The Arm Chair at the Inn Part 14

"Sometimes it didn't take that long," and a quick laugh escaped Herbert's lips as if to conceal his serious mood. "Those things depend on how you feel and what has started your thinking apparatus to working.

I walked out of a kraal in Australia one summer's night when the home-hunger was on me and never stopped until I reached Sydney--the last hundred miles barefoot. You must have known about it, for I met you right after"--and he turned to The Engineer, who nodded in an amused way. "That was before we struck Borneo, if I remember?"

"Why barefooted, Herbert?" asked Louis, hitching his chair the closer.

"Because the soles and heels were gone and the uppers were all that were left."

"Tell them about it, Herbert," remarked The Engineer with a smile, pulling away at his pipe.

"Oh, if you would, Monsieur Herbert! I tried to tell Monsieur High-Muck about it the night you arrived, but Monsieur Louis' horn put it out of my head. It is better that he hears it from you"--and the old man's lip quivered, his face lighting up with admiration. Herbert was his high-priest in matters of this kind.

"There is really nothing to tell," returned Herbert. "I was tending cattle for a herdsman at the time up in the hills--I and a friend of mine. We had both run away from our s.h.i.+ps and were trying the rolling country for a change, when one of those irresistible, overwhelming attacks of homesickness seized me, and without caring a picayune what became of me, I turned short on my tracks and struck out for the coast.

A man does that sort of thing sometimes. I had no money and only the clothes on my back, but I knew the railroad was some forty miles away, and that when I reached it I could work my pa.s.sage into civilization and from there on to London.

"The weather was warm and I slept in a cow shack when I found one, and in the bushes when they got scarce. Finally I reached the railroad. I had never tried stealing a ride, sleeping on the trucks, hiding in freight cars, and being put off time and again until the next town was reached--I had never tried it because it had never been necessary, and then I hated that sort of thing. But I had no objection to asking for a lift, telling the agent or conductor the whole story, and I did it regularly at every station I pa.s.sed on foot, only to get the customary oath or jeering laugh. After I had walked about sixty miles I came upon a water station known as Merton, with a goods train standing by. This time I asked for a ride on the tender. The engineer met my request with a vacant stare--never taking his pipe from his mouth. The fireman was a different sort of man. He not only listened to my story, but handed me part of the contents of his dinner pail wrapped up in a newspaper--which I was glad to get, and told him so. Before the train had gone fifty yards she was side-tracked for orders--which gave me another chance to get at the fireman. 'I may lose my job if I do,' he said, 'but I've been up against it myself; come around a little later; it'll be dark soon and something may turn up.'

"Something did turn up. While the engineer was oiling under his engine I got a wink from the fireman, climbed on the tender, crept beneath a tarpaulin, and rooted down in the coal. There, tired out, I fell asleep.

I was awakened by the whistle of the locomotive, and then came the slow wheeze of the cylinder head, and we were off. Sleeping on a hard plank under a car going thirty miles an hour is a spring mattress to lying in a pile of coal with lumps as big as your head grinding into your back.

Now and then the fireman--not my particular friend, but a man who had replaced him as I discovered when we whizzed past the light of a station--would ram his shovel within reach of my ribs--just missing me.

But I didn't mind--every mile meant that much nearer home and less tramping in the heat and dust to get there. If I could manage to keep hidden until we reached Sydney I should gain one hundred--maybe two hundred--miles before morning.

"About midnight we came to a halt, followed by a lot of backing and filling--shunting here and there. The safety-valve was thrown wide open, or the exhaust, or something else, and suddenly the steam went out of her. Then came a dead silence--not a sound of any kind. Sore as I was--and every bone in my body ached--I wrenched myself loose, lifted the edge of the tarpaulin, and peeped out. The engine and tender were backed up against a building which looked like a round-house; not a soul was in sight. I slid to the ground and began to peer around. After a moment I caught the swing of a lantern and heard the steps of a man. It was a watchman going his rounds.

"'Warm night,' he hollered when he came abreast of me. He evidently took me for a fireman, and I didn't blame him, for I was black as soot--clothes, face, hands, and hair.

