Chapter III

I left Drislane to go to the theatre with Captain Norman Sickles. The theatre over, he went with me to my hotel to get a few ship's papers I had for him. After that we sat in for a smoke and a chat.

Not that there was much chatting on Captain Norman's part. He never did have much to say of himself, nor too much of anybody else, though he could praise a man if he liked him. It was the first time I had ever spent more than an hour together with him except on pure business, and I was curious to know just what he thought of a lot of things; among others, of his cousin. I gave him two or three openings, but he didn't rush in. What he did have to say of him he said at one gulp. It was: "Where I was raised 'twas common talk that after you'd been getting naught but fair winds for a long course, it was then a good time to keep a watch out. The headwinds have to come some time, and the longer they be in coming the longer they'll stay with you when they does come. Oliver Sickles's been runnin' with a free sheet so long that I calc'late he's forgot there's such a thing as headwinds this side the Western ocean."

Even as Drislane, so did Captain Norman look like a terribly lonesome man at times. He probably was not yet over losing that girl who had been tricked into marrying his cousin. His cousin seemed to have got over it. There was gossip enough between Boston and Norfolk to hang more than a suspicion of that on--for that and the belief that not so much in marrying her as in getting the girl away from his cousin was where Captain Oliver had most likely achieved his main desire.

We talked until Captain Norman thought it was time for him to be getting back aboard his vessel and turning in. As he stood up to go, he said: "'Tis said you like a little sea trip now and again? Why don't you go home with me in the _Sirius_?"

I was pleased at that--he was known to be not over-free with his invitations--and I thanked him, but on my not saying yes or no at once he looked chagrined; seeing which, I explained that early that fall his cousin had invited me, if ever I cared to return to Boston by water, to take passage with him on the _Orion_.

He tried to smile. He was a whale of a man, bashful in his ways. He smiled like an overgrown boy who had done something there was no harm in but of which he was ashamed. "He always appears to be gettin' in ahead o' me, don't he?" he said, wistfully-like, after a moment, which hurried me into saying: "But I never said I'd go with him, captain, and he probably thinks he knows me too well to ask me now. I want to go with you, captain, and"--I made up my mind then and there--"I will--and proud to have you ask me."

"Good!" 'Twas a real smile now. "And if the _Orion_ hauls out with us you may see a wet passage, and maybe a bit of excitement of one kind or another before we make Boston Light."

We shook hands on the hope of a fast run to Boston, and then, drawing from my suit-case a package of receipts, coal memoranda, and so on, I held them up. "For the _Orion_, captain. Where do you suppose I'll find your cousin this time of night to give them to him?"

"Where but the Tidewater where that girl is?"

I stopped to put one thing to another. "And he is after that red-haired Rose, too?"

"What else?"

"But doesn't she know, or doesn't her uncle know, that he's a wife in Boston?"

"Her uncle!" he snorted. "He's no more wit than my ship's cat."

"But Drislane knows--won't he tell her?"

"He don't seem to. A proud one, Drislane. Six months he's been with me now in the _Sirius_, and if she isn't sure she wants him above anybody else on this earth, then she needn't have him, that's all; or leastwise, that's how I sense him. He wouldn't take no odds of the devil, that lad."

I could believe that; and it set me to thinking.

"Maybe you're thinkin' now," he went on, "that she should be able to see for herself what my cousin is? But what training has she had to judge o' men? What other kind does she see aught of in her uncle's place? Indeed, with her bringing up and what brains the poor girl has, she's done very well, I'm thinkin', to ha' kept off the rocks as long as she has. A hundred to one you'll find my fine cousin at the Tidewater to-night. But I must be going. Good night to you."

* * * * *

Only the bartender was in the front room of the Tidewater, and he was so busy peeking through a slide in the wall, the same through which he passed the drink orders from the restaurant, that he did not hear me come in. The door to the inner room was closed, but the low-powered roars of people trying hard not to be noisy were oozing through.

"What's doing?" I called to the bartender. I had to call it twice to make him turn around.

"It's the big captain of the _Orion_ and that little deck-hand Drislane."

Anybody taking Drislane for a joke always did get my goat. "He's not a deck-hand!" I bit out, "he's a seaman, and a good one. But what about him and Captain Sickles?"

"It's about him an' the boss's Rose. The captain begins to abuse Drislane somethin' fierce, an' he comes back at him. Then the captain brings her into it. 'What would a girl be wantin' with a little runt like you?' he says; and after that, 'I dunno but I'll take her to Boston with me this trip,' and said it like he meant it. An' the little Drislane he jumps into him two-handed, an' they're hard at it now."

I squeezed inside the door of the inner room. "Man-to-man fashion!" I could hear, in the powerful voice of Captain Oliver, while I was crowding through the ring of people to the open space in the middle of the floor. "That's it--man fashion wi' the naked fists!" some scattering voices echoed.

Man-to-man fashion! As if man could invent an unfairer scheme to settle private quarrels! Give a man heavy muscles and huge knuckles, tough hide and thick skull, add half the courage of a yellow dog, and how can he lose at that game? The old-time duellists with their swords were a hundred times fairer. A long sword to his wrist and the smallest man had a chance; which is as it should be, or else we might as well pick some seven-foot, solid-skulled savage from out of the jungle and set him up for king.

