Chapter IV: Part 4

"Dump the carrt here. Pack the mule, an' we'll send back for the Noah's ark when we get settled over beyant. Make haste an' upholster the mule with the baggage of light marchin' order."

When the dun mule, in tow of the boy, limped out of the gateway across the crumbling moat, its small hoofs sank to the fetlock in white sand, and the trail of cart-wheels winding across the plain shimmered in an aching dazzle of sunlight. At the end of an hour the village behind them was a brown smudge not more than two miles distant. The deserter made peevish comments, but there was cheerfulness in the crack of his profanity, as he plodded painfully ahead of the boy and the mule. Whenever they paused to rest he talked to You Han, not caring whether the boy understood one word in five. The two seemed alone in all the world; their calamitous fortunes were more closely knit than at any time in the flight; and hope lay somewhere beyond this barricade provided by a fate grown strangely kind.

"You'll have the next week to get the sand out o' thim foolish shoes o' yourn," observed the corporal. "An' me blisters will be attinded to by the chief surgeon of the county. Like chickens an' silk over-coats, my son? We're goin' hell-bent for the comforts of life by the carrt-load."

You Han talked to the mule in encouraging whistles and replied, "Can do," to the monologue of the corporal, who rambled on:

"Say, thim kids did me more good than a barrel o' monkeys. Weren't they corkers? By the holy poker! I'm goin' to marry you off to a little squeeze-toed fairy in the big town over the way, an' you'll live without worrkin' forevermore. Maybe the old man will follow suit. It's me life ambition to be idle an' palatial. An' You Han will be the hottest sport in fifty li. Dinghowdy? All right?"

In the third hour they were not more than halfway across, and the short winter afternoon was reddening. The level desolation had begun to tumble up into crowding little hills and sand barriers among which the trail now and then entangled itself. But the air was crystal and windless, and scrambling to the top of one of the white hills, the corporal could see the faintest tracery of a towered temple on the farther side of the desert as a guiding landmark. It was a forced march, and a halt was made only for a fragment of supper and a swig for man and mule from the water-bottle on the pack. The moon rose in the sleeping dusk, but before it was clear of the scalloping ridges of sand the sky became spattered with rags of flying cloud. Presently the wind behind the angry scud began to pick up gusts of sand and flirt them from one crest to another. The travelers rubbed their eyes and coughed as they plowed steadily westward, steering a course by the cart-trail, still discernible, and by the moon behind them. "We're more 'n halfway over," shouted the corporal, "an' it's silly to be dr'amin' of losin' ourselves in this two-by-four desert."

Then the gray sky closed down in blackness everywhere, and leaping billows of sand seemed to meet it. The rush of the terrific wind wiped out the trail as if it had been no more than a finger-mark. There were no more hills nor winding passages among them, only a fog of whirling sand. The wind had an icy edge as it brought the killing cold of Mongolian steppes a thousand miles away. The deserter and the boy covered their faces with their hands, their garments; and almost instantly they were adrift, cowering, lost, helpless. So dense was the driving smother of sand that they could scarcely see the mule straining at the end of its halter-rope. The hillocks were shifting with a complaining roar, and the shriek of the wind in mid-air was pierced with a shrill rasp like the commotion of innumerable iron filings.

The corporal and You Han groped toward the side of a hillock, seeking a lee; but the flooding sand tumbled down its side knee-deep, and the wind sucked round and searched them out, as if in chase. The flinty particles pelted in sheets, and bit their faces like incessant volleys of fine shot. There was no more time to think of what should be done than when a swimmer is plunged over a dam.

It did not seem possible that the danger of death was menacing in this absurdly small theater of action, yet it could not have been many moments before the deserter began to realize where lay the odds in another hour's exposure to such a storm. All sense of direction had been snatched from him, and he fought only for breath. You Han had no knowledge of desert storms in his home on the bank of the Pei-ho. He gasped whatever prayers came to him, but placed his active faith, still unshaken, in the ability of his master to save him from the choking, freezing terror. The man and the boy were not only stifled, but soon benumbed, for neither had ever felt anything to compare with the searching cold of this blast. They stumbled from one hill to another, sometimes keeping their feet, falling oftener, rising more slowly, the little mule trying in vain to turn tail to the storm.

There could be no conversation. At length the deserter muttered drowsily to the storm such fragments as these:

"No place like home. It's the finish that's comin' to me. Cudn't take me medicine like a man. P'rhaps this'll blow over soon. I'm blinded entirely. Good God! forgive me poor cowardly sowl! I niver meant to go wrong. Had to bring that poor fool You Han into this mess."

The deserter pitched forward on hands and knees, his rifle buried somewhere in his circling wake. He caught hold of You Han's queue lest they lose each other, and then the mule pushed impetuously between them, ears forward, muzzle outstretched, trumpeting joyfully.

"He b'lieve can find. He sabee plenty," feebly sputtered You Han.

The frantic mule dragged the boy by the lead-rope a few paces, the corporal falling, sliding after, and then stopped. The linked procession could go no farther. You Han collapsed in a little heap, and the corporal toppled face down. The boy had tied the lead-rope around his own wrist, and the impatient mule was jerking it so that the forlorn figure in the sand seemed to make appealing gestures. The corporal was without motion, and with a mighty effort You Han pulled himself a little nearer, and the mule followed protestingly. The swaying curtain of sand closed in around the three figures.

