a sudden
thought striking me.

"If they want it," said the clerk; "sometimes they don't. But we
paid the Kanaka's passage to Honolulu this morning; and by
what Captain Trent was saying, I understand the rest are going
home together."

"Then you haven't paid them?" said I.

"Not yet," said the clerk.

"And you would be a good deal surprised, if I were to tell you
they were gone already?" I asked.

"O, I should think you were mistaken," said he.

"Such is the fact, however," said I.

"I am sure you must be mistaken," he repeated.

"May I use your telephone one moment?" asked Pinkerton; and
s soon as permission had been granted, I heard him ring up the
printing-office where our advertisements were usually handled.
More I did not hear; for suddenly recalling the big, bad hand in
the register of the What Cheer House, I asked the consulate
clerk if he had a specimen of Captain Trent's writing.
Whereupon I learned that the captain could not write, having
cut his hand open a little before the loss of the brig; that the
latter part of the log even had been written up by Mr.
Goddedaal; and that Trent had always signed with his left
hand. By the time I had gleaned this information, Pinkerton
was ready.

"That's all that we can do. Now for the schooner," said he;
"and by to-morrow evening I lay hands on Goddedaal, or my
name's not Pinkerton."

"How have you managed?" I inquired.

"You'll see before you get to bed," said Pinkerton. "And now,
after all this backwarding and forwarding, and that hotel clerk,
and that bug Bellairs, it'll be a change and a kind of consolation
to see the schooner. I guess things are humming there."

But on the wharf, when we reached it, there was no sign of
bustle, and, but for the galley smoke, no mark of life on the
Norah Creina. Pinkerton's face grew pale, and his mouth
straightened, as he leaped on board.

"Where's the captain of this----?" and he left the phrase
unfinished, finding no epithet sufficiently energetic for his
thoughts.

It did not appear whom or what he was addressing; but a head,
presumably the cook's, appeared in answer at the galley door.

"In the cabin, at dinner," said the cook deliberately, chewing as
he spoke.

"Is that cargo out?"

"No, sir."

"None of it?"

"O, there's some of it out. We'll get at the rest of it livelier
to-morrow, I guess."

"I guess there'll be something broken first," said Pinkerton, and
strode to the cabin.

Here we found a man, fat, dark, and quiet, seated gravely at
what seemed a liberal meal. He looked up upon our entrance;
and seeing Pinkerton continue to stand facing him in silence,
hat on head, arms folded, and lips compressed, an expression
of mingled wonder and annoyance began to dawn upon his
placid face.

"Well!" said Jim; and so this is what you call rushing around?"

"Who are you?" cries the captain.

"Me! I'm Pinkerton!" retorted Jim, as though the name had
been a talisman.

"You're not very civil, whoever you are," was the reply. But
still a certain effect had been produced, for he scrambled to his
feet, and added hastily, "A man must have a bit of dinner, you
know, Mr. Pinkerton."

"Where's your mate?" snapped Jim.

"He's up town," returned the other.

"Up town!" sneered Pinkerton. "Now, I'll tell you what you are:
you're a Fraud; and if I wasn't afraid of dirtying my boot, I
would kick you and your dinner into that dock."

"I'll tell you something, too," retorted the captain, duskily
flushing. "I wouldn't sail this ship for the man you are, if you
went upon your knees. I've dealt with gentlemen up to now."

"I can tell you the names of a number of gentlemen you'll never
deal with any more, and that's the whole of Longhurst's gang,"
said Jim. "I'll put your pipe out in that quarter, my friend.
Here, rout out your traps as quick as look at it, and take your
vermin along with you. I'll have a captain in, this very night,
that's a sailor, and some sailors to work for him."

"I'll go when I please, and that's to-morrow morning," cried the
captain after us, as we departed for the shore.

"There's something gone wrong with the world to-day; it must
have come bottom up!" wailed Pinkerton. "Bellairs, and then
the hotel clerk, and now This Fraud! And what am I to do for a
captain, Loudon, with Longhurst gone home an hour ago, and
the boys all scattered?"

"I know," said I. "Jump in!"  And then to the driver: "Do you
know Black Tom's?"

Thither then we rattled; passed through the bar, and found (as I
had hoped) Johnson in the enjoyment of club life. The table
had been thrust upon one side; a South Sea merchant was
discoursing music from a mouth-organ in one corner; and in
the middle of the floor Johnson and a fellow-seaman, their
arms clasped about each other's bodies, somewhat heavily
danced. The room was both cold and close; a jet of gas, which
continually menaced the heads of the performers, shed a coarse
illumination; the mouth-organ sounded shrill and dismal; and
the faces of all concerned were church-like in their gravity. It
were, of course, indelicate to interrupt these solemn frolics; so
we edged ourselves to chairs, for all the world like belated
comers in a concert-room, and patiently waited for the end. At
length the organist, having exhausted his supply of breath,
ceased abruptly in the middle of a bar. With the cessation of
the strain, the dancers likewise came to a full stop, swayed a
moment, still embracing, and then separated and looked about
the circle for applause.

"Very well danced!" said one; but it appears the compliment
was not strong enough for the performers, who (forgetful of the
proverb) took up the tale in person.

"Well," said Johnson. "I mayn't be no sailor, but I can dance!"

And his late partner, with an almost pathetic conviction, added,
"My foot is as light as a feather."

Seeing how the wind set, you may be sure I added a few words
of praise before I carried Johnson alone into the passage: to
whom, thus mollified, I told so much as I judged needful of our
situation, and begged him, if he would not take the job himself,
to find me a smart man.

