The Sailor Part 18

The heart of the Sailor began to thump violently. And there came something soft and large in his throat.

"How tall are you, Sailor? Six foot?" The eye of an expert traversed the finely turned form.

"Thereabouts."

"What's your fighting weight in the buff?"

"Dunno."

"Ought to know to a bounce. But it don't matter. You'll thicken. How old next birthday?"

"Nineteen."

"That's a good age. Wish I was. I'm one and twenty."

The Sailor thought he looked more.

"I'm a lot more in some things," said Ginger. "But at football I shall not be one and twenty until the middle o' Janawerry."

The Sailor was a little out of his depth. There was a subtlety about Ginger that went far beyond anything he had ever met. Even Klond.y.k.e, great man as he was, seemed a mere child by comparison with this forcible thinker.

"Nineteen is just the age," said Ginger, "to learn to chuck yerself about. But I dare say you know how to do that, having follered the sea."

"I can climb a bit," the Sailor admitted with great modesty.

"Can yer jump?"

The Sailor could jump a bit too.

"Could you throw yerself at the ball like a rattlesnake if you see it fizzing for the fur corner o' the net?"

The Sailor's modesty could not hazard an opinion on a matter of such technical complexity.

"I expect so," said Ginger, with a condescension that was most agreeable. "You are just the build for a goalkeeper. If it's fine tomorrow dinner-hour, we'll put you through your paces on c.o.x's Piece.

I'm thinkin', Enery, you and me will soon be out after that four quid.

Anyhow, I'll answer for Mr. W. H."

With the air of a Bismarck, Mr. W. H. Jukes, _alias_ Ginger, resumed an extremely concentrated perusal of the evening's news.

VI

That night the repose of the Sailor was rather disturbed. For one thing he was unused to sleeping on dry land; for another Ginger took up a lot of the bed, and as he slept next the wall, the Sailor's position on the outer verge was decidedly perilous. Also when Ginger lay on his back, which he did about two, he was a snorer. Therefore the Sailor had to adjust himself to circ.u.mstances before he could begin to repose at all.

Even when slumber had really set in, which was not until after three, he had to wriggle his lean form into the famous but very tight jersey of the Blackhampton Rovers, the historic blue and chocolate. But what a moment it was when he came proudly on to the field in the midst of the heroes of his early dreams, coolly b.u.t.toning his goalkeeping gloves, and pretending not to be aware that thousands were ma.s.sed tier upon tier around the amphitheater craning their necks to get a glimpse of him, and shouting themselves hoa.r.s.e with their cries of battle!

It was odd that his first game with his beloved Rovers should be against the doughtiest of their foes, the world-famous Villa. And it seemed at first that the occasion would be too much for him. But Ginger was there, ruddy and insouciant, also in a magnificent new jersey. Ginger was playing full back, and just as the match was about to begin he turned round to the goalkeeper and said, "Now, Sailor, pull up your socks, old friend." But the queer thing was, the voice did not belong to Ginger, it was the voice of Klond.y.k.e. Then confusion came.

It was not Ginger, it was Klond.y.k.e himself who was playing full back, Klond.y.k.e the n.o.blest hero of them all. So much was the Sailor astonished by the discovery that he fell out of bed, without disturbing Ginger who was in occupation of three parts of it and snoring like a traction engine.

Next day, the dinner-hour being fine, the Sailor made his debut as a football player on c.o.x's Piece in the presence of a critical a.s.sembly.

A number of the choicest spirits of the neighborhood, some in work, some out of it, but one and all fired with real enthusiasm for a n.o.ble game, gathered with a football about a quarter past twelve. This was a stalwart company, but as soon as Ginger appeared on the scene he took sole command of it. There were those who could kick a football as well as he, there were those who were older, bigger, stronger, but by sheer pressure of character in that a.s.sembly Ginger's word was law.

"Parkins," said Ginger, "you can't keep goal. Come out of it, Parkins.

Here's a chap as can."

While the crestfallen and unwilling Parkins deferred to the master mind, a wave of solemn curiosity pa.s.sed through the cognoscenti of c.o.x's Piece. The Sailor was seen to doff his wonderful fur cap, which alone was a guaranty of untold possibilities in its wearer, to roll up solemnly the sleeves of his tattered blue seaman's jersey, and to take his place in the goal which had been formed by two heaps of coats.

"He's a sailor," said Ginger, for the general information. But the statement was entirely superfluous. It was clear to the humblest intelligence that he was a sailor and nothing else, but Ginger knew the value of such an announcement. To a landsman--and these were landsmen all--a sailor is a sailor. Strange glories are woven round his visionary brow. He is a being apart. Things are permitted to him in speech and deed that would excite criticism in an ordinary mortal. For instance, the first shot at goal, which Ginger took himself by divine right, and quite an easy one, by design, for a real goalkeeper to parry, the Sailor missed altogether. Had he been aught but a sailor his reputation as far as c.o.x's Piece was concerned would have been gone forever.

