Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

And you have today the spectacle of this so-called Democratic mayor lined up with the Trust magnates and their money-bags at the big ends of the gas-tubes and against the people of all parties who suffer extortion at the little ends of the gas-tubes. He is actually opposing the efforts of the people of this city to secure the necessary legislation to permit them to build and operate their own gas-plants and deliver the gas to themselves through pipes laid in their own streets. And if you refuse to support such a man you are likely to be told by an insolent Tammany Hall henchman that you are no Democrat.

Talk about municipal ownership! Why, the municipality, which is another name for the people, already own everything they need. They own the streets and the right of way through them, and they own the money to build lighting plants, railways and telephone lines. The only thing they do not own is _permission_ to use their own property. And this is withheld from them by greedy Trust magnates through their bought-up politicians.

We need MEN in this city who cannot be deceived by the _names_ Democracy and Republicanism. We need men who will stand together and protect our franchise property against grafting politicians and grafting political organizations, no matter by what names they call themselves. New York City may be likened to a big “skyscraper” laid on its side. The streets correspond to the elevator shafts. Now, what would be thought of the sanity of a company of men who built a high office building, hotel or apartment house and allowed their agents to give away to outsiders the right to run the elevators and the further right to prey upon the tenants who are obliged to use them? Yet this is exactly what the politicians have done and are doing with the streets of this city.

Make an inventory of the Gas Trust’s property, find out how much it would cost to duplicate its plant, then subtract that sum from the capitalization of the Trust and the remainder is franchise property, and that belongs to the people. Go through the list of telephone, telegraph and railway companies the same way, and you will begin to get an idea of the value and earning capacity of your franchise property which has been stolen from you by your agents, the officeholders.

If the agent of an individual deeds away a piece of his private property and fails to make a just return to the owner, the law holds the title to be spurious and punishes that agent. But the officeholders, the agents appointed by all the individuals to care for their franchise property, deed it away to so-called public service corporations, pocket the proceeds and go scot-free!

The telephone, telegraph and all the corporations that use wires and electricity appropriate and use the people’s private property as well as their franchise property. Go on your roofs, New Yorkers, and count the electric wires that the thieving electricity corporations have attached to your houses or have strung across your lots without your permission. Remember that you own a space equal to the surface dimensions of your lot down into the bowels of the earth and up into the sky as far as you like to go. And nobody has the right to string wires across this space in the air or in the earth without your permission. The New York Telephone Company attached a wire to the roof of a house I had leased. I threatened to cut the wire. The company insolently replied that they needed that wire on my roof to carry on their business. I insisted on justice and my rights in the matter. The company then came round with a lease, which I signed, granting them permission to pass their wire over my roof, and I received a substantial annual rental for that privilege.

These corporations appropriate your private property as well as your franchise property for their own enrichment and pay nothing for it. They would string wires on your teeth if they needed them and you did not object. And to cap the climax they charge extortionate rates for service in order to pay dividends on watered stock. I wrote these facts a few years ago and offered the article to two daily newspapers in this town, and they did not dare to publish it. But thank God TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE exists to tell the truth. New Yorkers, you ought to examine the fences around your backyards. You surely own them, and they are valuable property. They produce an enormous income to—the telephone company. Tens of thousands of yards of telephone wires are strung on these fences. The company uses them to get wires into your houses, in order to charge you extortionate prices for ’phone service. The company will tell you they need these fences to give _you_ ’phone service. That answer reminds me of the answer given by a negro girl caught stealing raisins from her mistress’s bureau drawer. “Why did you steal those raisins?” asked the mistress. Sally replied, “Why, missus, dey’s good.”

_The Cause of the Congregating_

“MY friends,” began the Great Man, in a voice admirably adapted for declamatory purposes, as he stepped out upon the platform of the car and beheld the major portion of the inhabitants of the wayside hamlet seething and jostling around the station, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this enthusiastic greeting, this spontaneous outpouring of your best citizens, this wholesale welcome, this——”

“Wholesale gran’mother!” broke in a youthful and pessimistic voice. “It ain’t you that’s the attraction—a big fat drummer is havin’ the gol-rammedest fit you ever had the pleasure of witnessin’, right there in the waitin’-room!”

* * * * *

_That Fateful Day_

FREDDIE—How long does the honeymoon last, dad?

COBWIGGER—Until a fellow’s wife learns not to be afraid of him.

_The Storm-Petrel_

PROSE POEM BY MAXIM GORKY
TRANSLATED BY ABRAHAM CAHAN

[NOTE: The following prose poem by Maxim
Gorky was written a few years ago in prophecy of
the present crisis in Russia and was published
only in _Life_, the leading literary magazine of
St. Petersburg. In consequence the periodical was
immediately suppressed. The editor and his entire
staff voluntarily expatriated themselves and
re-established the magazine in London, whence, during
the few months of its existence in exile, thousands
of copies were smuggled over the frontier for secret
circulation.

Gorky was arrested for complicity in the strikers’
movement that resulted in the St. Petersburg massacre
of January 22 last. The rumor that the Russian
Government purposed to sentence him to death excited
so much feeling, that the foremost literary men of
Germany, England and the United States concerted in
an appeal for clemency, on the ground that the life
and work of a great writer belong not alone to his
country but to the world.