"Me!" he cried. "I couldn't no more do it than I could try to go
to hell!"

"I thought you were a mate?" said I.

"So I am a mate," giggled Johnson, "and you don't catch me
shipping noways else. But I'll tell you what, I believe I can get
you Arty Nares: you seen Arty; first-rate navigator and a son of
a gun for style."  And he proceeded to explain to me that Mr.
Nares, who had the promise of a fine barque in six months,
after things had quieted down, was in the meantime living very
private, and would be pleased to have a change of air.

I called out Pinkerton and told him. "Nares!" he cried, as soon
as I had come to the name. "I would jump at the chance of a
man that had had Nares's trousers on! Why, Loudon, he's the
smartest deep-water mate out of San Francisco, and draws his
dividends regular in service and out."  This hearty indorsation
clinched the proposal; Johnson agreed to produce Nares before
six the following morning; and Black Tom, being called into
the consultation, promised us four smart hands for the same
hour, and even (what appeared to all of us excessive) promised
them sober.

The streets were fully lighted when we left Black Tom's: street
after street sparkling with gas or electricity, line after line of
distant luminaries climbing the steep sides of hills towards the
overvaulting darkness; and on the other hand, where the waters
of the bay invisibly trembled, a hundred riding lanterns marked
the position of a hundred ships. The sea-fog flew high in
heaven; and at the level of man's life and business it was clear
and chill. By silent consent, we paid the hack off, and
proceeded arm in arm towards the Poodle Dog for dinner.

At one of the first hoardings, I was aware of a bill-sticker at
work: it was a late hour for this employment, and I checked
Pinkerton until the sheet should be unfolded. This is what I
read:--

              TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD.
                        
                OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE

              WRECKED BRIG FLYING SCUD
                        
                       APPLYING,

               PERSONALLY OR BY LETTER,

AT THE OFFICE OF JAMES PINKERTON, MONTANA
BLOCK,

         BEFORE NOON TO-MORROW, TUESDAY, 12TH,

                     WILL RECEIVE
                          
              TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD.

"This is your idea, Pinkerton!" I cried.

"Yes. They've lost no time; I'll say that for them--not like the
Fraud," said he. "But mind you, Loudon, that's not half of it.
The cream of the idea's here: we know our man's sick; well, a
copy of that has been mailed to every hospital, every doctor,
and every drug-store in San Francisco."

Of course, from the nature of our business, Pinkerton could do
a thing of the kind at a figure extremely reduced; for all that, I
was appalled at the extravagance, and said so.

"What matter a few dollars now?" he replied sadly. "It's in
three months that the pull comes, Loudon."

We walked on again in silence, not without a shiver. Even at
the Poodle Dog, we took our food with small appetite and less
speech; and it was not until he was warmed with a third glass
of champagne that Pinkerton cleared his throat and looked
upon me with a deprecating eye.

"Loudon," said he, "there was a subject you didn't wish to be
referred to. I only want to do so indirectly. It wasn't"--he
faltered--"it wasn't because you were dissatisfied with me?" he
concluded, with a quaver.

"Pinkerton!" cried I.

"No, no, not a word just now," he hastened to proceed. "Let me
speak first. I appreciate, though I can't imitate, the delicacy of
your nature; and I can well understand you would rather die
than speak of it, and yet might feel disappointed. I did think I
could have done better myself. But when I found how tight
money was in this city, and a man like Douglas B. Longhurst--
a forty-niner, the man that stood at bay in a corn patch for five
hours against the San Diablo squatters--weakening on the
operation, I tell you, Loudon, I began to despair; and--I may
have made mistakes, no doubt there are thousands who could
have done better--but I give you a loyal hand on it, I did my
best."

"My poor Jim," said I, "as if I ever doubted you! as if I didn't
know you had done wonders! All day I've been admiring your
energy and resource. And as for that affair----"

"No, Loudon, no more, not a word more! I don't want to hear,"
cried Jim.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't want to tell you," said I; "for
it's a thing I'm ashamed of."

"Ashamed, Loudon? O, don't say that; don't use such an
expression even in jest!" protested Pinkerton.

"Do you never do anything you're ashamed of?" I inquired.

"No," says he, rolling his eyes. "Why? I'm sometimes sorry
afterwards, when it pans out different from what I figured. But
I can't see what I would want to be ashamed for."

I sat a while considering with admiration the simplicity of my
friend's character. Then I sighed. "Do you know, Jim, what
I'm sorriest for?" said I. "At this rate, I can't be best man at
your marriage."

"My marriage!" he repeated, echoing the sigh. "No marriage
for me now. I'm going right down to-night to break it to her. I
think that's what's shaken me all day. I feel as if I had had no
right (after I was engaged) to operate so widely."

"Well, you know, Jim, it was my doing, and you must lay the
blame on me," said I.

"Not a cent of it!" he cried. "I was as eager as yourself, only
not so bright at the beginning. No; I've myself to thank for it;
but it's a wrench."

While Jim departed on his dolorous mission, I returned alone to
the office, lit the gas, and sat down to reflect on the events of
that momentous day: on the strange features of the tale that
had been so far unfolded, the disappearances, the terrors, the
great sums of money; and on the dangerous and ungrateful task
that awaited me in the immediate future.