"'Yes,' I said, and stopped. It wouldn't do to undeceive him. Then I remembered the name of the station where I had boarded the tender. 'Been hot all the way from Merton. How far is that from Sydney?'

"'Oh, a devil of a way!' He lifted his lantern and held it to my face.

'Say, you ain't no fireman--you're a hobo, ain't ye?'

"I nodded.

"'And you're p'inted for Sydney? Well, it serves ye right for stealin' a ride; you're eighty-two miles further away than when ye started. That locomotive is a special and got return orders.'"

The Engineer threw back his head and roared.

"Yes, that's it, Herbert. I remember just how you looked when we ran against each other in Sydney."

"Not barefooted, were you, old fellow?" remarked Louis in a sympathetic tone. "That was tough."

"Barefooted? Not much!" exclaimed The Engineer. "He was quite a n.o.b.

That's why I made up to him; he was so much better dressed than I. And do you know, Herbert, I never heard a word of you from that time on until I struck one of your statues in the Royal Academy the other day. I never thought you'd turn out sculptor with medals and things. Thought you wanted more room to swing around in. This is something new, isn't it?"

Herbert took his freshly lighted cigar from his mouth long enough to say, "About as new as your building dams. You were trying to get into the real-estate business when I bid you good-by in Sydney. Did it work?"

"No, I got into jail instead."

Everybody stared.

"What was it all about?" asked Herbert, unperturbed.

"Stealing!"

"_Stealing!_" exclaimed Le Blanc.

"Yes. That was about it," he answered. "Only this time I tried to bag a government and got locked up for my pains. One of your countrymen"--and he nodded toward me--"was mixed up in it. By the way"--and he rose from his chair--"you don't mind my taking this candle, do you?--I've been looking at something in that cabinet over there all the evening and I can't stand it any longer. I may be wrong, but they look awfully like it."

He had reached the carved triptych, and was holding the flame of the candle within a few inches of a group of tiny figures--some of Lemois'

most precious carvings--one the figure of a man with a gun.

"Just as I thought. Prison work, isn't it, Monsieur Lemois? Yes--of course it is--I see the tool marks. Made of soup bones. Oh, very good indeed--best I have ever seen. Where did you get this?"

"They were made by the French prisoners in Moscow," answered Lemois, who had also risen from his seat and was now standing beside him. "But how did you know?" he asked in astonishment. "Most of my visitors, if they look at them at all, think they are Chinese."

"Because no one, if he can get ivory, makes a thing like this of bone"--and he held it up to our gaze--"and everybody out of jail who has this skill _can_ get ivory. I've made a lot myself--never as fine as these--this man must have been an expert. I used to keep from going crazy by doing this sort of thing--that and the old dodge of taming fleas so they'd eat out of my hand. What a pile of good stuff you have here--regular museum"--and with a searching, comprehensive glance he replaced the candle and regained his chair.

I bent forward and touched his elbow.

"We've entertained all sorts of people here," I said with a laugh, "but I think this is the first time we have ever had an out-and-out ticket-of-leave man. Do you mind telling us how it happened?"

"No; but it wouldn't interest you. Just one of those fool sc.r.a.pes a fellow gets into when he is chucked out neck and heels into the world."

Brierley drew his chair closer--so did Louis and Le Blanc.

Herbert glanced toward his friend. "Let them have it, old man. We promise not to set the dogs on you."

"Thanks. But it wouldn't be the first time. Well, all right if it won't bore you. Now let me think"--and he lifted his weather-bronzed face, made richer by the glow of the candles overhead, and began scratching his grizzly beard with his forefinger.

"It was after you left Borneo, Herbert, that I came across two fellows--Englishmen--who told me of some new gold diggings on the west coast, and I was fool enough to join them, working my pa.s.sage on one of the home-going tramp steamers. Well, we thrashed about for six months and landed on one of the small islands in the Caribbean Sea--the name of which I forget--where we left the s.h.i.+p and hid until she disappeared.