Gorky has risen from the depths of poverty and
ignorance to literary eminence as the interpreter of
life among the masses. His first successful short
stories appeared in the newspapers and attracted
attention for their truth and vigor. Since 1893
he has made his literary position secure by the
production of various novels and plays. He is now
thirty-six years old.

Abraham Cahan, translator of the poem, is a
Russian who has attained distinction among American
writers of fiction through short stories and the
novels, “Yekl” and “The White Terror and the
Red.”—EDITORS.]

Over the gray expanse of sea the wind is gathering the clouds. Circling between the clouds and the sea, like a black flash of lightning, is the storm-petrel on high.

Now touching a wave with his wing, now shooting heavenward, dart-like, he is crying, and the clouds hear glad tidings in his cry.

There is thirst for storm in that cry. The force of rage, the flame of passion, the confidence of victory do the clouds hear in that cry.

The gulls are groaning before the storm, groaning and tossing over the sea; ready to hide their terror at the bottom of the sea.

The cargeese, too, are groaning. The joy of the struggle is unknown to them; the din of strife awes them.

The silly albatross hides his fat body in the cliffs. The proud storm-petrel alone is soaring boldly, freely over the sea, the waves singing, dancing on high, coming to meet the thunder.

The thunder roars. Foaming with fury, the waves are raging, battling with the wind. Now the wind seizes a flock of waves in gigantic embrace, now hurls them with savage hate to the rocks, shattering them to dust and masses of emerald spray.

Shouting joyously, the storm-petrel is circling like a black flash of lightning, piercing the clouds like a spear, brushing foam off the waves with its wings.

There he is, flying like a demon, a proud, black storm-demon, laughing and sobbing at once. It is at the clouds he is laughing; it is for joy he is sobbing.

In the thunder’s rage the sensitive demon perceives a weary note, the voice of defeat. He knows that the clouds cannot conceal the sun—not they!

The wind is sighing; the thunder is pealing. Hundreds of clouds gleam bluish over the precipice of the sea. The sea is catching darts of lightning and smothering them in its bosom. Like serpents of fire the reflections of the lightning are writhing, vanishing one after the other.

The storm is advancing! Another minute and the storm will come with a crash.

It is the intrepid storm-petrel who is proudly careering among the flashes of lightning over the roaring, infuriated sea; it is the prophet of victory who is shouting.

Let the storm blow and roar with all its might!

_What Buzz-Saw Morgan Thinks_

BY W. S. MORGAN

Trusts breed distrust.

Law cannot make wrong right.

Charity is no cure for poverty; it is only a plaster.

A forty-three-cent protective tariff is worse than a fifty-cent dollar.

Fiat dollars are better than the fiat promises of the old party politicians.

The rich will continue to grow richer and the poor poorer as long as the present financial system exists.

I want to ask our Democratic friends how often do they need to be fooled by their leaders before they will get their eyes open?

Liberty is not safe in a country where greed and avarice are the basis of its prosperity.

The gold power owes allegiance to no party, yet it controls the machines of both old parties.

If there is anything that is calculated to give the political bosses the jim-jams it is a show of independence on the part of the masses.

I would rather be a dog and scratch at the root of a stump for a mouse, than to feel as small as most rich people do when the assessor and tax-collector come round.

Money paid out for public improvements is a blessing compared with that paid out for war expenses.

An honest dollar is one that preserves the equity in contracts, and not the one of increasing or decreasing value, or whose value depends upon the caprice or self-interest of a few bankers.

The greatest need of this country is for about seven million men who have the courage to vote for what they want.

“The poverty of the poor is their destruction,” and the wealth of the rich has the same effect on its possessors. These two extremes are the cause of the downfall of the nations.

There are some things of which there can be an overproduction, and one of them is yellow-dog politics.

Is there a farmer or laborer in all the land that ever signed a petition to Congress for the destruction of the greenbacks?

The question of 16 to 1 is still an issue; that is, there are sixteen reasons why the Democratic party should permit itself to be buried to one against it.

The banks are in the field to destroy the greenbacks and secure complete control of the currency.

It is not despair but hope that incites revolution. Despair is death.

The workingmen divide what they produce with every idler in the land, rich and poor.

The way to get even with a private trust is for the people to establish a public trust.

It wasn’t the so-called “sound money” men that saved the flag.

It is the hog nature in man that causes most of the suffering in the world.

Our commercial system rests upon the basis of skinning the other fellow before he has an opportunity to skin us.

One of the strongest planks in the devil’s platform is yellow-dog politics.

The best way to abolish poverty is to establish justice.

You can’t cheat the devil by passing a law that calls stealing business.

The lower classes are those who act low—rich or poor.

The practice of redeeming one kind of a dollar with another kind constitutes the banker’s cinch.

The harmony that will likely prevail in the next national Democratic convention might best be illustrated by pouring out a barrel of Kilkenny cats upon a wet floor.

I don’t think that Mr. Bryan is a thief, but he had the Populist platform borrowed so long that he has perhaps inadvertently fallen into the habit of thinking it is his own.

Railroads under private ownership form the strongest prop on which the trusts lean. Through special and reduced rates in the way of rebates they are enabled to freeze out all competitors.

