Chapter III: Part 3

"I'd like to see 'em treat me, or any member o' Congress, any other way!"

"A member of Congress--that's right. And as a member of Congress you're drawing down how much, J. J.?"

"Seventy-five hundred a year--and allowances," replied Flavin, looking around the wardroom and not caring particularly who might hear the figures.

"And before you were sent to Washington you never made more than fifteen dollars a week in your life," thought Carlin. Aloud he said, in as gentle a tone as he could on short-order muster: "And did you ever stop to think, J. J., that while you're being paid that seventy-five hundred a year--and allowances--the captain of this ship, with ten or eleven hundred lives and a twelve-million-dollar war-machine to look out for, gets less than five thousand a year--and that only after thirty-odd years of professional study and practice? And that almost all of these other officers you see standing around here will regularly have to go up on the bridge and take full charge of this ship and all on her, and let 'em, some night or day, make a mistake, lose their nerve, or close their eyes for an instant and--bing! All off with the ten or eleven hundred lives, not to mention the twelve-million-dollar plant! And these officers under the captain have had all the way from seven or eight to thirty years of continuous professional study and practice, and yet some of them are getting less than one-third of the money you get."

To which the Honorable J. J. responded blandly: "Well, what of it? Their pay and my pay is fixed by the same gover'ment. If they don't pay more, it's because the people who regulate their pay and my pay think they ain't worth any more."

"Fine!" said Carlin--"seeing that Congress regulates them both!"

"Huh!" Flavin hadn't foreseen that. "Here, you!" he roared to the mess-boy with the tray of cigars; and the little brown boy, with no inclining admiration for stout-waisted, loud-voiced men in splendid new gray trousers and frock coats, but always well drilled, floated himself and his tray respectfully, if not over-hurriedly, across the ward-room deck to Flavin.

"If you worked for me I'd soon learn you to move faster," growled Flavin. He began to paw through the tray. "Where's that cigar I had before? This it?" He read the name on the band. "Yes, that's it. Twelve cents apiece in Cuba, did y' say, Carlin? I wonder couldn't I get somebody to get me some of 'em? Here, ain't you having one?"

"No, I've smoked enough."

"Enough?--and swell smokes like this kind being passed round!" He took two.

Suddenly, smoking anew, Flavin cast a suspicious glance at the newspaper man. "What you getting at, Carlin--trying to drive into me all this talk about the navy? Is it because I'm a member of Congress?"

"I don't know that I've been trying to drive anything into you," retorted Carlin. "But you made a crack about the navy, and after you've been in Washington awhile longer somebody will be sure to tell you that my favorite monologue is the navy. They'll probably tell you, too, that if I couldn't get anything more intelligent to listen I'd hold up a row of trolley-poles and pump it into 'em. And so long as we are at it--take the officers' case again. As a member of Congress, J. J., you ought to know these things. When from out of his pay an officer deducts the cost of his grub and uniforms, not to speak of other items----"

"Huh!" Flavin was thinking of a new speech. Its theme was to be the soft times of certain pampered government servants, this for the undistinguished and unterrified voter of his district; but this item of grub and clothes was disturbing. "The gover'ment don't furnish 'em grub and clothes?"

"It doesn't. And the special full-dress coat of that officer standing there, or any of those younger officers, happens to cost nearly one-half of one month's pay--just the coat. And being naval officers, they have to live up to a certain standard aboard ship, as do their families, if they have any, ashore. And a lot of other items. Take this reception this afternoon--they have to pay for it out of their own pockets."

Flavin whoofed two, three funnels of smoke thoughtfully toward the air-port. That speech would sure have to be given up, or vamped up in some new way, or saved for prudent delivery before closed secret organizations--that was sure. An impressive speech, too, he could have made of it. Confound Carlin butting in with his inside information! And Carlin not being a politician either, what could a fellow do with him?

Carlin waited for the words of wisdom to flow. They flowed. "Y' know, Carlin, there's nothing to be gained in my district by voting for any naval bill."

"Is there anything to be lost?"

"Suppose I could swap a vote with somebody for a federal building or something in my district for something in his district?"

"Go ahead and swap it!" barked Carlin. "And keep on swapping till your district wakes up to you and swaps you for somebody else!"

Flavin shook his head in triumphant prophecy. "They won't--not in my district, Carlin. It's too solid. A nomination is an election in my district, and the machine says who'll be nominated. But I tell you what, Carlin--a man like you in Washin'ton could help me out a lot through your paper up home." He eyed Carlin narrowly to see how he took that. Carlin said nothing. Flavin continued: "You weren't born in the bushes yesterday, Carlin, for all you're no pol. You know enough about the game to know there's nobody giving somethin' for nothing in politics. And----"

Carlin raised a warning palm. "Pull up, pull up! You don't have to do any trading in this thing. You want to remember, J. J., that I'm a newspaper man even before I'm a navy man, and whatever you do you'll get what's coming to you from me."

The Honorable Flavin, not without doubt in his eyes, stared out of the air-port. Presently he said: "I'll take a look over the ship, I guess. See you later."