You Han struggled to his knees and with his teeth loosed the knotted cinch, and the pack fell from the mule. The boy writhed over on the corporal and tried to raise the dead weight, tried to talk to him in a wordless and appealing whimper. The deserter strove to rise, and failed until he dully comprehended that the boy sought to make him mount the mule, or at least to hitch him in tow with the lead-rope. Then the soldier awoke, and fighting off the death that had almost mastered him, lurched to one knee and pushed You Han toward the mule that was standing over them. His voice thick and rasping as if his tongue were of sandpaper, the deserter succeeded in saying:

"Get aboard that mule. No Chinese village in mine. Better man than me--you an' mule both better men. You won't? ---- ---- you, take that!"

The deserter swung his fist against the jaw of the struggling boy, and the blow went home with the last flicker of the old-time fighting strength of Corporal Sweeney. You Han dropped limp, as if shot. Then the fugitive from army justice braced himself, tried, and failed to lift the light body in his arms. Three times he tried and failed, and then, as the mule swerved, he fell against it and dropped the lad across its back, like a bundle of quilts. The cinch, trailing in the sand, tripped the man, and he slipped it over You Han and pulled it tight before he fell back in the tossing sand. The mule stumbled a step or two with its burden, found that it was free and in a moment tottered beyond the vision of the deserter.

Not more than a hundred yards away a camel-trail lay encamped against the storm, and to the Mongolian drivers, huddled in furs close to their beasts, came a little dun mule half dragging an unconscious Chinese youth, whom they took for dead as they wonderingly cut him loose from his lashing.

Daylight and the tail of the sand-storm had come before he was able to speak, and the camels were jostling into the line of march. The swarthy drivers scoffed at the story told by the raving stranger, until the bell-camel shied at something nearly buried in the sand. You Han fought the greedy northerners off until he had disclosed a figure in army blue and a clean-cut Irish face whose expression was vastly peaceful.

The last silver coin was gone from the knotted sash of You Han after he had persuaded the camel-men to carry the body to the village where Corporal Sweeney had expected to find a refuge from fear.

THE LAST PILOT SCHOONER

Young James Arbuthnot Wilson slipped into the _Standard_ building with an uneasy air as if he were vaguely on the defensive. Six months of work in the "City Department" had not rid him of the feeling of a cat in a strange garret. The veterans of the staff were rather pleased that this should be the attitude common among young reporters. It showed that the office machine was geared to high tension when every man, short of five years' service, was thankful to find his "job" had not slid from under him between two days.

Wilson could recall no specific warnings that his head was in peril. His activities had been too inconspicuous to merit the dignity of official notice of any kind. He had faithfully followed his foot-sore round of minor police courts, hospitals, one-alarm fires, and dreary public meetings, to have his copy jammed as scanty paragraphs under the head of "City Jottings." A "story" filling a third of a column had marked his one red-letter day on the _Standard_.

Each afternoon, at one o'clock, he hurried to his pigeon-hole in the row of letter-boxes by the city editor's door, his heart thumping to this sense of intangible fear, and with it pulsing the foolish hope of a "big assignment." Some day they must give him a chance, and he would show them whether or not he could handle something worth while. But the flame of hope was low on this dull day of June as Wilson unlocked his box and tore open the yellow envelope on which his name was scrawled.

He whistled in blank amazement as he followed an unfamiliar hand down to the managing editor's signature. The youngster's face flushed and his fingers twittered as he turned sharply to see if the loungers at their desks had noted his agitation. Then he stole into the hall and re-read, with his lips moving as if he were spelling out the words:

DEAR MR. WILSON: You have been pegging away without any let-up
for three months and your work has been excellent. Here is an
easy assignment as a reward of merit. It will give you a pleasant
outing, and us a good page story for the Sunday sheet. The
enclosed clipping from to-day's paper will give you the idea. The
art department will have a snap-shot camera waiting for you. Our
Ship-News man made arrangements this morning for you to be met
and taken aboard. The one-forty train from Broad Street Station
will take you through to Lewes and the Breakwater. To save time I
enclose some expense money. Try to be back on Thursday. This will
give you three days at sea. We want plenty of rattling description
and human interest, with local color _ad lib._ Good luck.

"Oh, there must be some mistake," gasped young Wilson. "A page Sunday story? A whole page? My work has been excellent? The managing editor has been following it? Why, I didn't suppose he knew me by sight. I can't believe it."

Befogged with hopes and fears, he turned back to the door of the city editor's room.

"He's just gone out to lunch with the managing editor," volunteered the day assistant. "No, I don't know where they went. Said they'd be back about two-thirty."

Wilson looked at the office clock. If he would catch the one-forty train for Lewes there was no leeway for hesitation. He started toward the elevator, then halted to read the clipping, which might throw some light upon this staggering manifesto:

THE LAST PILOT SCHOONER

The new steam pilot-boat will go into commission off the Delaware
Capes early next week. This change from sail to steam is another
blow at the romance of blue water. Six of the eight trim schooners
of the Delaware fleet have already been dismantled, not only the
_Albatross, Number One_ is cruising on the station. She will be
laid up as soon as the steamer is ready to put the pilots aboard
incoming vessels. Every ocean voyager will regret the passing of
the pilot schooner. These stormy petrels among sailing craft have
been the first messengers from the looked-for land, as specks in
the tumbling waste of sea, or lying hove to in all weathers....