It is difficult, in the retrospect of such affairs, to avoid
attributing to ourselves in the past a measure of the knowledge
we possess to-day. But I may say, and yet be well within the
mark, that I was consumed that night with a fever of suspicion
and curiosity; exhausted my fancy in solutions, which I still
dismissed as incommensurable with the facts; and in the
mystery by which I saw myself surrounded, found a precious
stimulus for my courage and a convenient soothing draught for
conscience. Even had all been plain sailing, I do not hint that I
should have drawn back. Smuggling is one of the meanest of
crimes, for by that we rob a whole country pro rata, and are
therefore certain to impoverish the poor: to smuggle opium is
an offence particularly dark, since it stands related not so much
to murder, as to massacre. Upon all these points I was quite
clear; my sympathy was all in arms against my interest; and
had not Jim been involved, I could have dwelt almost with
satisfaction on the idea of my failure. But Jim, his whole
fortune, and his marriage, depended upon my success; and I
preferred the interests of my friend before those of all the
islanders in the South Seas. This is a poor, private morality, if
you like; but it is mine, and the best I have; and I am not half
so much ashamed of having embarked at all on this adventure,
as I am proud that (while I was in it, and for the sake of my
friend) I was up early and down late, set my own hand to
everything, took dangers as they came, and for once in my life
played the man throughout. At the same time, I could have
desired another field of energy; and I was the more grateful for
the redeeming element of mystery. Without that, though I
might have gone ahead and done as well, it would scarce have
been with ardour; and what inspired me that night with an
impatient greed of the sea, the island, and the wreck, was the
hope that I might stumble there upon the answer to a hundred
questions, and learn why Captain Trent fanned his red face in
the exchange, and why Mr. Dickson fled from the telephone in
the Mission Street lodging-house.

CHAPTER XI.

IN WHICH JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS.

I was unhappy when I closed my eyes; and it was to
unhappiness that I opened them again next morning, to a
confused sense of some calamity still inarticulate, and to the
consciousness of jaded limbs and of a swimming head. I must
have lain for some time inert and stupidly miserable, before I
became aware of a reiterated knocking at the door; with which
discovery all my wits flowed back in their accustomed
channels, and I remembered the sale, and the wreck, and
Goddedaal, and Nares, and Johnson, and Black Tom, and the
troubles of yesterday, and the manifold engagements of the day
that was to come. The thought thrilled me like a trumpet in the
hour of battle. In a moment, I had leaped from bed, crossed the
office where Pinkerton lay in a deep trance of sleep on the
convertible sofa, and stood in the doorway, in my night gear, to
receive our visitors.

Johnson was first, by way of usher, smiling. From a little
behind, with his Sunday hat tilted forward over his brow, and a
cigar glowing between his lips, Captain Nares acknowledged
our previous acquaintance with a succinct nod. Behind him
again, in the top of the stairway, a knot of sailors, the new crew
of the Norah Creina, stood polishing the wall with back and
elbow. These I left without to their reflections. But our two
officers I carried at once into the office, where (taking Jim by
the shoulder) I shook him slowly into consciousness. He sat
up, all abroad for the moment, and stared on the new captain.

"Jim," said I, "this is Captain Nares. Captain, Mr. Pinkerton."

Nares repeated his curt nod, still without speech; and I thought
he held us both under a watchful scrutiny.

"O!" says Jim, "this is Captain Nares, is it? Good morning,
Captain Nares. Happy to have the pleasure of your
acquaintance, sir. I know you well by reputation."

Perhaps, under the circumstances of the moment, this was
scarce a welcome speech. At least, Nares received it with a
grunt.

"Well, Captain," Jim continued, "you know about the size of
the business? You're to take the Nora Creina to Midway
Island, break up a wreck, call at Honolulu, and back to this
port? I suppose that's understood?"

"Well," returned Nares, with the same unamiable reserve, "for a
reason, which I guess you know, the cruise may suit me; but
there's a point or two to settle. We shall have to talk, Mr.
Pinkerton. But whether I go or not, somebody will; there's no
sense in losing time; and you might give Mr. Johnson a note,
let him take the hands right down, and set to to overhaul the
rigging. The beasts look sober," he added, with an air of great
disgust, "and need putting to work to keep them so."

This being agreed upon, Nares watched his subordinate depart
and drew a visible breath.

"And now we're alone and can talk," said he. "What's this
thing about? It's been advertised like Barnum's museum; that
poster of yours has set the Front talking; that's an objection in
itself, for I'm laying a little dark just now; and anyway, before I
take the ship, I require to know what I'm going after."

Thereupon Pinkerton gave him the whole tale, beginning with a
businesslike precision, and working himself up, as he went on,
to the boiling-point of narrative enthusiasm. Nares sat and
smoked, hat still on head, and acknowledged each fresh feature
of the story with a frowning nod. But his pale blue eyes
betrayed him, and lighted visibly.

"Now you see for yourself," Pinkerton concluded: "there's
every last chance that Trent has skipped to Honolulu, and it
won't take much of that fifty thousand dollars to charter a smart
schooner down to Midway. Here's where I want a man!" cried
Jim, with contagious energy. "That wreck's mine; I've paid for
it, money down; and if it's got to be fought for, I want to see it
fought for lively. If you're not back in ninety days, I tell you
plainly, I'll make one of the biggest busts ever seen upon this
coast; it's life or death for Mr. Dodd and me. As like as not,
it'll come to grapples on the island; and when I heard your
name last night--and a blame' sight more this morning when I
saw the eye you've got in your head--I said, 'Nares is good
enough for me!'"

"I guess," observed Nares, studying the ash of his cigar, "the
sooner I get that schooner outside the Farallones, the better
you'll be pleased."

"You're the man I dreamed of!" cried Jim, bouncing on the bed.
"There's not five per cent of fraud in all your carcase."

"Just hold on," said Nares. "There's another point. I heard
some talk about a supercargo."