The eyes of Carlin, searching the ward-room for such officers of the ship as he had not yet greeted, encountered the quizzical and questioning glance of "Sharkey," otherwise Lieutenant Trench, United States Navy. "Who is your large and sonorous friend?" queried Trench. Being a host he did not put it in words, but being human he could not help looking it.

The spoken answer to the unspoken question would probably have horrified the Honorable Flavin. "He's a man from up my way who made himself useful to the machine, and so they sent him to Washington. He's pretty raw, Sharkey, but I suppose he could be worse. At least we know where he will always be found."

"And where, Carl, will he always be found?"

Carlin smiled with Trench. "Where the votes are. That's his idea of supreme political genius--playing for the votes of the moment. I was talking up the navy to him, with an increased navy-pay bill in mind for this session. But I don't suppose that interests you, Sharkey."

"Thanks to the thrift and thoughtfulness of an acquisitive ancestry," smiled Trench, "I suppose I could worry along if there was never a pay-day in the service. But most of the rest of the fellows would surely be interested. There's Pay Totten now. He'd----"

"Where is Pay? I haven't seen him since I came aboard."

"Nor you won't for some time again, unless you carry a longer than regulation glass, for Pay's by this time on the high seas and southward bound. That's why I spoke of him. But come into my room."

From a pigeonhole in his desk in his room Trench pulled out several typewritten pages. "Ever hear, Carl, of Pay's bale of blankets?"

"Nope."

"Ah-h--yours shall be the joy of hearing the tale from the lips of the poet-author himself. You may elevate your high literary eyebrows at the construction, but recalling that you, or some other competent critic, told me once that construction was, after all, subordinate--that is, physical, not psychological, construction--I venture to tell this story in my own way. Hark, now!" He smoothed out his sheets of paper and read:

"She was the war-ship _Missalanna_, which lay out in the stream
Of a port in Chinese waters which translated means Cold Cream.
A wireless comes from the admiral--he flew two stars on blue--
And the message read: 'At once cast free and join me in Chee Foo.
But bring along all packages, all bundles, and all mail
Our need is great, the fleet does wait, come forced draft, do not fail.'

"And says the _Missalanna's_ commander: 'Whatever shall I do?
'Tis a two days' Chinese holiday, don't they know that in Chee Foo?
And a thousand tons of coal we'll need, and merchandise in dock
Fills half the tin-clad warehouse, and immovable as rock
Are sampan men and coolies when they've knocked off for the day--
And now 'tis snow and hail and sleet and a two days' holiday!'
"But he wakes up good old Totten
Sleeping soundly in his bed,
And showing the admiral's wireless,
Mutters: 'This is what he said.'"

Trench looked over the top of his first page. "How's it so far, Carl?"

"They've put men in the brig for less. But go ahead."

"Thanks. I proceed:

"'I was dreaming,' says good old Totten, 'I was writing to my wife
Of Chinese native customs and the joys of navy life.
But two hundred coolie men we'll need and a score of sampans wide
To get that coal aboard the ship and sail by morning tide.
No night for honest men to roam, but be sure ashore I'll go--
Mayhap in a shack on the water-side I'll find my friend Jim Joe.'

"Pay found his old-time Chinese friend and tells him what's to do.
'A thousand tons of coal I want and I'm putting it up to you.'
But Joe he looks at his Melican flend and he says: 'Me no can do--
To-night good Chinese mens they go and burn the joss-sticks--so--
And bad Chinese mens, my flend,' says Joe, with a wink or two,
'They play fan-a-tan, low-lee and mot.' Says Joe: 'Me no can do.'

"And saying the last part over again--
With another wink or two,
'They play fan-a-tan, low-lee and mot.'
Says Joe: 'Me no can do.'

"Then Pay, with a grip of Joe's pigtail, 'You mind the time--you do?--
When I pulled you out from a gunboat's snout?--and you now say: "No can do"?
Two hundred coolie boys I want and twenty sampans wide,
And twice five hundred tons aboard, so we sail by morning tide.
When I left the ship the skipper says: "Now, Pay, it's up to you!"'
Pay gives Joe's tail a gentle twitch--'Now, Joe, you must can do!'

"And Joe, with queue curled all anew, in the sleet and hail he goes
And twoscore crews of coolie boys he drags out by their toes.
'Two hundled coolie boys me want and twenty sampans wide,
And tice fi' hundled tlons on ship so she sail by morning tlide.'
And some he tore from their honest beds and some from loud wassail,
But all came out, for Joe was stout, into the sleet and hail.

"And two hundred lusty coolie boys
With twenty sampans wide,
Laid twice five hundred tons to where
The ship in stream did ride."

Trench laid down the sheets.

"That's not the end, Sharkey?"

"No, no. But that's the end of the Jim Joe part, which was hailed as so masterly a performance on Pay's part--getting those sampan men and coolies out of their beds on a night like that and to work at coaling ship for us--that I, the uncrowned poet laureate of the Asiatic squadron, was commissioned to do it in verse, which I proceeded to do one night; and got that far, swinging along fine and dandy, when the messenger called me for the mid-watch."

"And you never finished it?"

"I couldn't--not in rhyme. After that four hours' night-watch the rhymes were all gone from me. It was a rough night. A monsoon made out of the southeast----"

"Omit the professional jargon, Sharkey, and your professional troubles, and remember the first law of story-telling is to tell the story."