Wilson threw his doubts overboard. All he had ever read of bellying canvas, whipping spars, and lee rails awash leaped into the foreground of his boyish imagination. Here was his chance for such a "descriptive story" as he had dreamed of through weeks and months, this last cruise of the last pilot schooner. He dashed into the art room, snatched up the waiting camera, and bolted for the station. After he dropped panting into a seat of the accommodation train for Lewes, he found himself already overhauling his stock of sea-lore and sailor adjectives.

There was time for reflection in this four-hour journey to the sea, and ere long, sober second thought began to overtake his first wild elation. The young reporter's doubts came trooping back. He remembered now that he had never written a line of "ship-news" for the _Standard_. He blushed to confess to himself that his life on salt water had been bounded by the decks of river excursion steamers. And what had he ever done worth the notice of the managing editor? Of course, he had worked hard, and the world, at least in fiction, occasionally rewarded honest merit in lowly places with unexpected largess. But any "star man" of the staff would have given a week's salary for such a note as this from the chief executive of the _Standard_. And he, James Arbuthnot Wilson, was indubitably the rawest and humblest recruit of that keen and rough-riding squadron of talent.

An inevitable reaction swung his mood into the forebodings. The train was loafing along the upper reaches of Delaware Bay when he re-read the intoxicating note, and caught himself repeating "Dear Mr. Wilson," with a sudden glimmer of association. In another miserable moment the youth's beautiful dream was wrenched from him. What a fool he had been! "Wilson," "Wilson," he muttered and burst out:

"Of course, there is another Wilson, the tip-top man of the staff. It's the Wilson who's been filling in as chief of the Washington Bureau for six months. I heard somebody say the other night that 'Doc' Wilson was coming back, and was to go on general work again. He must have turned up over Sunday. And that new boy put his note in my box. Well, I am IT."

Young James Arbuthnot Wilson squeezed back a smarting tear. He did not try to fence with this surmise. There was no room for doubt that the kind words and the pleasant outing had been aimed at his high-salaried elder. James Arbuthnot had never clapped eyes on the gifted "Doc" Wilson, whose Washington dispatches had carried no signature and whose distant personality had made no impression upon this wretched understudy of his.

How could the pilgrim muster courage to go back and face the issue? He would be the office butt--Well, he could resign, but most likely, he reflected, dismissal would be the instant penalty of this incredibly presumptuous blunder. The only thing to be done was to drop off at the next way station and return to the scene of his downfall. But to his stammering plea the brakeman returned:

"Next train up won't get along here till late to-night. You better go through to Lewes instead of waiting seven hours at one of these next-to-nothing flag stations."

The reporter slumped into his seat and looked through the open window. The tang of brine was in the breeze that gushed up the bay with the rising tide. Across the green fields he began to glimpse flashing blue water and bits of the traffic of far-off seas. A deep-laden tramp freighter was creeping toward her port, a battered bark surged solemnly in tow of an ocean-going tug, and a four-masted schooner was reaching up the bay with every sail pulling. Across the aisle of the car Wilson noticed, with a melancholy pleasure, four deep-tanned men of rugged aspect, who played cards with much talk of ships and tides and skippers. They belonged in this picture.

Wilson thought of the stewing city far behind him, and the spirit of some sea-faring ancestor was whispering in his ear. Yes, by Jove! he would see the tragic venture through after all. It were better to return with a "story," and fall with colors flying than to slink back to empty ridicule. Let them try to overtake him if they dared. This was "Mr. Wilson's" mission, and no one could snatch it from him.

When the train labored into Lewes, the fugitive looked across the flats to the cuddling arm of the Breakwater and the shining sea beyond. With the instinct of the hunted, he made ready to flee in this direction, away from the station and the town. As he dropped from the car, a man in the uniform of a station agent climbed aboard and shouted:

"Telegram for Mr. Wilson. Is Mr. Wilson aboard? Urgent telegram for Mr. J. A. Wilson."

Mr. Wilson's pulse fluttered as he dove behind the warehouse across the tracks, while the hoarse cry of the station agent rang horribly in his ears. The long arm of the _Standard_ had almost clutched him by the collar. As he hurried down the nearest street to the water, he saw heading toward him a lusty youth of a sailorish cut, who eyed the camera case as if hasty suspicions were confirmed.

"Is your name Wilson?" demanded the stranger. "If it be, come along with me. I'm from the _Albatross'_ boat-crew."

Wondering how much guilt was written in his face, Wilson fervently shook the hand of the briny youth. They fared toward the pier, while the convoy explained:

"You're in luck. We're ready to go to sea as soon as you get aboard. Hit it just right, didn't you? The pilots'll be glad to see you again. They was tickled to death over the piece you wrote for the paper when the _Eben Tunnell, Number Three_, come in after fightin' through the '88 blizzard, and specially what you wrote about ol' 'Pop' Markle stickin' by the _Morgan Castle_ when she ketched fire off the Capes two year ago. And, say, they still talk about that jack-pot you sky-hooted clean through the cabin skylight, and how th' Pilots' Association went in mournin' for thirty days after that poker game. Two o' them boys is aboard this cruise, with the chips all stacked an' waitin', and their knives whetted. I'm sorry I missed the fun before."