"That's Mr. Dodd, here, my partner," said Jim.

"I don't see it," returned the captain drily. "One captain's
enough for any ship that ever I was aboard."

"Now don't you start disappointing me," said Pinkerton; "for
you're talking without thought. I'm not going to give you the
run of the books of this firm, am I? I guess not. Well, this is
not only a cruise; it's a business operation; and that's in the
hands of my partner. You sail that ship, you see to breaking up
that wreck and keeping the men upon the jump, and you'll find
your hands about full. Only, no mistake about one thing: it
has to be done to Mr. Dodd's satisfaction; for it's Mr. Dodd
that's paying."

"I'm accustomed to give satisfaction," said Mr. Nares, with a
dark flush.

"And so you will here!" cried Pinkerton. "I understand you.
You're prickly to handle, but you're straight all through."

"The position's got to be understood, though," returned Nares,
perhaps a trifle mollified. "My position, I mean. I'm not going
to ship sailing-master; it's enough out of my way already, to set
a foot on this mosquito schooner."

"Well, I'll tell you," retorted Jim, with an indescribable twinkle:
"you just meet me on the ballast, and we'll make it a
barquentine."

Nares laughed a little; tactless Pinkerton had once more gained
a victory in tact. "Then there's another point," resumed the
captain, tacitly relinquishing the last. "How about the
owners?"

"O, you leave that to me; I'm one of Longhurst's crowd, you
know," said Jim, with sudden bristling vanity. "Any man that's
good enough for me, is good enough for them."

"Who are they?" asked Nares.

"M'Intyre and Spittal," said Jim.

"O, well, give me a card of yours," said the captain: "you
needn't bother to write; I keep M'Intyre and Spittal in my
vest-pocket."

Boast for boast; it was always thus with Nares and Pinkerton--
the two vainest men of my acquaintance. And having thus
reinstated himself in his own opinion, the captain rose, and,
with a couple of his stiff nods, departed.

"Jim," I cried, as the door closed behind him, "I don't like that
man."

"You've just got to, Loudon," returned Jim. "He's a typical
American seaman--brave as a lion, full of resource, and stands
high with his owners. He's a man with a record."

"For brutality at sea," said I.

"Say what you like," exclaimed Pinkerton, "it was a good hour
we got him in: I'd trust Mamie's life to him to-morrow."

"Well, and talking of Mamie?" says I.

Jim paused with his trousers half on. "She's the gallantest little
soul God ever made!" he cried. "Loudon, I'd meant to knock
you up last night, and I hope you won't take it unfriendly that I
didn't. I went in and looked at you asleep; and I saw you were
all broken up, and let you be. The news would keep, anyway;
and even you, Loudon, couldn't feel it the same way as I did."

"What news?" I asked.

"It's this way," says Jim. "I told her how we stood, and that I
backed down from marrying. 'Are you tired of me?' says she:
God bless her! Well, I explained the whole thing over again,
the chance of smash, your absence unavoidable, the point I
made of having you for the best man, and that. 'If you're not
tired of me, I think I see one way to manage,' says she. "Let's
get married to-morrow, and Mr. Loudon can be best man
before he goes to sea.'  That's how she said it, crisp and bright,
like one of Dickens's characters. It was no good for me to talk
about the smash. 'You'll want me all the more,' she said.
Loudon, I only pray I can make it up to her; I prayed for it last
night beside your bed, while you lay sleeping--for you, and
Mamie and myself; and--I don't know if you quite believe in
prayer, I'm a bit Ingersollian myself--but a kind of sweetness
came over me, and I couldn't help but think it was an answer.
Never was a man so lucky! You and me and Mamie; it's a
triple cord, Loudon. If either of you were to die! And she likes
you so much, and thinks you so accomplished and distingue-
looking, and was just as set as I was to have you for best man.
'Mr. Loudon,' she calls you; seems to me so friendly! And she
sat up till three in the morning fixing up a costume for the
marriage; it did me good to see her, Loudon, and to see that
needle going, going, and to say 'All this hurry, Jim, is just to
marry you!'  I couldn't believe it; it was so like some blame'
fairy story. To think of those old tin-type times about turned
my head; I was so unrefined then, and so illiterate, and so
lonesome; and here I am in clover, and I'm blamed if I can see
what I've done to deserve it."

So he poured forth with innocent volubility the fulness of his
heart; and I, from these irregular communications, must pick
out, here a little and there a little, the particulars of his new
plan. They were to be married, sure enough, that day; the
wedding breakfast was to be at Frank's; the evening to be
passed in a visit of God-speed aboard the Norah Creina; and
then we were to part, Jim and I, he to his married life, I on my
sea-enterprise. If ever I cherished an ill-feeling for Miss
Mamie, I forgave her now; so brave and kind, so pretty and
venturesome, was her decision. The weather frowned overhead
with a leaden sky, and San Francisco had never (in all my
experience) looked so bleak and gaunt, and shoddy, and crazy,
like a city prematurely old; but through all my wanderings and
errands to and fro, by the dock side or in the jostling street,
among rude sounds and ugly sights, there ran in my mind, like
a tiny strain of music, the thought of my friend's happiness.

For that was indeed a day of many and incongruous
occupations. Breakfast was scarce swallowed before Jim must
run to the City Hall and Frank's about the cares of marriage,
and I hurry to John Smith's upon the account of stores, and
thence, on a visit of certification, to the Norah Creina.
Methought she looked smaller than ever, sundry great ships
overspiring her from close without. She was already a
nightmare of disorder; and the wharf alongside was piled with
a world of casks, and cases, and tins, and tools, and coils of
rope, and miniature barrels of giant powder, such as it seemed
no human ingenuity could stuff on board of her. Johnson was
in the waist, in a red shirt and dungaree trousers, his eye
kindled with activity. With him I exchanged a word or two;
thence stepped aft along the narrow alleyway between the
house and the rail, and down the companion to the main cabin,
where the captain sat with the commissioner at wine.