"Wizz!" murmured Sharkey. "But, thus encouraged, I proceed. Well, getting Jim Joe started with his twenty sampans and his two hundred coolies was only part of Pay's job that night. The big warehouse, where goods for our fleet and other craft were stored, was in charge of a Chinaman we called Hoo Ling, and he knew less English than Joe, and appreciated even less than Joe the need of quick action. The admiral's wireless message looked just like any other wireless message to this big chink, Hoo Ling. But it's a great thing to be a student of the Chinese and of Chinese customs and of Chinese mental processes. Pay wheedled Ling a little, bluffed him a little, touched on past friendships a little, on possible future business a lot, painted a picture of our warlike forces over to Chee Foo, touched--not too casually--on the so much greater love which the officers and men of the United States Navy bore for China than for Japan, and such other little subtleties as he could invoke or invent. At last the old fellow was moved to open up and let Pay pick out what packages were for the fleet.

"And so, with four yeomen of the ship roused from restful hammocks to make memoranda of the addresses as fast as he pried them loose from the main pile and called them out, and with twelve able seamen of the watch to hustle the packages along as fast as the yeomen recorded them, and with forty other bustling bluejackets to load them into the boats, Pay tore into that pile of freight, which was about as high and twice as long and wide as a three-apartment house. There were probably four or five thousand packages of various kinds to be overhauled, and they were addressed in four languages--English, German, French, and Chinese. If Pay was the only white man in that part of China who could have charmed that impassive old storekeeper out of his bamboo bed that time of night, he was probably likewise the only white man in port that night who could read those Chinese shopkeepers' addresses.

"Dry goods, wet goods, hardware, grocery stuff, butcher's stuff, jeweller's stuff, ship's stores, bales of cotton, bales of silk, curios, souvenirs, bicycles, sewing-machines, sacks of rice, sacks of coffee, sacks of potatoes, barrels of flour and of gasolene, auto tires, boxes of tea, quarters of beef and of mutton, cases of breakfast-food and of oil, packages all the way from the size of a finger-ring to packages the size of an auto-truck. You know what a big, husky chap Pay Totten is? Imagine him on a slushy, snowy night, stripped to the waist, wading into that pile--feet, shoulders, knees, hands, elbows, with his teeth almost--tearing out those packages, and from addresses in English, French, German, and especially Chinese, picking out flying such as were for our ships."

Trench paused. A reminiscent smile was parting his lips.

"Hurry up. Did you sail on time next morning?" demanded Carlin.

"We did. With our coal aboard and the packages for the fleet, we made a record run and arrived in Chee Foo hours before the admiral was looking for us. And it was the day before Christmas, and our coming made the whole fleet happy for Christmas week, and our skipper got 'Well done!' from the flag-bridge, but--" Trench looked at Carlin and smiled ruefully. "There's so often a but, isn't there, to the otherwise happy tale? Among the seven hundred and odd packages receipted for by Paymaster Totten it seems there was missing one bale of blankets. What happened to the bale of blankets? they queried Paymaster Totten, and 'Lord!' says poor Pay, 'how do I know? It might 've been stolen on the wharf, or dropped overboard between the wharf and one of the ship's boats, or lost in rowing out to the ship or hoisting it over the ship's side. There were a dozen ship's boats and two hundred ship's men coming and going, and half a mile between the ship and shore; and it was a black, blustering night of sleet and hail, and there were also hundreds of coolies and dozens of sampans on the coal. It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight--how do I know what happened to one lone bale of blankets?'

"However, Pay nor anybody else worried much about the blankets at the time. Our skipper recommended, in view of Paymaster Totten's extraordinary exertions on that night, that the bale of blankets be not charged against his accounts. And the admiral, when he heard all the story, approved and passed it along to Washington. But it came back. And by and by it was sent on to Washington again. And by and by it came back.

"And forth from us it went in due time, and for the last time, we thought, on leaving for home by way of Suez and Guantanamo. In the Mediterranean we picked up the European squadron and with them enjoyed several gala occasions, notably at Alexandria, Naples, Villefranche, and Gibraltar, at each of which ports we deemed it incumbent upon the service to spread itself a little. And during these festivities Pay was there with the rest of us, but between the gala-days going without his bottle of beer with lunch, his cigar after dinner, in order that on the great days he might be able to contribute his share toward these receptions and yet not impair that sum--three-quarters of his pay it was--which he sent home monthly, in order that Mrs. Pay and the five little Pays might have food, lodging, clothes, and otherwise maintain the little social standard of living imposed upon a naval officer's family.

"'Thank God,' says Pay on our last day in the Mediterranean, 'we are leaving here to-morrow!' and he hauls out his aged special full-dress suit, and looks it over, and says with a sigh: 'I'm afraid I'll have to lay you away, old friend; but a few thrifty months in West India winter quarters and I may be able to replace you with a grand new shining fellow, and so come up the home coast the gayly apparelled, dashing naval officer of tradition.'

