The Sailor Part 12

Enry Arper was Sailor's own private name, which he had been given at his birth, which he had used all his life. He had always felt that as it was the only thing he owned, it was his to do with as he liked.

Therefore he was determined to spell it according to his fancy. He wouldn't admit that there could possibly be an aitch in Arper; and for some little time his faith in Klond.y.k.e's competence was a bit shaken, for his mentor was at pains to make out that there could be and was.

Henry Harper stuck to his ground, however.

"It's me own name," he said, "an' I oughter know."

Klond.y.k.e was amused. He seemed rather to admire Sailor's att.i.tude. No doubt he felt that no Englishman is worth his salt who doesn't spell his name just as the fancy takes him.

Klond.y.k.e's own name was Jack Pridmore, and it was set out with other particulars on the flyleaf of his Bible. In a large and rather crude copperplate was inscribed:

Jack Pridmore is my name, England is my nation, Good old Eton College Gave me a lib'ral education.

Stet domus et Floreat Etona.

The arms of Eton College with the motto "Floreat Etona" were inscribed on the opposite page, also in tattoo on the left arm of the owner. In Sailor's opinion, Eton College did flourish undoubtedly in the person of Jack Pridmore. He was a white man all through, and long before Sailor could make out that inscription on the flyleaf of Klond.y.k.e's Bible, he was convinced that such was the case.

In Sailor's opinion, he was a good one to follow anywhere. Everything in Klond.y.k.e seemed in just the right proportion and there was nothing in excess. He was new to the sea, but he was not in the least green or raw in anything. You would have to stay up all night if you meant to get ahead of him. So much had he knocked about the world that he knew men and cities like the back of his hand, and he had the art of shaking down at once in any company.

All the same, in Sailor's opinion, he had odd ideas. For one thing, he set his face against the habit of carrying a knife in your s.h.i.+rt in case the dagoes got above themselves.

"It's not quite white, you know, old friend," said Klond.y.k.e.

"Dagoes ain't white," said Sailor.

"No; and that's why we've got to show 'em how white we are if we are going to keep top dog."

This reasoning was too deep for Sailor.

"Don't see it meself. Them dagoes is bigger'n me. If I could lick 'em, I'd lick 'em till they hollered when they started in to fool around. But they are real yaller; none on 'em will face a bit o'

sheffle."

"No," said Klond.y.k.e, "and they'll not face a straight left with a punch in it either."

Klond.y.k.e then made a modest suggestion that Sailor should acquire this part of a white man's equipment. He was firmly convinced that with the rudiments of reading and writing and a straight left with a punch in it, you could go all over the world.

At first Sailor took by no means as kindly to the punching as he did to the other branches of knowledge. He wanted a bit of persuading to face Klond.y.k.e in "a little friendly sc.r.a.pping practice" in the lee of the chart house when no one was by. Klond.y.k.e was as hard as a nail; his left was like a horse's kick; and when he stood in his birthday suit, which he did once a day to receive the bucket of water he got Sailor to dash over him--another of his odd ideas--he looked as fine a picture of make and muscle as you could wish to see. Sailor thought "the little friendly sc.r.a.pping practice" was a very one-sided arrangement. His nose seemed to bleed very easily, his eyes began to swell so that he could hardly see out of them, and his lips and ears thickened with barely any provocation at all, whereas he never seemed to get within a yard of Klond.y.k.e's physiognomy unless that warrior put down his hands and allowed him to hit it.

By this time, however, Klond.y.k.e had laid such a hold on Henry Harper that he didn't like to turn it up. He'd never make a Slavin or a Corbett--it simply wasn't in him--but all that was "white" in Sailor mustered at this chap's call. The fact was, he had begun to wors.h.i.+p Klond.y.k.e, and when with the "sand" of a true hero he was able to get over an intense dislike of being knocked about, he began to feel a sort of pride in the process. If he had to take gruel from anybody, it had better be from him. Besides, Sailor was such a queer fish that there seemed something in his nature which almost craved for a licking from the finest chap he had ever known. His affection for this "whitest" of men seemed to grow with the punishment he took from him.

One night, after an easy watch, as they lay talking and smoking in their bunks in the dark, Klond.y.k.e remarked:

"Sailor, there's a lot o' guts in you."

Henry Harper, who was very far off that particular discovery, didn't know what Klond.y.k.e was getting at.

"You've taken quite a lot of gruel this week. And you've stood up to it well. Mind, I don't think you'll ever make a bruiser, not if you practice until the cows come home. It simply isn't there, old friend.

It's almost like hitting a woman, hitting you. It is not your line of country, and it gets me what you are doing aboard this blue-nose outfit. How do you stick it? It must be h.e.l.l all the time."

Henry Harper made no reply. He was rather out of his depth just now, but he guessed that most of this was true.

"I don't mind taking chances, but it's all the other way with you.

Every time you go aloft, you turn white as chalk, and that shows what grit you've got. But your mother ought never to have let you come to sea, my boy."

"Never had no mother," said Sailor.

"No"--Klond.y.k.e felt he ought to have known that. "Well, it would have saved mine a deal of disappointment," he said cheerfully, "if she had never had such a son. I'm her great sorrow. But if you had had a mother it would have been another story. You'd have been a regular mother's boy."

Sailor wasn't sure.

XIX

Klond.y.k.e was ten months an ordinary seaman aboard the _Margaret Carey_.

In that time the old tub, which could not have been so crazy as she seemed to the experts of the forecastle, went around the Pacific as far as Brisbane, thence to Durban, thence again to California. Meanwhile, friends.h.i.+p ripened. It was a great thing for Sailor to have the countenance of such a man as Klond.y.k.e. He knew so much more about the world than Sailor did, also he was a real friend and protector; and, when they went ash.o.r.e together in strange places, as they often did, he had a wonderful knack of making himself respected.

