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Show HPHE STORY 0? ( 1 A MAN WHO j UN HIS OWN IJTTLE WORLO AEJOARDSHTP WAS A LAW UNTO-llIMSELK CHAPTER I. I Bcarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furu-seth's Furu-seth's credit. He kept a summer cottage cot-tage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpals, and never occu pied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain. Had It not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning morn-ing would not have found me afloat on San Francisco bay. Not but that I was afloat In a safe craft, for the Martinez was a new ferry steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, 1 had little apprehension. I took up my position posi-tion on the forward upper deck, directly direct-ly beneath the pilot house, and allowed al-lowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time 1 was alone in the moist obscurity yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be the captain, in the glass house above my head. It was good that men should be specialists, spe-cialists, I mused. The peculiar knowledge knowl-edge of the pilot and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no more of the sea and navigation naviga-tion than I knew. On the other hand, instead of having to devote my energy en-ergy to the learning of a multitude of things, I concentrated it upon a few particular things, such as, for instance, the analysis of Poe's place in American Ameri-can literature an essay of mine, by the way, in the current Atlantic. From out the fog came the mournful mourn-ful tolling of a bell, and I could sea the pilot turning the wheel with great rapidity. The bell, which had seemed straight ahead, was now sounding from the side. Our own whistle was blowing hoarsely, and from time to time the sound of other whistles came to us from out of the fog. An unseen ferryboat was blowing blast after blast, and a mouth-blown horn was tooting in terror-stricken fashion. A shrill whistle, piping as If gone mad, came from directly ahead and from very hear at hand. Gongs sounded sound-ed on the Martinez. Our paddlewheels stopped, their pulsing beat died away, and then they started again. The shrill whistle, like the chirping of a cricket amid the cries of great beasts, shot through the fog from more to the side and swiftly grew faint and fainter. 1 glanced up. The captain had thrust his head and shoulders out of the pilot house, and was staring intently in-tently into the fog as though by sheer force of will he could penetrate it. His face was anxious. Then everything happened, and with inconceivable rapidity. The fog seemed to break away as though split by a wedge, and the bow of a steamboat steam-boat emerged, trailing fog-wreaths on either side like seaweed on the snout of Leviathan. I could see the pilot house and a white-bearded man leaning lean-ing partly out of it, on his elbows. He was clad in a blue uniform, and I remember re-member noting how trim and quiet he was. His quietness, under the cii'cum stances, was terrible. He accepted destiny, marched hand in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke. As he leaned there, he ran a calm and speculative eye over us, as though to determine the precise point of the collision, col-lision, and took no notice whatever when our pilot, white with rage, shouted, shout-ed, "'Now you've done it!" We must have been struck squarely amidships, for 1 saw nothing, the strange steamboat having passed beyond be-yond my line of vision. The Martinez heeled over, sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown flat on the wet deck, and before be-fore I could scramble to my feet I heard the screams of women. This it was, 1 am certain the most Indescribable Inde-scribable of blood-curdling sounds that threw me into a panic. I remem bered the life preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept back by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of pull ing down life preservers from the overhead over-head racks, while a red-faced man fastened them about the bodies of a hysterical group of women. It was the screaming of the women that most tried my nerves. It must have tried, too, the nerves of the red-faced red-faced man, for I have a picture which will never fade from my mind. A stout gentleman is stuffing a magazine into his overcoat pocket and looking on curiously. cu-riously. A tangled mass of women, with drawn, white faces and open mouths, is shrieking like a chorus of lost souls; and the red-faced man, his face now purplish with wrath, and with his arms extended overhead as in the act of hurling thunderbolts, is shouting. "Shut up! Oh, shut up!" These women, capable of the most sublime emotions, of the tenderest .sympathies, wore open-mouthed and 1 : : - - copypisHr jy jack vcttoorr " 1 screaming. They wanted to live, they were helpless, like rats in a trap, and they screamed. The horror of it drove me out on deck. I was feeling sick and squeamish, squeam-ish, and sat down on a bench. In a hazy way I saw and heard men rush ing and shouting as they strove to lower the boats. It was just as I had read descriptions of such scenes in books. The tackles jammed. Nothing worked. One boat lowered away with the plugs out filled with women and children and then with water, and capsized. cap-sized. Another boat had been lowered by one end, and still hung in the tackle by the other end, where it had been abandoned. Nothing was to be seen of the strange steamboat which had caused the disaster, though I heard men saying that she would undoubtedly undoubt-edly send boats to our assistance. I descended to the lower deck. The Martinez was sinking fast, for the water wa-ter was very near. Numbers of the passengers were leaping overboard. Others, in the water, were clamoring to be taken aboard again. No one heeded them. A cry urose that we were sinking. I was seized by the consequent con-sequent panic, and went over the side in a surge of bodies. How I went over I do not know, though I did know, and instantly, why those in the water were so desirous of getting back on the steamer. The water was cold so cold that it was painful: The pang, as I plunged into it, was as quick and sharp as that of fire. It bit to the marrow. mar-row. It was like the grip of death. I gasped with the anguish and shock of it, filling my lungs before the life preserver popped me to the surface. The taste of the salt water was strong in my mouth, and I was strangling with the acrid stuff in my throat and lungs. How long this lasted I have no conception, con-ception, for a blankness intervened, of which I remember no more than one remembers of troubled and painful sleep. When I aroused, it was as after centuries of time; and I saw, almost above me and emerging from the fog. the bow of a vessel, and three