Chapter IV

At eight o'clock that night Tim was facing his audience, and a fine, large audience it was--not a hand's width in a single bench vacant; from the front row, where sat Buck Malone, almost smiling, to the back wall, where De Soto with some Indians and mailed companions was discovering the Mississippi--from stage to entrance, not a vacant seat. What hopes for a man in a fighting audience like that if he could but win them to him!

Tim was alone on the stage.

"Gentlemen," he began, "the Republican party in New Ireland seems to be very busy to-night. One-half of it has to attend a conference of bank cashiers over in Rocktown; and Rocktown, it appears, is four miles in a buggy over a rough road. That rough road and the buggy are, of course, an incontrovertible argument, gentlemen. And the other half has a rich prospective customer for a couple of town lots--also over in Rocktown. A busy little place that Rocktown must be! I don't wonder you're smiling. I smiled myself when they told me.

"But if they are not here, gentlemen, to accredit me, I am here to speak for myself. And, as you see, there is the table, the chair, the ice-water pitcher, the empty glass, all as"--he smiled down at the boss in the front row--"as Mr. Malone said it would be. 'Twas this very afternoon Mr. Malone spoke of it; and, myself happening to hear him, I would not for a lord lieutenant's income disappoint him. 'Twas my good old mother--God rest her soul!--who used to say--and many's the time she said it: 'Timmie dear, don't never disappoint people if you can help it.' And I never do--especially when it don't cost me anything; for water is the only thing I had to bring into the hall to-night--and water, gentlemen, is cheap."

"Yes, an' talk's cheap, too!"

Tim bowed to the voice and smiled with the laugh that followed.

"God knows it is cheap. If it wasn't 'tisn't the likes o' me could afford to be handing it out to you to-night, and no charge for admission at the door."

"Say, Buck, his ten minutes'll be used up before ever he gets started!" came a voice from midway of the hall.

"True for you, boy. And so I'll be introducing myself. My history is short. Riley is my name, Timothy Joseph Riley--baptized by Father Kiley, in the parish of Ballymallow--and I'm a Republican."

"And there's what we'd like to have you tell us, Misther Riley--how came you to be a Republican?"

"Yes, you blarneyin' turncoat--how came ye?"

A man in the front row stood up to say that last, a rugged-looking man, who looked as if he would like mighty well to jump up on the stage and haul Tim down off it. Toward him Tim stepped, leaning over the edge of the stage so that the belligerent one would not miss a syllable.

"I'll tell how I came to be a Republican. When I landed in this country and before I was fairly out of Castle Garden some thief of a pickpocket or worse stole the few little dollars I had to keep me until I could get a job. I was a seventeen-year-old boy, and that shy I couldn't beg. For two days not a morsel of food went into my mouth. And there I was, jumping sideways with the hunger, when a man comes along and saw me and brought me into a grand restaurant, 'And how'll I ever pay you?' I asks when I'd eaten my fill. He was a butcherman, with a white smock on him. And he laughs and says: 'You can't now; but by and by, when you get a vote, be sure and vote the Republican ticket.' And I says: 'Why the Republican ticket?' And he says: 'Oh, just by way o' variety--just to show that you people don't all go one way.'

"And"--Tim straightened up--"I took his hand, and 'Sir, I will!' I said. He was joking, maybe; but I wasn't. And I did vote the Republican ticket; and I'm still voting the Republican ticket. And I'm saying to you all to-night--the one Republican among five hundred of ye--that I'm not apologizing to any man in this hall or any other hall for it. And I'm saying to you"--in the face of the inquiring man in the front row, in the face of Buck Malone, in the face of the whole hall, Tim clinched his fist--"I'm saying that the man of Irish blood who ever forgets the promise that he's made to the one that befriended him--I say to ye all, and I don't care whether ye like it or not--his blood's been crossed somewhere; he's no Irish in him! No--nor fit to be called a man at all!"

Tim stepped back to pour out a glass of water; a form rose up midway of the hall, and a voice roared out:

"Say, you Riley man, your politics are the divil's own, but you're Irish all right. Go on!"

Tim held the glass toward the speaker.

"And, ma bouchal, 'tis you has the Irish heart in you, too. Here's to you! You stubborn, unconverted, hereditary Democrat, here's to you!" He drained the glass.

"Go on! Tell us more!"

"Yes; go on--talk up!"

"You'll get a show here. Go on!"

Tim glanced down at Buck Malone, swept the benches for the sight of a more cheerful face and caught the friendly eyes of Peter Kearney. Also he suddenly recognized the face of Malone's henchman--the man to whom he had given the cigar. He was wagging his head encouragingly.

"Gentlemen, I will go on--and thank you for the chance. And, with your permission, gentlemen, I'll speak of something besides politics. It is of charity. Gentlemen, a great quality is charity. Only because of the spirit of charity in you, gentlemen, am I allowed to speak to you here to-night; but it's another phase of charity I'd like to speak of. I will put it in the form of a story--and, gentlemen, not too long a story.