Man to man! Drislane was five foot six and weighed, possibly, a hundred and thirty-five pounds, and was no boxer. Sickles was six foot three and weighed two-fifty. He had enormous muscles and knuckles of brass. His hide was thick and hard as double-ought canvas. Drislane could have stood off and pounded on his ribs for a week and hardly black-and-blued them. He could have swung on him for a month and not knocked him over.

It was the old-fashioned style of stand-up fighting. No regular rounds with a rest between. The men rushed and slugged and clinched and tugged, and when they fell, got up and went at it again. Always, when they went to the floor, Sickles let his two hundred and fifty pounds drop limp and heavy on Drislane. Drislane would almost flatten out under it. Standing up, when Sickles's fist landed on him he would wince all over. He felt pain like a girl.

It was slaughter. Blood, blood, blood; and the blood all on one side. For perhaps twenty times Drislane was knocked flat. If Sickles had only the explosive spark to go with those tremendous blows he wouldn't have had to hit Drislane more than once. But he could only continue to knock the little man flat; and knocking him flat often enough, the pounding finally told.

The time came when Drislane could not rise to his feet. He worked himself up to one knee, with the big man waiting for him to look up so he might deliver the blow more sweetly. Drislane, knowing to the full what was coming, looked up and took all there was of it.

This time he lay flat and quiet. The triumphant Sickles bent over him. "Y'are satisfied, are yuh?"

Sickles wasn't going to stop with beating him up. Drislane must proclaim his conqueror's victory and his own defeat. Possibly he wanted the girl Rose to hear it. She had been standing back on a box in the kitchen doorway and must have seen most of the fight. I was wondering how far the joy of battle would mount in her primitive nature; but when I looked up to note that, and how she took Drislane's beating, she had gone.

"Are yuh? Speak up!--are yuh?" bellowed Sickles.

Drislane by now could open his eyes. He looked up at his conqueror but would not say the word. Sickles dug the toe of his shoe into his side.

I had been waiting, half sick to my stomach, for a good excuse to butt in. I had marked, when I first came in, a piano-stool setting upside down atop of the piano to one side of the room. In these possibly rough-house wind-ups it never does any harm to note where a few little articles of warfare may be picked up in a hurry. This piano-stool had a two-inch oak seat.

"You wunt, heh?" Sickles lifted his foot.

"No, he won't!" I butted in, and as he straightened up to see who it was, I went on: "And don't think I'll be foolish enough to go staving in my good knuckles on you. See this little wherewithal I'm holding, and not too loosely, by the wind'ard leg? You've a fine thick skull, but this is thicker. One cute little wallop o' this amidships of your ears, and it's little you'll care whether you take the _Orion_ out on the first or the last of the flood-tide to-morrow. Let him be!"

Now, don't let anybody think I was making a play for any Carnegie medal thereby. I knew Oliver Sickles, and even better did I know his kind, who only go to battle when certain victory lies before them. The only chance I was taking was with my firm's interests. It might be that he'd have such a grouch against me that he'd carry no more coal for my firm than he could help in future.

He let him be. He put on his collar and coat, and received as his due the applause of that crawling breed which are never by any chance seen shaking hands with anybody but a winner. While he was still at the hand-shaking I threw him his ship's papers.

I had the bartender order a carriage, and while waiting I tried to cheer up Drislane. I told him that he must not think of going to sea next day, that I would see Captain Norman Sickles and get him off, and later go with him to Boston by rail.

He shook his head. He could hardly part his swollen lips to talk; and then could only half whisper. "I'll sail to-morrow on the _Sirius_," he said; and rolled his head over to see what Sickles was doing.

Sickles was just then stepping through that kitchen doorway where but two minutes earlier Rose had been standing. Drislane closed his eyes; and then, as if he thought he had to show me he wasn't beaten, he opened them and smiled. After I'd fully taken in that smile, I wished he had cried.

The bartender called through the slide that the carriage was waiting. I carried out Drislane, drove him to my hotel, and called in a doctor. Between us we gave him a hot bath, salved and plastered him, and put him to bed.

I turned in on a cot which I had had brought in. Hours after I heard him groan. I switched on the light and went to him. He was lying on his side with his head on one arm. His hands were clinched.

After a moment he said: "She is in trouble somewhere." That was another one of the things he believed in--telepathy.

He may or may not have had it right; but it certainly wasn't going to do him any good to let him lie there and be torturing himself. "Sh-h--go to sleep, son. Don't imagine things. You'll find everything will be all right to-morrow," I said.

"No," he said, "everything will never be all right while he's alive and I'm alive."

That didn't sound good to me, so I sat down by the bed and began to talk to him. We talked, I doing the most of it, until past daylight. We talked of her. "She's all right," he said at last, "I tell you she is. Even if she didn't like me and did him, it would be only natural. But she likes me--the best of her likes me better than him, and when she gets to know him all of her will like me. You'll see."

There were people who used to say Drislane was so innocent as to be a joke; but after that talk into that wintry dawn I had to salute him. He had just a little something on all of us who were so much more worldly-wise. It surely was a great gift he had--to see in every woman only the shining soul.