It was not that Klond.y.k.e wore frills. In most of the places in which they found themselves a knife in the ribs would have done his business out of hand had that been the case. It was simply that he knew his way and could talk to every man in his own language, and every woman, too, if it came to that. Whether it was a Frisco hash-slinger or a refined bar-lady along the seaboard made no difference to Klond.y.k.e. It was true that he always looked as if he had bought the earth at five per cent. discount for cash and carried the t.i.tle deeds in his pocket, but he had such a way with him that from Vancouver to Sydney and back again n.o.body seemed to think the worse of him for it.

However, the day came all too soon when a tragic blow fell on Sailor.

The s.h.i.+p put in at Honolulu one fine morning, and as soon as Klond.y.k.e went ash.o.r.e he picked up a subst.i.tute for himself on the waterfront, whom the Old Man was willing to accept for the rest of his term.

Klond.y.k.e then broke the news to Sailor that he had just taken a fancy to walk across Asia.

It was a heavy blow. Sailor was very near tears, although he was growing in manhood every week.

"It's no use asking you to come with me," said Klond.y.k.e. "We shouldn't have enough bra.s.s to go round. Besides, now the _wanderl.u.s.t_ is on me there is no saying where I'll get to. I'm very likely to be sawed up for firewood in the middle of Tibet."

Sailor knew that Klond.y.k.e wanted to make the journey alone. Partly to soften the blow and partly as an impulse of friends.h.i.+p, he gave the boy his Bible and also his wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears.

"Stick to the reading and writing, old friend," were the final words of this immortal. "That's your line of country. It'll pay you in the end. You'll get no good out of the sea. If you are wise, whenever you touch the port of London, you'll give a miss to this old tub. A life on the ocean wave is never going to be the least use to you."

Sailor knew that Klond.y.k.e was right. But among the many things he lacked was all power of initiative. As soon as he had lost his prop and stay, he was once more a derelict. For him life before the mast must always be a h.e.l.l, but he had no power of acting for himself.

After Klond.y.k.e left the s.h.i.+p there didn't seem anything else to do beyond a mere keeping of body and soul together aboard the _Margaret Carey_. There was nothing else he could do if it came to that. He had only learned to sell papers on land, and he had given the best years of his life to the sea. Besides, every voyage he became a better sailor and was paid a bit more; he even had visions of one day being rated able seaman. Moreover, being saving and careful, his slender store of dollars grew. But his heart was never really in his work, never in the making of money nor in the sailing of the s.h.i.+p.

He was a square peg in a round hole. He didn't know enough about himself or the world or the life he was trying to live to realize fully that this was the case. And for all his weakness of will and complete lack of training, which made his life a burden to him, he had a curious sort of tenacity that enabled him to keep on keeping on long after natures with more balance would have turned the thing up. All the years he was at sea, he never quite overcame the sense of fear the sea aroused in him; he seldom went aloft, even in a dead calm, without changing color, and he never dared look down; he must have lost his hold in many a thras.h.i.+ng northeaster and been broken on the deck like an egg but for an increasing desire to live that was simple torment.

There was a kind of demon in his soul which made him fight for a thing that mocked it.

He had no other friend after Klond.y.k.e went. No other was possible; besides, he had a fierce distrust of half his s.h.i.+pmates; he even lost his early reverence for Mr. Thompson, in spite of the fact that he owed him his life, long before the mate left the s.h.i.+p at Liverpool nine months after the departure of Klond.y.k.e. Above all, the Old Man in liquor always inspired his terror, a treat to be counted on once a month at least. The years of his seafaring were bitter, yet never once did he change s.h.i.+p. He often thought about it, but unluckily for Henry Harper thought was not action; he "never quite matched up," as Klond.y.k.e used to express it. He had a considerable power of reflection; he was a creature of intuitions, with a faculty of observation almost marvelous in an untrained mind, but he never seemed able to act for himself.

Another grave error was that he didn't take Klond.y.k.e's advice and stick to reading and writing. No doubt he ought to have done it; but it was such a tough job that he could hardly take it on by himself. The drudgery made him miserable; it brought too vividly to his mind the true friend who had gone out of his life. For the rest of his time aboard the _Margaret Carey_ he never got over the loss of Klond.y.k.e.

The presence and support of that immortal had meant another world for him. For many months he could hardly bear the sight of the Bible his friend had given him, but cherished it as he had once cherished an apple that had also been given him by one who had crossed his...o...b..t in the night of time and had spoken to him in pa.s.sing.

It is not unlikely that Henry Harper would have sailed the seas aboard the _Margaret Carey_ until that miraculous s.h.i.+p went to pieces in mid-ocean or turned turtle round the Horn; it is not unlikely that he would have gone down to his grave without a suspicion that any other kingdom awaited him, had it not been that in the last resort the decision was taken out of his hands.

One day, when he had been rather more than six years at sea, the _Margaret Carey_ was within three days of London, whither she was bound with a cargo of wheat, when the Old Man informed him briefly and curtly that she was making her last voyage and that she was going to be broken up. The news was such a blow that at first Sailor could not realize what it meant. He had come to feel that no sort of existence would be possible apart from the _Margaret Carey_. He had lived six crowded and terrible years of worse than discomfort, but he could envisage no future apart from that leaking, crazy, foul old tub.

All too soon the day came, a misty morning of October, when he stepped ash.o.r.e. A slender bundle was under one arm, Klond.y.k.e's fur cap on his head, a weird outfit on his lathlike body, an a.s.sortment of clothes as never was on sea or land before; and he had a store of coins of various realms, no less than eighty-five pieces of all sizes and values, from an English farthing to a Mexican five dollars, very carefully disposed about his person.