"There was an old lady in the old country, who received a letter from her oldest son, John, with passage-money for her second son, Pat, to come over and join him. She gave her consent. Why wouldn't she--when the living was so hard? Pat went, leaving his mother of nigh seventy and the last of his brothers with her. One son had already gone to South America and another to Australia; and now only a boy was left to her--and him with one leg gone in a railroad accident, for which they'd never got a farthing."

At this point Tim heard the side door softly open and close. He took a quick backward peek. Dinnie and old Nanna Nolan were waiting in the wings. Tim signed to them to remain there. He stepped to the front of the stage then, just in time to see Malone, whose every move he was watching, uncross his legs and half rise in his seat. Tim looked at him steadily and waited. Malone did not move farther, and Tim resumed:

"Well, the two sons in America, strong and willing, worked side by side, earning their dollar and a quarter and their dollar and a half a day, with now and again a day's or a week's layoff to set them back, but managing always between them to save four dollars in the week and send it over every month to the old mother--until by and by, she scrimping and saving, too, there was passage-money for herself and the lad to come to America. They took the steamer at Queenstown; and 'twas like a grand dream to them--until one day there came a great storm and the ship leaped and jumped, and the poor, helpless, crippled boy was thrown down an iron ladder; and when some one thought to help the poor mother pick him up he was dead. Well--But, gentlemen, maybe I'm trying your patience?"

"Go on!" came a voice, and "Go on!" came another; and then three, four, a dozen voices called for him to continue.

"Thank you. Well, gentlemen, a tempest in the great ocean, with its tremendous winds and mountains of seas, must be a terrible sight; but surely a more terrible sight is to see that same ocean, as smooth as oil, and the blue heavens smiling down, while the body of one that's dear to you is lowered into it! So it was. With loose, wide stitches they'd sewed the boy into canvas; and to the one foot of him they tied a piece of an old grate-bar, and dropped him into that great ocean."

Tim saw Malone shoot a furtive glance sideways to learn how they were taking it in the front row. Plainly he was not liking it, for he stood up straight then and surveyed the rows of voters behind him. Tim waited, and every man there knew why he waited. There was an indrawing of breaths all over the hall. Malone, without showing the ordering forefinger, sat down again.

Tim bowed to him. "Thank you, Mr. Malone, for that fighting chance," which remark brought out a quick burst of applause.

"Well, gentlemen, that poor old woman landed in the strange country. Grief-stricken she was, but not yet utterly discouraged. The son Pat was to meet her at the dock. He was not there. Well, she could see a good reason for that. They could not leave their work--sometimes the bosses were strict--they had often written so in their letters. No matter. With not much left of her little savings, she bought a ticket and took the train for the town where her two sons were working. Well, neither was Pat at the station to greet her--but by and by she learned why.

"There had been a premature explosion in the quarries, and a fall of rock had knocked Pat senseless; and as he lay there, unconscious, a second blast came and killed him. Well, that was an awful thing; but still there was the son John. And they had then to tell her of John. Well, while Pat lay there helpless, another man had run in to carry him out of danger. He was a brave man, that second man, for the flame of the second fuse was then almost to the charge; but he ran in and he had the injured man in his arms when the second explosion came. They were killed together. That second man was her other son, John."

Tim paused; but he no longer had to ask their leave to speak. He was in full swing; and out there, beyond the ends of his nervous, spreading fingers, they were swinging with him. Sitting up straight and still they were--or leaning forward, bent and eager.

A potent gift, the orator's. A writer may never hope to achieve instantly his great intention. He is limited to monotonous-looking black words on a blank page. But a speaker! Added to the words are eyes, lips, hands, head, body, and the immeasurable force of personality. Tim's voice softened and deepened, halted and quickened, rounded and trembled; the ruddy cheek took on a ruddier color; his deep-set eyes grew deeper and darker, and by and by they flamed. He grew taller; his body expanded. He spread his hands--fine, shapely hands, with nervous, expressive fingers--and as he gestured he quivered to his very finger-tips, and down there on the benches they quivered with him. The cold words--he warmed and revivified them. Under the caress of his beautiful, barely perceptible brogue the commonest, harshest lines took on smoothness and roundness; and from out his mouth the fine, tender words bloomed like summer flowers; and the larger, colorful words flashed like gems.

Tim, in short, was an orator. And when he said: "There, gentlemen, you have the story--and you know whose story it is. Poor old Nanna Nolan's--yes:" when he had said that, with arms and hands no longer gesturing, but drooping straight and motionless by his side, no one stirred--but a great sigh went up.

And not till that moment did Malone wake up to it that he had waited too long; but that moment he desperately chose to take his position at the end of the aisle and face his hitherto unbroken constituency; and while Malone was doing that Tim was motioning to Dinnie in the wings; and now Dinnie was leading her out--old Nanna Nolan, halting and bewildered, blinking at the audience--as Tim held up one hand for a last word.

"Here she is! I've tried to tell you her story, gentlemen; but there's only one living person can tell that story right, and I'm not that one. If you could have heard her telling it--she in her little cabin on that windy hillside, before her little stove, with the dark coming down and the lights beginning to shine through----"

And that instant, while Tim's arm was across her poor thin shoulders, covered as ever with the worn man's coat--that instant Malone, whose back was to the stage, chose to raise his fateful forefinger.