"And we went on to the West Indies and put in the rest of the winter there, with Pay forgetting all about the bale of blankets, until the night before we were to go north. On that night a steamer from New York puts into where the fleet is, and in her mail for us is our old friend the letter of the indorsements as to the loss of the blankets, and now with one more indorsement since we'd last seen it, to wit: the department saw no reason to change its original ruling as to the responsibility for the loss of the bale of blankets, and Paymaster Totten's accounts would be charged with the loss thereof."

Trench paused to allow a swift hot blast from Carlin to sweep through the room. "The archaic bureaucrats!" concluded Carlin fervently.

"Yes," agreed Trench, "and yet, Carl, from their point of view----"

"A point of view which impairs high service is criminal."

Trench knitted his brows. "Maybe you're right, Carl, but--recalling your advice about story-telling--Pay Totten, foreseeing a battleship cruise along the North Atlantic coast this summer, with certain pleasant but expensive ports in sight, could see where it might well behoove him to ask for a change of venue--that is, if he ever hoped to settle for that bale of blankets. It was costing him thirty dollars on the ship for his grub, which, as you know, didn't include any smokes or an occasional bottle of beer, nor the laundry for fifteen white suits--a fresh one every day in the tropics--and a few other sundry items, not to mention other minor but inescapable items.

"So Pay thought it all over, and on his way north he put in his request, and two days ago he got his orders; and yesterday he left us. And this morning--look!"--from the pile of letters atop of his desk Trench selected one. "This came. Listen:

"DEAR SHARKEY:

"We're sailing to-day for the West African coast to look into Liberian matters. And in that country, where you're likely any time to fall in with a member of the cabinet sitting barefooted in the middle of the road peeling potatoes, the wear and tear on uniforms won't probably be over-heavy. And if there should happen to be any _recherché_ affairs when we move onto the Congo coast, I am only hoping that the natives won't inspect too closely any special full-dress paymaster's coat which should be blue but, as it happens, is green in the region of the seams. And after the West African sojourn we are bound for a little jaunt of a thousand miles or so up the Amazon, where I learn--and I've taken some trouble to learn--we won't have to wear full dress at all, not even when calling upon the tribal high chiefs. I'll come home yet with that old full-dress standby--if it isn't blown off my back during some tropical typhoon.

"It's a great thing, Sharkey, the being allowed two months' advance pay on leaving for foreign service. For me it means that Mrs. Totten and the children can have their little place and their one little maid at the little beach which did them all so much good last summer, and, if they're economical, maybe an occasional trip to the movies.

"And so I am leaving almost happy. Of course, the good-by and that two years made me feel a bit lumpy and lonesome leaving them, but the race would be too easy if we didn't carry some little extra weight, wouldn't it? As to the bale----"

Trench looked up. "There's something else, personal stuff, which doesn't concern the story." He laid down the letter and looked up. "I couldn't help hearing a word or two of what your friend the congressman was saying to-day--half the ward-room also heard it, I guess. There's a case for him, Carl, if he's the right kind--a special bill to reimburse Totten."

Carlin jumped to his feet. "You're right, Sharkey. And he isn't the worst in the world. I'll put it up to him right now, if he's still aboard."

Congressman Flavin was still aboard, but also was bursting with something to tell. "What d'y'know, Carlin--nine hundred and odd sailors aboard this ship and not home once in ten years to vote."

"Why----"

"And you ask me to vote for bills for a lot of people that ain't ever home to vote. I wouldn't 'a' known only I was speaking to a couple of 'em happened to live in my district, and they told me."

"That's all right, J. J., but forget that voting stuff for a minute and listen to me." And briefly, rapidly, and not without art, Carlin retold the story--retold it in prose entirely--of Paymaster Totten and the bale of blankets. When he had done he added: "Now, J. J., what do you think of a man doing a good job like that and losing out by it?"

"Always the way, Carlin--always," replied the Honorable Flavin briskly. "What most of these fellows on these ships need is a little course in practical politics. Why didn't that paymaster sit tight in his bunk, the time his captain came to him with that hurry-up message, and tell him he couldn't get any coolies or sampans? If he'd just rolled over in his bunk and said, 'Captain, it can't be done,' or if he'd gone ashore and made a bluff it couldn't be done, he wouldn't 'a' had any bale of blankets to pay for--see? This doing things you don't have to do, and nothing in it for yourself when you do do 'em--that's kid's work."

"All fine, J. J., but how about Christmas for the fleet?"

"Christmas? Let 'em look out for their own Christmas! He'd be getting his pay envelope every week just the same, wouldn't he?"

"Fine again--and as beautifully practical as you always are, J. J. But how about doing what Totten thought was his duty?"

"Duty? That ain't duty--that's foolishness. Duty's doing what you got to do, not doing something just to make a good fellow of yourself."

Slowly Carlin began to count: "One, two, three----"

"What's the matter?" demanded Flavin.

"A dream I had is taking the count--eight, nine, ten, out! Say, Flavin, did it ever occur to you that your duty included knowing something about your business--who can vote, for instance, among a thousand other things, and who can't?"