I gazed with disaffection at the little box which for many a day
I was to call home. On the starboard was a stateroom for the
captain; on the port, a pair of frowsy berths, one over the other,
and abutting astern upon the side of an unsavoury cupboard.
The walls were yellow and damp, the floor black and greasy;
there was a prodigious litter of straw, old newspapers, and
broken packing-cases; and by way of ornament, only a glass-
rack, a thermometer presented "with compliments" of some
advertising whiskey-dealer, and a swinging lamp. It was hard
to foresee that, before a week was up, I should regard that
cabin as cheerful, lightsome, airy, and even spacious.

I was presented to the commissioner, and to a young friend of
his whom he had brought with him for the purpose (apparently)
of smoking cigars; and after we had pledged one another in a
glass of California port, a trifle sweet and sticky for a morning
beverage, the functionary spread his papers on the table, and
the hands were summoned. Down they trooped, accordingly,
into the cabin; and stood eyeing the ceiling or the floor, the
picture of sheepish embarrassment, and with a common air of
wanting to expectorate and not quite daring. In admirable
contrast, stood the Chinese cook, easy, dignified, set apart by
spotless raiment, the hidalgo of the seas.

I daresay you never had occasion to assist at the farce which
followed. Our shipping laws in the United States (thanks to
the inimitable Dana) are conceived in a spirit of paternal
stringency, and proceed throughout on the hypothesis that poor
Jack is an imbecile, and the other parties to the contract, rogues
and ruffians. A long and wordy paper of precautions, a fo'c's'le
bill of rights, must be read separately to each man. I had now
the benefit of hearing it five times in brisk succession; and you
would suppose I was acquainted with its contents. But the
commissioner (worthy man) spends his days in doing little
else; and when we bear in mind the parallel case of the
irreverent curate, we need not be surprised that he took the
passage tempo prestissimo, in one roulade of gabble --that I,
with the trained attention of an educated man, could gather but
a fraction of its import--and the sailors nothing. No profanity
in giving orders, no sheath-knives, Midway Island and any
other port the master may direct, not to exceed six calendar
months, and to this port to be paid off: so it seemed to run,
with surprising verbiage; so ended. And with the end, the
commissioner, in each case, fetched a deep breath, resumed his
natural voice, and proceeded to business. "Now, my man," he
would say, "you ship A. B. at so many dollars, American gold
coin. Sign your name here, if you have one, and can write."
Whereupon, and the name (with infinite hard breathing) being
signed, the commissioner would proceed to fill in the man's
appearance, height, etc., on the official form. In this task of
literary portraiture he seemed to rely wholly upon temperament;
for I could not perceive him to cast one glance on any of his
models. He was assisted, however, by a running commentary
from the captain: "Hair blue and eyes red, nose five foot seven,
and stature broken"--jests as old, presumably, as the American
marine; and, like the similar pleasantries of the billiard board,
perennially relished. The highest note of humour was reached
in the case of the Chinese cook, who was shipped under the
name of "One Lung," to the sound of his own protests and the
self-approving chuckles of the functionary.

"Now, captain," said the latter, when the men were gone, and
he had bundled up his papers, "the law requires you to carry a
slop-chest and a chest of medicines."

"I guess I know that," said Nares.

"I guess you do," returned the commissioner, and helped
himself to port.

But when he was gone, I appealed to Nares on the same
subject, for I was well aware we carried none of these
provisions.

"Well," drawled Nares, "there's sixty pounds of niggerhead on
the quay, isn't there? and twenty pounds of salts; and I never
travel without some painkiller in my gripsack."

As a matter of fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual
sailor's provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual
sailor fashion, he would daily drug himself, displaying an
extreme inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red
Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to
Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides, some
mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over
which Nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. "Seems to
smell like diarrhoea stuff," he would remark. "I wish't I knew,
and I would try it." But the slop-chest was indeed represented
by the plugs of niggerhead, and nothing else. Thus paternal
laws are made, thus they are evaded; and the schooner put to
sea, like plenty of her neighbours, liable to a fine of six hundred
dollars.