James Arbuthnot Wilson gulped hard at these lamentable tidings. He was vaulting from the frying-pan into the fire. These rude and reckless men would probably heave him overboard. And, alas, the penny-ante of his mild college dissipations had left him as deficient in poker prowess as in sea-lore. The foremast hand from the _Albatross_ was somewhat crestfallen over his capture. If this slip of a boy was the seasoned and capable "Doc" Wilson, able to hold his own in all weather and any company, then appearances were basely deceiving, and the escort felt a sense of personal grievance.

The boat was waiting at the pier and the four slouching seamen rowed out to the black schooner, which lazily rolled her gleaming sides off the end of the Breakwater. Wilson climbed awkwardly aboard and was saved from sprawling his length on deck by a strong hand, which yanked him in a welcoming grip. Then a stocky man with a grizzled mustache stepped back and fairly shouted:

"Why, hell! You ain't 'Doc' Wilson. What kind of a game is this? I popped up from below in time to see your hat coming over the side. Kick me, please. I'm dreamin', as sure as my name's McCall."

He fished a rumpled telegram from his blue clothes, and flourished it before the nose of his guest, as he cried formidably:

"Read that!"

"'Doc' Wilson, of the _Standard_, will be down on afternoon train.
Take him aboard and treat him right."

Young Wilson looked at the half mile of water between the schooner and the beach, and thought of trying to swim for it. But the bully-ragging tone of the pilot struck a spark of his latent pluck and he answered with some spirit:

"I'm mighty sorry you're so disappointed. My name is Wilson, James Arbuthnot Wilson, of the _Standard_. The order to join your boat was delivered to me. If there's been a mistake, and I'm so unwelcome, I'll have to put you to the trouble of setting me ashore again."

The innate hospitality of his kind smothered the pilot's first emotions, and he regretted his rudeness as he smote the lad on the back and shouted:

"All right, Jimmy Arbutus. I guess there's no great damage done. It's now or never for your newspaper, and if we can't carry the skipper, we'll get along with the mate of your outfit. And we'll give you a cruise to make your lead-pencil smoke. Tumble below and shake them natty clothes. The boat-keeper will fit you out with a pair of boots and a jumper."

Sore and abashed, with the hateful emotions of an intruder, Wilson crept below and faced another ordeal. In the pilots' roomy cabin, which ran half the length of the schooner, four men were changing their clothes and tidying up their bunks. One of them emerged from the confusion to yell at the invader's patent leather ties:

"Hello, Doc, you old pirate. Is that you? Glad to see you aboard. Well, I will be damned!"

His jaw dropped and he looked sheepish as a hurricane voice came through the open skylight:

"Don't hurt the kid's feelin's. I've done plenty of that. This is Jimmy Arbutus Wilson, apprentice to 'Doc,' and he's doin' the best he can. 'Doc' got stranded somewheres, and the lad is takin' his run. I don't fathom it a little bit, but what's the odds?"

The passenger was introduced to all hands, who showed a depressing lack of enthusiasm, and the pilots returned to their tasks. Wilson retired, blushing and confused, to the edge of his bunk. Presently the oldest man of the party sat down beside the intruder, and shook his hand for the second time. Wilson raised his downcast face to the white-haired veteran, who said softly:

"Now, sonny, don't let the boys rile you none. They're kinder sore on some of the greenhorns that writes pieces all wrong for the Philadelphy papers, and this 'Doc' Wilson knows sailor ways and sailor lingo, and they sorter took a shine to him and his style. But fur's I know, you can write rings around him. And Old Pop Markle, as they calls me, will see you through, blow high, blow low. It's my last cruise, this is. I'm past seventy year, sonny, and my oldest boy is a pilot; he brought a tanker in yestiddy, and my grandson is servin' his apprentice years, and he'll be gettin' his papers pretty soon. It's time for me to quit. I was goin' to lay up ashore in the spring, but I kinder wanted to wind up with the old _Albatross_. Better come on deck, sonny; we're shortenin' cable."

Wilson smiled his gratitude at the gentle and garrulous old pilot, whose smooth-shaven face was webbed with fine-drawn wrinkles, as if each salty cruise had left its own recording line. The blue eyes were faded from staring into fifty years of sun and wind, but they held a beaming interest in the welfare of this tyro struggling in the meshes of hostile circumstance.

The reporter followed his guardian on deck, and his spirits swiftly rose. The _Albatross_ was paying off under a flattened forestaysail, while her crew tailed onto the main-sheet with a roaring chorus, for they, too, felt a thrill of sentiment in this last cruise. The wind held fresh from the south'ard, and under the smooth lee of Cape Henlopen the _Albatross_ shot seaward, as if they were skating over a polished floor. Now the pilots came tumbling up, and shouted as they turned to and helped set the maintopsail and staysail. The schooner staggered down to it, until the white water hissed over her low bulwark, and sobbed through the scuppers. "Old Pop" Markle slapped his knee and cried huskily:

"Give her all she'll stand, boys. It's like old times when we raced that dodgasted _Number Four_ and hung to the weather riggin' by our teeth, and bent a new suit of sails every other cruise."