And Tim waited. And Malone waited.

Not a man left the hall.

Malone turned and faced Tim.

"You win," he said; "but that two-faced chairman of yours--and he ain't any friend of yours--he never tipped me off you could fight any way except with your hands. Speak the rest of your piece. You win!"

* * * * *

Back at headquarters the state chairman had been for an hour trying to extract a little comfort from the newspaper story of the New Ireland upheaval when the tall boss came in. To the boss, of course, he had to make some comment, and he made it.

"This man Riley," he began cautiously, "I've been trying to discover whether he's a Republican or a Democrat by what he says here."

"How's that?"

"He says: 'Take your leaders: and if they don't carry out your will fire 'em out! If the men you have set on high betray you,' he puts it, 'lasso 'em off their pedestals and set 'em on the street level again!' If that isn't----"

"--government by the people?"

"I wasn't going to say that, sir."

"Why not? Isn't that what it amounts to? Let me see your paper, please. H-m! I don't see what there is here to object to. He is not against a party government; in fact, he's all for party. Only make sure the party leaders are honest, he says, in politics, religion, business--in everything; and if they do not live up to their promises read them their lesson. Well, why not? I think he's right. The people know more than they did and we might as well reckon with that new knowledge. The men who don't do that might as well give up the leadership!"

There was a whole page of it in the New Ireland _Record_ about Tim. The senator read it all. When he at last looked up he murmured:

"Raised twelve hundred and odd dollars for the widow Nolan. That was surely well done! Two hundred and fifty votes pledged to him before he left the hall. He surely has the touch! And Malone says he's going to stick to his contracting hereafter. Good idea!"

The senator read on: "And Malone also says--also says--H-m!"

The chairman was startled out of his silence.

"I set Malone on to Riley--to fool him."

"You did!" The senator scratched his beard with his finger-nails, drew his chin in to his neck and looked over his pince-nez at the chairman. "Too bad he misunderstood you--wasn't it? It would be so nice if we could give you the credit; but I'm afraid we'll have to hand it to Riley."

It was not said loudly; but the tone and the glint of the eyes--and the cultured boss stirred into using slang! The chairman knew that he might as well pick up his hat and go.

And he did; after he wrote out his resignation with the big boss dictating it over his shoulder.

IN THE ANCHOR WATCH

The battle-fleet, home from foreign waters, now lay, within a mile-square, emblazoned quadrangle, to placid moorings in the bay.

From the after bridge of his own ship Lieutenant Wickett had been observing in silence the night life of the fleet, but when from some happy quarter-deck to windward there floated down the opening strains of a mellow folk-song, he lifted his chin from arms crossed on the bridge top-rail to say to his shore-going friend beside him: "Were you ever able to listen to a ship's band over water, Carlin, and not get to feeling homesick?"

"Still the kid, aren't you? How can you be homesick and you home?"

"I'm not home--not yet."

Just below them the officer of the deck was roaming the quarter-deck. A ship's messenger stepped up to him, saluted and said smartly: "Two bells, sir."

"Strike 'em," came the sharp order; and as the two bells were striking, from other ships, from windward and leeward, came also the quick, sharp-toned double stroke.

"Why," asked Carlin, "couldn't they strike those two bells without bothering that deck officer?"

"Regulations."

"They're the devil, those regulations, Wickett."

"Worse--sometimes. You can steer clear of the devil if you want to." He paused. "And yet it would soon be a devil of a service without 'em."

A sailor stepped up to the officer of the deck, and, saluting, said: "Anchor lights burning bright, sir."

A man in a chief petty officer's uniform stepped up to the officer of the deck, whereupon Wickett, sitting up, said: "That's our wireless operator."

"A message for Mr. Wickett, sir," came the operator's voice.

"You'll find Mr. Wickett on the after bridge," the officer of the deck said; and the wireless man came up the bridge ladder and saluted:

"You raised the _Clermont_, Wesson?" Wickett's voice was eagerly anticipatory.

"No, sir, I could not. She has no wireless."

"Oh-h!"

"But I raised the Cape station, and they reported she passed there on schedule time."

"On time? Good! Thank you, Wesson; that's all."

"Were you expecting somebody on the _Clermont_?" asked Carlin, when the wireless man had gone.

"Not really expecting. My home is a thousand miles from here, and my pay won't allow of my family travelling around everywhere to meet me. But I like to dream of rosy possibilities, don't you?"

A cool night breeze was blowing. Wickett bared his head to it. Presently he began to hum:

"And it's O you little baby boy
A-dancing on my knee--
Will it be a belted charger
Or a heaving deck to sea?
Is't to be the serried pennants
Or the rolling blue Na-vee?
Or is't to be----"

He turned to Carlin. "When I hear myself singing that, in my own quarters ashore, then I'm home--and not before."

He set to humming softly again:

"And it's O you little baby girl
Athwart your mother's lap----"

Suddenly he asked: "Were you ever away from home sixteen months?"

Carlin emphatically shook his head. "No, _sir_. A year once. And I don't want to be that long away again. Were you--before this cruise?"