This characteristic scene, which has delayed me overlong, was
but a moment in that day of exercise and agitation. To fit out a
schooner for sea, and improvise a marriage between dawn and
dusk, involves heroic effort. All day Jim and I ran, and
tramped, and laughed, and came near crying, and fell in sudden
anxious consultations, and were sped (with a prepared sarcasm
on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and made dashes to the
schooner and John Smith's, and at every second corner were
reminded (by our own huge posters) of our desperate estate.
Between whiles, I had found the time to hover at some half-a-
dozen jewellers' windows; and my present, thus intemperately
chosen, was graciously accepted. I believe, indeed, that was
the last (though not the least) of my concerns, before the old
minister, shabby and benign, was routed from his house and
led to the office like a performing poodle; and there, in the
growing dusk, under the cold glitter of Thirteen Star, two
hundred strong, and beside the garish glories of the agricultural
engine, Mamie and Jim were made one. The scene was
incongruous, but the business pretty, whimsical, and affecting:
the typewriters with such kindly faces and fine posies, Mamie
so demure, and Jim--how shall I describe that poor,
transfigured Jim? He began by taking the minister aside to the
far end of the office. I knew not what he said, but I have reason
to believe he was protesting his unfitness; for he wept as he
said it: and the old minister, himself genuinely moved, was
heard to console and encourage him, and at one time to use this
expression: "I assure you, Mr. Pinkerton, there are not many
who can say so much"--from which I gathered that my friend
had tempered his self-accusations with at least one legitimate
boast. From this ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me; and
though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of my name
and one fierce handgrip, communicated some of his own
emotion, like a charge of electricity, to his best man. We stood
up to the ceremony at last, in a general and kindly
discomposure. Jim was all abroad; and the divine himself
betrayed his sympathy in voice and demeanour, and concluded
with a fatherly allocution, in which he congratulated Mamie
(calling her "my dear") upon the fortune of an excellent
husband, and protested he had rarely married a more
interesting couple. At this stage, like a glory descending, there
was handed in, ex machina, the card of Douglas B. Longhurst,
with congratulations and four dozen Perrier-Jouet. A bottle
was opened; and the minister pledged the bride, and the
bridesmaids simpered and tasted, and I made a speech with
airy bacchanalianism, glass in hand. But poor Jim must leave
the wine untasted. "Don't touch it," I had found the opportunity
to whisper; "in your state it will make you as drunk as a
fiddler."  And Jim had wrung my hand with a "God bless you,
Loudon!--saved me again!"

Hard following upon this, the supper passed off at Frank's with
somewhat tremulous gaiety. And thence, with one half of the
Perrier-Jouet--I would accept no more--we voyaged in a hack to
the Norah Creina.

"What a dear little ship!" cried Mamie, as our miniature craft
was pointed out to her. And then, on second thought, she
turned to the best man. "And how brave you must be, Mr.
Dodd," she cried, "to go in that tiny thing so far upon the
ocean!"  And I perceived I had risen in the lady's estimation.

The dear little ship presented a horrid picture of confusion, and
its occupants of weariness and ill-humour. From the cabin the
cook was storing tins into the lazarette, and the four hands,
sweaty and sullen, were passing them from one to another from
the waist. Johnson was three parts asleep over the table; and in
his bunk, in his own cabin, the captain sourly chewed and
puffed at a cigar.

"See here," he said, rising; "you'll be sorry you came. We can't
stop work if we're to get away to-morrow. A ship getting ready
for sea is no place for people, anyway. You'll only interrupt my
men."

I was on the point of answering something tart; but Jim, who
was acquainted with the breed, as he was with most things that
had a bearing on affairs, made haste to pour in oil.

"Captain," he said, "I know we're a nuisance here, and that
you've had a rough time. But all we want is that you should
drink one glass of wine with us, Perrier-Jouet, from Longhurst,
on the occasion of my marriage, and Loudon's--Mr. Dodd's--
departure."

"Well, it's your lookout," said Nares. "I don't mind half an
hour. Spell, O!" he added to the men; "go and kick your heels
for half an hour, and then you can turn to again a trifle livelier.
Johnson, see if you can't wipe off a chair for the lady."

His tone was no more gracious than his language; but when
Mamie had turned upon him the soft fire of her eyes, and
informed him that he was the first sea-captain she had ever
met, "except captains of steamers, of course"--she so qualified
the statement--and had expressed a lively sense of his courage,
and perhaps implied (for I suppose the arts of ladies are the
same as those of men) a modest consciousness of his good
looks, our bear began insensibly to soften; and it was already
part as an apology, though still with unaffected heat of temper,
that he volunteered some sketch of his annoyances.

"A pretty mess we've had!" said he. "Half the stores were
wrong; I'll wring John Smith's neck for him some of these days.
Then two newspaper beasts came down, and tried to raise copy
out of me, till I threatened them with the first thing handy; and
then some kind of missionary bug, wanting to work his passage
to Raiatea or somewhere. I told him I would take him off the
wharf with the butt end of my boot, and he went away cursing.
This vessel's been depreciated by the look of him."

While the captain spoke, with his strange, humorous, arrogant
abruptness, I observed Jim to be sizing him up, like a thing at
once quaint and familiar, and with a scrutiny that was both
curious and knowing.

"One word, dear boy," he said, turning suddenly to me. And
when he had drawn me on deck, "That man," says he, "will
carry sail till your hair grows white; but never you let on, never
breathe a word. I know his line: he'll die before he'll take
advice; and if you get his back up, he'll run you right under. I
don't often jam in my advice, Loudon; and when I do, it means
I'm thoroughly posted."

The little party in the cabin, so disastrously begun, finished,
under the mellowing influence of wine and woman, in excellent
feeling and with some hilarity. Mamie, in a plush
Gainsborough hat and a gown of wine-coloured silk, sat, an
apparent queen, among her rude surroundings and companions.
The dusky litter of the cabin set off her radiant trimness: tarry
Johnson was a foil to her fair beauty; she glowed in that poor
place, fair as a star; until even I, who was not usually of her
admirers, caught a spark of admiration; and even the captain,
who was in no courtly humour, proposed that the scene should
be commemorated by my pencil. It was the last act of the
evening. Hurriedly as I went about my task, the half-hour had
lengthened out to more than three before it was completed:
Mamie in full value, the rest of the party figuring in outline
only, and the artist himself introduced in a back view, which
was pronounced a likeness. But it was to Mamie that I devoted
the best of my attention; and it was with her I made my chief
success.

"O!" she cried, "am I really like that? No wonder Jim ..." She
paused. "Why it's just as lovely as he's good!" she cried: an
epigram which was appreciated, and repeated as we made our
salutations, and called out after the retreating couple as they
passed away under the lamplight on the wharf.