Holding the wind abeam, the _Albatross_ drove straight out to sea, and then, once clear of Cape May, slid off to the north'ard. Now, the quartering sea picked her up and she swooped down the slopes and tried nimbly to climb the frothing hills, as the jolly wind smote her press of canvas and jammed her smoking through them. A new exhilaration surged in young Wilson's veins. He was drinking it all in, the buoyant flight of the low, slim schooner, the intimate nearness of the sea, the sweetness of the wind, and the solemnity of the marching twilight. He would not have been elsewhere for worlds. Then the fat and sweating face of the cook appeared from below, and bellowed an inarticulate summons.

The pilots obeyed with ardor, and Wilson followed timidly in their wake. Supper smoked on the cabin table, and the guest was glad to survey the stout fare of hash, cold meat, potatoes, green peas, flaky hot biscuits, and a mammoth pudding. "Old Pop" Markle took the youngster under his protecting wing, and found a seat on the locker beside his own. The reporter fell to, while the pilots chatted with bursts of gusty laughter. He made one desperate rally to join the talk, and in a quiet moment asked a neighbor:

"How do you know when a ship wants a pilot?"

"We generally have a trained green parrot that flies over and asks 'em," was the cruel response. "But we ran short of stores last cruise, and had to eat him. This voyage we intend to mail 'em postal cards."

There was an appreciative roar, and Wilson winced as "Old Pop" Markle whispered:

"Don't mind that Peter Haines. He's got a heart as soft as mush. It's only their skylarkin', sonny. Hit 'em back. That's what they like."

But the victim had lost all self-confidence, and now he was beginning to feel dizzy and forlorn. The smell of food, the heat, and the jerky plunging of the cabin were overwhelming. He staggered to his bunk and crept in. This was the last blow, that on top of his false pretences he should be laid low before the eyes of this hostile crowd. He knew not what happened, until hours after he awoke from a semi-stupor to find "Old Pop" Markle sponging his face with cold water and calling in his ear:

"There's a steamer coming up from the east'ard. Brace up and get on deck. It's a pretty sight."

The boy clambered through the companionway as the boat-keeper touched a match to an oil-soaked bunch of waste in a wire cage at the end of his torch. The schooner and the near-by sea were bathed in a yellow glare. Out in the darkness a blue Coston light glowed a response. Some one shouted: "On deck for the skiff," and five minutes later the boat-crew was pulling off in the night to the waiting steamer, with a pilot in the stern-sheets.

"There goes your friend, Peter Haines," chuckled "Pop" Markle. "I knowed you'd take it hard if I didn't give you a chance to say good-bye to him. He won't pester you no more this cruise."

The wind blew some of the cobwebs from poor Wilson's muddled head, and he felt refreshed. Soon the pelting spray drove him below deck and he curled up on a locker, watching the poker game from which youth and inexperience barred him. And what was more cutting, he was not even asked to play.

"It would be like taking pennies from a blind child," callously commented the strapping McCall who had welcomed him aboard. But the white-haired patriarch of them all did not join the game, and he said cheerily to Wilson:

"You're too young and I'm too old to be wastin' our wages in them pursuits, ain't we, sonny? There's an old lady and a cottage at Lewes that takes care of my rake-off. And instid of raisin' the limit, I raise vegetubbles for my fun."

Wilson opened his bruised heart and told the old pilot the story of his venture, and felt relieved that his masquerade had been thrown away. "Pop" Markle's blue eyes twinkled:

"See here, Jimmy Arbutus, I'll see that you write a fust-rate piece for your paper. Ask me anything your amazin' ignorance tells you to. The boys wanted me to take in the fust vessel we met, and was willin' to shove their turns aside, but I told 'em it was my last cruise, and I was goin' to see her through to the finish. So we've lots of time to talk pilotin' together. What was the most remarkable experience ever I had? Pshaw, that sounds like a full-rigged reporter, sonny, really it does.

"Well, I never got drownded boardin' a vessel, but I once fell afoul of a skipper that was a worse blunderin' idjit than you've been. It may sound kinder comfortin' to you. About fifty miles off the Capes, I clumb aboard an Italian bark. Her captain said he was bound for Wilmington, and would I take him in? He got a tow-boat at the Breakwater, and we were goin' up the river all right, when plumb by accident this benighted Dago imparted to me that he was bound for Wilmington, North Caroliny. 'Great Scott! You dodgasted lunatic,' says I, 'you're pretty nigh up to Wilmington, Delaware.' He went crazier than ever, and put about for sea after I showed him on the chart where he was at. He had been runnin' by dead-reckonin', and didn't know where he was. So, when he picked up a pilot and found he was headed all right for Wilmington, he figured his troubles were over. So there's worse than you afloat, Jimmy Arbutus."

At his suggestion, Wilson dug up his notebook and scribbled therein many other yarns, for the old pilot warmed to his task, and insisted that each of the poker players should contribute a story to the fund. When he was routed out for breakfast, the party had lost another pilot who had found his ship at daybreak. The wind had drawn into the northeast, and the _Albatross_ was snuggled down under double reefs. The barometer was falling, and the boat-keeper shook his head when the pilots insisted upon edging further off shore.

"Drive her till she cracks," shouted McCall. "This is the trip when we keep going till we get our ships. The _Albatross_ goes home empty, you bet your boots."