"Five years one time."

"F-i-i-ve! Whee-eee! Pretty tough that."

"Tough? More--inhuman. A man can get fat on war, but five years from your family--!" He raised his face to the stars and whoofed his despair of it.

"My year away from home," said Carlin, though not immediately, "was in the Philippines--where I first met you--remember? The night you landed from the little tug you were in command of and a bunch of us--war correspondents we called ourselves--were gathered around a big fire."

Wickett nodded. "I remember. And pretty blue was I?"

"Not at first. I thought you were the most care-free kid I'd met in months as you sat there telling about the funny things that had happened you and your little war tugboat. But towards morning, with only the two of us awake, I remember you as possibly the most melancholy young naval officer I'd ever met. You started to tell what a tough life the navy was for the home-loving officer or man, and I had a special reason for being interested in that. I had--I still have--a nephew with his eye on Annapolis. But just then reveille blew the camp awake and you went back to your tugboat."

Wickett smiled, though not too buoyantly, as he said: "Well, on my next cruise to the East I could have added a chapter to the story I might have told you by that overnight camp-fire. And I will now--but wait."

A ship's messenger was saluting the officer of the deck. "Taps, sir."

"Tell the bugler to sound taps," was the brisk command.

The ship's bugler had already taken position, heels together and facing seaward, in the superstructure bulkhead doorway. Looking straight down, Wickett and Carlin could see him, as, shoulders lifting and blouse expanding, he put his lungs into the call. From other ships, as he called, it was coming also--the long-noted, melancholy good night of the war legions.

When the last lingering note drooped out, only one ship, and she a far-away one, remained; but from her, finally, on the wings of the night breeze, the last notes drifted--gently, sweetly, lonesomely, to them.

* * * * *

"What was keeping me walking the deck or sitting up around camp-fires nights in the Philippines wasn't Filipinos," began Wickett. "I'd been in the East a year that time we met, and I put in another year on top of that in China. A terrible two years. But even two years in the East with your heart at home must have an ending. After all, the earth can only revolve so many days in one year, though at times I used to believe she'd quit revolving altogether, had stopped dead, was only marking time--'specially nights--and that the astronomical sharps weren't on to her changes. However, at last she'd rolled her sun up and her sun down the necessary seven hundred and odd times and I was headed for home.

"I went out a middy and came back an ensign--which is very important. An ensign may not rate many high rights in the service, but he does rate a leave of absence. And when my leave came I flew across the bay to the fort, where Colonel Blenner--Doris's father--was commandant. And on the way over I had a thousand visions, dreams, hopes, with of course a million misgivings, fears, doubts, and so on.

"When I met her I set it down right away that my misgivings had come true. A fleet of young artillery officers were manoeuvring within shelling range of her, and while I didn't expect her to bound half-way across the drill-ground and throw her arms around my neck, or anything like that, because she never had bounded down and thrown her arms around my neck, and wasn't the bounding-down-and-throwing-her-arms-around-your-neck sort of a girl anyway; but what I did sort of hope for was that after a polite little interval she'd turn the red-caped chaps adrift and say, 'Come on, Dick, let's sit down here in the corner by ourselves and have a good talk,' and perhaps later, before the evening got too old, go for a stroll on the long walk, same as she used to.

"But she didn't turn any of them loose. She kept them all about her while she drew me into the middle of them. But poor me! I'd had no service at all in the civilized ports and hadn't seen more than a dozen white women in the whole two years I'd been gone, and of that dozen had spoken to only three, while as for these artillery chaps--! They made me feel like a six-pound shell in a big turret magazine. Any one of them could talk the eye out of my head the best day I'd ever seen. And the day I came back to her wasn't the best day I'd ever seen--not for talking purposes. I looked at and listened to them, and kept saying to myself: 'I wonder if they realize what a lucky lot they are to be able to stay all the time around where civilized women live?' But I don't believe they did. They took everything as if 'twas no more than small-arms ammunition was being served out to them.

"In my room in the hotel that night I began to chart a few new courses for myself. Before I left for the East Doris was terribly young and there'd been no other war heroes hanging around. She and her mother were then living in a quiet hotel near my house while her father was off on some board mission in the West. But now it wasn't any isolated little country hotel. It was post quarters, with her father the commandant, and a parade of young army officers in and out of those quarters, with squadrons of two and three-stripers steaming over pretty regularly from the navy-yard across the bay. And she was two years older--a terrible advance, eighteen to twenty, and I'd been two years gone.

"You said a while ago, Carlin, 'What a kid you are!' and perhaps I am, though I think I'm an old, old party myself; but about the time I came back from the East that first time I must have been a good deal of a kid. I know now I was. That first night at the hotel, after I'd been to the fort all day, I talked to myself in good shape. And I wound up by saying: 'Well, what do you care? There are forty nice girls between this hotel and the post.' But there weren't forty. There were a hundred, as far as that went, but there was only one that I wanted to see coming over the side of my ship, and next day when I went to see that one again I set out to win her. And I'm not going to give you any history of the courtship of Doris. I couldn't tell it right if I wanted to, and I don't want to--it's our own private story, but she wasn't trifling when she told me she'd never forget me before I went East. In a week it all came back, and once more we were walking under tall pines and sailing in a beautiful bay. In another week it was as when I left her--I had hopes.