It is stated that the rebate given to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company by the Santa Fé Railroad while Paul Morton was its traffic manager amounted to $400,000 a year. Morton was a heavy stockholder in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. If this is true, and this is the kind of man President Roosevelt is depending on to reform railroad rates and abolish rebates, we may know just what to expect.

The supreme test of any question is, is it right? If it is, then no man should hesitate to declare himself for the right.

Direct legislation is the very essence of democracy, and that is why the politicians don’t want it.

* * * * *

If Thomas Lawson is telling the truth it appears that about three-fourths of the Captains of Industry ought to be wearing striped clothes behind prison bars.

* * * * *

The President’s recommendation for the control of the railroads, and the plan he seems to have adopted to go about it, consultation with the railroad magnates, reminds me of a story I once heard related by a German speaker at a public meeting. A man who had been considered as having an unsound mind was found one morning hanging to a beam in the barn, the rope under his arms. He was promptly cut down, and on being asked why he hanged himself that way he answered that he was trying to commit suicide.

“But why didn’t you place the rope around your neck?” he was asked.

“I’ve tried it that way twice,” he replied, “and it always chokes me.”

Is the President afraid of choking the railroad corporations?

* * * * *

The question of how to get something for nothing is pretty well illustrated in the free government deposits in national banks. The banks have now over one hundred millions of dollars of government money for their own use, for which they do not pay a cent. Yet when the farmer talks about borrowing money from the government on his land at 2 per cent. interest, the banks raise a howl of paternalism that can be heard all around the world. If President Roosevelt is sincere in his fight on the trusts let him yank that money out of the hands of the biggest trust of all—the money trust. This is something that he can do and that ought to be done. There is no constitutional question involved, and if it be urged that it is necessary for the money to be in circulation let the government loan it direct to the people without a rake-off for the banks. This thing of prosecuting the little trusts and aiding the big ones won’t add any laurels to Teddy’s brow. Let no guilty trust escape, and there ain’t any innocent ones.

* * * * *

Toledo has just brought in a batch of indictments against some of her public officials. Governor Durbin, of Indiana, declares: “Statistics of political debauchery in this State for 1904, if it were possible to present them, would be nothing short of stunning.” Several other governors in their messages have called attention to the growth of corruption in their States, and in Colorado the situation is alarming. Three United States senators have been indicted within the past year, besides scores of lesser officials, some of whom are now serving terms in the penitentiary. Four Republican candidates for governor have been defeated in Republican States on account of their connection or sympathy with corrupt practices, and yet the work is only begun. Let the crusade against political corruption continue. If there is not room enough in the jails, I move that some of the horse thieves be turned out and the public thieves turned in.

* * * * *

The express companies once had a monopoly of transmitting money and charged exorbitant rates for the service. Then the government went into the business and reduced the rates. The express companies were compelled to come to the government rates or not get any business. Thus money is saved to the people, and the business is established on a firm basis. Of course the express companies set up the usual cry of paternalism, but it did no good, and the people would not think now of surrendering this prerogative to private companies. Now, why can’t the government add to its postal system the carrying of parcels, say up to ten or twelve pounds’ weight, and a telegraph and telephone system? The latter are just as legitimate and necessary as the former. Is it because the express companies, that have grown immensely rich, have a lobby in Congress to prevent the passage of such a bill? In England they have the parcels post and the government telegraph, and they save the people millions of dollars. In the past few years nineteen congressional committees have been appointed to investigate the use of the telegraph in connection with the postal department and seventeen of them have reported favorably toward establishing it. A majority of Postmaster Generals have recommended it, and the people demand it, yet the telegraph companies, or rather one company which is controlled by one family, has been successful in thwarting all legislation toward the establishment of a government telegraph system.

* * * * *

The readiness of the Democrats to vote for any old thing they see coming down the pike with the Democratic label on—Parker or Bryan, the gold standard or free silver—reminds me of an incident that happened down in Texas. A wealthy farmer who employed a great many negroes was going into town one day, and one of the negroes on the farm asked him to bring him back a marriage license.

“All right, Pete,” said the farmer, “but what’s the girl’s name?”

“Ann Brown,” replied the darkey.

When the farmer returned that evening he gave the negro his marriage license.

Pete took it and slowly read it over.

“Look heah, Marse Henry, you’se done gone an’ got dis license fer Mary Clarke. I’se gwine t’ marry Ann Brown.”

“I’m sorry, Pete,” the farmer replied, “but never mind; when I go into town again next week I’ll get you another license.”

“What’ll dat cost?” asked Pete.

“One dollar.”

“Lordy, nebber mind, Marse. Dere ain’t a dollar’s wuff ob difference ’tween all de coons on de fa’m.”