Thus it was that our farewells were smuggled through under an
ambuscade of laughter, and the parting over ere I knew it was
begun. The figures vanished, the steps died away along the
silent city front; on board, the men had returned to their
labours, the captain to his solitary cigar; and after that long and
complex day of business and emotion, I was at last alone and
free. It was, perhaps, chiefly fatigue that made my heart so
heavy. I leaned at least upon the house, and stared at the foggy
heaven, or over the rail at the wavering reflection of the lamps,
like a man that was quite done with hope and would have
welcomed the asylum of the grave. And all at once, as I thus
stood, the City of Pekin flashed into my mind, racing her
thirteen knots for Honolulu, with the hated Trent--perhaps with
the mysterious Goddedaal--on board; and with the thought, the
blood leaped and careered through all my body. It seemed no
chase at all; it seemed we had no chance, as we lay there bound
to iron pillars, and fooling away the precious moments over tins
of beans. "Let them get there first!" I thought. "Let them! We
can't be long behind."  And from that moment, I date myself a
man of a rounded experience: nothing had lacked but this, that
I should entertain and welcome the grim thought of bloodshed.

It was long before the toil remitted in the cabin, and it was
worth my while to get to bed; long after that, before sleep
favoured me; and scarce a moment later (or so it seemed) when
I was recalled to consciousness by bawling men and the jar of
straining hawsers.

The schooner was cast off before I got on deck. In the misty
obscurity of the first dawn, I saw the tug heading us with
glowing fires and blowing smoke, and heard her beat the
roughened waters of the bay. Beside us, on her flock of hills,
the lighted city towered up and stood swollen in the raw fog. It
was strange to see her burn on thus wastefully, with half-
quenched luminaries, when the dawn was already grown strong
enough to show me, and to suffer me to recognise, a solitary
figure standing by the piles.

Or was it really the eye, and not rather the heart, that identified
that shadow in the dusk, among the shoreside lamps? I know
not. It was Jim, at least; Jim, come for a last look; and we had
but time to wave a valedictory gesture and exchange a wordless
cry. This was our second parting, and our capacities were now
reversed. It was mine to play the Argonaut, to speed affairs, to
plan and to accomplish--if need were, at the price of life; it was
his to sit at home, to study the calendar, and to wait. I knew
besides another thing that gave me joy. I knew that my friend
had succeeded in my education; that the romance of business, if
our fantastic purchase merited the name, had at last stirred my
dilletante nature; and, as we swept under cloudy Tamalpais and
through the roaring narrows of the bay, the Yankee blood sang
in my veins with suspense and exultation.

Outside the heads, as if to meet my desire, we found it blowing
fresh from the northeast. No time had been lost. The sun was
not yet up before the tug cast off the hawser, gave us a salute of
three whistles, and turned homeward toward the coast, which
now began to gleam along its margin with the earliest rays of
day. There was no other ship in view when the Norah Creina,
lying over under all plain sail, began her long and lonely
voyage to the wreck.

CHAPTER XII.

THE "NORAH CREINA."

I love to recall the glad monotony of a Pacific voyage, when the
trades are not stinted, and the ship, day after day, goes free.
The mountain scenery of trade-wind clouds, watched (and in
my case painted) under every vicissitude of light--blotting stars,
withering in the moon's glory, barring the scarlet eve, lying
across the dawn collapsed into the unfeatured morning bank, or
at noon raising their snowy summits between the blue roof of
heaven and the blue floor of sea; the small, busy, and deliberate
world of the schooner, with its unfamiliar scenes, the spearing
of dolphin from the bowsprit end, the holy war on sharks, the
cook making bread on the main hatch; reefing down before a
violent squall, with the men hanging out on the foot-ropes; the
squall itself, the catch at the heart, the opened sluices of the
sky; and the relief, the renewed loveliness of life, when all is
over, the sun forth again, and our out-fought enemy only a blot
upon the leeward sea. I love to recall, and would that I could
reproduce that life, the unforgettable, the unrememberable. The
memory, which shows so wise a backwardness in registering
pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended pleasures;
and a long-continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its
mass) our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of our
life's map there lies a roseate, undecipherable haze, and that is
all.

Of one thing, if I am at all to trust my own annals, I was
delightedly conscious. Day after day, in the sun-gilded cabin,
the whiskey-dealer's thermometer stood at 84. Day after day,
the air had the same indescribable liveliness and sweetness,
soft and nimble, and cool as the cheek of health. Day after day
the sun flamed; night after night the moon beaconed, or the
stars paraded their lustrous regiment. I was aware of a
spiritual change, or, perhaps, rather a molecular reconstitution.
My bones were sweeter to me. I had come home to my own
climate, and looked back with pity on those damp and wintry
zones, miscalled the temperate.

"Two years of this, and comfortable quarters to live in, kind of
shake the grit out of a man," the captain remarked; "can't make
out to be happy anywhere else. A townie of mine was lost
down this way, in a coalship that took fire at sea. He struck the
beach somewhere in the Navigators; and he wrote to me that
when he left the place, it would be feet first. He's well off, too,
and his father owns some coasting craft Down East; but Billy
prefers the beach, and hot rolls off the bread-fruit trees."

A voice told me I was on the same track as Billy. But when
was this? Our outward track in the Norah Creina lay well to
the northward; and perhaps it is but the impression of a few pet
days which I have unconsciously spread longer, or perhaps the
feeling grew upon me later, in the run to Honolulu. One thing I
am sure: it was before I had ever seen an island worthy of the
name that I must date my loyalty to the South Seas. The blank
sea itself grew desirable under such skies; and wherever the
trade-wind blows, I know no better country than a schooner's
deck.