The gold fever was well out of us by that time, and, besides, I had gotten tired of scrubbing decks and my two fellow tramps of was.h.i.+ng dishes. The port was a regular coaling station and some other craft would come along; if not, we could stay where we were. The climate was warm, bananas were cheap and plenty; we were entirely fit, and--like many another lot of young chaps out for a lark--did not care a tinker's continental what happened. That, if you think about it, is the high-water mark of happiness--to be perfectly well, strong, twenty-five years of age, and ready for anything that bobs up.

"This time it was a small schooner with a crew of about one hundred men, instead of the customary ten or twelve. A third of them came ash.o.r.e, bought provisions and water, and were about to shove off to the vessel again, when one of my comrades recognized the mate as an old friend. He offered to take us with them, and in half an hour we had gathered together our duds and had pushed off with the others. The following week we ran into a sheltered cove, where we began landing our cargo. Then it all came out: we were loaded to the scuppers with old muskets in cases, some thousand rounds of ammunition, and two small, muzzle-loading field-guns. There was a revolution in Boccador--one of the small South American republics--they have them every year or so--and we were part of the insurgent navy! If we were caught we were shot; if we got a new flag on top of Government House in the capital of San Josepho, we would have a plantation apiece and negroes enough to run it. It sounded pleasant, didn't it?

"I'm not going into all the details--it's the story of the jail you want, not the revolution. Well, we had two weeks of tramping up to our waists in the swamps; three days of fighting, in which one of the field-guns blew off its nose, killing the mate; and the next thing I knew, my two companions and I were looking down the muzzles of a dozen rifles held within three feet of our heads. That ended it and we were marched into town and locked up in the common jail--and rightly named, I tell you, for a filthier or more deadly hole I never got into. It was a square, two-story building--all four sides to the town--with a patio, or court, in the centre. Outside was a line of sentries and inside were more sentries and a couple of big dogs.

"They put us on the ground floor with a murderous-looking chap for guard. As the place was packed with prisoners, we three were shoved into one cell. Every morning at daylight one or two--once six--poor devils were led out; the big gate was opened, and then there would come a rattling of rifle-shots, and when the six came back they were on planks with sheets over them. All this we could see by standing on each other's shoulders and looking over the grating.

"Our turn came the morning of the seventh day. The door was unlocked and we were ordered to fall in. But we didn't go through the big outer gate; we were led to a door across the yard and into a bare room where another murderous-looking chap, in a dirty uniform with shoulder-straps and a sword, sat at a table. On either side of him were two more ruffians, one with an inkstand. Not a man Friday of them spoke anything but Spanish.

When we were pushed in front of his highness in shoulder-straps, he looked us over keenly and began whispering to the man with the ink. Then to my surprise--and before either I or my two friends--one of whom spoke a little Spanish--could utter a protest--right-about-face, and we were hustled back into our cell and locked up again.

"For three days and nights the usual jail things happened: We had two meals a day--bone soup and a hunk of mouldy bread; the guard tramped in the dust outside our cell, while at night another took his place--the dogs prowling or sniffing at the crack of our door; at daylight the rifle-shots!

"We had started to work for our release by that time, and by persistent begging got a sheet of paper, and, with the help of my companion, I wrote a letter to 'his Excellenza,' as the guard called his nibs, informing him that we were English tourists who had taken pa.s.sage for sheer love of adventure, and demanding that our case be brought to the attention of the English consul.

"One week pa.s.sed and then a second before we were informed by the head jailer that there _was_ no English consul, and that if there had been it would have made no difference, as we had been taken with arms in our hands, and that but for some inquiries put on foot by his Excellenza we would have been shot long ago.

"So the hours and days dragged on and we had about started in to make our wills when, one morning after our slop coffee had been pushed in to us, the bolts were slid back and the nattiest-looking young fellow you ever laid your eyes on stepped inside. He was about twenty-four, was dressed from head to foot in a suit of white duck, and looked as if he had just cleared the deck of the royal yacht. With him were two slovenly looking functionaries, one of whom carried a note-book. The young fellow eyed us all three, sizing us up with the air of a man accustomed to that sort of thing, and said with an air of authority:

"'I am the American consul. Your communication was brought to me because your government is not represented here. You're in a bad fix, but I'll help you out if I can. Now tell me all about it.'