"And then came the morning of the last day of my leave, and as an ensign doesn't rate any shore duty I knew that next day it would have to be back to my ship for me; though that same ship being slated for a neighborly berth with the North Atlantic fleet, I didn't feel too discouraged. I'd be within wireless distance at least. But I did not want to go without a promise. The night before I couldn't get two minutes together with her--there being a reception in her father's quarters to somebody or other--but when I was leaving for the night she had said yes, she'd come sailing with me in the morning after breakfast. And I left the hotel at sunrise and went down to the boat-landing to overhaul the hotel's little twenty-one-footer to make sure everything would be all ready for our sail after breakfast.

"I went through the post grounds to get sight of her window in passing, and there she was--all dressed, and looking out across the bay from their veranda. 'I was just wondering if you, too, would be up early this morning, Dick,' she said. 'Do you think it is going to storm?' And I told her no, and if it did, what matter? And without waiting until after breakfast we went off for our young cruise in the bay.

"I was half hoping it would storm, so I could show her what I could do with that little boat. But there was no storm or anything like it. There did come a squall of wind and I let it come, wearing the boat around, and letting the main-sheet run. And she zizzed. And I let her zizz. Nothing could happen. She was one of those little craft with a lead keel that you couldn't capsize, which I explained to Doris, while down on her side the little thing was tearing a white path in the blue water. But Doris's people had been always army people, and she hadn't much faith in floating contraptions. She clung closer to me; and the two of us sitting together and nothing to do but watch the boat go, why--well, we sat together and let her go.

"The breeze died down until there wasn't enough of it to be called a breeze, but that was no matter. We were still sitting close together and while we sat so, I found courage to tell her what had been flooding my heart through all those nights and days in Eastern waters. And we came back to breakfast engaged. And after breakfast--" Wickett unexpectedly turned to Carlin and said, half shyly: "I suppose you still think I'm a good deal of a kid to be telling you all this?"

Carlin nodded in serene agreement. "I always thought you were a good deal of a kid. I hope you always will be. God save me from the man who isn't still a good deal of a kid at thirty. What did you do after breakfast?"

"After breakfast I went up to see Colonel Blenner, and found him on his veranda smoking his after-breakfast cigar before he went over to guard-mount. He was genial as ever; except that he put his foot down on an engagement. 'An engagement means a marriage, or should,' he says, 'and how can you marry on an ensign's pay? You with your mess bills and other expenses aboard ship, and Doris with her quarters ashore--you would never meet your bills.'

"I agreed with him, but also argued with him, and shook him some, but could not quite upset him. I left him to run back to the hotel to throw my things together. And there I found a new complication--orders were waiting me. I was to be detached from my ship and to take command of the gunboat _Bayport_--and a rust-eaten old kettle of a _Bayport_ she was, famous for her disabilities; and I was to sail for Manila next morning at eight o'clock. Manila! Another jolt. I sat down and thought it out.

"And when I got talking to myself again, I said: 'Doris Blenner, you're a great girl--the best ever; but you're not superhuman. No man has a right to expect a girl to be that. You're too lovable, too human, Doris, to be the superhuman kind. I'll be away in the East Lord knows how long--another two years perhaps--and there's all those army chaps always on the job. We'll just have to be married, that's all there is to that, before I leave.'

"I was back to the post in time to join a riding-party after lunch. It was no use my trying to see her alone riding. But after the ride we slipped out onto the ramparts of the fort, and there, the pair of us sitting hand in hand and a sentry a dozen paces away trying not to see and hear us, I told her of my orders and then entered my new plea. 'All for myself, Doris,' I told her. By that time the sun was low behind us and throwing our two shadows onto where the water of the bay came gurgling up against the walls of the fort, and looking down on our shadows from the fort walls, she said at last she would marry me before I left, if papa agreed--and glad one minute and sad the next, we walked back in the twilight.

"Colors had sounded when we got back, and the colonel was dressing for dinner; but after dinner I took him out for a walk. Three laps we made around the drill-ground and then, halting him under the clump of willows down by the outer walls, I plumped it at him--what it meant to be away for months and years from your own people.

"And he heard me through, and said: 'Why, that's part of the hardship, Richard, in both arms of the service. In my day, Richard----"

"'Pardon, Colonel,' I butted in, 'pardon me, Colonel, but in your day the army people never left the country. Even when you were fighting Indians on the frontier, after all it was only the frontier and never more than a couple of thousand miles at the most to get back home. And when you were through campaigning and back in garrison, your people could come to see you. But twelve thousand miles! It isn't as if a man's within telephone call then. And when you're not to see your people for that length of time, there's danger.'

"'Danger?' He stiffens up and takes a peek at me.