But for the tugging anxiety as to the journey's end, the journey
itself must thus have counted for the best of holidays. My
physical well-being was over-proof; effects of sea and sky kept
me for ever busy with my pencil; and I had no lack of
intellectual exercise of a different order in the study of my
inconsistent friend, the captain. I call him friend, here on the
threshold; but that is to look well ahead. At first, I was too
much horrified by what I considered his barbarities, too much
puzzled by his shifting humours, and too frequently annoyed by
his small vanities, to regard him otherwise than as the cross of
my existence. It was only by degrees, in his rare hours of
pleasantness, when he forgot (and made me forget) the
weaknesses to which he was so prone, that he won me to a
kind of unconsenting fondness. Lastly, the faults were all
embraced in a more generous view: I saw them in their place,
like discords in a musical progression; and accepted them and
found them picturesque, as we accept and admire, in the
habitable face of nature, the smoky head of the volcano or the
pernicious thicket of the swamp.

He was come of good people Down East, and had the
beginnings of a thorough education. His temper had been
ungovernable from the first; and it is likely the defect was
inherited, and the blame of the rupture not entirely his. He ran
away at least to sea; suffered horrible maltreatment, which
seemed to have rather hardened than enlightened him; ran
away again to shore in a South American port; proved his
capacity and made money, although still a child; fell among
thieves and was robbed; worked back a passage to the States,
and knocked one morning at the door of an old lady whose
orchard he had often robbed. The introduction appears
insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The sight of
her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in tatters,
the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the
spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy for the old lady," Nares
said, "even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard,
and shake her thimble and her old curls at me out of the
window as I was going by; I always thought she was a kind of
pleasant old girl. Well, when she came to the door that
morning, I told her so, and that I was stone-broke; and she took
me right in, and fetched out the pie."  She clothed him, taught
him, and had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed him
to her hearth on his return from every cruise, and when she died
bequeathed him her possessions. "She was a good old girl," he
would say. "I tell you, Mr. Dodd, it was a queer thing to see
me and the old lady talking a pasear in the garden, and the old
man scowling at us over the pickets. She lived right next door
to the old man, and I guess that's just what took me there. I
wanted him to know that I was badly beat, you see, and would
rather go to the devil than to him. What made the dig harder,
he had quarrelled with the old lady about me and the orchard: I
guess that made him rage. Yes, I was a beast when I was
young. But I was always pretty good to the old lady."  Since
then he had prospered, not uneventfully, in his profession; the
old lady's money had fallen in during the voyage of the
Gleaner, and he was now, as soon as the smoke of that
engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was
about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick
head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over
the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a
good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick
observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant
address; and when he chose, the greatest brute upon the seas.

His usage of the men, his hazing, his bullying, his perpetual
fault-finding for no cause, his perpetual and brutal sarcasm,
might have raised a mutiny in a slave galley. Suppose the
steersman's eye to have wandered: "You ----, ----, little,
mutton-faced Dutchman," Nares would bawl; "you want a
booting to keep you on your course! I know a little city-front
slush when I see one. Just you glue your eye to that compass,
or I'll show you round the vessel at the butt-end of my boot."
Or suppose a hand to linger aft, whither he had perhaps been
summoned not a minute before. "Mr. Daniells, will you oblige
me by stepping clear of that main-sheet?" the captain might
begin, with truculent courtesy. "Thank you. And perhaps
you'll be so kind as to tell me what the hell you're doing on my
quarter-deck? I want no dirt of your sort here. Is there nothing
for you to do? Where's the mate? Don't you set ME to find
work for you, or I'll find you some that will keep you on your
back a fortnight."  Such allocutions, conceived with a perfect
knowledge of his audience, so that every insult carried home,
were delivered with a mien so menacing, and an eye so fiercely
cruel, that his unhappy subordinates shrank and quailed. Too
often violence followed; too often I have heard and seen and
boiled at the cowardly aggression; and the victim, his hands
bound by law, has risen again from deck and crawled forward
stupefied--I know not what passion of revenge in his wronged
heart.

It seems strange I should have grown to like this tyrant. It may
even seem strange that I should have stood by and suffered his
excesses to proceed. But I was not quite such a chicken as to
interfere in public; for I would rather have a man or two
mishandled than one half of us butchered in a mutiny and the
rest suffer on the gallows. And in private, I was unceasing in
my protests.

"Captain," I once said to him, appealing to his patriotism,
which was of a hardy quality, "this is no way to treat American
seamen. You don't call it American to treat men like dogs?"

"Americans?" he said grimly. "Do you call these Dutchmen
and Scattermouches [1] Americans? I've been fourteen years to
sea, all but one trip under American colours, and I've never laid
eye on an American foremast hand. There used to be such
things in the old days, when thirty-five dollars were the wages
out of Boston; and then you could see ships handled and run
the way they want to be. But that's all past and gone; and
nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a
belaying-pin. You don't know; you haven't a guess. How
would you like to go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen
months on end, with all your duty to do and every one's life
depending on you, and expect to get a knife ripped into you as
you come out of your stateroom, or be sand-bagged as you pass
the boat, or get tripped into the hold, if the hatches are off in
fine weather? That kind of shakes the starch out of the
brotherly love and New Jerusalem business. You go through
the mill, and you'll have a bigger grudge against every old
shellback that dirties his plate in the three oceans, than the
Bank of California could settle up. No; it has an ugly look to it,
but the only way to run a ship is to make yourself a terror."