* * * * *

Every effort is now being put forth by the banks to have the greenbacks retired. So long as they continue to be issued by the government the banks have not complete control of the money of the country. This movement to retire the greenbacks was begun directly after the Civil War. At that time the bankers said: “It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money for any length of time, for we cannot control that.” Hugh McCulloch, then Secretary of the Treasury, acting on the bankers’ suggestion, said: “The first thing to be done is to establish the policy of contraction.” It was done, and we had the panic of 1873, on account of which thousands lost their homes. The panic aroused the people and caused the bankers to pause in their conspiracy. The Greenback party came and $346,000,000 in greenbacks were saved from destruction. But in the meantime the bankers had silver secretly demonetized. In 1878, however, it was partially restored by the Bland-Allison law. But the bankers were still at work. In October, 1877, the famous Buell circular letter was sent to the bankers throughout the country. “It is advisable,” said this circular, “to do all in your power to sustain such prominent daily and weekly newspapers, especially the agricultural and religious press, as will oppose the issuing of greenback paper money, and that you also withhold patronage or favors from all applicants who are not willing to oppose the government issue of money. Let the government issue the coin and the banks issue the paper money of the country, for then we can better protect each other.”

* * * * *

In March, 1893, the American Bankers’ Association sent out to all the national banks what is known as the “panic circular.” In view of the present efforts on the part of the banks to retire the greenbacks, this circular furnishes some very good reading matter:

DEAR SIR: The interests of national
bankers require immediate financial legislation by
Congress. Silver, silver certificates and Treasury
notes must be retired and national bank-notes upon a
gold basis made the only money. This will require the
authorization of from $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000
of new bonds as a basis of circulation. You will at
once retire one-third of your circulation and call in
one-half of your loans. Be careful to make a money
stringency felt among your patrons, especially among
influential business men. Advocate an extra session
of Congress for the repeal of the purchasing clause
of the Sherman law, and act with the other banks of
your city in securing a large petition to Congress
for its unconditional repeal, as per accompanying
form. Use personal influence with congressmen and
particularly let your wishes be known to senators.
The future life of national banks as safe investments
depends upon immediate action, as there is an
increasing sentiment in favor of government legal
tender notes and silver coinage.

Does anyone but the bankers themselves, and their paid agents, believe for a moment that it would be safe to surrender the control of the currency of the country into the hands of men who would put out such a circular as that? May we not conjecture what they would do when once they had us in their power? If there are those who are in doubt about this question, or the patriotism and honesty of the national bankers, let them read the history of the panics of 1873 and 1893, both of which were precipitated by the bankers. Let the government take the bankers at their word and compel them to keep in their banks a reserve gold fund for the redemption of their own notes. Abolish the gold reserve in the Treasury and make every greenback a perpetual, absolute money, receivable for all dues to the United States, and a legal tender for the payment of private debts. In other words, put the banks where the government is now, if they are to issue any notes at all, and give the government the prerogatives which the banks now want, and some of which they already have. Instead of the government loaning money to the banks at one-fourth of one per cent., let it loan it to the people direct at two per cent. Instead of the government maintaining a large supply of gold for the benefit of the banks, let the banks furnish their own gold for the redemption of their notes, and compel them to maintain a 100-cent reserve, for a note that has only 50 cents behind it is worse than any 50-cent dollar that the banker has ever conjured in his mind. Money issued by the banks and that issued by the government are entirely different propositions. If the banks have proved anything they have proved too much. They have proved that the government credit is the best in the world, that it will even make the note of a dishonest banker good. They have proved that it would not be safe to place the control of the currency into their hands, for they might at any time issue another panic circular asking the banks to call in “one-third of their circulation and one-half of their loans,” and a lot of other mean things that an honest man and a patriot would not do. The question is now up, and it is nearing the climax where the people must decide as to whether the banks will control the currency of the country, and through it the business of the country, or whether the power shall remain in the hands of the people, as Jefferson says, “where it belongs.”

_A Family Necessity_

“James,” said Mrs. Talkyerdeth, as she discontentedly jabbed her hatpins into the hat she had just taken off, “one of us has got to be operated on.”

“Wha-at!” ejaculated Mr. Talkyerdeth, sitting up with a jolt.

“And right away, and seriously, too,” continued Mrs. Talkyerdeth, setting her lips firmly.

“What are you talking about, Maria?” demanded Mr. Talkyerdeth impatiently.

“Well, it’s so,” asserted Mrs. Talkyerdeth decidedly. “Will you telephone for a surgeon, or shall I?”

“Why, my dear,” protested Mr. Talkyerdeth anxiously, “I hadn’t the least suspicion that there was anything the matter with you.”

“There isn’t,” snapped Mrs. Talkyerdeth. “Do you take me for one of these puling, pasty, putty-like females all the women seem to be nowadays?”

“Well, there’s nothing the matter with me, either,” asserted Mr. Talkyerdeth, with intense relief in every glad accent. “I never felt better in my life than I do this minute.”

“I know it. But what difference does that make?” demanded Mrs. Talkyerdeth sharply.

“Eh?” cried Mr. Talkyerdeth, his eyelids flying up and his lower jaw dropping down until there seemed to be some danger of their colliding, if they kept on, in the middle of the back of his head.

“I never was so mortified in my life as I was at the sewing society this afternoon, and it’s never going to happen again,” replied Mrs. Talkyerdeth positively. “So you can just make up your mind that the doctor is going to chop something, I don’t care what, out of one of us right straight off. Why, every woman there was telling all about either her own or her husband’s operation, and I had to sit with my mouth shut all afternoon, just because we’ve never had one!”