"'Danger, yes sir,' I said. 'I've been out there in the islands, in a tugboat with her engines broken down and she drifting onto a beach where four hundred squatting Moros with Remington rifles were waiting hopefully for us to come ashore. Four hundred of them and five of us all told. But that's not danger, sir,' I hurries on, 'of the kind to scare a man, though it did sicken me to think I'd never see Doris again, and that perhaps it would shock her when she heard of it. But otherwise, sir, that's no danger. But when a young officer goes a thousand miles up a Chinese river in command of a gunboat, as I was this last time--gone for months on it--and being commander was everywhere received as the representative of a great country by all the governors and topside mandarins along the route. And they haven't our idea of things--a lot of things that seem wrong to us seem all right to them. They mean no harm. They intend only to be courteous and complimentary, and so they strew a fellow's path with the flowers of ease and pleasure--if he forgets himself, there's danger, Colonel,' I said. 'I sail at eight in the morning, sir. I'm to be gone I don't know how long, perhaps another two years, and--Colonel--I want a home anchor.'

"He said no word till he had finished his cigar. When he does he drops it at his feet, steps on it to put out the light, and says: 'A good argument for yourself, Richard, but what of Doris?'

"'Doris has probably done a lot of thinking in the matter, sir. Why not leave it to Doris, sir?'

"'Of course,' he said, dry as powder, 'Doris would be disinterested in this case!'

"'Then leave it to her mother, sir.'

"'I see neither logic nor prudence in your argument, Richard,' he answers at last, 'but I will leave it to her mother.' And when he said that, I knew I had won; for, without her ever telling me, I knew her mother was with us. If I had told him that, I would only have been telling what he already guessed, as he told me that same night, later.

"Anyway, after a minute with Doris and her mother, I jumped over to the hotel, and from the side of a most billowy waltz partner I detached Shorty Erroll to get the ring and the smaller stores for a proper wedding, and then I went out to bespeak my own ship's chaplain. I found him lying in his bunk in his pajamas with a History of the Tunisian Wars balanced on his chest and a wall-light just back of his head, and he says: 'Why surely, Dick,' when I told him, but added: 'Though that old sieve of a _Bayport_, I doubt will you ever get her as far as Manila,' after which, carefully inserting a book-mark into the Tunisians, he glides into his uniform and comes ashore with me.

"And without Doris even changing her dress we were married--in the colonel's quarters, with every officer and every member of every officer's family on the reservation--even the children--standing by. And the women said, 'How distressing, Mr. Wickett, to have to leave in the morning!' and the men said, 'Tough luck, Dick'--and be sure I thought it was tough luck, and it would have been tough luck only by this time the entire post had got busy and got word to Washington, and at eleven o'clock, while we were still at the wedding-supper, word came to delay the sailing of the gunboat for twenty-four hours. And that was followed by a telegraphic order next morning to haul the _Bayport_ into dry dock and overhaul her."

Wickett, who had been talking rapidly, came to a full stop, while three bells were striking throughout the fleet.

"Nine-thirty," said Wickett. "I thought I saw a steamer's light beyond the breakwater."

Carlin looked where he pointed. "I don't, but I haven't your eyes. How long was the respite?"

"In ten days they had her afloat again. I thanked my God-given luck for every flying minute of those ten days."

"And did she stay afloat long enough to get to Manila?"

"Oh, yes. She wasn't half bad. Needed a little nursing in heavy weather, but outside of that she wasn't hopeless at all."

"And what of Mrs. Wickett?"

"She was to come to me just as soon as I cabled where in the East the gunboat would fetch up for any sort of a stay. But I was never in one spot for long. We cruised from Vladivostok to Manila and back again, never more than a week in any one place. Even so, as soon as I'd saved enough out of my ensign's pay, she was to come--and she would have--to meet me; but before enough months of saving had passed she wrote me. There was a baby coming, and then I wouldn't let her come. I did not want her jumping from port to port in foreign waters before the baby was born, and she would soon be needing every cent of my ensign's pay that I could save.

"And the months rolled around and the cable came which told that the baby had come, and that Doris and everything was fine; and I was as happy as a man could be with a wife and boy he was crazy to see, but couldn't. She wanted to come out and join me right away, but I said no.

"Well, when the baby was big enough to stand travel she was coming, anyway, she wrote; but I reminded her that before a great while now I ought to be on my way home. And one day in the China Seas I saw the sun between us and the shore setting under a thousand golden lakes and pools and purple pillars, and a home-bound pennant of a full cable's length whipping the breeze in our smoke astern."

Wickett paused, and resumed: "That was a great night. It was two years and three months since I'd left Bayport. The first thing I did in the morning after turning out, and for every morning thereafter, was to step to the calendar on the wall of my room and block out that day's date with a fat blue-leaded pencil I'd got from the paymaster for that purpose alone, and then, estimating the run on the chief engineer's dope, count how many days were left."

Wickett was silent. He remained silent so long that Carlin thought that that must be the end, abrupt though it was, to the story. But it was not that. Wickett was pointing across the bay.

"See, Carlin--the flag-ship of the second squadron has just sent out an order for its first division to prepare for an emergency signal drill. And the first division are to have a torpedo drill at the same time. Wait--in half a minute it will be on. There--look!"