With much daring and difficulty one man was put aboard a liner late in the afternoon. Three pilots were left, and they swept Wilson into their genial comradeship, as the little party clawed its way to supper, and hung onto the table by its eyelids. In his mind, Wilson began to see the page story, "full of human interest and color." To-morrow he would work at his "introduction," and the thought of really making a start at filling those stately columns was perturbing. He felt something like stage-fright at the notion of it.

Before midnight, James Arbuthnot Wilson had forgotten his "story," and was thinking only of the awful turmoil above him. The wind had leaped to the might of a sudden summer gale. The schooner was hove to and battened tight, and like a tightly corked bottle she danced over the shouting seas. Made sick and giddy, Wilson sought "Old Pop" Markle, who was peacefully snoring in the next bunk, and shook him awake.

"Pshaw, sonny," the old man muttered, "she's safer than a big ship. She'll rare and tear and sputter till it blows over. If it'll ease your mind any, I'll take a peek on deck."

The pilot slipped into his oil-skins and vanished.

"It's pretty thick," he said when he came below, "but there ain't no great sea on, not for us. Rainin' hard and blowin' some. McCall is standin' watch with the boat-keeper. You're safer than if you was in the _Standard_ office. You can't lose your job out here, Jimmy."

Somewhat comforted, Wilson tried to sleep. It was a terrifying experience for the greenhorn, with more "local color" than he had bargained for. Some time later in the night he was half dreaming that "Doc" Wilson was holding his head under water and drowning him with the most enjoyable deliberation.

With a crashing sound like the explosion of a great gun in his ears, he was flung headlong clear across the cabin, and on top of him came "Old Pop" Markle, sputtering harmless curses. The cabin floor sloped like the side of a house and stayed there as Wilson scrambled to his hands and knees. Then came a more sickening lurch, and before the hanging cabin lamp was smashed against the deck-beams, the lad saw that the old man was dazed. He gave him a hand, and together they climbed the slope, and grasped the legs of the stationary table. They heard the other pilots stumble up the companion ladder, and hammer back the hatch, with yells of terror lest they be trapped.

Forward of the cabin bulkhead, they heard the roar of inrushing water, and smothered outcries among the watch below. While the old man and the boy tried to grope their way aft to the ladder, the sea crashed through the bulkhead door from the galley beyond, and instantly they were picked up and hurled aft, choking and fighting for life. Wilson chanced to grasp a step of the ladder, and with his free arm pulled "Old Pop" Markle to this refuge. The reporter did not want to die, and he knew that death dragged him by the heels. And it was with no heroic prompting that he pushed the old man up ahead of him. It was done on the instant, as one friend would help another in a pinch, without wrought-out purpose.

The water was sucking at his waist as he fought his way up, and partly out, and managed to double himself over the hatch coaming, with the old man's legs across his shoulders. Thus they were half jammed in the cramped exit. Just then the flare torch was lighted by a seaman. In the yellow glare "Old Pop" Markle saw the two pilots and two, only two, of the crew wrestling with the one skiff left at the davits. One of them stopped to beckon wildly to the old man and started to go to his aid.

In this moment the schooner lurched under with a weary, lifeless roll, and a black sea stamped across her sodden hull. It licked up the boat and the handful of toiling men, it leaped forward and pulled down the black figure with the torch. The two men still jammed in the hatchway were cruelly battered, but they could not be wrenched away. And when the towering comber had passed, there was darkness and silence, and no more shouting voices on the schooner's deck.

The old pilot wriggled free and got his hands on a life-buoy that hung within his reach at the after end of the cabin hatch. Wilson dragged himself after him, and pitched against a splintered mass of planking upended against the wheel. They listened and heard a steamer's imploring whistle, and one faint cry off to leeward. "Pop" Markle groaned as he fumbled in the darkness and laboriously passed a tangle of line around the wreck of the skylight cover to which Wilson was clinging.

"Hang on, sonny," he gasped. "I've made the buoy fast to the loose timber. We'll go off together with the next sea, sure. My God! here it comes."

The dying schooner seemed to sink from beneath them, and clinging to their frail bit of a raft, they were spun off to leeward in the arms of the sea that swamped the rock-ballasted _Albatross_. Turned over and over, the two men fought for breath until the skylight cover righted, and they came to the surface. They slid swiftly into a murky hollow, and were borne to the tattered crest whose froth was strangling.

But the wind was falling fast. Such seas as those which had broken over the helpless _Albatross_ were running in swollen billows when they met no barrier to check them. Therefore the castaways could cling and breathe, and even made shift to pass the loose ends of the line around their waists while they waited for the end. Now their spray-blinded eyes dimly saw the lights of the steamer that had bitten halfway through the pilot-schooner. She was blundering far to windward, and her signal rockets cut red gashes in the night. They could watch her swing in a useless circle as she sought to find the craft she had struck. Drifting away to leeward, the old pilot and the young reporter tried to shout, but their little rasping cries were pitifully futile. They coughed the racking brine from their throats, and saw the last rocket soar, saw the steamer's lights fade in the rain, become twinkling points and vanish.