ALEX. RICKETTS.

_The Songs We Love_

BY EUGENE C. DOLSON

The songs we love, the dear heart songs
That light us on our way,
Are records of our smiles and tears—
Our lives from day to day.

For words to simple nature true
Are those that reach the heart,
And that which thrills the common soul
Is still the highest art.

_The Alligator of Blique Bayou_

A CUBAN TALE

BY FRANK SAVILE

The smoking-room steward yawned his despair. The card parties had broken up half an hour before, nightcap drinks had been ordered, tumblers had been emptied, and half a dozen men had risen to their feet with “Good night” upon their lips. It looked as if the long-suffering attendant were to be allowed a real six hours’ sleep below.

And then a single word—“fishing”—had changed all these bright prospects in the twinkling of an eye. The globe-trotting Englishman, Mathers, was vaunting the fifty-six-pound salmon he had caught in the Sands River, British Columbia. It seemed that not a man in the room could take to his bed in peace till he had confuted the boaster from stores of personal experience. Fresh cigars were lit, tumblers were refilled, and story climbed upon story in unctuous mendacity.

Muller, the German bagman, bumbled tales of Baltic sturgeon that would make two bites of the British Columbian salmon if they encountered them after breakfast time; Morehead, fresh from Florida, smiled superiorly as he told of one-hundred-and-fifty-pound tarpon, caught with a line and rod, of the weight of a walking-cane; Rivaz, the creole, asked what was the matter with a two-hundred-weight tuna that it should score second place to what was nothing more than a glorified herring? Across the clouds of smoke romance answered to romance; falsehood was fought with its own weapons.

Finally Morehead, abandoning his earliest illustration, harked back to the land from which it was drawn. Alligators—had any one of them enjoyed the sport of hanging a looped line over an alligator run, and opening a manhole through the earth upon their lairs? That was fishing if you liked, with the odds upon the fish! Till you had joined in the tug which yanked a fighting saurian ashore you didn’t know what human muscles could stand—you might go shark-fishing every day of your life, and miss learning it.

The suddenness of the topic left him, for the moment, master of the field. Professional liars, hurriedly reviewing their conversational equipments, found themselves with no better weapon than an already over-tempered imagination. None of them had been in Florida—none could supply the substratum of fact which alone is a true foundation for convincing fiction.

Then a new voice shattered the periods of Morehead’s triumph. In the corner, with one foot banked against the table and the other stretched across the lounge, sat a long and lanky graybeard, his extended limbs giving him something of the effect of a pair of human compasses. So far he had added nothing to the conversation.

“Say, now, my dear sir,” he drawled plaintively, “you know you have not got any _real_ alligators in Florida.”

The young man’s face grew purple.

“Not got any!” he blared. “Not got any!”

“Not to call _alligators_!” persisted the veteran complacently. “What, now, would be your idea of the length, breadth and jaw-capacity of one of your little pets?”

The youth drew a calculating breath and eyed his questioner narrowly.

“I assisted, a short time back, to capture one eighteen feet long,” he lied coldly. The man on the lounge accepted the statement with a patronizing little nod.

“There now!” he agreed. “It just bears out what I say. Nowadays there aren’t any of a size to _call_ alligators. When _I_ was in Florida, it might be forty or it might be fifty years ago, that kind of small fry were reckoned in among the lizards. When we went hunting what the New York manufacturers call crocodile leather, anything less than four fathoms from tail-tip to smile we shouldered out of the way. One of thirty feet, I allow, we considered a circumstance.”

A murmur rustled up from the assembly. Even the steward’s unconscious grimace spoke of incredulity.

“Yes,” continued the old man pleasantly. “I see your eyebrows rise, but that won’t prevent my assuring you that my recollections don’t stop there. For over a year I had the personal acquaintance of one that measured from end to end not a single inch less than twelve slimy yards. But that,” he allowed generously, “was not in Florida.”

“Barnum’s Museum?” suggested Morehead contemptuously, and the listeners grinned. The veteran was not put out.

“No,” he contradicted, “not even in the United States. Yet, at the same time, not so far from home. In Cuba—to be explicit.”

There was a shout of derision. Not less than six of those present had been volunteers in the war.

“Cuba!” they bawled in chorus. “There isn’t a crocodile in the island that would crowd a bathtub!” added Morehead defiantly.

The graybeard eyed them serenely.

“Of course,” he said, with a humble note of interrogation, “you’re posted—you know every inch of the country from Baracoa to Corrientes?”

Morehead moved a little restlessly.

“I was three months around Santiago with my regiment,” said he.

“And spent every spare second examining the creeks, I don’t doubt,” said the other cheerfully. “My boy,” he went on, “I had been five years in the country before you began to attend kindergarten. In those days the fame of the Blique Bayou alligator was known to every soul within a hundred miles of Guantanama. I don’t mind allowing that the name of Everett P. Banks—which is what I’m called when I’m at home, gentlemen—was a good deal in men’s mouths about the same time. We were much mixed up together, one way or another, that astounding beast and I.”

The steward leaned his head upon his palms, and swore gently beneath his breath. He told himself that this evil old man was about to knock another half-hour off the night’s rest. He recognized in the gray eyes a triumphant light—the gleam that illumines the face of the raconteur whose audience is assured.