From the mastheads the red and white Ardois lights were winking even as the illuminated arms of the semaphores were wigwagging jerky messages from bridge to bridge; on shore, on the water, on the clouds, the great search-lights swept and crossed endlessly. It was dazzling. Suddenly it ceased. "Oh-h!" protested Carlin.

"Life is just like that, isn't it?" said Wickett; "all light and play and color for a spell, and then--pff--lights out."

"Maybe," admitted Carlin, "but don't impede the speed of the story. Your ship was racing for home."

"Our orders were to proceed by way of Suez and to rendezvous with the battle-fleet at Guantánamo, Cuba. We got into Guantánamo the day before the _Missalama_ arrived from the North. The _Missalama_ had orders to proceed to the West Coast. Half a dozen of the officers already in Guantánamo were ordered to her. I was one of them."

"Good night! But that was a jolt!"

"That's what it was. But that's the service."

"And couldn't you do anything about it?"

"What could I do? There were my orders. A couple of the fellows came as near to being politicians then as ever they did in their lives. They tried to reach people in Washington--bureau chiefs, senators, influential congressmen--to have me detached and ordered home. But next day was a holiday and the day after was Sunday, and the ship had to sail by Sunday. And she did, and I with her."

"And how do you account for your being shunted off like that? Somebody have it in for you?"

"No, no--not that. Simply the politicians. I don't suppose the service will ever be free of the near-politicians. The navy has them--fellows who are not good enough officers to depend upon themselves alone, and not good enough politicians to go in for politics altogether. Somebody with a good shore billet somewhere was probably due for sea-duty, and not wanting to let go of a good thing, and having the pull, somebody else went instead. And somebody else for that somebody else, and somebody else again, and so on till at last the somebody else who could be made to serve a turn happened to be me.

"'Hard luck, Dickie,' said the ward-room mess. 'But cheer up--in three months you'll see the Golden Gate, and by then you'll be ready for a little duty on your home coast. Then your lieutenant's straps and shore duty, and your wife and baby to yourself for a while.' I had that thought to cheer me through the night-watches around South America, but at Callao we got orders to proceed to Manila, and after six months out that way it was off to the Island of Guam, and from there to make a survey of some islands in the South Sea. No way I could fix it could I tell my wife to come and meet me at any certain place.

"But no task is endless. We were homeward bound at last. I remember how I used to say at mess that I was never going to believe I was home, till with my own eyes I saw the anchor splash in a home port. But there it was now--the anchor actually splashing in Bayport. I had the bridge making port, and I remember what a look I took around me before I turned the deck over to the executive. From the bridge, with a long glass, I could see above the tree tops the roof of the colonel's old quarters. I pictured him on the veranda below with the baby and Doris waiting for me. I'd sent a wireless ahead for Doris not to risk herself or that baby out in the bay with a fleet of battle-ships coming to anchor. And the baby! I dreamed of him reaching up his little hands and calling, 'Papa, papa!' when he saw me.

"Well, everything was shipshape. We were safe to moorings and I was relieved of the deck and about to step off the bridge when the word was passed that somebody was waiting to see me in the ward-room. And with no more than that--'Somebody to see you, sir'--I knew who it was. The fort boat had come alongside and people had come aboard--officers' wives and families, I knew, but not just who, because the boat had unloaded aft while I was on the bridge forward. But I knew.

"The messenger smiled when he told me. The men along the deck smiled when they saw me hurrying aft. The marines on the half-deck smiled as I flew by them. Everybody aboard knew by this time of my five years from home and the little baby waiting. Good old Doctor and Pay, going up to take the air on the quarter-deck, said: 'Hurry, Dick, hurry!' Hurry? I was taking the ladders in single leaps. At the foot of the last one, in the passageway leading to the ward-room, I all but bowled over a little fellow who was looking up the ladder like he was expecting somebody. I picked him up and stood him on his feet again. 'Hi, little man!' I remember saying, and thinking what a fine little fellow he was, but no more than that, I was in such a hurry.

"And into the ward-room, and everybody in the ward-room that wasn't occupied with some of his own was smiling and pointing a finger to where, in the door of my stateroom, Doris was waiting for me. And I dove through the bulkhead door, leaped the length of the ward-room country, and took her in my arms. For a minute, five minutes, ten minutes--just how long I don't know--but I held her and patted her and dried her tears.

"'And where's little Dick?' I asked at last.

"'Why, that was Dick you stood on his feet in the passageway,' she said, and laughed to think I didn't know him. 'But that's because he looks so much like you and not me. No man knows what he looks like himself,' she said, and ran and got Dick, and brought him to me, and said: 'Dick, here's your papa.' And Dick looked at me and he said: 'No, mama, that is not my papa. My papa has no legs,' just as I was going to fold him in my arms and hug him to death.

"And--will you still think I was only a kid?--I stepped into my room and drew the curtains, and sat down by my bunk and cried. After five years! And Doris came in, and perhaps she wanted to cry, too, but she didn't. She drew a photograph from her bosom and showed it to me. It was the only one of me that ever suited her, and it happened to be only a head and shoulders, and every day since the baby was old enough she had told him: 'That's your papa, dear, and some day he'll come home in a great big war-ship with guns and guns, and then you'll see.' And the poor little kid, four years and three months old, had never seen any legs on the man in the photograph; but he had seen his mother cry almost every time she looked at it, and he supposed that was why she cried--because papa had no legs. And so the poor kid was waiting to see a man with no legs."