"The mistake you make and all you wise high-brows make, Carlin"--and the Honorable Flavin fixed him with a knowing eye--"is in thinking I don't know my job. My job ain't in being in Congress. A hell of a lot they'll know at home what I'm doing in Washin'ton after I get there. My job is being elected to Congress. And getting elected means to be able to get votes, and getting votes means being with the people who'll give you the votes. And your paymaster friend"--the Honorable Flavin favored Carlin with a wink and another knowing smile--"and his push, they don't swing any votes. But o' course that's for them. With you it's different. Now, you being in Washin'ton with a string o' newspapers--huh?"

Carlin had walked off.

"There he goes," muttered Flavin, "pluggin' the game of a lot of people who can never do a thing for him."

Trench was shaking his head, half-sadly and half-smilingly, at Carlin. He replaced Totten's letter on the pile on his desk. "One of the jokes of the mess is to accuse me of having so much money that I could publish my own books of foolish rhymes if I felt like it, but I haven't enough to pay for that bale of blankets for Pay Totten. Aboard ship Pay has just as much money as I have. But no matter--I'm one of those who believe that nobody beats the game in the long run. The eternal laws are against it. The people get everybody pretty near right in time. And fellows like Pay will get what's due them some time. And your congressional friend, too, I hope. But"--Trench stood up--"what d'y'say, Carl, if we get out into the ward-room country again? It's been a long watch since you and I clinked glasses together."

And outside, in the mess-room, standing almost under the air-port which opened out to sea, Trench held his glass up to Carlin's, saying: "There was a boson's mate I knew one time, named Cahalan. I used to absorb most of my philosophy from him. I was on the bridge one night, and in one of the wings was Cahalan and another lad of the watch. They were evidently having an argument about something, and Cahalan was trying to convince him. I couldn't hear what his watch-mate said, but from out of the dark all at once I heard Cahalan. Said Cahalan: 'When a man does a good job and gets rated up for it, he's a lucky geezer; when he does a good job and don't get rated up for it, he mayn't be a lucky geezer, but what th' hell, he's done a good job just the same, hasn't he?' So, Carl, what d'y'say?--to Pay Totten, sailing lonesome through the Trades--a poor politician, but a damn good officer!"

Breath o' Dawn

It was an admiral of a great navy returning a call, and hundreds of bluejackets were peeking out from the superstructure.

"Here he comes--spot me Lord Admiral, fellows!"

"Three ruffles of the drum, three pipes o' the boson's whistle----"

"--six boys an' thirteen guns----"

"--and he swellin' out like an eight-inch sponson comin' over the side, as if it was himself and not his job the guns are for!"

Young apprentice boys' voices those.

There came an older voice: "You kids talk as if it was in admirals and at sea alone. And ashore any day are bank presidents, head floor-walkers, chairmen of reception committees--yes, and bishops of the church--any of them on their great days stepping high to the salutations, as if 'twas something they had done, and not the uniform or the robe or the job they held."

Carlin had a look at the owner of the voice. Later he hunted up Trench--Lieutenant Trench--and to him he said: "Glory to the man who can wear his uniform without tempering hot convictions or coining free speech to the bureaucratic mint! But greater glory to the man who can divest high office of its shining robes and see only the man beneath. Who's your big, rangy gunner's mate with the gray-flecked, thick black hair and what the apprentice boys call go-to-hell eyes?"

"That's easy--Killorin."

"And what's his history?"

"When I first knew him--on the China station--he was stroke of the ship's racing crew, the best football player I ever saw, and among the men he had the name of being an all-big-gun ship in a fight. A medal-of-honor man, too. Later he went in for booze-fighting and hellraising generally and made a first-class job of that, too. I liked him--all the officers did--and when I was having my first dreams of the day when I should be commanding the latest dreadnought, it was Killorin, settled down and steady, who was to be my chief gunner. I told him as much one night on watch.

"'A warrant-officer and wear a sword and be called Mister?' says Killorin. 'And will you tell me, sir, what's being a warrant-officer and wearing a sword and being called Mister to being all alive when my youth is still with me?'

"I couldn't tell him; and as we grew more friendly many another question he asked me in the quiet of the night-watches I couldn't answer. He could talk the eye out of a Chinese idol himself."

Carlin peered down at Killorin. "Did you ever ask him how--despite the being all alive and having his youth--he is to-day only a gunner's mate?"

"And have him, in ten perfectly respectful words, put me back in my place? I did not--not that I wouldn't like to know."

"I think I half know," said Carlin.

That was in a tropic port. That same night Carlin found it too hot to sleep below. He rolled off his bunk, had another shower-bath, dressed lightly, and went on deck, where his friend Trench was on watch.

He patrolled the deck with Trench. The men were sleeping everywhere around the top deck. The tall form of Killorin rolled out from under the overhang of a turret and sat up. Trench's walk brought him abreast of Killorin.

"Pretty hot?" asked Trench.

"It is hot--yes, sir."

"These young lads"--Trench waved a hand toward the stretched-out shapes all around--"they don't seem to mind it."

"They're young, sir."

"Young? I didn't think there was a tougher man, young or old, in the navy than you."

"A man's body," said Killorin, "can take comfort atop of a hot galley stove--or a cold one. A man's mind--'tis not so simply eased."