Morehead was still dissatisfied.

“Blique Bayou?” he repeated superciliously. “Blique Bayou?”

Banks nodded with an indulgent air.

“On the map it appears as the San Antonio River,” he explained, “and it flows into the sea about a mile to the west of the Buena Esperanza Mining Company’s settlement. As it was notorious that Emil Blique, the West Indian, owned all the shares, the hill that was topped by the shafting was called Blique Mountain, and the creek and swamp around it Blique Bayou. For five years I was manager of the whole outfit. And a knock-kneed crowd they were,” he added reminiscently.

Mathers interrupted. It looked as if the narrative were going to jump the tracks to be wrecked on outside issues.

“The alligator,” he insisted. “We want the tale of the alligator!”

The old man stared at him in gentle surprise.

“You wouldn’t keep a man of my age out of his berth to tell you yarns thirty years old?” he deprecated.

“We would,” said Mathers determinedly. “What’s yours?”

Startled out of his equanimity, the ancient allowed that so far he had encountered nothing to abash whisky—plain. But as for the story at that time of night—well, well, they needn’t make all that noise. If it had to be done he supposed he had better get to it as quickly as possible. He paused, took a gulp at the tumbler the steward placed before him, and let a meditative glance dwell upon Morehead, who had made a motion to rise. Catching his eye, the Floridian suddenly abandoned his purpose, and sat down in a pose of exasperated resignation.

“It was somewhere about ’81—or it might be ’82,” began the old man, anchoring his gaze mildly upon Morehead’s uncompromising features, “that I landed at Santiago from Savannah, with a letter in my pocket from my late employer, George S. Gage, to Señor Emil Blique, Buena Esperanza; the letter and myself being respectively part answers to a wild telegram that my boss had received ten days before. The West Indian had cabled that his manager had died of yellow fever, and that he was alone with nothing but creole help to drive the congregation of hard-shell niggers and dagos that he paid to grub manganese from the bowels of the earth.

“He wanted a man, he said, with a knowledge of mining and with two working fists. He laid particular stress upon the second qualification, and offered such a one three hundred dollars a month to come at the earliest opportunity.

“Gage told me that if I’d the spirit of a louse I’d run along and take it. Otherwise, he said, he’d offer it to Altsheler, the under manager, who was a wicked man behind a pistol, but with no kind of idea of using four fingers and a thumb when the gun got lost. That’s a terrible fault among dagos. They are frightened of a knock-down blow, because they don’t understand it. But when you start gunning among them—well, they can gun and knife themselves—some.

“You mightn’t think it, gentlemen, but in those days I’d a fist like a ham, and I concluded, after consideration, that the job was built for my particular talents and not for Altsheler’s. Ten days after that telegram arrived I was bumping along the trail to Blique Mountain, wondering just how hard those three hundred dollars would be to collect at the end of every four weeks.

“I needn’t have troubled. For a Jamaican, old Emil was as straight a man as I have ever known. His cheque was good money every time I cashed it, and, when I’d got the hang of the business, fairly easy earned. During the first fortnight I filled an eye for two mine hands _per diem_, and by the end of that time the crowd began to understand just where their best interest lay. They reasoned it out that they’d have to do as they were told, and after that things went like clockwork. When I’d got them really tame, indeed, I found that I could slack off in the afternoons when old man Blique was moving about himself, and so I looked around for relaxation. Like all of you, I was something of a fisherman.

“Naturally, I turned my steps toward the bayou, and it was there that I made the acquaintance of Pedro Garsia, Concepcion, his son, and the other member of the family, as I must call him, for from every point of view, he was treated like a relation. I allude to my friend Joaquin el Legardo—Jimmy the Alligator, in the vernacular—and he, I repeat, was every inch of thirty-six feet long. I dare say he was a hundred and fifty years old, and he led a more or less blameless existence in the swamp and stream adjacent to the Garsia bungalow.

“At first, though, it looked as if our relations might be strained. I’d got down to the bank, fitted up my rod and cast a speculative lump of frog’s flesh into the water just to see if anything sizeable was on the move. No sooner had I made the cast than there was a boil and a rush ’way out in midstream, and an ugly dun snout bobbed above the surface and took down my bait and half my line before I realized what was happening. It didn’t take me long to understand. I saw the great jaws open and champ viciously on the good catgut that was tangled in the yellow teeth, and I said a wicked word. Also I drew my revolver. Before I’d got it cocked I heard a terrible uproar from behind.

“An old man, with silver-white hair hanging over a chocolate-brown face, was running toward me, shouting as if he’d break a blood vessel.

“‘No shoot!’ he bawled, ‘no shoot!’ and he waved his arms with some of the most complete gesticulations I have ever witnessed. I put down my pistol and waited till he arrived panting.

“He was too much out of breath to say much at first, but what he did manage to whisper was to the point. ‘_Bueno legardo_—_bueno_,’ he repeated, pointing to the brute that was playing cat’s-cradle with my fishing line, and then, tapping the butt of my revolver, ‘no shoot—no!’