"Ain't got his sea legs yet." Ginger's coolness and impressiveness were extraordinary. "Been eight year at sea. Round the world nine times. Wrecked twice. Seed the serpent off the coast o' Madagascar.

Give me the ball, Igson. Wait till he gets his eye in an' you'll see."

Ginger's second shot at goal was easier than his first, and the Sailor, to the gratification of his mentor, was able to mobilize in time to stop it.

"What did I tell yer?" said Ginger. "You'll see what he can do when he gets his sea legs."

Within a week the Sailor was the unofficial hero of c.o.x's Piece.

Ginger, of course, was the only authentic one. But he was too great a man ever to be visited by a suspicion of jealousy. Jealousy is a second rate pa.s.sion, and whatever Ginger was he was not second rate.

Besides the Sailor's remarkable success on c.o.x's Piece increased the prestige of his discoverer.

The Sailor took to goalkeeping as a duck takes to water. The truth was he was a goalkeeper born, as a poet is born or a soldier or a musician.

His slender body was hung on wires, his muscles were toughened into steel and whipcord by long years of hard and perilous training. Then his eye, keen and clear as a hawk's, was quick and true. Also he was active as a cat, and with very little practice was able to compa.s.s that _tour de force_ of the goalkeeper's art, the trick of flinging himself full length upon the ground in order to parry a swift shot at short range.

Ginger was a wonderfully shrewd judge of men. And this faculty had never shown itself more clearly than in seeing a born goalkeeper in the Sailor even before that young man had made his debut on c.o.x's Piece.

The brilliant form of his protege was a personal triumph for Ginger.

His reputation for omniscience was more firmly established than ever.

In little more than a fortnight the Sailor was able to keep goal not merely to the admiration of c.o.x's Piece, his fame had begun to spread.

It was not that Henry Harper, even in these critical days, was wholly absorbed in the business of learning to play football. Of vast importance to his progress in the world, as in Ginger's opinion that art was, there was still time and opportunity for the Sailor to think of other things.

He was much impressed by Ginger's perusal of the evening's news, which always took place after supper. At the same time he was troubled.

Ginger took it for granted that Enery could read a newspaper. He treated that as a matter of course, perhaps for the reason that he had seen the Sailor sign his name, laboriously it was true, in the time-book of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited. But Ginger, with all his shrewdness, made a bad mistake. He little guessed that the Sailor's signature stood for the sum of his learning. He little guessed when he flung the _Evening Mercury_ across to the Sailor after he had done with it himself, and the Sailor thanked him with that odd politeness which rather puzzled him, and became absorbed in the paper's perusal, that the young man could hardly read a word.

On the evening this first happened the Sailor had intended no deceit.

He was so straight by nature that he could not have set himself deliberately to take in anybody. The deception came about without any will of his to deceive at all; and he was soon having to maintain a false impression which he had not intended to create. All the same, he would have been mortally ashamed to let the cat out of his bag. He well knew that it would have been a crus.h.i.+ng blow to that terrible thing, the pride of Ginger.

The young man wrestling behind the _Evening Mercury_ with the simplest words it contained, and able to make very little of them in the way of sense because they so seldom came together, reflected ruefully that he ought at all costs to have borne in mind Klond.y.k.e's advice. "Stick to the reading and writing, old friend. That's your line of country.

You'll get more out of those than ever you'll get out of the sea."

Bitterly he regretted now that he had not set store by those inspired words. He began to see clearly that you could not hope to cut much ice ash.o.r.e unless you were a man of education.

He was able to write his name, and that was all. Also he knew his alphabet and could count up to a hundred if you gave him plenty of time. There were also a few words he knew at sight, and thirty, perhaps, short ones, and the easiest in the terribly difficult English language, that he could spell with an effort. This was the sum of his knowledge, and the whole of it was due to Klond.y.k.e, who had given many a half-hour of his leisure to imparting it in the cold and damp misery of the half-deck with no more than a sputter of candle by which to do it.

Sailor had clung desperately to all the sc.r.a.ps of learning which Klond.y.k.e had given him, but when his friend left the s.h.i.+p he had not had the grit to plow the hard furrow of knowledge for himself. Somehow he had not been able to stick it. He needed the inspiration of Klond.y.k.e's voice and presence, of Klond.y.k.e's humor and friendliness.

He could hardly bring himself to open the Bible his friend had given him, and when he tried to read the _Brooklyn Eagle_ he couldn't see it for tears.

Now he had left the sea for good, he knew a bitter price would be exacted for his weakness. To begin with it would be impossible to tell Ginger the truth. Ginger was the kind of man who would look down on him if once he knew his secret. Besides it was a grievous handicap ash.o.r.e never to have been to school. Moreover the Sailor was so honest that any kind of deception hurt him.