"Trench," said Carlin, when they had left Killorin, "when I was a boy there was a great hero in our school. Half the girls I knew carried his picture on their bureaus. And most of the other half were suspected of hiding one away. One of those athletic heroes, a husky Apollo--this Killorin makes me think of him. But suddenly he disappeared from the middle of his glory."

"Any crime?"

"No, no crime. Wild, but straight. His name was Delaney."

"Killorin's right name," said Trench after a while, "is Delaney."

Carlin left Trench and walked around deck, in and out among the sleeping forms. Here was one in a hammock, here one on a cot, but mostly they slept on the bare deck in their blankets. Every odd corner and open space held them. They were tucked in against hatchways, under turrets, inboard of boats, outboard of boats, next the smoke-pipes, in the lee of gypsies, of winches, cook's galley. Everyhow and everywhere they slept--on their backs, their stomachs, on their sides, curled up and stretched out. Some whistled, some groaned, some snored, but mostly they slept like babes.

It was hot, as sometimes it seems to be hotter in the night than ever it can be in the day, even in the tropics.

A young bluejacket under a cluster of deck-lights tossed, rolled, tossed, sat up. A restless lad near him also sat up. Between them they produced the makings and rolled a cigarette. They lit up, inhaled, began to talk.

"How about Bar Harbor, or Rockport, or some other little place off the New England coast a night like this, with a cool, fresh breeze sweeping in from the Atlantic?" asked the first one.

"What's the matter with the little old North River?" said the other, "or the East River, with the Brooklyn trolleys clangin' and the train to Coney and a few dollars in your pocket after a visit to the paymaster? ... And your best girl, o' course," he added after a moment.

They snuffed out their cigarettes and rolled back into their blankets. Killorin was still sitting up wide awake.

"And your best girl?" repeated Carlin to Killorin.

"Yes," responded Killorin, "as if that didn't go, like an anchor to a ship, without saying."

"Isn't it always a girl?" said Killorin presently. "Whatever drives the most of us to whatever it is we do, good or bad beyond the ordinary, but a woman stowed away somewhere to see what we do at the time or read of it later?"

The Killorins of the world are not standing and delivering to men they never saw before; and so it was not that night, nor the next; but on another hot night, and the ship headed up the Gulf, with the men sleeping anyhow and everywhere about the deck, that Killorin sat outboard of the sailing-launch and, looking out over the dark waters, said:

"Progresso astern and Veracruz ahead--always a port astern and another ahead, isn't it? And so you knew old Dan Riley that kept the candy store up home? ... And Mary Riley?" he asked; and, after a while, began to talk of things that had been.

Lovely Mary Riley! No thought ever I had that girls were made for boys to notice till I saw you!

Five blocks out of my way from school her father's store was, but four times I walked past that store window the day after the first time I saw her, and more than four times many a day later--to see her again. It was three months before I got courage to go nearer to her. And then it had to be a night with snow on the ground and sleigh-bells to the horses, and in the faces of men and women a kinder look and in the heart of a boy maybe a higher hope than ordinary.

Christmas eve it was and the store all decorated--candy canes, big and little, hanging among the bright things in the window. There were other people before me, but she nodded and smiled by way of letting me know that she saw I was waiting. She nodded in the same smiling way to a poor child and a rich man of the neighborhood.

"How much for a cane?" I asked when it came my turn, and I that nervous I exploded it from me.

"Canes?" She turned to the window. They were all prices, but I didn't hear what she said. I was listening to her voice and trembling as I listened.

There was a great big brute of a cane, tied with blue ribbons and hanging from a gas fixture. "How much for that one?" I asked.

"That?" She had violet eyes. She opened them wide at me. "That is two dollars."

"Let me have it," I said.

Her thin red lips opened up and the little teeth inside them shined out at me. "But you don't want to be buying that," she said; "we keep that more for show than to sell."

To this day a thing can come to my mind and be as if it happened before my eyes. "She thinks I'm one who can't afford to spend two dollars for that cane, and she's going to stop me," I says to myself. "She thinks I am a foolish kind who would ruin himself to make a show." If there had been less truth in what she thought, maybe I would have been less upset. "I'll take it," I said. "I want it for a Christmas tree for my little nephew."

There was no nephew, little or big, and no Christmas tree, and that two dollars was every cent I had to spend for Christmas. But her eyes were still wide upon me, and I paid and walked out with the cane--without once turning at the door or peeking through the window in passing, for fear she would be looking after me, and I wouldn't have her think that a two-dollar candy cane wasn't what I could buy every day of my life if it pleased me.

I hoped she would remember me, but took care not to pass the store for a week again, for fear she would see me and think I was courting her notice because I had bought the big cane.

I was going to high school then. One Saturday afternoon there came high-school boys from all that part of the country to compete for prizes in a great hall near by. I wasn't in them. I liked to run and jump and put the shot well enough, but to go in training, to have a man tell me what time to go to bed and what time to get up, and what to eat and what not to eat, and after a couple of months of that to have to display yourself before crowds of people--that was like being a gladiator in the Colosseum I used to read about, and performing for the pleasure of the mob--patricians and the proletariat alike!

I would spend hours in the alcove of the school library reading of belted knights in the days of tourneys and crusades--but that was different. I could see myself addressing the kings of the land and the queens of the court of beauty, the while the heralds all about were proclaiming my feats of valor. A knight on a great charger in armor and helmet, with my lance stuck out before me--never anything less glorious could I be than that.