“I can tell you I was mystified, for the idea of a _good_ alligator, as he kept calling it, was outside the pale of my experiences. I told him so. But he nodded and beckoned and led me down the bank a couple of hundred yards till we were opposite his house. There I found a rope stretched between two stumps across the river, with a loop running on it, and this last was lashed to the bow of a pirogue.

“‘This mine,’ he explained, smiling. ‘This what you call a ferry.’ I looked at the boat. Then I remembered that coming up from Santiago the road had circled widely. Blique Mountain had been in sight a good hour before we reached it and my driver had made me understand that we were avoiding the river. This was evidently the short cut for foot travelers.

“‘If this is the ferry, why in the name of gracious don’t you let me fill that old pirate with lead?’ I asked, as the brute floated comfortably by. ‘Not that he’d mind,’ I added, as I realized the size of him, ‘but you should get a howitzer and pump a six-pound ball through him. Some day, when your catboat’s full of people, he’ll upset it and fill his larder for a fortnight.’

“The old man smiled agreeably and put his head on one side like a magpie. He cocked me a comical look out of the corner of his eye.

‘This river not deep,’ he explained glibly. ‘This what you call ford one time,’ and he pointed toward the eddies that swirled between us and the opposite bank. I could see that they were running over shallows nowhere more than four feet deep. And at that the old chap toddled into the house and reappeared with a basket load of decaying lizard flesh. He came close to me and gave me a little nudge.

“‘Ford one time,’ he repeated, taking a lump of offal and tossing it into the stream. Then he gave me another nudge, and grinned. ‘Joaquin—’ he drew my attention to the dun snout that came floating down upon the bait—‘_Joaquin make it ferry!_’

“I gave him one look, and he answered me with a grimace that would have done credit to an idol. Then I sat down and laughed and laughed till I was sore. The originality of it! The old scoundrel was positively and actually maintaining his private alligator to put the fear of death upon the niggers and mulattos that used the short cut into the town, and was reaping a harvest of ferry dues over a four-foot deep river!

“He watched me, as I shouted, quite politely, and when I’d had my laugh out insisted on escorting me into his house and offering me a glass of aguardiente. While I was sipping it he was rummaging among his litter and finally produced me a line in the place of the one that Joaquin had snatched. He insisted on binding it on to my reel, and then, in his broken English, began to explain just where the best fishing stands could be found along the banks. And he didn’t stop a-telling. He took me out when the sun got lower and gave me a few practical hints upon the spot. He laid himself out to be agreeable, and at the end of a couple of hours we were as thick as thieves.

“When we got back to the shanty we found a thick, squat, low-browed young man smoking a cigarette on the veranda. The old man introduced him as his son, Concepcion. The youth bowed, smirked and expressed his sense of the honor in perfect English, yet somehow I didn’t take to him as I had done to his parent. He had the same magpie way of looking at you as his father had, but with a difference. The old man did it with a laugh in his eye: the young one furtively, shiftily and without the ghost of a smile.

“It came about that for the next twelve months I was thrown a good deal into the company of the Garsias. They lived openly on the earnings of their ferry, but I suspected that they made a little by selling aguardiente to my dagos and niggers. But they knew when to stop—they never sent one of my crowd back so’s he couldn’t take his spell the day after a carouse, and anything short of that I winked at.

“Old man Blique was not a conversationalist, and the two at the bungalow were practically my only company for days together. And when they were out of the way I got into the habit of regarding even Joaquin as a sort of companion. I got to know his haunts, and where a newcomer would have seen nothing but an ugly log, half buried in the mud, I could recognize the upper half of the alligator’s countenance and his little, straight, slit eyes winking at me most benevolent.

“And yet he was the one that put an end to all this simplicity and loving kindness. I don’t know if the fish supply in the river grew short. Perhaps in his old age he developed epicurean tastes. But nasty stories suddenly began to come in. Fowls went, pigs were missed and never heard of again, a couple of steers disappeared from an _estancia_ higher up the river, and a mare of Emil’s was robbed of her colt and pervaded the banks of the bayou for weeks, neighing like a lost soul. Joaquin grew to be the most unpopular personage in the neighborhood.

“The worst, however, was to come. Red Rambo, the head man of a gang that worked Number 44 level, and a mulatto went spreeing off to Santiago one fine evening before a Saint’s Day. The next afternoon, late, as I was fishing, he appeared on the opposite bank, evidently full up, calling to Pedro to fetch him and his mates across. The moment the old man had got the pirogue against the far bank Red Rambo started to call him every kind of extortioner and money-sucker, and, seeing that it was from a mulatto to a pure-breed creole, I don’t wonder that the old man got mad. He refused to take the fellow over—told him to cool his blood by walking six miles round.

“Unfortunately Rambo had drunk himself up to the pitch of Dutch obstinacy and Dutch courage. He came splashing into the river, wading after the pirogue and cursing Pedro by every saint in the nigger calendar.

“Some of the low-down half-castes, who’d believe anything, used to declare that Joaquin was the familiar spirit of the Garsia family and was sworn to protect them in this life in return for a note of hand for their souls in the life to come. I could see some of the men in the boat just shivering for Red Rambo as they listened to the insults he was piling upon the old boy, and their shivers were prophetic. For there came a sudden swirl upon the surface of the calm in midstream, and then a little grooving eddy shot toward the mulatto with the rush of a millrace.