triangular triangu-lar sails, each shrewdly lapping the other and filled with wind. Where the bow cut the water there was a great foaming and gurgling, and I seemed directly in Its path. I tried to cry out, but was too exhausted. The bow plunged down, just missing me and sending a swash of water clear over my head. Then the long, black side of the vessel began slipping past, so near that 1 could have touched it with my hands. I tried to reach it, by my arms were heavy and lifeless. Again I strove to call out, but made no sound. The stern of the vessel shot by, dropping, as it did so, into a hollow between the waves; and I caught a glimpse of a man standing at the wheel, and of another man who seemed to be doing little else than smoke a cigar. He slowly turned his head and glanced out over the water in my direction. Life and death were in that glance. His face wore an absent expression, as of deep thought, and I became afraid that if his eyes did light upon me he would not see me. But he did see me, for he sprang to the wheel, thrusting the other man aside, and whirled it round and round, hand over hand, at the same time shouting orders or-ders of some sort. The vessel seemed to go off at a tangent to its former course and leapt almost instantly from view into the fog. I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, uncon-sciousness, and tried with all the power of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that was rising around me. A little later I heard the stroke of oars, growing grow-ing nearer and nearer, and the calls of a man. When he was very near I heard him crying, in vexed fashion, "Why in hell don't you sing out?" This meant me, I thought, and then the blankness and darkness rose over me. CHAPTER II. I seemed swinging In a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness. But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I told myself it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I was Jerked from swing to counter-swing with Irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. I gasped, caught by breath painfully, and opened my eyes. Two men were kneeling beside me, working over me. My mighty rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a ship on the sea. A man's hard hands were chafing my naked chest. I squirmed under the pain of it, and half lifted my head. My chest was raw and red, and I could see tiny blood globules starting through the torn and inflamed in-flamed cuticle. "That'll do, Yonson," one of the men said. "Can't yer see you've bloomin' well rubbed all the gent's skin orf?" The man addressed as Yonson, a man of the heavy Scandinavian type, ceased chafing me, and arose awkwardly awk-wardly to his feet. The man who had spoken to him was clearly a Cockney, with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost effeminate face of the man who has absorbed the sound of Bow bells with his mother's milk. A draggled drag-gled muslin cap on his head and dirty gunnysack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook of the decidedly dirty ship's galley in which I found myself. "An' 'ow yer feelin' now, sir?" he asked, with the subservient smirk which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors. For reply I twisted weakly into a sitting posture, and was helped by Yonson to my feet. The cook grinned and thrust into my hand a steaming mug with an " 'Ere, this'll do yer good." It was a nauseous mess ship's coffee but the heat of it was revivifying. revivi-fying. Between gulps of the molten stuff I glanced down at my raw and bleeding chest and turned to the Scan dinavian. "Thank you, Mr. Yonson," I said; "but don't you think your measures were rather heroic?" "My name is Johnson, not Yonson," he said, in very good, though slow English, with no more than a shade of accent to it. There was mild protest in his pale blue eyes, and withal a frankness and manliness that quite won me to him. "Thank you, Mr., Johnson," I corrected, cor-rected, and reached out my hand for his. He hesitated, awkward and bashful, shifted his weight from one leg to the other, then blunderingly gripped my hand in a hearty shake. "Have you any dry clothes I may put on?" I asked the cook. "Yes, sir," he answered, with cheerful cheer-ful alacrity. "I'll run down an' tyke a look over my kit, if you've no objections", objec-tions", sir, to wearin' my togs." "And where am I?" I asked Johnson, whom I took to be one of the sailors. "What vessel is this, and where is she bound?" "Off the Farallones, heading about sou'west," he answered, slowly and methodically, as though groping for his best English, and rigidly observing the order of my queries. "The schoon- Tnthis tale ( 1 JACK LON--1 f DON'S SEA EX- ) Iperience IS VsEDWITH ALL I .S-AR4LLPEN.- from his hand; my flesh revolted. And between this and the smells arising from various pots boiling and on the galley fire, I was in haste to get out into the fresh air. Further, there was the need of seeing the captain about what arrangements could be made for getting me ashore. "And whom have I to thank for this kindness?" I asked, when I stood com pletely arrayed, a tiny boy's cap on my head, and for coat a dirty, striped cotton jacket which - ended at the small of my back and the sleeves of which reached just below my elbows. The cook drew himself up in a smugly smug-ly humble fashion, a deprecating smirk on bis face. "Mugridge, sir," he fawned, his effeminate ef-feminate features running into a greasy smile. "Thomas Mugridge, sir, an' at yer service." "All right, Thomas," I said. "1 shall not forget you when my clothes are dry." "Thank you, sir," he said, very gratefully and very humbly indeed. Precisely in the way that the door slid back, he slid aside, and I stepped out and staggered across the moving deck to a corner of the cabin, to which I clung for support. The schooner, heeled over far out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging plung-ing into the long Pacific roll. The fog was gone, and in its place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the water. I turned to the east, where 1 knew, California must lie, but could see nothing save low-lying fog banks. In the southwest, and almost in our course, I saw the pyramidal loom of some vessel's sails. Beyond a sailor at the wheel, who stared curiously across the top of a cabin, J attracted no no'ce whatever. Everybody seemed interested in what was going on amidships. There, on a hatch, a large man was lying on nis buck. His eyes were closed, and he was apparently unconscious. A sailor, from time to time, and quite methodically, as a matter of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean at the end of a rope, hauled it in hand under hand, and sluiced its contents over the prostrate man. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |