Chapter II: Part 2

“Are you willing to catch the eight-thirty express, and to stop first and relieve me of a check for forty thousand dollars?” I asked. “Stop, you will hurt the receiver!”

After all, an ideal supplanted is hardly overthrown. I confess, however, to a day of apprehension until the rural free delivery handed me a letter. It was consistently terse:

“When you greeted me as another, I knew that it was the only way to
insure the safety of your valuables. Had you suspected me you would
not have trusted a stranger. Yours is the right to withdraw the
sale. Otherwise, a check for the maximum value will go to you.
Forgive me, Cinderella, and think gently of

DANTRÈ.”

Withdraw it? . . .

When I ran to the gate at sunset to hear Prince’s sequel, it was with high heart, for I felt that the day of the lady agent had waned. Martha was joyfully trolling a somber tune in the kitchen; ahead of me was the radiant vision of a new roof, a basket laden for Mrs. Petty, and sticks innumerable in the woodshed. The vision materialized, when Prince gravely placed a bank-book in my hand. His measures had been summary. He went first to Penwick’s hotel, and called him up to say that his estimate of Miss Legree’s antiques was too low; she had sold them.

“Oh, I am sorry! After all, he was a relative,” I said, regretfully.

“Stick to the past tense, please,” said Prince, briefly. “His language over the wire wasn’t publishable. He is safer at a distance, and I implied as much.”

“And—Dantrè?” I ventured.

“Banks conjure by that name. You did a wonderful stroke of business, Enid—for a woman.”

Had I? I hid a smile.

“Dantrè is a Richard Burton for wandering, and an infallible expert. Collectors swear by him. I heard an odd thing about the man today. It seems that Dantrè is not his name. His father was a notorious criminal speculator, and ruined many before he served his time in the penitentiary, Dantrè is equally keen on the trail of tricksters in collecting, but the disgrace made a recluse of him. He has gone again, and his agent was placing the Fierienti on exhibition today. I’ve no doubt that he turned up from the end of the earth just to get even with—” Prince hesitated. “You see, Enid, I remembered the name of the collector who bought old Mrs. Mace’s Romney. I hated to tell you. It was Cary Penwick.”

But memory swung back to a firelit hour and a dark, listening face upon a slender hand, with two swastikas—

“Oh, I am glad it wasn’t Dantrè!” I breathed to the spring sunset.

_Virginia Woodward Cloud_.

LONG, LONG AGO

When the brakeman swung back the door and with resonant indifference shouted in Esperanto “Granderantal stashun,” Galbraithe felt like jumping up and gripping the man’s hand. It was five years since he had heard that name pronounced as it should be pronounced, because it was just five years since he had resigned from the staff of a New York daily and left to accept the editorship of a small Kansas weekly. These last years had been big years, full of the joy of hard work, and though they had left him younger than when he went, they had been five years away from New York. Now he was back again for a brief vacation, eager for a sight of the old crowd.

When he stepped from the car he was confused for a minute. In the mining camp at present substituted for the former terminal he was green as a tenderfoot. It took him a second to get his bearings, but as soon as he found himself fighting for his feet in the dear old stream of commuters he knew he was at home again. The heady jostle among familiar types made him feel that he hadn’t been gone five days, although the way the horde swept past him proved that he had lost some of his old-time skill and cunning in a crowd. But he didn’t mind; he was here on a holiday, and they were here on business and had their rights. He recognized every mother’s son of them. Neither the young ones nor the old ones were a day older.

They wore the same clothes, carried the same bundles and passed the same remarks. The solid business man weighted with the burden of a Long Island estate was there; the young man in a broker’s office who pushed his own lawn mower at New Rochelle was there; the man who got aboard at One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Street was there. There was the man with the Van Dyke, the man with a mustache, and the fat, smooth-shaven man, and the wives, the sisters and the stenographers of all these. They were just as Galbraithe had left them—God bless ’em.

Swept out upon Forty-second Street, he took a long, full breath. The same fine New York sky was overhead (the same which roofed Kansas) and the same New York sun shone down upon him (even as in its gracious bounty it shone upon Kansas). The thrill of it made him realize as never before that, though the intervening years had been good to him, New York was in his blood. His eyes seized upon the raw, angular buildings as eagerly as an exiled hill man greets friendly mountain peaks. There are no buildings on earth which look so friendly, once a man gets to know them, as those about the Grand Central. Galbraithe noticed some new structures, but even these looked old. The total effect was exactly as he had left it. That was what he appreciated after his sojourn among the younger cities of the West. New York was permanent—as fixed as the pole star. It was unalterable.

Galbraithe scorned to take cab, car or bus this morning. He wanted to walk—to feel beneath his feet the dear old humpy pavement. It did his soul good to find men repairing the streets in the same old places—to find as ever new buildings going up and old buildings coming down, and the sidewalks blocked in the same old way. He was clumsy at his hurdling, but he relished the exercise.

He saw again with the eyes of a cub reporter every tingling feature of the stirring street panorama, from gutter to roof top, and thrilled with the magic and vibrant bigness of it all. Antlike, men were swarming everywhere bent upon changing, and yet they changed nothing. That was what amazed and comforted him. He knew that if he allowed five years to elapse before returning to his home town in Kansas he wouldn’t recognize the place, but here everything was as he had left it, even to the men on the corners, even to the passers-by, even to the articles in the store windows. Flowers at the florist’s, clothing at the haberdasher’s, jewels at the jeweler’s, were in their proper places, as though during the interval nothing had been sold. It made him feel as eternal as the Wandering Jew. The sight of the completed public library restored him to normal for a moment but, after all, the building looked as though it had been long finished. A public library always does. It is born a century old.

The old Fifth Avenue Hotel was gone, but he wondered if it had ever been. He didn’t miss it—hardly noticed any change. The new building fitted into its niche as perfectly as though it had been from the first ordained for that particular spot. It didn’t look at all the upstart that every new building in Kansas did.

He hurried on to Park Row, and found himself surrounded by the very newsboys he had left. Not one of them had grown a day older. The lanky one and the lame one and the little one were there. Perhaps it was because they had always been as old as it is possible for a boy to be, that they were now no older. They were crying the same news to the same indifferent horde scurrying past them. Their noisy shouting made Galbraithe feel more than ever like a cub reporter. It was only yesterday that his head was swirling with the first mad excitement of it.

Across the street the door stood open through which he had passed so many times. Above it he saw the weather-beaten sign which had always been weather-beaten. The little brick building greeted him as hospitably as an open fire at home. He knew every inch of it, from the outside sill to the city room, and every inch was associated in his mind with some big success or failure. If he came back as a vagrant spirit a thousand years from now he would expect to find it just as it was. A thousand years back this spot had been foreordained for it. Lord, the rooted stability of this old city! He had forgotten that he no longer had quarters in town, and must secure a room. He was still carrying his dress-suit case, but he couldn’t resist the temptation of first looking in on the old crowd and shaking hands. He hadn’t kept in touch with them except that he still read religiously every line of the old sheet, but he had recognized the work of this man and that, and knew from what he had already seen that nothing inside any more than outside could be changed. It was about nine o’clock, so he would find Hartson, the city editor, going over the morning papers, with his keen eyes alert to discover what had been missed during the night. As he hurried up the narrow stairs his heart was as much in his mouth as it had been the first day he was taken on the staff. Several new office boys eyed him suspiciously, but he walked with such an air of familiarity that they allowed him to pass unquestioned. At the entrance to the sacred precinct of the city editor’s room he paused with all his old-time hesitancy. After working five years under Hartson and then five years for himself as a managing editor, be found he had lost nothing of his wholesome respect for the man. Hartson’s back was turned when Galbraithe entered, and he waited at the rail until the man looked up. Then with a start Galbraithe saw that this wasn’t Hartson at all.

“I—I beg pardon,” he stammered.

“Well?” demanded the stranger.

“I expected to find Mr. Hartson,” explained Galbraithe.

“Hartson?”

“I used to be on the staff and—”

“Guess you’re in the wrong office,” the stranger shut him off abruptly.

For a moment Galbraithe believed this was possible, but every scarred bit of furniture was in its place and the dusty clutter of papers in the corner had not been disturbed. The new city editor glanced suspiciously toward Galbraithe’s dress-suit case and reached forward as though to press a button. With flushed cheeks Galbraithe retreated, and hurried down the corridor toward the reportorial rooms. He must find Billy Bertram and get the latter to square him with the new city editor. He made at once for Billy Bertram’s desk, with hand extended. Just beyond was the desk he himself had occupied for five years. Bertram looked up—and then Galbraithe saw that it wasn’t Bertram at all.

“What can I do for you, old man?” inquired the stranger. He was a man of about Bertram’s age, and a good deal of Bertram’s stamp.

“I was looking for Billy Bertram,” stammered Galbraithe. “Guess he must have shifted his desk.”

He glanced hopefully at the other desks in the room, but he didn’t recognize a face.

“Bertram?” inquired the man who occupied Bertram’s desk. He turned to the man next to him.

“Say, Green, any one here by the name of Bertram?”

Green lighted a fresh cigarette, and shook his head.

“Never heard of him,” he replied indifferently.

“He used to sit here,” explained Galbraithe.

“I’ve held down this chair for fifteen months, and before me a chump by the name of Watson had that honor. Can’t go back any farther than that.”

Galbraithe put down his suit case, and wiped his forehead. Every one in the room took a suspicious glance at the bag.

“Ever hear of Sanderson?” Galbraithe inquired of Green.

“Nope.”

“Ever hear of Wadlin or Jerry Donahue or Cartwright?”

Green kicked a chair toward him.

“Sit down, old man,” he suggested. “You’ll feel better in a minute.”

“Ever hear of Hartson? Ever hear of old Jim Hartson?”

“That’s all right,” Green encouraged him. “If you have a line in that bag you think will interest us, bring it out. It’s against office rules, but—”

Galbraithe tried to recall if, on his way downtown, he had inadvertently stopped anywhere for a cocktail. He had no recollection of so doing. Perhaps he was a victim of a mental lapse—one of those freak blank spaces of which the alienists were talking so much lately. He made one more attempt to place himself. In his day he had been one of the star reporters of the staff.

“Ever hear of—of Galbraithe?” he inquired anxiously.

By this time several men had gathered around the two desks as interested spectators. Galbraithe scanned their faces, but he didn’t recognize one of them.

“Haven’t got a card about your person, have you?” inquired Green.

“Why, yes,” answered Galbraithe, fumbling for his case. The group watched him with some curiosity, and Harding, the youngest man, scenting a story, pushed to the front. With so many eyes upon him Galbraithe grew so confused that he couldn’t find his card case.

“I’m sure I had it with me,” he apologized. “Remember where you were last night?” inquired Green.

“Just got in this morning,” answered Galbraithe. “I—here it is.”

He drew out a card and handed it to Green. The group gathered closer and read it.

“Harvey L. Galbraithe, Moran County Courier.”

Green solemnly extended his hand.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Galbraithe. Up here on business, or pleasure?”

“I used to work here,” explained Galbraithe. “I came up on a vacation to see the boys.”

“Used to work on this sheet?” exclaimed Green, as though doubting it.

“I left in nineteen seven,” answered Galbraithe.

“Nineteen seven,” exclaimed Green, with a low whistle. “You are sure some old-timer. Let’s see—that’s over fifteen hundred days ago. When did you come on?”

“Just before the Spanish War,” answered Galbraithe eagerly. “Hartson sent me to Cuba.”

Harding came closer, his eyes burning with new interest.

“Gee,” he exclaimed, “those must have been great days. Why in thunder can’t Taft stir up a little trouble like that? I ran across an old codger at the Press Club once who had been with Dewey at Manila.”

He spoke as Galbraithe might speak of the Crimean War. He pressed the latter for details, and Galbraithe, listening to the sound of his own voice, allowed himself to be led on. When he was through he felt toothless, and as though his hair had turned gray.

“Those were the happy days,” exclaimed Harding. “The game was worth playing then—eh, old man?”

“Yes,” mumbled Galbraithe. “But don’t any of you know what has become of Hartson?”

“Haydon would probably remember him—”

“Haydon?” broke in Galbraithe. “Is he here?”

He looked wistfully about the room to the corner where the exchange editor used to sit.

“He died last spring,” said Green. “Guess he was the last leaf on the tree.”

“He came on five years ahead of me,” said Galbraithe. “He and I did the barrel murders together.”

“What was that story?” inquired Harding.

Galbraithe looked at Harding to make sure this was not some fool joke. At the time nothing else had been talked of in New York for a month, and he and Haydon had made something of a name for themselves for the work they did on it. Harding was both serious and interested—there could be no doubt about that. That was eight years ago, and it stuck out in Galbraithe’s mind as fresh as though it were yesterday. But what he was just beginning to perceive was that this was so because he had been away from New York. To those living on here and still fighting the old game it had become buried, even as tradition, in the multiplicity of subsequent stories. These younger men who had superseded him and his fellows already had their own big stories. They came every day between the dawn and the dark, and then again between the dark and the dawn. Day after day they came unceasingly, at the end of a week dozens of them, at the end of the month hundreds, at the end of a year thousands. It was fifteen hundred days ago that he had been observing the manifold complications of these million people, and since that time a thousand volumes had been written about as many tragedies enacted in the same old setting. Time here was measured in hours, not years. Only the stage remained unchanged.

Galbraithe stood up, so dazed that he faltered as though with the palsy. Harding took his arm.

“Steady, old man,” he cautioned. “You’d better come out and have a drink.”

Galbraithe shook his head. He felt sudden resentment at the part they were forcing upon him.

“I’m going back home,” he announced.

“Come on,” Harding encouraged him. “We’ll drink to the old days, eh?”

“Sure,” chimed in Green. The others, too, rose and sought their hats.

“I won’t,” replied Galbraithe, stubbornly. “I’m going back home, I tell you. And in ten years I’ll be twenty-five years younger than any of you.”

He spoke with some heat. Harding laughed, but Green grew sober. He placed his hand on Galbraithe’s arm.

“Right,” he said. “Get out, and God bless you, old man.”

“If only Haydon had been here—” choked Galbraithe.

“I expect he’s younger than any of us,” replied Green, soberly. “He’s measuring time by eternities.”

Galbraithe picked up his bag.

“S’long,” he said.

He moved toward the door, and the entire group stood stock still and without a word saw him go out. He hurried along the narrow corridor and past the city editor’s room. He went down the old stairs, his shoulders bent and his legs weak. Fifteen hundred days were upon his shoulders. He went out upon the street, and for a moment stood there with his ears buzzing. About him swarmed the same newsboys he had left five years before, looking no older by a single day. Squinting his eyes, he studied them closely. There was Red Mick, but as he looked more carefully he saw that it wasn’t Red Mick at all. It was probably Red Mick’s younger brother. The tall one, the lanky one and the little lame one were there, but their names were different. The drama was the same, the setting the same, but fifteen hundred days had brought a new set of actors for the same old parts. It was like seeing Shakespeare with a new cast, but the play was older by centuries than any of Shakespeare’s.

Galbraithe hailed a taxi.

“Granderantal stash-un,” he ordered.

Peering out the window, he watched the interminable procession on street and sidewalks. He gazed at the raw, angular buildings—permanent and unalterable. Overhead a Kansas sun shone down upon him—the same which in its gracious bounty shone down upon New York.

_Frederick Orin Bartlett_.

THE RIGHT WHALE’S FLUKES

’Ware th’ sparm whale’s jaw,
an’ th’ right whale’s flukes!

—_Old Whaling Maxim_.

In the old whaling museum on Johnny Cake Hill there is a big room with a fireplace where, on a rainy or stormy day, the whaling captains like to gather; and when storms or cold keep him from his rocking chair on the after deck of his Fannie, Cap’n Mark Brackett climbs the hill to the old museum and establishes himself in a chair before the fire. From the windows you may look down a short, steep street to the piers where great heaps of empty oil casks, brown with the grime of years of service, block the way. Tied up to the piers there may be an old square-rigger, her top hamper removed, and empty so that she rides high in the water and curtsies to every gust; and you will see squat little auxiliary schooners preparing for the summer’s cruising off Hatteras; and beyond these the eye reaches across the lovely harbor to Fair Haven, gleaming in the sun.

The old museum is rich with the treasures of the sea, and this room where the captains like to gather is the central treasure house. An enormous old secretary of mahogany veneer stands against one wall, and in cases about the room you will find old ship’s papers bearing the names of presidents a hundred years dead, pie crimpers carved from the solid heart of a whale’s tooth, a little chest made by one of the Pitcairn Island mutineers, canes fashioned from a shark’s backbone or the jawbone of the cachalot, enormous old locks, half a dozen careful models of whaling craft with the last rope and spar in place, and the famous English frigate, in its glass case at one side.

I found Cap’n Brackett there one afternoon, in an old chair before the fire, his black pipe humming like a kettle, his stout body relaxed in comfortable ease. He had advised me to read “Moby Dick,” and had loaned me the book; and when I entered, he looked up, a welcoming twinkle in the keen old eyes that lurk behind their ambush of leathery wrinkles, and saw the book in my hand.

“Read it?” he asked, between puffs.

“End to end,” I assured him.

“A great book. A classic, I say.”

I nodded, and drew up a chair beside him, and opened the volume to glance again across its pages and to dip here and there into that splendid chronicle of the hunt for the great white whale. The old man watched me over his pipe, and I looked up once and caught his eye.

“He’s stretching it a bit, of course,” I suggested. “You would never meet the same whale twice, in all the wastes of the Seven Seas.”

The cap’n’s eyes gleamed faintly. “Why not?” he asked.

“It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“It happens.”

One certain method to provoke Cap’n Brackett to narration is to pretend incredulity. I smiled in a wary fashion, and said nothing.

“There was one whale I saw four times, myself,” he asserted.

“How do you know it was the same?”

“He was marked. . . . And the hand of Fate was in it, too.”

I turned the leaves of the book, and chuckled provokingly, watching covertly the captain’s countenance; and, as I expected, he began presently to tell the story that was in his mind. His gruff old voice ran quietly along; the fire puffed and flared as the wind whistled down the chimney, the snow flurried past the windows and hid the harbor below us. Cap’n Brackett’s voice droned on.

“You never heard of Eric Scarf,” the old man thoughtfully began. “Not more’n three or four men alive now that knew him. He were mate of the Thomas Pownal when I knew him; a big, straight, fiery man, powerful and strong. He came of some Northland breed, with a great shock of yellow hair, and eyes as blue as the sea; but he was not like most Norsemen in being slow of speech and dull of wit. Quick he was; quick to speak, and quick to think, and quick to act; quick to anger, quick to take hurt, and quick to know Joan for the one woman, when she began that v’y’ge on the Thomas Pownal.

“James Tobbey was the captain of the Pownal; Joan was his daughter. She was a laughing girl, always laughing; a child. Her hair was fine-spun and golden, and it curled. When the fog got into it, it kinked into ringlets as crisp as blubber scraps. You wanted to rub them in your hands, and hear them crinkle and crackle between your palms. And her voice, when she laughed, was the same way, crisp and clean and strong; and her eyes were brown. Give a girl light curly hair and dark brown eyes, and any man’s heart will skip a beat or so at seeing her.

“She used to be everywhere about the ship, always laughing; and little Jem Marvel forever hobbling at her heels. Jem was a baby, a little crippled baby, the son of a sister of Joan’s who had died when Jem was born; and Jem’s father was dead before that, although no one knew it till the Andrew Thomes came back without him, two years after.

“Thomes had been a hard, bitter man; and little Jem took after him. The baby was black—black hair, black eyes, a swart skin; and when he dragged his withered leg about the deck at Joan’s heels, his face worked and grimaced with spleen that was terrible to watch. Maybe six or seven he was then; and for all Joan tended him like a mother, I’ve known him to rip out at her black oaths that would rot a grown man’s lips.

“Cap’n Tobbey kept his eyes away from the boy; but Joan loved the little thing. None but her could bear with him.

“Eric Scarf was the only man aboard that ever tried to win the baby. I’ve seen him work for weeks at some dinkus he was making for the boy, only to have Jem scorn it when it was done. He put six months of whittling into a little model of the Pownal, with every rope in place; and when he gave it to Jem at last, the boy smashed it on the deck, and stamped upon the splinters.

“Eric but laughed. The mate was a hard man with men, quick with them; but with the child he was as gentle as Joan herself.

“He loved Joan. I loved Joan. Every man aboard the Pownal loved the girl; but Eric more than most of us. He sought ways to please her, and when he bungled it, it was a fight with him to hide his grief. One of the greenies, when the Pownal was but a few days out, bumped against the girl in the waist of the ship at the lurch of a wave; and Eric knocked the man halfway to the fo’c’s’le scuttle with one cuff. But while the greenie was scrambling to his feet, nursing his mouth with one tooth gone, Joan flamed at Eric.

“‘Why was that?’ she demanded, her voice very steady and hot.

“‘He bumped you!’ Eric tells her.

“‘I did not complain. Only a coward hits men who cannot hit back.’

“Eric’s face crimsoned; he whirled to the man. ‘Here,’ he shouted. ‘Forget I’m the mate. Do you want the chance to get even?’

“The man stared affrightedly, then ducked down the scuttle like a rabbit, with Eric glaring after him. But when Eric turned, Joan had gone aft without another word, and he was left to grope for understanding of her.

“Scarf was the strongest, quickest man I ever saw. He was tall and powerful, and built slim and flat like a whalebone spring. He was boiling with his own strength all the time. He suffered for a vent for it; and he trod the deck on his toes like a tiger, his fists swinging, not from any lust for battle so much as from the excess of his own power and vigor.

“I’ve seen him set his hands to tackle, and brush the fo’mast hands aside, and do three men’s work himself for the mere peace and joy it gave him to put forth all his strength for a space; his shoulders and back and arms would knot and swell and bulge with his efforts, and his lungs would shout with gladness at the task.

“Eric was never still. On deck, where others would lean against the rail with an eye to the ship and their thoughts somewhere off across the water, he was always moving, pacing up and down, climbing into the rigging, shifting this and stirring that, restless like a caged beast. Something drove him. He could not rest. The springs of life and energy in the man would have torn him to bits if you had held him motionless for an hour. He had to move, to act, to do; and when he buffeted the men, it was neither native cruelty nor bullying. It was but the outburst of his own impatient, restless power.

“It was a strange thing to see such a man gentling little Jem Marvel, or wooing the boy to a romp about the deck; and it was strange to see Scarf stand near Joan, watching her, and the muscles in him twitching and straining with the agony of inaction. Eric worshipped Joan; and she bewildered him. He used to plan little pleasant surprises for her, and watch her joy at them and take his reward in watching. He never spoke love to her, never so much as touched her hand unless it might be to help her along the deck when the ship was wallowing; and when the things he planned failed to delight her, a man watching him could see that his very soul was writhing.

“I said Scarf was a quick man, quick of thought and quick of deed. But where Joan was concerned, he was very dull and slow. He never could learn, try as he would, to please her; and his own impotence and his strength combined to drive him to feats which he meant for wooing, but which the girl abhorred.

“He trapped a little sea bird once, and made a tiny cage for it, and left it for her to find; and when the girl discovered it, she cried out with pity for the captive, and ran on deck with the cage and set the little creature free. Eric Scarf saw her, and she knew it was he who had done it, and pitied him.

“‘I’m really grateful,’ she said, smiling very gently at the big man, ‘but he is so unhappy in a cage.’

“Eric tried to speak, and saw one of the men by the tryworks grinning at him; so he went forward and drove the man with blows to the knight’s heads, and Joan scorned him for days thereafter.

“I’ve seen a cock pa’tridge ruffle his feathers and beat and drum with his wings, all glory and strength and vigor in his wooing; and no doubt the hen liked it. But if the pa’tridge had tried such measures in the courting of a singing thrush, he would only have frighted and dismayed her whom he sought to please. It was so with Eric. His courting would have pleased some women; Joan it but disgusted and disturbed.

“‘Eric Scarf and I were closer friends than you would think; and I knew the big, strong man to be as shy and as easy to take hurt as a child. But it was his way when he was hurt or shamed to strike out at the nearest, and so to those without understanding he seemed a mere bully, cruel and exultant in his strength.

“Lucky for us on the Pownal, Scarf delighted in the whaling. There was no other task in the world so fitted to the man. So strong he was that nothing short of a whale could give him the fierce joy of battle which soothed him. He drove his men as he drove himself, and they either broke under it or became hard-bitten and enduring hands, fit to match him. His boat was always first away; and he would strike and kill one whale and then another while other officers were content with a single catch. I’ve known him to do what few attempt: to lower at night when moonlight revealed a spout, and make his kill, and tow the fish to the ship by dawn. Cap’n Tobbey never interfered with Eric, for the mate was too valuable; and when the mate’s watch was on deck, he would lower and kill without ever calling the Old Man from his cabin at all.

“I had heard of Scarf before this v’y’ge, but never watched him work before; and many a time I found myself biting my lip and holding the breath in my chest at the daring of him. In any weather short of a gale, he would lower; and once two boats were swamped in lowering before he took the third mate’s and got away—and got the whale.

“With such an officer, and decent luck, a quick voyage was sure; and so it was this time. Before we’d been out two years, the casks were filled, oil was stored in everything that would hold it, and the Old Man gave the word to fly the Blue Peter and put for home. We threw the bricks of the tryworks overboard to lighten ship that much, and struck across the South Pacific, fought our way around the Horn, and took a long slant north’ard toward Tristan.

“There was no place to store more oil if we had it, and we could not try out if we had the blubber; so, though we sighted fish now and then, we let them go—though I could see Eric was fretting at it, and wishing the ship empty again.

“For months now, Eric had been wooing Joan in his own wild, longing way; but the girl would have none of him. He must have known it, and he bridled his tongue as he could. But the word was bound to come some day; and it came at last when we were rocking in a calm, with an island two or three miles to starboard, and the sun hissing on the sea that sighed and swelled like the bosom of a sleeping woman whose dreams are troubled and disturbed.

“The ship was idle, the men squatting forward in what shade they could discover, and the rigging slatting back and forth as the Pownal rocked on the long swells. Eric had the deck, the Old Man was asleep below, and Joan and the boy, Jem, were sitting aft, the girl sewing at something she held in her lap.

“Scarf, with nothing in the world to do, fretted and paced about, his eyes never leaving her, and a worship in them that all the world could see. The afternoon droned away, the Pownal creaked and swung in the cradle of the sea, and the sun burned down endlessly. Scarf could not bear it. He strode across to where the girl sat; and she looked up at him to see what he had come for, and at the look in his eyes rose quickly to face him, her face setting hard.

“Eric must have seen; but he blundered blindly on. The words came awkwardly. He lifted no hand to touch her. ‘I love you. I love you,’ he said, in a dry, husky voice. ‘I love you. I want you to marry me.’

“Black little Jem looked up at them and, with the quick perception of the child, grinned malignantly. Joan’s face turned white beneath the soft bronze the sun and wind had given her cheeks. She could not help pitying the big man; but she could not love him.

“‘I’m sorry, Eric,’ she said. ‘I do not love you.’

“‘I love you,’ he repeated, as though it were an argument he were advancing.

“‘I’m sorry,’ she told him again. ‘I’m sorry to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. But I don’t love you.’

“His eyes were quivering and trembling like the raw flesh of a wound, but he stood impassively before her, staring down into her eyes, searching there for something he would never find. Little Jem chuckled, and the sound broke the spell upon the man. He turned rigidly away; and as it always was with him when his heart was torn, his great body clamored for action. His fingers bit at his palms.

“And then one of the boat steerers, standing in the waist, uttered a low ejaculation; and Eric turned and saw the man was pointing toward the shore, where a misty spout was just dissolving against the dark background of the cliffs that dipped to the water there.

“It was the vent Eric wanted for the torment that was tearing him. Without a word, he leaped to his boat; and his men, well trained, came tumbling at his heels. In a minute’s time, Eric had caught up some gear that had been removed from the boats when the fishing was finished, and gave the order to lower.

“Joan came softly to him. ‘You are not going to kill the whale, are you?’ she asked. ‘We have no need for it.’

“Eric did not hear her; for the boat had split the water and was bobbing there below him, and he dropped with his men and in a moment was away. Joan, her eyes burning angrily, watched him go; and presently she brought the glass to see what was to come.

“The whale inshore was lying quietly, but Eric sent the boat along as though his life hung on success. He drove the men till the oars bent like whip-shafts; he drove them and he drove himself; and they ran fair upon the creature before they realized their speed. Then, at Eric’s cry, the boat steerer in the bow leaped up and drove the harpoons home, and the boat sheered off while Eric changed places with the man.

“They had struck a cow whale, a right whale, with a calf not a week old tucked under her fin; and the little thing lay there, lifting its tiny spout against its mother’s side, its fins feebly fanning.

“A cow whale is the easiest of game; and there is no sentiment in the whaling ships. If the Pownal had been empty, she would have been counted clear gain. With the Pownal full to brimming, this that Eric was doing was mere murderous slaughter.

“When Eric saw that he was cheated of the battle he had craved, a fury seized him. He shouted hoarsely to his boat steerer, and the man swung them in alongside the whale. The great mother had not stirred, save for a trembling shudder of her whole bulk when the irons seized upon her. The calf was fighting to escape, but the mother’s great fin pinioned it against her side, soothingly, assuringly, as though she promised it should be safe there.

“Eric lifted his lance and pierced the mother, driving home the steel for six feet into the great body; and he withdrew it, and prodded the vitals of the whale again and again, with a desperate energy, pouring out the fire of his own strength in his efforts.

“It was like piercing butter with a hatpin; and this dull acquiescence on the creature’s part only whetted Eric’s blind rage. When at the last the great flukes lifted once, his heart leaped with the hope that at the end there might come the struggle and the opposition for which he hungered; but agony had lifted the flukes, and the bursting heart of the mother brought them gently down again, never even disturbing the little creature at her side.

“She died; a thrust killed the calf. The boat sheered out; and then the boat steerer shouted a warning from the stern.

“Eric whirled and saw a great bull whale just emerging from the depths; and the whale headed for them furiously.

“I do not say the creature was the dead cow’s mate. It would not be strange if this were so; but it need not be asserted. I do not say the bull attacked the boat. He was badly gallied, he was running blindly.

“But whatever the explanation, he charged them; and Eric shouted triumphantly at thought that here was the adversary he had desired.

“The boat steerer swung the boat about to meet the onrush; and Eric snatched a harpoon. They swerved out of the path of the bull. As he roared past them in a smother of foam, Eric sent the harpoon home.

“But next instant the smashing flukes struck them, and the boat’s whole bottom was driven away. Eric chopped the loose line in time to save them; and in ten seconds from the appearance of the bull, they were to their necks in water, the boat beneath them.

“The bull charged on and disappeared. I lowered and went after the men in the water; and we got them aboard. Eric was reacting from his fury now; he was shamed at what he had done; and he looked back once to the body of the cow, about which sharks were already fighting, with something like apology in his eyes.

“The men were talking. ‘Did ye see the cross on the bull’s head?’ the tub oarsman asked; the steerer assented.

“‘A white scar in the blubber,’ he agreed.

“The others nodded; and Eric looked at me and said quietly: ‘The old bull was marked.’

“It was when we were all aboard again, and Eric had changed to dry garments, that Joan came up to where he stood with me. Her eyes were blazing; and little Jem, at her heels, was chuckling blackly.

“‘That was murder,’ said the girl, trembling with her own anger.

“Eric flushed, and his head bowed a little.

“‘A cow and a calf—killed uselessly!’ Joan exclaimed.

“The big man, uneasy, shy, not knowing where to turn, saw little Jem beside him; and he turned to the boy and caught the lad under his arms, and swung him high in the air. ‘Up you go!’ he cried, trying to laugh.

“He meant only to start a romp—anything to divert the girl’s searing scorn; but the malignant spirit of little Jem converted the movement into black tragedy. The child screamed indignantly, and kicked down at Eric’s upturned face with his sound foot.

“Eric was standing a yard from the rail, his back to it. The kick in his face made him lose his balance, and he staggered backward, and before I could stir, with the boy extended above his head, he had fallen overboard.

“Joan screamed; and together we leaped to the rail. I reached for a coil of rope. The two had sunk in a smother of bubbles; and in the second that we waited for Eric to fight his way to the surface again, a sinister shadow shot like fire along the ship’s side, and I saw the flicker of a silver-white belly, and heard Joan scream again.

“The water turned crimson; and then Eric came to the surface with empty hands. He dove instantly, furiously; and I got a boat into the water. Eric broke to the surface again, his face convulsed with the anguish that tore him; and two of us grabbed him and dragged him, fighting, into the boat.

“‘Let go, let go,’ he screamed, and struck us back. ‘Let me go. I can get him.’

“He was mad; and we caught him, and he broke and dropped, sobbing, in the bottom of the boat. I saw that one of his arms was rasped raw by the shark’s rough skin.

“Joan met him like a fury when he stepped upon the deck again, and I thought she would strike him. He stood before her, drooping and crushed; and the girl caught herself. But I heard the word she said.

“‘Thrice murderer!’ she told him softly. ‘Thrice murderer! A mother and child—and now my baby! Oh curse you, curse you! May you be always accursed until you die!’

“She held him for a moment, and then turned away from the man; and Eric Scarf drooped sick and weak where he stood, until I dragged him below to tend his wounded arm.”

The old man paused, and stared into the fire; and when I had waited fruitlessly for another word from him, I asked:

“Is that all?”

He looked up at me quietly. “No,” he said. “No—that is not the whole of it.”

Still he did not continue, and so I prompted him. “You said the whale was seen four times,” I suggested.

He nodded; and so drifted into his story again. “Aye, four times,” he agreed. “The old bull with the cross upon his skull. Four times. I’ve but told the first.”

He puffed silently for a little, shifted his great bulk in the chair, rose and crossed to the window to look down toward the harbor, and returned at last to me.

“Joan kept to her cabin much, from that day,” he said. “She kept to her cabin; and Eric Scarf did his tasks and held aloof from her. We came smoothly northward, and presently were at our pier, unloading the casks that filled our holds. Eric had slowly recovered something of the old strength and power that moved him; and though he avoided the girl, and though I could see how he suffered and what agony he was enduring, he kept a steady face to the men, and drove them as he always drove.

“Cap’n Tobbey was a quiet, stern man; but he was just. He blamed Eric for taking out the boat, but he knew the other for what it was, an accident of Fate; and when time came for the next cruise, Eric was too good a man to stay ashore. He shipped as mate, and I was second mate again.

“This time, Joan stayed behind. She had had enough of the sea for a lifetime, she told me; and from a girl, she was become a woman. Lovely as ever, her laughter as sweet and crisp as a spring wind, yet there was a depth in her that had not been there before, and at times her eyes shrank as though they gazed upon awful, tragic happenings.

“She was on the pier the day we sailed; and I saw Eric Scarf watching her with the hopeless longing in his eyes that tears at the vitals of a man.

“There was a shadow over the mate from the beginning of that cruise. Any man could see it; and the fo’mast hands used to watch him, and whisper among themselves. Outwardly he was the same; strong and quick and proud, alive, alert, his body uplifted with the energy it housed. He trod the decks lightly, he moved with the quick precision of an animal; and he plunged into his work in a fashion that would have worn another man to threads.

“A sprinkling of our old crew was aboard; so Eric’s story was no secret. But it was never mentioned by him or in his presence. He seemed to find a joy in his toil that allowed him to forget; and the man’s eyes brightened and his cheeks set in their old firm, fine lines as we drove southward. There is no better index to a man than the cheeks of him. Flabbiness of body or soul shows quickest there, and there all other vices and all virtues first appear. Eric’s face was neither gaunt nor round, but it had a chiseled perfection of contour that was like a song.

“There is a deal of superstition that hangs about the sea; and a whaler has her share of it, and more. But it is never allowed to interfere with the work at hand. And so if the men wished Eric off the ship, they kept their wishes to themselves; and if they were reluctant to serve in his boat, they hid this reluctance. For Eric was a quick man, quick to anger, with a quick fist to him. In his place, I should have moved tremblingly, fearful of a blow from behind during the watch on deck at night. But Eric strode fearlessly about the ship; and none laid hand to him.

“The sea is a grim thing, and inscrutable. No man can look out across its smooth bosom day and day, and remember the vast multitude of lives which go their way beneath that smiling surface, without a sense of the mystery and wonder of it all. The sea in a storm may be terrible and appalling, when its broad expanse is cut up into myriad gulleys and mountains in which the ship is lost as in a labyrinth; but to me it has always been even more terrible and menacing when it is calm. In time of storm, its fury rages without curb; the worst is with you. But when the sea is quiet, all its energies hidden, it is like the smiling mask of Fate which conceals unguessed and unpredicted blows.

“Thus, when we sailed southward over smooth and smiling seas, I fell victim to unrest that harassed me. I rose and looked abroad each day with eyes that searched eagerly for a threat of the fate that seemed impending; and even as I watched the sea, in like manner did I watch Eric Scarf, to discover if I could what it was that hung so threateningly over the man’s smiling head.

“If Eric felt any uneasiness, he gave no sign at first. He was as he had always been, confident, and quick, and strong. But the day came when a hint was given us, just as the impalpable atmospheric changes reveal through the glass the approach of storm.

“We had sighted whales more than once, and made a fair beginning on the long task ahead of us; and then one day in the South Atlantic, the boats were lowered for a pod that lay far off to southward. Eric got fast, and the third mate likewise. But the whale I had chosen as my goal took alarm, and whirled toward us, and then fled before our irons could reach him.

“There had been time, however, for us to see upon his head a dull scar, in the form of a cross, and I heard a cry from Eric’s boat, that was just getting fast, and turned to see Eric staring toward the spot where the old bull had disappeared.

“Then I remembered what the men had said about the whale which had stove Eric’s boat after the kill on the other voyage; and when we were aboard again, the cutting-in done, and the tryworks boiling and smoking, I was not surprised that Eric came to me.

“‘Mark,’ he whispered huskily, ‘was there a cross on the bull that got away?’

“I nodded. ‘On his head.’ I said. ‘An old scar, gouged into the blubber.’

“I saw his jaw set hard. ‘It can’t be!’ he exclaimed, half to himself. I said nothing; and he looked at me a moment later, with an agony of doubt in his eyes.

“‘Well, what of it. Eric?’ I asked, knowing, but thinking that to talk might ease the man.

“‘It was a scarred bull stove my boat—that day,’ he told me.

“‘Every old bull has his scars,’ I said easily.

“‘Aye—but—this was the same, Mark!’

“‘What matter?’

“He flushed and stammered like a child. ‘Her curse is on me,’ he declared. ‘The old bull is going to wait for me!’

“‘He’ll suffer by it,’ I laughed. ‘He’s a fat old duke, too.’

“Eric looked forward where the men were working, and looked aft, and then out across the sea; and then he looked at me at last with an appeal in his eyes. ‘Are you calling me “murderer” as she did, Mark?’ he asked.

“I shook my head. ‘She’s but a girl,’ I told him. ‘There was no need of killing the cow. But what matter for that? And the other—was no one’s blame.’

“His hand gripped my arm till I winced. ‘You mean it?’ he begged, hungrily.

“I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Forget it all,’ I urged. ‘No harm will come.’

“‘It is not that I’m afraid,’ he told me swiftly; and I saw that I had roused him as I hoped to do.

“‘Sure of that?’ I asked.

“His eyes flamed. ‘I fear nothing, except myself,’ he exclaimed. ‘But I hear her word always; and I cannot bear it, Mark.’

“Before more could be said, Cap’n Tobbey came toward us; and Eric laughed as though at some jest of mine. His laughter was not a pleasant thing to hear, and I would have wished to reassure the man. But thereafter he gave me no further opportunity.

“I could see the thing was on his mind through the days that followed. He could not forget it; and he took to standing watch at the masthead when there was no need. I asked him once why he did this.

“‘To get the scarred bull, Mark,’ he told me. ‘That will end it.’

“‘You’ll never see him again!’

“He shook his head, and smiled grimly. ‘No fear,’ he said. ‘He’s about us.’

“And Eric was right; for the day we were finishing the trying out, the scarred bull was sighted again, this time so near the ship that his mark could be discerned through the glass as he rose to spout. Eric was aloft; and he tumbled down the rigging like a madman, and lowered; but there was a fog, and in the fog the bull was lost for that time.

“That was thrice he had been seen; and the fourth time came swiftly.