But all loyal sons of our school took a ticket for the games. I went to them; and there I saw Mary Riley waving her banner and cheering a gangling-legged young fellow that lived in the same street as myself. No special looks did he have, and no more brains than another, but he was winning a hurdle race and she was cheering him. And there came another, the winner of the high jump, and she cheered him, too.

To see a girl you are night and day thinking of--to see and hear her cheering some one else--! I went in for winning prizes. And when the season came around I played football. And my picture used to be in the papers, those same papers saying what a wonder I would be when I went to college. And all the time I wondering was she seeing the pictures and reading the words of me.

My people had no money to send me to any college, but from this college and that came men to explain to me how the money part could be arranged. And so to college I went. I paid enough attention to my studies to get by--no great attention did it take--but I paid special attention to athletics, and before long my picture was sharing space in the papers with presidents and emperors and the last man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. And is there any surer way to spoil a nineteen-year-old boy's perspective of life than to keep telling him that well-developed muscles--whether they be in his back or his legs or inside his head--will make a great man of him?

I came home from college for the summer. I'd seen Mary a few times since that Christmas eve, but made no attempt to get acquainted. Maybe I was too shy. Maybe I was too vain, or overproud--waiting for the day when I would be of some account, when the notice of neither men nor women would I have to seek--they would be coming to me.

But pride is a poor food for heart hunger. I went to have a look into her store on my first night home. I had a wild idea that I would go in and introduce myself and she would know of me, and maybe I would walk home with her.

There was a young fellow in a navy uniform--a chief petty officer's coat and cap--leaning on the counter talking to her, and he had a red rose in the buttonhole of his uniform coat. By and by, when her father came to close up the store, the young fellow walked home with her. Standing on the opposite corner, I watched them pass. It was something serious they were talking about--no smile to either of them.

I stood on the corner after they had passed for as long as I could stand it. Then I walked up to where I knew she lived. They were standing at the steps of her house. It was a quiet street, and the sound of my footsteps caused them both to turn. The young fellow stood up straight and strong on the lowest step, but she stepped into the shadow of the doorway. I saw her eyes looking out on me as I passed. Her hat was off and there was a red rose in her hair--and none in his coat.

Some pictures fade quick, some never. The picture of Mary Riley in that doorway, with his rose in her hair--that hasn't faded yet.

They had been talking before I reached them, but as I passed on I could feel the silence between them. For many steps after I passed on I could feel that silence and their eyes following me up the street.

Next day there was an outdoor bazaar for the benefit of some flood sufferers. There was an athletic programme and I was the star of the meet, with my picture on the bill-boards.

I went. Surrounding the athletic field and track were tables for the sale of this thing and that, and behind the tables were women and girls using every female guile to coax money from men's pockets.

There were big tables and little tables. At one of the little tables was Mary Riley. Sidewise out of my eyes I saw her, standing atop of a chair behind the table to look out on the games. When the games were over and I was dressed up in my street clothes again, I walked over to her table. My three first-prize cups in their three chamois bags were carried behind me by a multi-millionaire's son named Twinney. He was an athletic rooter, with an ambition to be known as the friend of some prize-ring or football or sprinting champion. In my coat pocket were two gold prize watches.

Mary Riley was standing behind her table. The young chief petty officer was there, too--in front of the table. They were auctioning the last of the things off. With a smile and a word of thanks Mary would hand over the things as they were bought. But she wasn't taking in too much money. She was the daughter of a man of no great importance in the community, and she didn't have the grand articles that the women at the other tables had. Her little stock was made up of things that she had begged or made herself.

The auctioneer was a whiskered old man with a great flow of gab. He holds up a piece of lace--to put on a bureau or a dresser it was--made, as he put it, by beautiful Miss Riley herself. And she was beautiful! Violet eyes and blue-black hair, and--I've seen Chinese ivory since that her face was the color of, only no Chinese ivory that ever would take on the warmer waves of color as I looked at it.

"How much for this lovely lace cover?" the auctioneer was asking, and "Two dollars," some one said. And right away the chief petty officer said "Five!"

I looked at him then--for the first time fairly. He was one of those quiet-looking, thoughtful kind--of good height, well made and well set up--maybe twenty-two years old.

There was another chief petty officer with him; and this one began telling a bystander how that young fellow who'd just bid was Jack Meagher the gun-captain--the same Meagher, yes, that the papers had been talking about--who'd dropped from his turret to his handling-room and in through a fire and shut himself up in a magazine and maybe saved the ship and the whole crew from being blown up. He'd got burnt, pretty bad--yes, but was all right now.

"He's got his medal of honor for it, but he's not one to carry it around and show it," said Meagher's friend.

Meagher was bidding--some one had said six dollars for the lace. Meagher had said ten, and Mary Riley's violet eyes were glowing. I had five dollars--no more--in my pocket. But there was Twinney with his tens-of-thousands allowance in the year. He always carried plenty of money around with him.

"Twinney," I said, "how much money have you?"

"Oh, a couple of hundred or so," and pulled it out and began to count it.