Wickett was silent. Carlin asked no more questions. In silence he, too, studied what was left of the night-life of the fleet. Only the white anchor-lights of the motionless battle-ships, the colored side-lights of the chugging steam-launches, were now left.

Carlin pointed out to Wickett a green light coming rapidly in from sea. "Another battle-ship, Wickett?"

Wickett shook his head. "No. I've been watching her. It's the _Clermont_. She's due. And I'm half afraid to go and board her."

"Why?"

"If my wife's aboard, she'll have with her a fifteen-months-old daughter that I have never seen. Suppose she, too, greets me with--She's swinging back--to her anchorage--look."

The green light rolled in a great half-circle inshore, and disappeared. A red light curved into sight.

Wickett jumped up. "Come on, Carlin, I'll get permission to leave the ship. We'll be there before she lowers the port ladder."

"No, but drop me at the landing on the way and I'll see you in the morning at the hotel. How's that?"

* * * * *

Carlin saw him before the morning. He was in the lobby of the hotel when Wickett with his wife, a fine big boy, and a lovely little baby girl, got out of the hotel 'bus. The boy was clinging to Wickett's hand, all the while talking rapturously of the trip of the _Clermont_. With his free arm Wickett was carrying the baby, which was murmuring, "Papa, papa, papa!"

Carlin would have known Mrs. Wickett without an introduction or the presence of the boy and the baby. Merely from the way she looked at Wickett he knew that this was the girl who had gone sailing with him in the dawn and become engaged before breakfast.

"It's all right," smiled Wickett, with his cheek against the baby's. "This one can't seem to say anything but papa!"

Carlin nodded, and whispered: "And you couldn't afford it?"

Wickett grinned. "We couldn't; but we did. We always do."

"And how about the service--going to quit it?"

Wickett stared at Carlin. "Quit the service!"

Suddenly he recalled, and laughed, and whispered: "Sh-h--! I'm due for a year and a half of shore duty. But don't mind if I hurry along, will you? I got to get these children to bed."

"Go on--hurry--and good night," said Carlin. "Good night, Mrs. Wickett," and handed her into the elevator; and smoked two thoughtful cigars on the veranda and then went inside and sat down and wrote a long letter on the subject of the navy as a profession to the mother of a young lad back home.

There was much detail, and then:

As to being away from home for long periods: Married officers tell
me that it is hard at times. But judging by what I saw awhile ago
here, the home-coming almost offsets the long absences. The kind of
a woman they marry probably makes a lot of difference. I'd say, let
him go if he wants to. Good night.

Your affectionate brother,

SAM.

CROSS COURSES

Hearing the boys in the office talking of a lecture at the Sailor's Haven a few nights ago was what set me thinking to-day. It was on superstition, and the speaker digressed to expend ten minutes, as he put it, on sailors. A most superstitious lot, sailors.

He had a lot of fun with the sailors, and a crowd of old seafaring men sat there and let him, until a boss stevedore from our wharf who'd been one time mate of a coaster, with the preliminary contribution that this was sure the wisest party he'd listened to in all o' seven years, rose to inquire of the gentleman how long he'd been to sea.

Well, he had been to sea quite a little. Twice to Europe and return, once to Panama and return, once to Jamaica in the West Indies and----

"--return?" finishes our stevedore. "Sure you returned each time? 'N' in what sortivver craft'd you sail to them places--and return--in?"

"Why, steamers," answers the lecturer.

"Passinjer?"

"Passenger? Certainly."

"Excuse _me_!" says our stevedore. "I oughter known better. O' course, _you know_ all about sailors," and sits down.

The lecturer was all right. He was doing the best he knew, with the finest and fattest of words he could pick out, to make things clearer to his audience; and his audience, appreciating that, let him run on, until he said that there was not one mysterious thing which had ever happened that could fail to be proved very ordinary by mathematical, or historical, or logical, or physical, or some other "cal" deduction; which bounced our watch-dog out of his seat again.

"How d'you 'count," he growls, "for th' _Orion_ 'n' _Sirius_?"

Well-l, he could not account for it, for the simple and overwhelmingly conclusive reason that, previous to that very moment, he had never heard of the ships named.

"Then s'pose you hear 'f 'em now," says our stevedore, and starts in and delivers the lecturer a lecture on the _Orion_ and _Sirius_, and it wound up the show; for when the lecturer started to butt in, all the old barnacles, who before this had been clinging warily to the edge of their seats, now rose up and rallied around our stevedore to finish his story, which he did; and the old fellows, on leaving the hall, said that the credit of the proceeds for the Sailor's Haven fund, for that night, anyway, ought to go as much to their old college chum from the coal wharf as to any imported lecturer with his deckload of lantern slides.

But our stevedore didn't tell all there was of the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_. The lecturer went home thinking he had been told all about it, but he hadn't. Here it is as it was.