There were no words between them until the day began to break. Now and then one sought the other's hand and found a feebly responsive grip. Thus they knew that death had not come to the little raft. With the gray light, the wind veered round to the south'ard, and except for the swinging swell, the sea was smoothed to summer gentleness. The eternal miracle of dawn had never come to more grateful hearts than these two. Youth had survived the battering ordeal with mind still alert, but old age was near passing with hurts and exhaustion. Now that he could see no help, the boy so managed it that the pilot could lie half across the life-buoy, which floated high with the supporting planking beneath it.

"Them as wasn't drownded and smashed in their bunks, couldn't swim, or none to speak of," sighed the old man. "I knew 'em all from boys. Two left.... And we're the most wuthless of the lot, sonny. But you may learn how to make an honest livin' some day.... Don't bother with me.... I'm due to go.... The old lady has the cottage, and there's the pension from the Pilot's Fund.... And two more pilots in the family.... Ain't you sorry you didn't let 'Doc' Wilson come?"

The boy sputtered:

"No, we aren't dead yet, and if we're picked up it's the story of a lifetime. I don't believe the Lord saved us from the wreck to die on a summer morning like this. And, my, but you were good to me, Mr. Markle."

They floated in silence while the June sun rose higher, and heat and thirst piled up their wretchedness. The seasoned fiber of the old man had been toughened for such a stress as this. He hung on grimly because he had always hung on grimly to whatever life set him to endure. Although they were out on the edge of traffic bound in and out of the Delaware Capes, he still hoped, but mostly for the boy.

Six hours after the _Albatross_ had gone to the bottom, a boat from a crippled brig, laden with salt from Turk's Island, picked up a bit of wreckage to which were lashed a white-haired man and a beardless lad. Both were too weak to talk, and the British skipper had them put into bunks, and poured raw Jamaica rum down their throats. Wilson was the first to revive, but he could not rise, and had to content himself with tidings that the pilot was alive and conscious. Night had come before the reporter could totter as far as the mate's cabin and see his comrade.

The pilot's leathery face was strangely bleached, and he could no more than whisper with a faltering huskiness:

"God bless their poor souls. They was all neighbors of mine. Hello, Jimmy Arbutus, have you begun to write that piece for the paper? There's something wrong with my insides. I think I busted some of 'em when we was jammed in that hatch. Well, we're going home, my son. Are you all taut again?"

Wilson tried to hide his anxiety and set himself to nursing the old man as best he could. His clumsy attentions were received with a sweet resignation, but the old man showed signs of impatience. At length, unable to restrain his desire, he asked:

"Why don't you begin to write your piece instead of wastin' time on my old hulk? I want to see it's done all ship-shape. We ain't goin' to have no 'Doc' Wilson nor a lot of fresh young pilots laughin' at our blunders. I'll overhaul the writin' for you."

Wilson was eager to begin. The skipper found a half-filled log-book, and the butt of a pencil, and the reporter sat by the pilot's bunk, and wrote with frowning effort. His labor was so evident that at length the interested pilot asked:

"You seem to be making heavy weather of it, Jimmy. Mind my lookin' over the nigh end of it?"

Wilson passed the log-book over with a flutter of expectancy. He was proud of his opening paragraphs. He flattered himself that he had caught the spirit of the tragedy of the last and lost pilot-schooner. The old man read them with puckered brow, and laid the book down without comment. Wilson waited and had to break the awkward silence:

"Anything the matter with that?"

"Well, I had only a common school education, and I've been at sea fifty years. I'm no judge, I guess. It's too high-falutin' for me. Those dictionary words are mighty imposin', and the opening verse of poetry looks gilt-edged. But, well, every man to his trade."

The very young reporter looked hurt, and the pilot tried to soothe him by flatly denying the truth of everything he had said. Wilson put the book away and went on deck. In his mind there was a glimmering notion that his literary method might be open to criticism. The old fear and lack of self-confidence came back. He would rest another day and try again.

Next morning the brig was beating against a baffling wind, and the Delaware Capes were two hundred and fifty miles away. A mattress was brought on deck, and the old man was laid on it beneath an awning. He was growing weaker, and began to fret when he found the brig was making so little headway toward her port and his home. Wilson was moody and worried about his comrade. He had no heart for his "story."

After a while the British skipper sat down beside the old man, and began to ask him about the loss of the _Albatross_. The pilot began with the start of the last cruise, and with crisp and homely detail, and with many breaks in his voice, he carried the tale down to the loss of the vessel, the loss of his comrades, and the escape of the oldest and youngest of those that had sailed in her. And because he felt it all so deeply, the story did not once wander from its chartered course.

Wilson pulled himself together and picked up his log-book. He felt that it was his duty to write what he heard. When he had finished, the scales fell from his eyes, for at a great price he had been taught to discern that virtue of simplicity which most of his craft must spend years to learn. When the pilot fell into a doze, he stole below and began to write his "story." It was not all as the pilot had told it, but its backbone and its vitals belonged to the simple and untutored old man. Next day when he read it to "Pop" Markle the pilot brightened and observed:

"Any sailor could understand that, my lad. It sounds as dodgasted ordinary as if I had wrote it myself. The pilots will think a heap of that piece. I want you to hold your job, sonny."

The third day passed, and then the fourth, and the booming head wind was holding the lubberly brig out of sight of the Delaware Capes. The pilot insisted that he be carried on deck whenever the sun shone. He was looking for the Henlopen light. When he was not drowsy, he would talk of home to his young comrade, for all his thoughts were flocking thither.