"I'll bid on the lace piece," I said, "and you pay for it."

"Ten dollars I'm offered for this lovely piece of lace," the auctioneer was drooning. "Do I hear----?"

"Twenty," I said.

Meagher looks over at me and a light comes into his eyes. "Forty," says Meagher.

"Sixty," I said.

"Eighty," says Meagher.

The fat auctioneer looked from one to the other of us. He had not had a chance to speak since the bidding was at ten dollars. He was about to open his mouth now when----

"One hundred dollars!" I said and looked over at Meagher.

Meagher turns to his chum. Before he could speak the chum was emptying his pockets to him. When he had it all counted--his chum's and his own----

"Two hundred fifty dollars," he said; "we might as well throw in the change--two hundred and sixty-five dollars," and laid it down on the table before Mary Riley.

Gold of angels, but there was class to the way he did it. No millionaire's money, but the savings of an enlisted man's pay.

I turned to Twinney. "He's through--make out your check for three hundred and give to me."

"Three hundred dollars," he says, "for that piece of lace! Three hundred--why, five dollars would be enough for it!"

"Make out your check for three hundred, Twinney, and those cups you've got and the two watches in my pocket, every medal and cup I've got at home, my championship gold football--they're yours to keep."

"But three hundred dollars!"

"Yes, and three thousand if I had your money!"

"But what do you want it for?"

"Gr-r-r--!" I snarled, and shoved my spread hand into his face. He landed on his back ten feet away. The C.P.O. friend of Meagher's started to smile at me, but before he could get the smile well under way I wiped it off. He fell where he stood. Meagher looked at me and I at him.

"That wasn't right," said Meagher.

"I'll make it right," I said, "with you or him or whoever else doesn't like it, now or later."

He went white; and the kind that go white are finish fighters. And he was a good big man with more than muscle under his coat.

"Make it right now," he said. "But not here--some place where the crowd won't be."

We moved over to under the grand stand. That was at half past five o'clock and it was a long summer's day, but it took till the daylight was all but gone before I knocked him down for the last time.

He couldn't talk; he couldn't get to his feet. His C.P.O. friend--a game one, too--shook his fist at me across his body. "Only a week out of the hospital and you had to beat him up. But, beaten or not beaten--go ahead, smash me again if you want to, you big brute--he's still a better man than you are or ever will be!"

A score of people had found their way in under the seats. None who cared to know but would hear a word of every blow that was passed in that fight. Going home after the fight it was borne in on me that less than ever was I the hero I was wishful to make myself out to be.

I slept little that night, and in the morning--nothing within the four walls of a house suited me any more--I slipped out into the sun and walked along the docks; and walking the docks I reached the gates to the navy-yard. I went in.

A ship!--'tis like nothing else in the world. Ships! In the romances I'd been reading since ever I could read, there had been tales of ships and of the sea. Phoenician galleys, Roman triremes, the high-prowed boats of the Vikings, carved Spanish caravels--they had carried the men who made history. Great ships were they, and yet here were ships that could take--any one of them here--could take a score, a hundred, of the ancient craft with all their shielded men at arms and stand off--a mile, two miles, ten miles off--and with one broadside blow them from the face of the waters. Dreams of what had been and what might be--what use were they? Things as they are--that was it!

What most people, maybe, would call common sense was coming to me; and maybe something finer than all the common sense in the world was flying from me. So I've often thought since of that morning.

I enlisted in the navy. And it was good for me. To look out on the wide 'waters--day or night--'tis to calm a man's soul, to widen his thought.

I had no ambition to rise. The blazing life of the four quarters of the world was soaking into me. My eyes, perhaps, were seeing too much, and my mind pondering on what I saw too much, to be breaking any ship records for efficiency.

But I was getting my rating when it was time and I was forgetting old shore troubles, when there was a warrant-officer came to our ship. His name--no matter his name--he's no longer in the navy. He was the-- But you've seen the little man on the big job?--the sure sign of it being the pompous manner and the arrogant word. There he was, licking the boots of those above him and setting his own boots on the necks of those below! He strutted like a governor-general. Maybe you know what sort of talk is passed along the gun-decks when such a one is parading by!

The ridiculousness of him was too wide a target for any man with an eye in his head to miss. I was never short of an eye, nor oil for the trunnions of my tongue, and no ship's company ever lacked a messenger to carry the disturbing word. For the fun I poked at him my bold superior had me spotted for his own target later.

There was a chest of alcohol on the lower flag bridge and there was a marine sentry standing by it night and day. As much for the devilment as for the drink, four or five of the lads in our gun crew one night rushed the ladder to the bridge, stood the sentry on his head, broke open the chest, grabbed the alcohol, and got away.

My warrant-officer says he saw me among 'em. 'Twas a hot night, like to-night, and in the tropics too, and he couldn't sleep, he said, and had to leave his room and come on deck. And so it was he happened to be where he could see me. He couldn't name the others. Indeed, he would not care to name others when he was not positive, and so do possibly innocent men an injustice, and so on. But he was positive about me.

I was called. The sentry looked me over. He wouldn't swear it was me, but there was one man in the party about my height and build, and, like me, he was a very active man, judging by the way he went down the bridge ladder.