“He yelled, tossed up his arms, and made a half-turn toward the shore. Through a long instant I could see his finger-tips quiver against the green of a fern palm opposite. And then he was _gone_—snatched down from below as suddenly as the pantomime clown drops through the trap in the boards. A little foaming cone of water burst up from the whirl where he disappeared, and long, irregular stains floated away from its crimson centre. But never another sign of Rambo was seen again, either in the water or out of it. Joaquin was both his murderer and his grave!

“In justice to poor old Pedro I must allow that he was the man who took the thing most to heart. He screeched, he gesticulated, he called down curses upon the alligator from all the angels of paradise, and he made as if he would leap into the river and fall upon Joaquin with nothing more than a pocket-knife; in fact, it took all the exertions of the other niggers to keep him from it. They got him ashore at last pretty well demented and fighting like a maniac. He had to be tied to his bed before we durst leave him to himself. When the others had gone jabbering off home I shook my head solemnly at Concepcion.

“‘That means the end of Joaquin,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow I shall get orders from the boss to fill him up with Winchester bullets, and then where’s your ferry?’

“The Spaniard was as pale as milk. He looked away from me to his father foaming upon the bed, and then he gave a queer little high-pitched laugh.

“‘Señor Banks,’ he answered, ‘there may be two sides to that question. Señor Blique owns the mines, but not the river or the alligator. That dirt-begotten negro brought his fate upon himself.’

“I looked at him narrowly, and noticed that he was ostentatiously and abnormally calm. That’s a bad sign in a creole. They are safer red and roaring. Cold and white they’re malicious.

“‘My dear friend,’ said I politely, ‘there is no law against alligator shooting. Whatever orders I get I shall obey—be sure of that and take a friendly warning. Joaquin can’t stay hereabouts after that bloody exploit—it’s absurd to expect it.’

“He bowed quite pleasantly.

“‘If warnings are in order, señor,’ he replied, ‘take one from me. The man that kills Joaquin will not live long to boast of it!’ And at that he drew back the curtain from before the door and gave me a very significant view of the street. I took the hint and, without another word, marched out. And I did it sideways, too. You don’t expose the broad of your back to a man of Concepcion’s singular talents without making sure that he’s leaving his knife in his belt.

“Of course, as I predicted, old Emil was not prepared to stand any nonsense from Pedro Garsia, his son, or Joaquin. Rambo was one of his best foremen. He gave me the strictest orders to take my gun to the alligator the first thing in the morning and to revenge the mulatto if it took all day. I nodded, shrugged my shoulders, and went to bed.

“The first news brought me in the morning was that old Pedro was dead. The shock had brought on brain fever, and the son’s homeopathic treatment of forcing aguardiente down his throat had lifted the fever to the point of delirium. In the night the patient had burst his bonds and broken straight for the river. His son and their nigger servant had been aroused by the noise and had followed.

“They were just about ten seconds too late. The old man stumbled upon the bank and went sprawling half in and half out of the water, his outstretched hand falling upon what the nigger thought was a floating log.

“It wasn’t. For the log split into twin jaws, and, as the other two snatched the poor old fellow up, the open fangs came together just below the unfortunate wretch’s shoulder. It was only a piece of corpse that they carried back into the veranda, while Joaquin went smiling off into midstream to enjoy a most unexpected dessert.

“I considered, of course, that any son with Christian feelings would spare me any further trouble in the matter of the alligator’s death. That, for the sake of commercial advantage, Concepcion would allow his parent to go unrevenged seemed out of the question. I took my Winchester with me as I strolled down to the river merely because I thought he might be too much overcome with grief to have completed his obvious duty, and that I might do him a neighborly turn by forestalling him.

“You can imagine my surprise, then, when I saw, as I turned the corner of the Garsia bungalow, Concepcion, standing alone upon the river bank, the usual basket of offal on the ground beside him, tossing the contents into the water, lump by lump! The alligator was taking them, serenely and regularly, waiting for them with half-open jaws as a lapdog waits for biscuits!

“There are moments when one’s impulses take the reins into their teeth and bolt. I made no sound—I said nothing. I strode silently up behind the man, drew a clear bead upon the brute’s eye and sent a bullet plumb into his wicked brain. And as he ripped out of the water and rolled over in his agony I fired another cartridge at the junction of his forearm and body, and that was the end of his floundering. He sank like a lump of lead.

“The Spaniard gave a yell as I fired the first time. I brought my rifle down from the second shot to see him springing straight at me. I pulled him up short. With the butt at my hip and the muzzle pointing straight at his chest, I made him understand just what to expect if he came a step nearer. He halted five yards away—panting.

“For ten seconds we two stood there, each glaring into the other’s face, and if the light of hell ever burns in a man’s eyes, I saw it so burning in the eyes of Concepcion Garsia. His shirt was open at the neck—I could watch the drumming of his heart within his ribs!

“And then the tenseness of his limbs gave. He seemed to fall in upon himself. He just gasped one threatening word—‘_Mañana!_’ (tomorrow!)—turned upon his heel and staggered off toward his house like a drunken man! I did not see him again for a fortnight.