"I don't think I'm going to fetch it, sonny," he murmured when the fifth day broke with no land in sight. "It looks like you're going to be the sole survivor of the _Albatross_. That will make your piece a heap stronger, won't it? My own boy couldn't have done more for me than you have. If we don't pick up the Capes by noon, I want you to write a letter for me to Mary, that's my wife. You can take it ashore at Lewes. You'll find the cottage easy enough. And you must go around and look at my vegetubbles. One of my boys will be home, and he'll see that they get my hulk to the buryin' ground. The skipper here has promised to anchor long enough to send me ashore."

Wilson choked, and tried to cheer the old man. But the faded blue eyes were serene with the foreknowledge of his end. The letter was written at his dictation, and Wilson sobbed while he went below to find an envelope in the skipper's desk. Then the pilot tried to sign it, and his knotted brown fingers held the pencil while Wilson helped him trace the wavering:

"Your loving Seth."

Late in the afternoon of this, the fifth day, a tiny shaft, like a beckoning finger, cut the cloudless western skyline. Seth Markle heard the shouts of the men clustered forward who were eager to bring him the longed-for news. Wilson and the skipper came to him, and propped him up in his pillows on the poop-deck.

"Henlopen light," he whispered. "Henlopen light, and Lewes just around the Point."

The dim light of life burned brighter in this draught of hope, but soon waned lower than before. After a long silence, the old man tried to speak. Wilson put his ear close to the resolute mouth, and could barely hear:

"Tell her how good you've been to me. I--I hope the piece is all right. The last cruise.... Oh, Mary, you're waiting around the Point of the Cape."

He was alive until sunset, but he did not speak, except once when Wilson thought he heard a fluttering whisper of "Mary," and after that the rough-hewn face became very peaceful.

The brig crept into the lee of the Breakwater soon after daylight next morning. Wilson went ashore and found the cottage with the marvelous vegetable garden, and a sweet-faced woman who read her letter while the bearer walked softly among the cabbage rows, and noted, with a quick pang, how lovingly they had been tended. Presently Mary Markle came to him, and put her motherly arms around his neck and kissed him through her tears. They went to a near-by cottage where dwelt the eldest son. There Wilson left them. Before he went away he said:

"He was the best friend I ever had. I'm coming down day after to-morrow. May I go to the church with you?"

He had to tarry in the streets, for the news had spread, and other weeping wives of pilots and seamen pressed around him. When, as tenderly as possible, he was able to leave them, he went to the telegraph office and sent this message to the managing editor of the _Standard_:

"Just landed. Am sole survivor of pilot schooner _Albatross_ run down and foundered a week ago. Will report with my story at noon."

On the train Wilson added to his "story" in the old log-book the facts of the last days of Pilot Seth Markle. His pencil quivered and balked when he recalled the words and face of his gentle old critic, and somehow, through his tears, he brought the narrative of the last cruise to its unadorned conclusion. Then he closed the book and leaned back with a great weariness. Now he was passing that bright vista of shore through which he had first seen the Bay, where he had chosen to advance rather than to retreat. Those intervening days seemed like years of life. He had gone away a boy, he was coming back a man.

When the young reporter walked into the _Standard_ office, the first man to greet him was a bald and bulky stranger with an impressive manner, who said:

"Ah, the young hero, I presume. You had a great streak of luck, didn't you? Glad to see you pulled through. My name is Wilson. I'm to take your notes at once and work up the story from them. We're going to play as the leading feature in to-morrow's paper, and follow up with a page for Sunday."

Young Wilson looked at "Doc" Wilson with a new assertiveness and threw back his slight shoulders as he replied:

"No, thank you. Nothing doing. My story is written, and it's going to be turned in to the boss as it stands. I'm going in to see him now."

"Oh, nonsense," snapped "Doc" Wilson. "I can understand your wanting to do the story, and your head being swelled a bit and all that. But if you want to hold your job you'd better fork over your notes without any more fuss about it. The old man passed it out that he was going to fire you, anyhow. I'll say a good word for you if you can produce the goods."

Young Wilson brushed past his elder, who stood dumbfounded at the insolence of the "pup." Then the managing editor was confronted by an unabashed intruder, who announced:

"Here's my story, sir. There's about six columns of it. And it's all ready to be edited. And no 'Doc' Wilson nor anybody else is going to rewrite it until you've passed on it."

The managing editor saw a bedraggled figure with a firm-set jaw and a level glance which looked him squarely in the eyes. He took in the sea-stained clothes, and the burned and grimy face, and smiled as he said:

"I'll read it, Mr. Wilson. Go home and come back at six o'clock. Then we'll talk it over. You've been through a tremendous experience, haven't you? It's your story. Don't fret about that."

When James Arbuthnot Wilson next entered the managing editor's office, that dignified personage grasped his hand and exclaimed:

"My son, why haven't I known you could write a story like this? It's the real thing. It's a masterpiece. Where did you learn how?"

The boy's face twitched as he said very slowly:

"The man who taught me how died in sight of home. It's his story. It isn't mine at all. I want a day off, if you please, to go down to Lewes again. I'm--I'm the last of the _Albatross_."

THE JADE TEAPOT